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Education Secretary Margaret Spellings -- an influential and meddlesome cabinet official about whom Americans know surprisingly little -- announced yesterday that the federal government would require states to use the same formula to calculate high school dropout rates. She did so under the auspices of No Child Left Behind, one of the most pernicious and potentially destructive laws of the Bush era.

"As the President likes to say, you can't solve a problem until you diagnose it," Spellings said. "By shining a light on which students drop out, when, and where, we will not only better diagnose the dropout crisis, we'll be on our way to ending it."

It might have been April 1, but Spellings wasn't fooling. Nobody thinks that the high dropout rate is good. I don't. But is it realistic or even desireable to expect every American to graduate from a regular, four-year high school? Or should teenagers have alternatives to high school, such as vocational training? More to the point, what business is it of the federal government to diagnose and "end" the "dropout crisis"?

Put another way, what does a bureaucrat in Washington D.C. know that a school board member or a middle-school principal in Deluth or Stockton or Schenectady does not?

The problem -- or one of the problems, at any rate -- with No Child Left Behind is the ease with which the federal government has usurped the role of states in educating citizens. No, no, Spellings would object, "Even though the federal government does have a role -- we are a 9% investor -- the primary policymakers and funders of education are in state and local government." But the states act depend on billions of dollars in federal support, with numerous strings attached, and make policy within an ever-narrowing range of options dictated by federal law.

And the stakes are high: Failing schools risk being taken over by the federal government. So what are local districts doing to avoid such a fate? Consider this report from the Christian Science Monitor: No Child Left Behind creates "rockstar" superintendents.

The list reads more like demands from a Hollywood agent than from a candidate to lead the schools for an antebellum-tinged suburb of Atlanta.To come to work here in Clayton County, a failing school district in Georgia, former Pittsburgh superintendent John Thompson wants $275,000 in salary, a $2 million consulting budget, a Lincoln Town Car with a driver, and money to pay a personal bodyguard.Sound a bit hefty for someone likely to pull a power lunch in a junior high cafeteria? Maybe not.Fewer qualified candidates, rising expectations, and a near-impossible job description are creating a new breed of superintendents: Call them central office rock stars. These candidates say that, for the right price, they're willing to do an unpopular job that can take a heavy personal and professional toll to whip underperforming districts into shape.

Six-figure salaries, personal bodyguards and chauffeur-driven Town Cars -- all in the name of raising standards. All on the taxpayer's nickle. And where are these "rockstars" needed most? The districts where performance is poorest, with the highest proportion of low-income and minority students.

As the Monitor's story notes, "the search for a competent bureaucrat has turned into a quest for a savior." But "often the problem is overly politicized school boards, critics say, where children's educational needs don't appear to be a priority." We never learn what "overly politicized" means. It's true that school boards are often dominated by teachers' union interests. Could that be it? I somehow doubt that's what the Monitor is getting at.

But elected boards are at least accountable to voters. To whom is the highly paid "rockstar" superintendent accountable? Maybe somebody should ask Margaret Spellings.