Dirty conservative tricks, part 3067

Kevin Drum links to a New York Times article showing how many otherwise excellent schools are being deemed "failures" by the No Child Left Behind Act. And he has some valuable insights to share:

I suspect that a lot of people who supported the worthier goals of NCLB simply didn't realize they were getting snookered: the fact is that the Bush administration wants to see lots of public schools labeled as failures. It's basically a long-term plan to erode the public's faith in public schools and thereby increase support for private schools and vouchers.

This is part of a pattern from conservatives, who realize that their domestic agenda is actually pretty unpopular and can be passed only if people don't realize what they're getting. NCLB is an example of this kind of stealth legislation, and both last year's Medicare bill and this year's "ownership society" are additional examples. In the end, though, NCLB may turn out to have been too clever by half, as parents rebel against being labeled failures instead of meekly accepting the verdict of the federal government.

Of course, that's not the only surprise the Bush administration has in store — surprises that they're hoping nobody will notice until they're either safely reelected or out of office. As I wrote last December, 2010 should be a helluva year....