Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson is working hard to win over educators in New Hampshire. According to the Associated Press, the governor of New Mexico pledged to a state conference of National Education Association members to completely scrap the No Child Left Behind Act and seek a federal minimum wage for teachers. It’ll be interesting to see whether any of the Democratic front-runners—Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, or former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina— will feel compelled to move towards those positions or flesh out their own education proposals. We might get further indication of how NCLB is playing out in the New Hampshire primary when Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, a member of the Senate education committee, addresses the New Hampshire teachers on Thursday.
More to come on that as it happens.