About time

Ok, after yesterday's scathing entry, I feel the need to point out Obama doing something I am thrilled about. He's given exception clauses to Bush's disastrous "No Child Left Behind" policy, including the state where my mother works as an educator, Indiana. In Indiana, it has caused education standards to plummet like a stone, causing more kids to be left behind. Actually, all it did in Indiana was add more standardized testing, causing teachers to abandon learning in favor of teaching kids how to pass tests. Unfortunately, this caused a generation of students who graduate high school with a 6th grade reading level and their only life skill is taking an exam. Kids should be taught how to learn, not how to take a test. The other thing that it did was place quota restrictions on which students could be retained to repeat a grade, so it was done on quota and not on merit. This should be a decision of the teacher and the parent, not the Federal Government. So kids were passed up grades when they weren't ready, all because of a quota. So thank you Mr. President. Now if you can give the same "opt out" policies to religious institutions when it comes to freedom as you just did ten states on education, you'd be doing a lot better.