Good Enough for Our Children, But Not Bush’s Vanity War

I made the point this morning that the whole premise of No Child Left Behind is that, by determining whether every school–and every child–was passing or failing, you could require improvements on the schools.

Well, not surprisingly, Bush is unwilling to undergo the same kind of tough scrutiny that the six year olds in our nation’s schools undergo:

Stung by the bleakfindings of a congressional audit of progress in Iraq, the Pentagon hasasked that some of the negative assessments be revised, a militaryspokesman said Thursday.

[snip]

At the White House,officials argued that the GAO report, which was required by legislationPresident Bush signed last spring, was unrealistic because it assigned“pass or fail” grades to each benchmark, rather than assessingwhether the Iraqis have made progress toward reaching the benchmarkgoals.

"A bar was set so high, that it was almost not to be able to be met,” White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.

I don’t know which is more tempting–to point out the failure of the NCLB logic, so we can get funding for the borderline schools that are improving but not "passing." Or to force the NCLB logic onto Bush’s failure of a war so we can bring our men and women home?