Federal Alphabet Soup Won’t Fix Schools By Andrew J. Coulson

President Bush signed the bi-partisan America COMPETES act on August 9th, with the acronymic goal of Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science. Come September, Congress will debate reauthorization of the 5-year-old No Child Left Behind act, or NCLB, which aimed to improve math and reading performance. But before our federal representatives serve up another acronym-laden education program, Americans might want to signal for the waiter, because there’s a fly in Washington’s alphabet soup: these programs will not, indeed cannot, fix our schools.

The problem is best demonstrated by the America COMPETES act, which was inspired by the National Science Foundation report “Rising Above the Gathering Storm.” The NSF observed that “a substantial portion of our workforce finds itself in direct competition for jobs with lower-wage workers around the globe,” and argued that this intensifying competition from abroad now compels us to improve our schools.

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