USA Today-- Great rant on No Child Left Behind

[TexasLawyer]

Oooooh this is a good rant!


Posted 2/22/2006 8:49 PM

Education, chutzpah and the GOP
By Don Campbell

<snip>

...chutzpah is what it takes for George W. Bush, who styles himself as the education president, to foist this program off on the American people and call it "No Child Left Behind." The leader of a party that has demonized public education and federal regulations for a generation is building a legacy of political audacity.

More on the way

And he's not done yet. With White House backing, Republicans in Congress have slipped into this year's budget bill a scheme to further tighten the federal grip on local education by setting up a national rating of academic rigor for high schools. The rating would be used in awarding a new kind of federal grant for low-income students headed to college.

It is all of a piece: the morphing of the GOP into the party that stands for more intrusive government, political pork, budget deficits — and the trampling of states' rights that interfere with a federal social-issue agenda.

No Child Left Behind is just the most obvious example of hypocritical Republicans talking one game and playing another. The law was presented in 2001 as a way to short-circuit efforts by local school officials to cover up their mistakes and failures. It ties federal aid to increasingly severe sanctions if schools don't show "adequate yearly progress" in an unending battery of tests and requires that all students achieve the same "proficiency" level by 2014.

<snip>

It's certainly clear now that catchy slogans wrapped in federal red tape won't get the job done.

Don Campbell, a lecturer in journalism at Emory University in Atlanta, is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.


http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-02-22-forum-education_x.htm

[phoebe]

1. His brothers are making a profit off these children with "Ignite" software

which believes in nothing but test, test, test..

Neil and JEB..anything to make a buck..

[TexasLawyer]

2. Wow-- I wasn't aware of Ignite and the Bush connection.

I just Googled it. What bastards!

Here are are couple sites for anyone interested.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3334.htm
‘Frauds-R-Us’

The Bush Family Saga

Part II - Part I Here

Ignite!

By William Bowles

05/11/03: (Information Clearing House) This maybe small potatoes by comparison with all the other Bush clan scams, but nevertheless Ignite! Learning has made Neil Bush $20 million over the past three years. Not bad for a guy who ran Silverado S&L into the ground. With accusations of nepotism flying around all over the place, especially now that Neil Bush is trying to get the Florida school system to buy into his learning software (at $30 a pop per student per year), the state that his brother Jeb is governor of, it’s no wonder. Connected is the wholesale privatisation of state services, which opens such areas as education to the predations of people like Neil Bush and indeed, the whole issue of influence peddling.

That Other Bush Boy The president's brother Neil hopes to profit from his family's influence.

by Michael Scherer May/June 2001

http://www.motherjones.com/magazine/MJ01/neilbush.html

Bush brother trying to sell FCAT software to Florida schools

Monday, October 28, 2002 Associated Press

http://www.naplesnews.com/02/10/florida/d799030a.htm

[rodeodance]

3. yes, I have read about the testing industry making $$ from NCLB. thanks

[rodeodance]

4. the goal is to get rid of public education in the long run.

A punishment?

Crawford Lewis, superintendent of DeKalb County schools, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that "no matter how well-intentioned the law is, it punishes schools that are doing well ... yet the school district has a moral responsibility to do what the federal government wants us to do." The problem is compounded, he says, because it's the successful students who are fleeing the inferior schools, not the struggling ones. And, as The New York Times have reported, few of the students being left behind across the country are getting the tutoring that the law provides, in part because of the red tape involved.

This brainchild of a Republican administration echoes a familiar liberal Democratic refrain: Don't judge us by our results, judge us by our good intentions.

Eventually, the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington will have to acknowledge that not all children can perform at an arbitrary level. Some start so far behind, and live in such dysfunctional or impoverished environments, that they're never going to perform on a par with their higher-scoring classmates. To improve at all, however, they need motivated teachers and caring, involved parents.

The answer is not to stigmatize a school because some of its students are struggling — or to spread the misery. The answer is to try to save each neighborhood school and every student in it with tutoring and other support programs targeted to individual families. And, yes, it will cost lots of money — that was obvious even back when the GOP was calling for the elimination of the Department of Education.......

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Not only that

I believe that the true intent is to make students hate learning, because they'll associate it with endless tests and tension.