The latest National Review offers us this blurb:

It doesn’t have the frenzied extravagance of the stimulus, or the obsessive control-freakdom of Obamacare. But in its way, the president’s proposal that all states make school attendance mandatory until a student graduates or turns 18 is a perfect example of the strain of grand-gesture liberalism he embodies: profligacy in the service of bossiness, with the fig leaf of technocracy and the real purpose of rewarding loyal Democratic interest groups — in this case, the teachers’ unions. It also exemplifies the liberal axiom that if X is good, more X is always better. In this case, however, more education would be worse, since it would keep unmotivated students in school to burden their teachers and classmates, not to mention the steep personnel costs involved. But a problem has been identified, and once laws are passed to address it and people are hired to put them into effect, the problem will ipso facto be solved. Or so the slow learners of Washington think.

Terry Stoops offers his own critique of Obama’s plan during the most recent edition of Carolina Journal Radio.