Does the NYT education writer also gets kickbacks?

I hate having to think that since I don't buy the 'Spellings is conciliatory' crap. The latest NYT piece reads too much like a fluff PR piece about how wonderful and flexible Spellings is turning out to be. And, wow, she's only been in office one month. Let's forget that abstinence education funding increased under her watch when so many other programs were cut and that she threatened NPR funding for showing 'unacceptable' lifestyles, all in her first month as well. I suppose the NYT writer completely forgot about those things by accident.

There are an abundance of problems with the legislation named NCLB, which makes it really really hard for states to comply with requirements. The predecessor, Paige, did indeed make several minor revisions to the actual federal policy. Remember also that corporate press made similar hooting sounds about how Paige was amazingly responsive.

With Spellings, the two cases were major policy issues in each state. But note: no official change in federal legislation accompanied this newly vaunted 'flexibility'. The federal law was not amended at all, unlike what Paige did, albeit the amendments he made were very minor and superficial.

So it looks like each state is on it's own when it comes to getting a NCLB waiver of any kind, which makes me wonder if this is BushCo's version of 'local control'. I think the comment about Nevada sounded ominous:

Ms. Spellings said that Senator Orrin G. Hatch had invited her to Utah and she expressed eagerness to visit there. "These are Republicans," she said. "These are our people."

I guess she's going to threaten them in person this time. What'll it be this time for not behaving as part of the Republican tribe? Maybe this time, they'll really take away their military bases.

Now that would be something if Utahns stand true to this type of pressure.
Update: d'uuuuuh. Writing down 'Nevadans' instead of 'Utahns' comes only from late night blogging.