There are many tragedies that have followed the War in Iraq. The 4,000+ dead American soldiers and the countless dead Iraqis are top on the list. Further down the list is the demise of education reform.

Before this war started, education reform was high on the political agenda in this country. Every political opinion poll showed that Americans cared about it. Education reform was on every politician’s todo list. The media carried countless stories about schools. The panels for education policy at the political science conferences were packed. NCLB was supported by a bipartisan group and its only critics were the teachers’ unions.

Now everybody has forgotten about education reform, and NCLB is considered, rightly or wrongly, as a failure. It will be decades before anything that ambitious is tried again.

Harry Brighouse writes that at least two positive outcomes have come out of NCLB — more data and slightly more equity.

Like Harry, I think that we have to go beyond the now tired criticisms of NCLB — teaching to the test, unfunded mandate — and think about a feasible replacement.