Last spring's decision of the trustees of the City University of New York to phase out remedial education at CUNY's ten four-year colleges—and thus deny admission to most of the students who need it—has become something of a seminal event, not only in higher education, but in our larger culture wars. CUNY took an issue that had been festering for years in hundreds of institutions, and hit it with a sledgehammer.

Late this summer, just as Texas Governor George W. Bush was beginning to convince a lot of people around the country that his state's public school reforms were lifting the test scores of even the poorest students, along came presidential candidate Bush bearing an altogether different message: when we fail, let them eat vouchers.

If he becomes president, Bush told a group of Latino business leaders in Los Angeles, he will take steps to transfer federal Title I money from consistently failing schools- $1,500 per child per year- and give it to parents to use in any tutoring program or in any alternative school, public or private, that the parents choose: "Whatever offers hope."