This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 6, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown. The

president is now granted more than half of states waivers under the No Child Left Behind Act, leaving many people to wonder

if the law still has teeth.

New McCluskey, Associate Director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom,

says the law never had teeth.

Republicans are critical of President Obama's granting of these waivers,

which as you point out they have no real statutory authority to do, especially

because they are, if only because they are demanding certain concessions from states in order to qualify for the waivers, but Republicans seem to be criticizing

President Obama for granting these waivers for the wrong reason.

And that is, oh, all your weakening accountability from the top down which

really doesn't seem like it should be the goal to begin with.

Yeah Republicans have painted themselves into a terrible corner here because the main thing

that the president's doing wrong is he's giving waivers to get out of No Child

Left Behind which actually the law allows You can let states out of requirements

in O'Ch I left behind. What you can't do is condition that on states adopting

reforms that basically just the president says he wants.

But conservatives or Republicans are also supposed to be the ones who are

standing for small government.

And recently, they've kind of reacquainted themselves with the idea,

this idea.

They're also supposed to be the ones that say the federal government shouldn't be in education,

so they're in a very difficult position. What they have to be saying is,

...