On Jan. 22, 1997, President Bill Clinton made a speech to a suburban Chicago audience so friendly that it interrupted him with applause 29 times. One line in his speech, however, was greeted with stony silence: "We can no longer hide behind our love of local control of the schools." Clinton is gone from the White House, but the federalization laws of his administration - Goals 2000, School-to-Work, and Workforce Investment - are still in place. President George W. Bush, who says the federal government has "a role to play in education," has merely substituted labels more comforting to Republicans:...
