Let's Leave Some Children Behind

Michael Petrilli is a leading conservative commentator on education policy. He is executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education-policy think tank based in Washington. He is also an executive editor of Education Next and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Petrilli is notorious for his hostility to teacher unions. He has also been a strong advocate for charter schools and voucher programs. In a recent blog posting on Education Week’s Bridging Differences blog, Petrilli discussed his views that education policy should be about sorting out "the especially deserving poor" who are worthy of help, rather than attempting to help all children succeed through access to quality education. Petrilli is to be admired for his brutal honesty about the values that underlie his education reform agenda. The rest of us are left to wonder what happens to those children "left behind" - and to wonder how the conservative authors of the No Child Left Behind Act reconcile the rhetoric of the law's title with Petrilli's honest discussion of the moral values behind the conservative agenda for public education.