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WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Senators John McCain andBarack Obama squared off last night in Mississippi for the first presidentialdebate. During one segment, the candidates were asked about which prioritiesthey would adjust if elected president in hopes of improving the currenteconomic crisis. The following can be attributed to NEA President Dennis Van Roekel: "In the midst of the worst economic crisis America has faced since theGreat Depression, Sen. John McCain tonight showed that he still does notunderstand the needs of working Americans. He still fails to grasp the directlink between a 21st century education system and a robust economy. McCain...

The researchers report in the Sept. 26 issue of Science that mathematical models they used in their analysis predict that nearly all elementary schools in California will fail to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements for proficiency by 2014, the year when all students in the nation need to be proficient in ELA (English Language Arts) and mathematics, per the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" (NCLB).

SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake City police have arrested an award-winning West High School teacher for the alleged sexual abuse of a 17-year-old student. Jose Bernaf Fajul was arrested on campus Tuesday after classes ended for the day. The 46-year-old social studies and world language teacher was booked into the Salt Lake County jail for investigation of forcible sexual abuse and forcible sodomy. Salt Lake City police spokeswoman Lara Jones says the department had been working with the teenage girl and her father prior to the arrest. ... This outstanding "teacher" won Utah's 2007 No Child Left Behind American...

California schools, required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act to lift more students over a higher academic hurdle this year, instead stumbled and slipped back, as nearly 1,400 fewer schools met test-score targets. The number of schools making "adequate yearly progress" plunged from 6,488 to 5,113 since last year, according to state educators who released school progress reports Thursday. That's a drop from 67 to 52 percent of the state's public schools. Officials said more schools faltered because No Child Left Behind requires a higher percentage of their students this year to have proficient scores in English and...

Congress has several concerns as it moves toward reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. Whatever else they do, lawmakers need to strengthen the requirement that states document student performance in yearly tests in exchange for federal aid. The states have made a mockery of that provision, using weak tests, setting passing scores low or rewriting tests from year to year, making it impossible to compare progress — or its absence — over time. [snip] Most states that report strong performances on their own tests do poorly on the more rigorous and respected National Assessment of Educational Progress,...

...On the subject of elementary and secondary education, the two seem to have gotten their roles completely mixed up. Obama is the staunch defender of the existing public school monopoly, and he's allergic to anything that subverts it. John McCain, on the other hand, went before the NAACP last week to argue for something new and daring. That something is to facilitate greater parental choice in education....

....The original No Child Left Behind law recognized the importance of teacher quality but did not properly emphasize teacher performance in the classroom. The reforms in the District and elsewhere offer a lesson for national policymakers: To best serve our nation's children, Congress needs to fix No Child Left Behind rather than abandon it. Lawmakers can do this by identifying, promoting and rewarding successful teachers; by better targeting professional development; and by strengthening provisions that hold teachers accountable for the performance of their students. Congress should encourage states to develop programs that attract the best and brightest teachers to the...

Randi Weingarten, the New Yorker who is rising to become president of the American Federation of Teachers, says she wants to replace President Bush’s focus on standardized testing with a vision of public schools as community centers that help poor students succeed by offering not only solid classroom lessons but also medical and other services. Ms. Weingarten, 50, is running unopposed for the presidency of the national teachers union, whose delegates at an annual convention in Chicago are expected to elect her Monday. In a speech prepared for delivery after the vote, Ms. Weingarten criticizes No Child Left Behind, President...

President Bush has often spoken about education reform as a civil rights issue. So we're not entirely surprised to see civil rights groups now defending the No Child Left Behind law against attempts to gut its most effective provisions. Last month, Representative Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, introduced the NCLB Recess Until Reauthorization Act, which would essentially suspend the law's accountability provisions but not the funding. Under Mr. Graves's bill, schools would no longer have to file progress reports that expose achievement gaps between kids of different races, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds. Since NCLB passed in 2002, minority parents in...

If New York’s commissioner of education, Richard Mills, is to be believed, one of the great success stories in the history of American public education is unfolding in the Empire State. The commissioner has released 2008 state test results showing that a stunning 97 percent of the 708 third-graders in upstate Warren County are achieving “proficiency” in math. Only five of the county’s third-graders scored at level 1, defined by the test protocol as reflecting “serious academic difficulties.” The state’s other third-graders aren’t doing quite as terrifically as those in Warren County, but they’re pretty close—with 90 percent demonstrating proficiency...

