From today’s edition of the Morning Jolt, just sent off for the editing and e-mailing process:

Imagine That, the Obama Administration Recoiling From Accountability
Somehow, I don’t think this sentence will be that shot in the arm that Team Obama was looking for: “The Obama administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of President Bush’s signature education law, No Child Left Behind, and will call for broad changes in how schools are judged to be succeeding or failing, as well as for the elimination of the law’s 2014 deadline for bringing every American child to academic proficiency.”
Do you have to even guess who wants this? “Educators who have been briefed by administration officials said the proposals for changes in the main law governing the federal role in public schools would eliminate or rework many of the provisions that teachers’ unions, associations of principals, school boards and other groups have found most objectionable.”
The Times’ coverage continues, “Yet the administration is not planning to abandon the law’s commitments to closing the achievement gap between minority and white students and to encouraging teacher quality.” Well that’s big of them.
Gina Cobb: “Nothing good will come of this more “nuanced” approach being urged by teacher’s unions. Nor will any students benefit academically from a new federal policy that will throw “large new amounts of money” at schools if they teach what Obama “defines” as important.”
Elsewhere in the education world, John J. Miller notices Democrats’ silence when Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”
If Only Carl Sagan Were Here to Say “Trillions and Trillions”
It’s Budget Day, where the administration unveils their budget (and often, the federal agencies would do the same to the reporters on their beat.) As a wire service reporter, I hated these stories. They all amounted to long lists of numbers, you inevitably had to get a quote from some interest group — “while we’re pleased to see the 3 percent overall increase, there are still vital public service programs that are dangerously underfunded”– and then the editors, having determined that budget stories are boring, would stick your story on A15 if you were lucky.
Having said all that, this year’s $1.6 trillion deficit ought to generate some real headlines. NRO’s Daniel Foster: “That number is a record, and represents the largest deficit as a percentage of GDP since the Second World War. It is also significantly higher than the last CBO estimate, which predicted a $1.35 trillion deficit just last week. The new White House budget, also to be released tomorrow, will reportedly project a $1.3 trillion deficit for FY 2011.”