Newsbusters hits Sun-Times hard today, in its editorial spread vs. GW as leaving children behind.  In the process NewsB. shoots down the whole idea of feds running education productively:

The oldest trick in the book in the “news” biz is to take a photo of a politician that makes him look worried, sad, or downcast to offset a story of how things aren’t working so well for that pol’s policies or plans. Well, the Chicago Sun-Times has used that ages old trick to lambast president Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program by giving us the stories of several Illinois students that supposedly slipped through the cracks of the Federal program and using a picture of Bush with furrowed brow with inset pictures of the several students. Of course, their stories are expectedly filled with nonsense, but it is the photo that the Sun-Times really expects to tell the tale. This photo says “failure and he knows it” all over the thing and sets the tone of bias from the start.

The editorial leans heavily on anecdotal argument, a newspaper staple.  Which is why I often discount newspaper arguments.

As for the law itself, the dreadful situation

won’t improve, many in Chicago’s trenches say, unless the law is changed to address what stands in the way: inequitable funding, overcrowding, violence, truancy and the overwhelming effects of poverty.

If only the federal govt. would “address” funding, violence, truancy, etc.  And if it would, then what?