Education Secretary Rod Paige said Monday that the National Education Association, one of the nation’s largest labor unions, was like “a terrorist organization” because of the way it was resisting many provisions of a school improvement law pushed through Congress by President Bush in 2001.

Paige’s comments, made to the nation’s governors at a private White House meeting, were denounced by union President Reg Weaver as well as prominent Democrats. Paige said he was sorry, and the White House said he was right to say so.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Making Light and John Cole of Balloon Juice have both weighed in on the subject.

As I come from a family of teachers, the words disgusting, vile, and offensive aren’t nearly strong enough to express my feelings about that statement.

Gina had considered writing a diatribe on “No Child Left Behind” but has not yet gotten around to it. Some of the highlights:
95% of the children in a school must test at grade level.
All children are to be tested, and all test scores count. This means that if a school has a large number of special education students, those student’s scores must be counted.
The 95% mark is for students registered in the school, not students taking the test, so schools with attendance problems will automatically fail, even if all their students do well, if they have problems with absenteeism.
Immigrants have one (1) year to attain proficiency in English. After that year their scores will be counted.

Those are some of the more obnoxious points Gina has mentioned, but there are lots more. Hopefully she’ll find the time to write something up.