First off, I've never understood why reading instruction became a political issue, much less why conservatives seem so enamored by phonics. While the education community has come to generally agree that a combination of phonics and whole-language instruction works best, the Bush Administration is pushing a phonics-only program. And educators are complaining that they have no voice in choosing their curriculum or professional development courses if they want to receive badly-needed federal education funds.

What gets to me about this story, though, is how it exposes the lie that Republicans believe in local control, while Democrats want "Washington bureaucrats" telling localities what to teach and how to teach it. The fact is, the only people who believe in local control are the school boards, i.e. the local controllers. While Republicans are perfectly happy to criticize the Department of Education when they are out of power there, going so far as to call for the Department's abolition, once they take over, they turn out to be big fans of bureaucracy. While almost everyone in truth believes the federal government must take a more active role in education, only the Republicans are total hypocrites about it. But as the Republicans have learned over the years, nobody ever lost an election because of hypocrisy. Maybe 2004 will be different.