[George W. Bush]

Hillary, is that you?

You guys must just love Teddy Kennedy and the DoE bureaucrats.

Quite obviously, you know nothing about DoE, NCLB and the other major distractions the liberal education establishment inflicts on teachers and schools.

I can't count the number of times idiots have tried to tell me that all we need to improve education is better tests. It's so simplistic, so far from the real needs of education and the hard work teachers try to do in the classroom that it astonishes me to hear people suggest we need even more of the failures of DoE.

You two should vote for the Democrat nominee if this is what you really want.

[asparagus]

No, just smart enough to realize that the world is changing and we need to get some competent people in Washington with long-term strategic thinking and accountability, or we're going to be in deep do-do. Throwing money at the problem isn't the solution, but neither is ignoring education at the national level.

Tell me which candidates are advocating the abolition of the Department of Education?

[firebrand]

As George Bush said at a charter school in Harlem, if you don't care about something, why measure it?

The idea of schools without accountability is one whose time has passed. And accountability without tests is impossible.

That was not my point, however. The main index of achievement in countries that are doing better than we are is adherence to curriculum. Not discipline, although that helps. And adherence to some of the curricula we have in disparate parts of this country brings us backward rather than forward.