Lost for Words

Time’s up? Where’s the GOP plan? July 27, 2010

Not too much has been said lately — at least in a prominent place — about public education reform, an area where the Obama administration agrees in large part with many of the voices within the GOP and otherwise on a conservative side of the equation. On things like linking teacher pay to student performance, coming down hard on chronically failing schools — even to the point of replacing the entire staff as Obama supported in Rhode Island — bolstering charter schools (as long as they also measure up), establishing national standards for basics like reading and math and using incentives to motivate adoption of methods that are proven to work.

Many of these notions long have been opposed by teacher unions, particularly by elements rooted in inner cities where failure today is all too common — some of it for very good societal reasons and some of it because of entrenched incompetence. The President has tried to lead on this matter, expending political capital on a course not all that popular with some core elements in his own party.

I’m not sure I buy into all his folks are proposing.  But if there ever were an area where a majority in Congress should have materialized by now, it’s here. Yet, we get this from Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn: “I’d say time is up. I don’t see it happening.”

Even though vast momentum is building in more than half the states for reforms that might actually move to change things in one of the most vitally important realms.

Time’s up, the “loyal” opposition says  — on July 27 — because — why?

Because it’s time for the party to do nothing constructive. It’s time to go tell the voters they would be better off turning control of the Congress over to the GOP. Time’s up because the GOP wants no progress toward solving any of the important problems of today — like failing schools — that might be interpreted in any way as a “Democratic” accomplishment.

Instead, we need to wait another year for their plan, which is — what?

If we don’t ask Sen. Alexander and any and all others waving the Red banner in the next few months, we’re gonna get a surprise. Could be good. Could be bad, just as is the case with any blank check