I think it is important to understand what I and most liberals mean by a "level playing field." In operational terms, we mostly mean education and health care. Implicit in your response (and I am not trying to be critical here) is the idea that the reason that your daughter will do well is because you spend time with her-make her do her homework and people who are poor fail to do those things. I don't deny that that distinction is true in many cases. However, it is also true that schools are just plain different in poor inner city communities than they are in more affluent communities (For a stark comparison, watch the excellent doccumentary Hoop Dreams). We can do much better for schools than we are doing now. The "no child" program was ostensibly designed to identify good schools. However, I would argue that was not the real intent. No Child was designed as a mechanism to pull money out of poor communities and public education in general. Conservatives always argue that there is no correlation between money spent and the quality of education. That is crap. All money is not the same. Money spent wisely can be used to improve educational quality. Lack of funds will destroy it.

No liberal denys that "luck" has a hell of a lot to do with how life works out for you. Nor do we think that everyone should be rewarded the same for unequal performance (a common conservative cannard). But, we do understand that there are some basic building blocks that everyone needs to succeed and that gvt has a legitimate role in ensuring that they are in place.