The second test of Obama's pragmatism has been education. During his campaign for president, Obama's post-partisan appeal was most credible -- to me and to others -- on education reform. He supported test-based accountability and merit pay for teachers -- significant departures from the education union agenda.

But education spending in the stimulus -- about $140 billion in the House and $80 billion in the Senate -- has little or no emphasis on teacher quality in high-minority schools, little or no emphasis on strengthening charter schools, little or no emphasis on improved assessment, little or no emphasis on teaching the basics of reading. With shrinking state and local education budgets, an increase in federal spending may be justified. But the administration's approach abandons the most basic principle of school improvement: Reform, and then resources.

The philosophic pragmatism of John Dewey involved, in his words, "variability, initiative, innovation, departure from routine, experimentation." On education, the Obama administration has displayed none these qualities. Instead, it has returned to an older kind of pragmatism -- the political pragmatism of paying off one's political supporters. The problem with this approach is not merely its cost to the Treasury but its cost to children. Schools have proved for decades that there is little correlation between their consumption of resources and their training of children in the basics of reading and math. When these outcomes are not required and measured, they should not be expected.

The educational betrayal of disadvantaged children is the tragedy that causes no scandal. Most Democrats in Congress seem content to represent education unions. Most Republicans oppose federal standards as a matter of ideology. Governors, both Democrat and Republican, are only too happy to take federal money without accountability. If a president does not speak for struggling children in failing schools, they will be ignored. As they are being ignored.

It is still early in the Obama era. But it is already evident that pragmatism without a guiding vision or a fighting faith can become little more than the service of insistent political interests.