Some people prefer to remain a stranger to controversy. Others are more bold about walking up to controversy and shaking hands. Some people even go so far as to make friends with controversy, issuing invitations to tea and offering extra theater tickets.
And then there's Secretary of Education Rod Paige:
Secretary of Education Rod Paige this month condemned leaders of the NAACP for opposing the federal No Child Left Behind Act and questioned the organization’s commitment to improving the education of African-American children...
President Bush declined an invitation to speak to the [NAACP], saying that it has shown a lack of respect for him. The NAACP then blasted the president for his refusal, setting off a firestorm of fault-finding. Mr. Paige, who denounced the NAACP’s criticism of the president in his column, wrote that he was puzzled by the group’s opposition to the No Child Left Behind Act, which Mr. Bush signed into law in 2002.
"How a civil rights organization could characterize NCLB as ‘disproportionately hurting’ African-American children is mindboggling, since it is specifically designed to close the achievement gap between disadvantaged children and their peers," wrote Mr. Paige, who noted that he himself is a lifelong member of the group.
"Yet, the NAACP would prefer to attack it merely because of its origins in the Bush administration. How sad for black children everywhere," Mr. Paige wrote of the law.
Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP’s board, whom Mr. Paige chastised as spreading "hateful and untruthful rhetoric" about Republicans and President Bush, said in an interview last week that he was taken aback by the secretary’s "angry language."
"You can’t expect anything different from a man who called the National Education Association terrorists," Mr. Bond said, referring to a comment Mr. Paige made earlier this year...
Posted by kswygert at July 28, 2004 03:31 PM