Charles Barone on ESEA Reauthorization

This comes a little late (10/31), but it’s well worth the read: Democrats for Education Reform’s Charles Barone explores the various unholy alliances at the heart of the effort to take teacher accountability measures out of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Read it.

Barone covers ground I’ve hit before—like how opponents of test-based accountability blithely use test results to make their arguments—but he doesn’t stop there. For example, after spending years appropriating the “true leftists” mantle by painting education reformers as conservative “market-based” policy wonks, reform’s opponents have fallen happily into the embrace of the Tea Party. Yep. The unions who’ve spent all that time calling reformers corporate stooges—are now finding common ground with the Koch Brothers.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with finding unlikely allies on the other side of the aisle. Compromise comes from opponents finding common cause, and we need more of that in DC. Of course, there’s also nothing wrong with reformers pointing out just how odd the unions’ bedfellows have become.