Students are performing better on state reading and math tests since enactment of the landmark No Child Left Behind law six years ago, according to an independent study [by the District-based Center on Education Policy] released yesterday.[snip]Because standards vary from state to state, some analysts have questioned the reliability of state tests as a gauge of academic performance. The study, which included data from 50 states, found that achievement on state reading and math exams has improved in most of them. The trend is largely mirrored on national exams, the study found, although the gains tend to be smaller. One...

...they take lingering looks at Douglass’s teachers and administrators as they work and at its students as they, more often than not, don’t work. Though eventually the Raymonds (just barely) take sides — they seem not to be fans of Mr. Bush’s program — their dismaying film isn’t really asking whether No Child Left Behind can help Douglass. It’s asking whether anything can. The film finds a few success stories among the school’s 1,100 students, but it is filled largely with teenagers who are drowning in apathy and attitude, those who seem well beyond any “To Sir With Love”-style rescue....

His experience reflects a challenge felt in classrooms nationwide. Six years after the No Child Left Behind law was enacted, the lowest-performing students continue to improve while children in the top tier have hit a plateau, according to a report due out Wednesday. The findings renew concerns about how schools challenge their brightest students at a time when federal law, backed by sanctions and financial consequences, forces many districts to focus time and money on students at the bottom rung of the academic ladder.

A new study argues that the nation’s focus on helping students who are furthest behind may [be] yielding steady academic gains for low-achieving students in recent years at the expense of top students. The study...said those at the bottom moved up faster than those at the top.{snip}The report included results of a survey of a nationally representative sample of 900 teachers. Seven in 10 teachers said their schools were more likely to focus on struggling students than average or advanced students when tracking achievement data and trying to raise test scores. And about three-quarters of the teachers surveyed said they...

According to many of our elected federal leaders, in the year 2014 the United States will witness a miracle. At that time, 6 years from now, all children in this country enrolled in grades K through 12 will be absolutely “proficient” at reading. How can this be? Because, our federal education legislation has dictated it. Under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal education policy, all public schools are required to ensure that all children enrolled in their schools meet this standard (without much thought to the required resources, of course). Wiping out social, economic and political realities in one...

Education Excellence, Choice, and Competition in American Education John McCain believes American education must be worthy of the promise we make to our children and ourselves. He understands that we are a nation committed to equal opportunity, and there is no equal opportunity without equal access to excellent education. Public education should be defined as one in which our public support for a child's education follows that child into the school the parent chooses. The school is charged with the responsibility of educating the child, and must have the resources and management authority to deliver on that responsibility. They must...

Or maybe not Because the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act imposed standards and accountability on the public schools, many conservatives were willing to support the law even though it was also a massive expansion of the federal government's role in education. It might be time for them to reconsider. On Thursday, the Department of Education announced that a key component of the measure -- the $6 billion Reading First program -- has been an utter failure.

The Bush administration proposed major changes yesterday in enforcement of the No Child Left Behind law, including some regulations meant to tighten oversight of public schools, as efforts to revamp the landmark education act have stalled in Congress. In the most significant shift, all states would be required by 2013 to use the same formula to calculate the high school graduation rate, an effort to shine a light on the nation's dropout problem and force schools to take steps to ensure that more students earn diplomas. The formula would be based on the number of students who graduate on time...

t's the 800-pound gorilla of U.S. education. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the sweeping legislation enacted six years ago to improve public schools, seems to make a lot of people unhappy. But President Bush, undaunted by the barrage of criticism aimed at this beleaguered measure by states, teachers' unions and politicians on both sides of the aisle, is pushing Congress to reauthorize it this year . Many Capitol Hill observers believe that it won't survive without the political clout a new president and Congress would bring -- but after a starring role in five straight presidential elections, education...

Opting Out of No Child Left Behind : Now Arizona must get its own house in order by Matthew Ladner, Ph.D. It looks like Arizona is set to opt out of No Child Left Behind. Arizonans need transparency and accountability in public schooling, but they do not need NCLB. The Goldwater Institute has written extensively about the flaws of NCLB. Chief among them is the fact that NCLB creates an entirely perverse incentive for states to lower their academic standards in order to meet a federal goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2014. A recent University of California Berkley study...

McGraw-Hill Cos. spent $960,000 lobbying the government in 2007 on a range of issues including education and oversight of credit-rating agencies. According to a disclosure form posted Feb. 14 by the Senate's public records office, McGraw-Hill spent $440,000 in the first half of 2007 and $520,000 in the second half on lobbying. McGraw-Hill, which publishes textbooks and rates credit quality, lobbied on issues including the protection of intellectual property, No Child Left Behind and legislation affecting oversight of credit-rating agencies.

