JUST LIKE W:

On education policy, Obama is like Bush (Dana Milbank, August 15, 2010, Washington Post)

The Education Department kicked off its first ever "Bullying Summit" this week with a speech by Secretary Arne Duncan about the need "to break the cycle of bullying."

But if Duncan really wants to stop the biggest bully in America's schools right now, he'll have to confront his boss, President Obama. In federal education policy, the president and his education secretary have been the neighborhood toughs -- bullying teachers, civil rights groups, even Obama's revered community organizers.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, in now-famous remarks, said that those who claim Obama is like George W. Bush should be "drug tested." In general, I have sympathy for Gibbs's frustration --liberals have an annoying tendency to eat their own -- and I often think Obama should be more forceful. But in education, the Bush-Obama comparison is spot on. If anything, Obama has taken the worst aspect of Bush's No Child Left Behind education law -- an obsession with testing -- and amplified it.