When in doubt, blame it on the immigrants.

In an interview, [Margaret] Spellings called attention to the improvement in math by fourth graders. She said the less robust increases and outright declines in some reading scores were understandable in part, because the nations schools are assimilating huge numbers of immigrants.

"We have more non-native speakers, there are lots of so-called at-risk, hard-to-educate students, and in spite of that, steady progress is being made," she said. "We're on the right track with No Child Left Behind."

Oh, yeah, we're blazing an admirable trail. Not only are we continually failing to educate huge swaths of our population, but now we're also justifying that failure with the mind-boggling complaint that "educating people is hard." I understand that there's not much else they could say publicly, but I'm disheartened by the fear that they actually believe what they're saying.