Compassionate fascism is just as anti-liberty as the other kind Perhaps you wonder how society's self-appointed hall monitors got the right to make you feel bad about the fries on your plate or the cigarette you're smoking, or outlaw listening to iPods while crossing the street. If so, you may also be fed up with being nagged about recycling, and be wondering why just because you don't think we're all responsible for global warming, you have been designated a pariah through that infelicitous phrase -- climate-change denier. You know what that's supposed to sound like. Worse, some of your accusers...

Willie Angelo's grasp of math, never firm, took a sharp nose dive just before Christmas. "Towards the end of last semester, it was all building up," said Angelo... "It was too much for me to handle." So there he was at a recent early-morning tutoring session with his teacher, struggling to learn polynomials - mathematical expressions studded with digits, X's, exponents and parentheses. He's not alone. Students across Colorado are struggling with math, according to results of statewide achievement tests. And the test scores go down as the students get older. The vast majority of students - 68 percent -...

Hillary Clinton - Proposed $10 billion for universal preschool. More money for special education. Opposes performance-based merit pay for teachers, favors incentives for teachers who work in places and on subjects where shortages exist. Supported No Child Left Behind accountability law but says it has not been properly financed or run, and should be replaced. $10,000 higher education scholarships for all who engage in national service full-time for a year. Raise value of tuition tax credit to a maximum $3,500 from $1,650.Obama - Encourage but not require universal pre-kindergarten programs, expand teacher mentoring programs and reward teachers with higher pay...

WASHINGTON — Teachers cheered Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton when she stepped before them last month at an elementary school in Waterloo, Iowa, and said she would “end” the No Child Left Behind Act because it was “just not working.” Mrs. Clinton is not the only presidential candidate who has found attacking the act, President Bush’s signature education law, to be a crowd pleaser — all the Democrats have taken pokes. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico has said he wants to “scrap” the law. Senator Barack Obama has called for a “fundamental” overhaul. And John Edwards criticizes the law as...

INTRODUCTION I have just finished reading Richard Rothstein’s book. The book was written in 2004 and is titled Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close The Black-White Achievement Gap. At a later time, I will try to summarize this short, but fact filled, book. But for now I just wish to review the literature on employability as seen by employers. Since 2001 the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has dominated educational efforts and discussion. The act’s goal is to eliminate class differences in academic achievement within 12 years. The NCLB act assumes this goal is...

THE federal No Child Left Behind law of 2002 rates schools based on how students perform on state standardized tests, and if too many children score poorly, the school is judged as failing. But how much is really the school’s fault? A new study by the Educational Testing Service — which develops and administers more than 50 million standardized tests annually, including the SAT — concludes that an awful lot of those low scores can be explained by factors that have nothing to do with schools. The study, “The Family: America’s Smallest School,” suggests that a lot of the failure...

WASHINGTON — Five years after President Bush's signature education program became law, No Child Left Behind is at a crossroads. Proposals that could drastically alter how children in the nation's public schools are educated have stalled for months in the Senate and House of Representatives education committees. The wrangling over the law, which demands that every child be "proficient" — working at grade level in reading and math — by 2014, has grown so rancorous that Congress is unlikely to reauthorize or change the program this year. NCLB will renew automatically if Congress fails to act. But as the 2008...

WASHINGTON - U.S. fourth-graders have lost ground in reading ability compared with kids around the world, according to results of a global reading test. Test results released Wednesday showed U.S. students, who took the test last year, scored about the same as they did in 2001, the last time the test was given — despite an increased emphasis on reading under the No Child Left Behind law. Still, the U.S. average score on the Progress in International Reading Literacy test remained above the international average. Ten countries or jurisdictions, including Hong Kong and three Canadian provinces, were ahead of the...

Thanksgiving's coming and you're concerned that your third-grader doesn't know much about the Pilgrims. Join the club. Educators in North Jersey and across the nation say social studies have been given short shrift in today's classrooms -- neglected in the drive to spend more time preparing for math and reading tests mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Just 27 percent of high school seniors were deemed "proficient" in civics and 53 percent had "below basic" knowledge of U.S. history, according to a federal report last year. Anecdotal evidence of a lack of civic knowledge seems to...

