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Like the stealthy shinobi, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings slipped in and out of Saint Paul yesterday, accomplishing her mission with a minimum of bloodshed and outcry from those who would oppose her in carrying out the quest laid upon her by her daimyo. Few recognized her shadowy presence, overshadowed as it was with news of racially-charged electoral rhetoric, newly appointed slutty governors, and medical incompetence of nigh-mythical proportions.

Spellings' quest is, of course, to stump for George W. Bush's premier education program, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which has been up for renewal since September 30. Her stop in St. Paul yesterday, complete with Pawlenty photo opp, concerned her decision to allow some states to make modifications in how schools are penalized for not making "adequate yearly progress". According to Spellings, the modifications are intended to allow states to differentiate between schools that are barely missing benchmarks and those that are dramatically underperforming on a year-to-year basis. Strangely, no mention was made of providing the money promised by Washington to fund the testing required by NCLB.

Spellings' speech emphasized that this new flexibility would not come at the price of accountability. Punctuated as it was by the secretary brandishing her gleaming ninja-to and threats to send her shadowy clan of kunoichi to "encourage" adequate yearly progress from the nonconforming and recalcitrant school districts not living up to the administration's lofty standards, many in the Washington offered their confidence that these measures would make a monumental difference in closing the education gap.

Oddly, Minnesota isn't one of the states eligible to participate in the pilot program. Minnesota has yet to secure approval for the alternative exams developed for English language learners, so won't be able to participate in the program. DFL lawmakers seized upon this opportunity to question why the secretary chose to come to Minnesota at all if the state wouldn't be reaping the benefits of the Department of Education's enlightened new policy - wondering if, in fact, this was all just a way to bring attention to Norm Coleman's campaign for reelection. Given the nature of the news, this was unlikely at best. Regardless, Spellings quickly silenced these voices of dissent with a torrent of shuriken before vanishing into the quickly fading twilight, as ninjas are wont to do.

Despite these modifications, which are intended to address one of the primary complaints about NCLB - namely that a school that doesn't make adequate yearly progress gets bent over, sans lube, regardless of how close or far from the mark they hit - Congress and the Department of Education are unlikely to come to any significant agreement on renewing NCLB in the near future. The upcoming presidential election makes it even more likely Congress will sit on its collective arse expressing shock that baseball players would stoop so low as to take steroids, all the while informing the public on how hard it's working to come to an agreement that "...will serve the best interests of the children. My god, won't you think of the children?" Clearly our legislature has our best interests at heart.

Once we reach the end of the interminable two-year slog known as the modern election season, our elected representatives in Washington may stop wetting themselves every time a significant policy decision needs to be made long enough to create meaningful legislation. As a result, the act is very likely to be modified heavily, or even disappear altogether, after the election. Obama and McCain both want to modify the act heavily, and despite voting to put NCLB in place originally, Hillary Clinton is the only candidate who has stated she'll put an end to the act, though she hasn't yet provided a plan to replace the accountability measures many have agreed are good for several of the groups struggling with the achievement gap.

And if that prognosis spawns an odd feeling in the pit of your stomach that feels remarkably like hope for the future, there no reason for concern. You can rest easy in the near certainty that the next administration, whoever may lead it, will almost certainly put an asinine, overpriced and ill-advised education policy in place that makes the reaming our schools have received under NCLB look like a threeway with Strawberry Shortcake and Rainbow Brite. Then again, Strawberry Shortcake turned out to be quite the tramp.