Good schools constitute a far more potent weapon against poverty than welfare, food stamps or housing subsidies. Yet, cowed by teachers’ unions, Democrats have too often resisted reform and stood by as generations of disadvantaged children have been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools.

However what it striking to me is how the piece echoes a seminal article in The New Republic back in May of 2005 titled “What Democrats need to say about education” (link here).  This is a longer piece, and (even as I reread it) far more pointed.  It is a reminder both of how much things have changed, and how little things have changed.  At a national level, there is a tremendous difference.  But all politics is local, and it is at the state and district level where the most resistance still lies.