President Bush yesterday made an overhaul of federal education policy his first legislative initiative, offering a plan that would give states more freedom and funding in exchange for rigorous annual testing of students, according to The Washington Post . The new president's plan closely resembles his signature campaign proposal, but he added several sweeteners for Democrats that were likely to improve the legislation's prospects, expanding funding for public education by an unspecified amount and softening some of the proposal's more controversial elements. In today's USA Today , Cato Director of Education and Child Policy Darcy Olsen writes that although accountability is a good thing, real accountability doesn't come from politicians.
Genuine accountability can happen only when parents control educational spending.
She argues that what ails education isn't a lack of standards or testing. For decades, Mexicans have been going North illegally to pick tomatoes, wash dishes and clean houses. Now a group of lawmakers says it's time to make it legal, according to The Christian Science Monitor . In the new Cato Handbook for Congress , Daniel Griswold calls for easing immigration laws and expanding quotas for immigrant workers. For example, destroyed by shelling nearly a decade ago, the ethnic Armenian village of Sardarashen, Azerbaijan, is being rebuilt brick by brick, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.