Charlie Barone of Democrats for Education Reform confronts two of “the fantastical creatures involved in the current ESEA debate”:

NTEA Party: The big daddy chimera right now is the NEA-Tea Party hybrid. During one of NTEA’s many jubilant moments at the Senate mark-up, Politics K-12 tweeted: “GOP Senate aide spotted hugging NEA lobbyist Mary Kusler after the vote on the Alexander amendment giving flex to states on turnarounds,” a sighting later corroborated by none other than @NEAMedia, one of the organization’s (NEA’s, that is) Twitter accounts.

Amnesiac Historians: Diane Ravitch, whose claim to credibility is that she is once was a top-notch historian says,”The federal role in K-12 education should return to what Congress envisioned in 1965,” by which she means such things as getting rid of achievement testing as one gauge of student and school performance, “providing additional resources for the neediest children;”…and “protecting the civil rights of students.”