What exactly does The Prichard Committee on Academic Excellence do in Kentucky? Since they have been "on" academic excellence since 1983, a cynic might conclude that they haven't been doing very much.
But I wasn't that cynical until I went and looked at their website and found that they seem to be little more than a lobbying group for education bureaucrats to demand more money for "education."
Sometimes they do say good things, like that students should work hard and parents should get involved, but their credibility was dealt a crushing blow today.
In much the same way that war protestors say Arabs can't handle democracy, teacher's union officials were thought to be the only people who could claim with a straight face that school choice wouldn't improve schools in poor Kentucky like it does in nearly all the states that outrank our state in scholastic achievement.
So it was in this spirit that the Bluegrass Institute challenged Pritchard's leader Robert Sexton do debate the merits of school choice.
Mr. Sexton took his opportunity to step up, and he punted it.
Republicans in the General Assembly absolutely must take on education improvement issues in the 2006 session. They can start with getting rid of the discredited CATS testing and then move on to school choice. The Democrats have no bullets left in this gunfight. Now is the time.
