July 2, 2004

You've doubtless heard the cynical saying, "No good deed goes unpunished." That's certainly the case whenever Congress and the President try to solve problems in public policy areas that the opposition party has identified as its own personal property.

Take prescription drug costs, for instance.

Sure, the new prescription drug program has problems. Its emphasis on giving seniors a wide array of choices has meant that it's too confusing for many people. Also, it merely helps with drug costs instead of picking up the tab, and the biggest subsidies go to the poorest participants instead of to everybody - issues that leave many feeling dissatisfied and underwhelmed.

Nevertheless, the program will provide significant help for most beneficiaries. Yet, along with honest critiques it has been the subject of vicious, misleading attacks. It seems that some people would rather trash a useful effort than let President Bush and the current congressional majority get any credit for helping people.

The same goes for education. One of President Bush's top priorities when he came into office was passage of education reforms under the title, "No Child Left Behind."

Among the provisions of the new law are requirements that 95% of students in certain grades take state-mandated tests and meet minimum attendance and graduation benchmarks. Expectations for student performance on the math and reading tests gradually increase, with the goal that by 2014 100% of students in all schools will be succeeding at their grade levels.

Under the plan, schools that go two years in a row without meeting the new standards can be "identified for improvement." If efforts to improve fail, inadequate schools will be subject to a number of changes.

Of course, the purpose of educational reform is not to punish underperformers but rather to target them for extra effort. The catch here is that in the past we have responded to bad schools by giving them more money only to see little discernible improvement. While the new tests are unpopular in some quarters, they bring into sharper focus the questions of "How are we doing?"; "Who needs help?" and "Is the extra help working?"

Those questions and the tests they helped create recently resulted in our state Department of Public Instruction's identification of 54 schools requiring improvement. That's down from last year, when there were 68 schools identified for improvement. Twenty-eight schools left the list because they met annual performance objectives for two consecutive years.

Opposition to the new law has at least three components: Honest concerns about the burdens imposed on schools; unhappiness about being held responsible for the success or failure of schools; and a determination by some to make sure that the President and the current congressional majority get no credit - and instead receive blame - for our efforts.

Every government program could be improved in some or many ways, and critiques are a necessary part of free societies. But overly strident partisan attacks can drown out serious objections.

Currently, there's a bitter campaign denouncing the Administration for failing to spend enough on education in order to "fully fund" the No Child Left Behind effort. What the critics don't mention, however, is that federal funding for education has more than doubled over the past nine years and under President Bush has had its biggest rise in any single presidential term since the 1960s.

As I said, "No good deed goes unpunished."