"Education Week" on MSNBC/NBC has convinced me of something.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Watching a lot of "discourse" about public education has convinced me that national education policy is not necessarily a good thing.

It is good to have some reasonable level of policy uniformity but it is not good to run these issues through the sausage grinder of national politics.

National politics produces bad answers lately. We have no choice but to decide some things on a national level because they are national policy, like whether to invade Iraq or preserve social security or make Warren Buffet pay a higher tax rate than his secretary pays. We know the national political process will produce suboptimal outcomes but that's our system and it is what it is.

But it is not necessary that that education be this much of a partisan football.

Some minimal standards? Sure.

But I would prefer to not see the day when federal education money is indispensable and the money is tied to "teaching both sides" of the creation/evolution argument, "keep the baby" counseling, etc.

I don't have any pat answers on education. At all. Just saying that the way we do things here, nationalizing issues does not always promote good faith and intellectual honesty.