Hog-Slopping Politics; Federal Bureaucracy Part of Education Problem

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Byline: Deborah Simmons, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A headline in The Washington Post yesterday caught my eye. "Shaping the Future," it said, "To Ensure the Health of Young Trees, Gradual Pruning can pay Dividends." That, I thought, is precisely what lawmakers and policy-makers should keep in mind when deliberating on education.

Sadly, what the powers that be call good public policy is often no better than the slop my great-granddaddy used to feed the family hogs in Buena Vista, Ga.

It's a hard-knocks life for children who grow into weeds or worse, a runt, instead of growing into a sturdy, shady oak. The lack of a solid educational foundation, as statistics have proven over the decades, leaves America's children and its economy deformed.

President Bush, Ted Kennedy, Rod Paige, Bill Bennett and …