One Size Does Not Fit All by: Heyecan Veziroglu, November 16, 2007 Congressman Scott Garrett’s (R-N.J.) introduction of HR3177, the Local Education Authority Returns Now Act (LEARN) in July 2007 offers solutions to the various problems caused by the federal No Child Left Behind law (NCLB). At the Leadership Institute’s Wednesday Wake-Up Club Breakfast meeting recently, he said, “The whole of education centers around the issue of money.” He pointed out that he has been outspoken about the negative impact that NCLB has had on America’s children’s education and their future. He said that “‘The LEARN ACT’ gives money...

New York City’s eighth graders have made no significant progress in reading and math since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took control of the city schools, according to federal test scores released yesterday, in contrast with the largely steady gains that have been recorded on state tests. The national scores also showed little narrowing of the achievement gap between white students and their black and Hispanic counterparts. The results for New York and 10 other large urban districts on the federal tests, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, paint a generally stagnant picture for the city, although there are gains in...

No Teacher Left Behind by: Malcolm A. Kline, November 08, 2007 Although education officials dreaded the Bush Administration’s allegedly two-fisted approach to public schools in its No Child Left Behind program, a new study shows that they seem to have found ways to work around it. “For one thing, the law included a number of loopholes that allowed states to claim that veteran teachers were highly qualified using a wide variety of criteria that might not be associated with quality,” the Aspen Institute found. “For example, in Minnesota, all elementary teachers licensed before 2001 were deemed highly qualified, regardless of...

WASHINGTON - It's a nickname no principal could be proud of: "Dropout Factory," a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That description fits more than one in 10 high schools across America. "If you're born in a neighborhood or town where the only high school is one where graduation is not the norm, how is this living in the land of equal opportunity?" asks Bob Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher who coined the term "dropout factory." There are about 1,700 regular or vocational high schools...

Drugging Our Poor by: Bethany Stotts, October 22, 2007 Many public schools have begun incorporating mental health screening tests into their curriculum, and may soon be analyzing family circumstances as a factor influencing low school performance under the No Child Left Behind requirements (NCLB). The proposed We Care Act (H.R. 3762) would amend the NCLB Act to stipulate that “Each State plan shall include an assessment of the nonacademic factors influencing student achievement, a description of public and private organizations and agencies within the State that are working to impact... including but not limited to state departments....and nonprofit youth development...

Dean: Bush Republicans Are Leaving Millions of Children Behind October 18, 2007 Washington, DC - Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement after Republican members of the House of Representatives voted to uphold President Bush's veto of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, denying health care to ten million children. Just yesterday, a new CBS News poll showed 8 in 10 Americans support expanding the program. [CBS News, 10/17/07] "Today, Republicans in Congress chose to side with President Bush and leave millions of children behind. Bush Republicans will spend billions of dollars on their failed strategy in...

As the director of high schools in the gang-infested neighborhoods of the East Side of Los Angeles, Guadalupe Paramo struggles every day with educational dysfunction. For the past half-dozen years, not even one in five students at her district’s teeming high schools has been able to do grade-level math or English. At Abraham Lincoln High School this year, only 7 in 100 students could. At Woodrow Wilson High, only 4 in 100 could. For chronically failing schools like these, the No Child Left Behind law, now up for renewal in Congress, prescribes drastic measures: firing teachers and principals, shutting schools...

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Tuesday that he's open to new ideas for changing the "No Child Left Behind" education law, but will not accept watered-down standards or rollbacks in accountability. The president and lawmakers in both parties want changes to the five-year-old law — a key piece of his domestic policy legacy, which faces a tough renewal fight in Congress. "There can be no compromise on the basic principle: Every child must learn to read and do math at, or above, grade level," he said in a statement from the Rose Garden that was directed at Congress and critics...

Money Matters by: Bethany Stotts, October 03, 2007 The numerous problems with the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have sparked criticism from both liberal and conservative policymakers. The National Education Association (NEA) has pushed for higher teacher salaries, smaller classrooms, and ‘indicative’ longitudinal testing. In contrast, the libertarian CATO Institute education policy analyst, Neal McCluskey, argues for the end of federal and state government intervention in education. Although increased funding has not translated into educational gains, special interest groups continue to push for increased expenditures. According to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) 2006 Education Report Card, between...

DESPITE the rosy claims of the Bush administration, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 is fundamentally flawed. The latest national tests, released last week, show that academic gains since 2003 have been modest, less even than those posted in the years before the law was put in place. In eighth-grade reading, there have been no gains at all since 1998. The main goal of the law — that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 — is simply unattainable. The primary strategy — to test all children in those subjects...

