Predicting what will happen in 2013 is a fool’s project. Consider 2012.
Who would have guessed on December 31, 2011 that a Wisconsin governor would survive a re-election battle after cutting the cost to government of teacher pensions?
Or that Republicans would quietly acquiesce when the Obama Administration allowed most states to opt out of No Child Left Behind, the signature Republican education law.
Or that Romney, in his bid for the presidency, would all but ignore the deplorable state of American education?
Or that Tony Bennett, the pro-voucher commissioner of education in Indiana, would lose re-election by antagonizing his conservative base over the Common Core standards issue?
Or that Rahm Emanuel, who was President Obama’s top White House adviser, would find himself in the midst of a teacher union strike upon assuming the mayoralty in the President’s home town?
Or that Harvard, MIT and Stanford would lend their prestigious names to the digital education movement?
Or that over-taxed California voters would vote themselves another tax increase?
Or that voters in Michigan, the home state of the United Automobile Workers, would resist a referendum that would give public employees the constitutional right to bargain collectively?
-Paul E. Peterson
