Getting, but missing, the point with Michelle Rhee

Michelle Rhee is the highly regarded, now former, chancellor of the Washington, DC government schools, and she's now making headlines by attempting to start a group that will tend to advocate for the interests of parents and children in the highly volatile mix.

While I commend her for realizing that politics is highly involved in government schooling, I don't think I'll join her group for a simple reason; politics does not need to be a big factor in education, and her successes in the District of Columbia were in significant portion due to DC's asinine infliction of draconian regulations on homeschoolers.  If you think pushing homeschoolers into the government schools wasn't on the minds of DC educrats and the city council when they did this, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you.

Regarding politics in education, the experience of homeschoolers demonstrates that no one group can adequately advocate for the interests of all children and parents.  You will see advocates of classical liberal education (like my family), unschoolers, Charlotte Mason advocates, A Beka, Bob Jones, and a host of other groups in the mix.  The only real thing all of these groups have in common is a desire to be the ones to train their children for adulthood.  We don't even agree on phonics for reading and repetition for math, for goodness' sake!

So what's the solution?  Probably the simplest one is to simply roll back federal spending and state mandates for education, and while doing so, work to make it clear to parents and other interested parties that there is a heavy penalty for failing to educate your child adequately; your child will be living in your home until he is 40, and you'll need to subsidize their life until you die--either by direct payments or by the taxes you pay.

If you want to counter special interests and get their attention drawn to the concerns of parents and children, that's the way to do it, I think.