I know a student who was given access to textbooks and materials he wouldn’t otherwise have gotten, as well as take an AP class that was created with No Child Left Behind Funding.    For kids who are poor, this kind of program can a make big difference.   You often have fewer chances to make mistakes if you’re poor, and you often work against a lot of the influences in your life, instead of with them.

This could be an example of some of the intent of No Child Left Behind.  Compassionate Conservativism at its best; trying to give help where it’s needed most.

Still, it’s easy to step back and criticize how fumbling No Child Left Behind seems.  I would like to support fiscal conservativism without having it be so removed from what education’s like in the schools.  Socially liberal and fiscally conservative, maybe.