“Wow, I’m kind of stunned, I’m thinking Sputnik”

That's Chester Finn's quote from this morning's New York Times, reacting to the news that students in Shanghai vastly outscored their counterparts in international standardized educational testing.

Finn seems to view this news as Sputnik-like, in that he sees it as an event that would galvanize support for even broader federal control of education (if that is even possible in the United States). But in 1994, Charlotte Twight demonstrated that Sputnik was actually a false crisis manipulated by those parties that long-wanted to expand federal control of education, while even the Times article lists several reasons why the testing results coming out of China are severely high-balled.

It makes one wonder: Is Finn participating in the same form of deception today? Given the role played by DC conservatives in federalizing education, I wish I was more stunned.