No Culture Left Behind? by: Nirmala Punnasami, September 27, 2007 At this stage in the history of education in this country, most education analysts who focus on the federal No Child Left Behind Act prefer to “assess time allocation” and the strengths and weaknesses of this controversial piece of federal legislation, but Terry Stoops , the Education Policy Analyst for the John Locke Foundation, a North Carolina- based “think tank,” compares “course enrollment to student enrollment growth,”referring specifically to what is happening with education in North Carolina. For the academic year 2000 to 2001, North Carolina Public Schools offered students...

President Bush met with Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai during the last day of the UN General Assembly in New York. (Transcript) The president and Mrs. Bush then joined local school kids and discussed the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. (Transcript) Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice met with foreign ministers from Turkey, Columbia, South Korea and other countries while in New York today. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and JCOS Chairman General Peter Pace spoke to Congress about the defense appropriations bill. President and Mrs. Bush returned to the White House this afternoon, accompanied by daughter Jenna Bush....

Democrat and Republican liberals on the US House Education and Labor Committee have released their discussion draft for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).  Both Hillary Clinton, as the "mayor" of the government "village" which wants to raise our children, and the ghost of George Orwell, author of 1984, are well represented in this draft.  What began in 1965, ostensibly as an effort to help poor children improve academic achievement has grown and spread like a monstrous cancer that is destroying academic achievement and freedom, parental autonomy, privacy, and the ability to maintain our republic for ALL public...

As Fred D. Thompson moves around the country delivering his folksy stump speech, he routinely makes his way through a laundry list of top concerns: national security, immigration reform, federalism and activist judges, among others. But he seems most energized when he discusses the ballooning cost of entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, and what he calls a need for more fiscal responsibility and less government in Washington. It is a recurring campaign theme of his. Mr. Thompson, a former Republican senator from Tennessee, made his greatest plea for the presidency, for instance, at the end of such remarks...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently offered a preview of Democrats’ plans for No Child Left Behind reauthorization: “So different will this bill be from the original No Child Left Behind, we’re thinking of changing its name.” The House Education and Labor Committee recently released draft language of a new version of NCLB that begins to make good on the Speaker’s promise. Chairman George Miller’s (D., Calif.) committee draft plan hasn’t changed the law’s name (yet), but it does propose fundamental policy changes. The new plan eases up testing requirements, allows many public schools to escape real school-reform requirements, and further...

Thompson: Leave 'No Child Left Behind' behindby Mark Silva Sometimes, it doesn't take long for a party to disavow the gains of its own leaders. And sometimes, candidates regret their own votes.... Today, Fred Thompson, the former senator from Tennessee and television and film star who has entered the campaign for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2008, suggested that it's time to leave No Child Left Behind behind. Thompson, campaignining in Florida -- where the president's brother, former Gov. Jeb Bush, also had made public school funding contingent on public school performance -- suggested that the federal government has...

THE VILLAGES, Fla. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson said Thursday he doesn't know enough about efforts by President Bush and Congress to keep Terri Schiavo alive to have an opinion on the right-to-die case that stirred national debate. Thompson was asked in an interview for Bay News 9's "Political Connections" program if he thought Congress' intervention to save the life of the brain-dead woman two years ago was appropriate. "I can't pass judgment on it. I know that good people were doing what they thought was best," Thompson said. "That's going back in history. I don't remember the...

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson says President Bush's No Child Left Behind program isn't working, and he would make changes to education spending. Campaigning today in Florida, the former Tennessee senator says No Child Left Behind is a good concept, but it needs improvements. Thompson says he's not opposed to students being tested, but says "it seems like now some of these states are teaching to the test." He's proposing the federal government provide block grants to states that establish objective testing programs. He also chided a woman who asked what he would do for education, saying it's the parents'...

In 2002, two of Congress' liberal Democratic lions - Rep. George Miller of Martinez and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy - stood behind President Bush as he signed the No Child Left Behind Act, a law they promised would shine a bright light on the failures in America's public schools and kick-start reforms. Five years later, Miller, now chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, is still a believer. But after traveling the country - listening to complaints from parents, teachers, school administrators and governors about the law's testing regime and stiff sanctions - he now admits it needs fixing....

No Child Left Behind has seen better days. Under attack from both the right and left, President Bush’s signature education achievement might not survive if some members of Congress get their way. House Education and Labor Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) offered a 435-page legislative draft last month that rewrites several provisions and guts the few measures in the law that limited-government conservatives support. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants to go one step further and rename the law to something other than No Child Left Behind.So not only does the Bush administration face the prospect of significant policy changes, it could...