The Obama administration is taking down the “No Child Left Behind” schoolhouses in front of the U.S. Department of Education.  According to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the name is just too “toxic.”  Besides, he’s got his own plan to manipulate the public’s cuteness zone ^[1]. As the Washington Post ^[2] reports, “photos of students, from preschool to college age, are going up on 44 ground-floor windows, forming an exhibit that can be seen from outside. There are images of young people reading, attending science class and playing basketball.”

So the propaganda is changing. The disaster ^[3]that has been federal involvement in education, however, keeps rumbling along. Indeed, it seems poised to get even worse. The Obama folks have been mum about what, exactly, they have planned for reauthorization of the No Child Left…er…Elementary and Secondary Education Act, but the foreshadowing has been ominous: $100 billion in “stimulus” for already cash-drenched ^[4]American education; loud endorsement of national standards ^[5]; dangling $350 million ^[6] to bankroll national (read: federal) tests; and the smothering ^[7] of DC school choice.

So meet the new propagandist, same as the old propagandist…only, quite possibly, even worse.