[Tennessean4Bush]

Those factors can be addressed and even controlled at a local or state level.

So, at a local or state level you are seeing the teacher union problems successfully addressed?

You want I should split hairs? Oy!

I am not asking anyone to split hairs, merely to modulate their rhetoric. Again, out of my list the NCLB would not even make my top five, nor would it make yours, I presume.

Is the federal government getting involved in public schools a great idea that I support? No. Is it worthy of "single, worst" thing to happen? Nah, not even in the top 10.

[grellis]

You presume wrong, actually. NCLB is most definitely in my top five. Number one with a bullet, as a matter of fact. My children attend public schools--an urban public school, in fact, in a failing school district. NCLB's goal was to address the problems in districts such as ours, and what it has done is hasten the demise of our district much faster than all of your other factors combined.

And yes, to a certain extent the teacher union problems are being addressed here, both at a local and state level. Is everyone happy with the way things are going? Of course not. I shudder to think, however, how difficult it would be to address union-related problems if it had to be done on a national level, rather than a state level.

If you want to call it hyperbole, go right ahead--but that has more to do with the circumstances of your school districts, not mine. Here in Lansing, NCLB has been disasterous.