Posted on 09/09/2007 1:38:13 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
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.
"We've learned a lot, and we shouldn't ignore that evidence," said Miller, who is leading the overhaul of the law in the House, which starts this week. "What we're trying to do in this reauthorization bill is to look for those changes to make this a smarter, fairer, better law."
Reform is coming to No Child Left Behind, but the question is what kind. Teachers unions, which bitterly oppose the law, are pushing to relax its rigid testing rules and penalties. Business groups, eager for better-educated workers, want to see the tough accountability measures preserved or expanded. Many states and local school districts are clamoring for more flexibility in implementing the law, which expires this year.
Miller is seeking a middle ground: He wants to keep the law's requirement of annual tests in reading and math for third- to eighth-graders and 10th-graders, but add other measurements - such as percentage of kids in college-prep classes - to help schools show they are meeting the law's demands to make yearly progress in student achievement.
The president, who sees the law as a crucial part of his legacy, has dug in his heels. ... -snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Close the borders - start deporting illegals - THEN take a look at NCLB. Currently it’s garbage.
I was going to say something very similar.
This year the schools were required to include the scores of the non-english speaking students. That requirement totally negated my daughter’s perfect score on the reading part of the state test........the school failed to meet the state benchmark for English, because we have so damned many non-english speaking children in this county.
“The easiest way to close the gap between the smart kids and the dumb kids is to dumb down the smart kids. NCLB pays the NEA to dumb down smart kids. The whole thing should be abolished”
How much are we spending on thisNCLB boondoggle?
If someone wanted to give our illustrious President the benefit of the doubt, they could say that he was just a little naive when he hitched his wagon to this multi-billion dollar monstrosity, ANY politician calling themselves a conservative, ‘compassionate’ or otherwise should have had all sorts of alarms going off when the likes of Fat Teddy and ‘Big’ George Miller (as GWB refers to him) sign on to this sort of funding hog.
The best way to educate American children is to begin with instilling a sense of pride and patriotism in the history of the United States, educating them as to WHY the entire world would now be in darkness were it not for America spilling it’s collective blood to stop tyrannies in their tracks. Follow that up with solid examples of WHY they should embrace a Judeo-Christian moral code (why? because it is superior to all others, there I went and said it!) and as for sex education?
The best sex education is to instruct students to do one simple thing: “Keep your future in your pants”, and tell young men to never treat any girl any differently than they would want someone to treat their mother, tell the girls to respect themselves and behave as their Grandparents would most likely tell them to, and be sure they understand that God made Adam and Eve, NOT ‘Adam and Steve’.
That’s the MkJessup Plan for Education, and it will cost one helluva lot less than this ‘No Child Left Behind’ horse manure.
I am not for creative teaching when that means kids don’t learn to read. Sorry.
“I am not for creative teaching when that means kids don’t learn to read. Sorry.”
Thank you!
I will say though, as an 8th grade reading teacher, I am encouraged at the progress being made by the elementary teachers. After testing the incoming 6th graders with IEP's, all of them read at least at the 2nd grade level. This compares to 5 years ago when I had 1 who did not know his alphabet and 3 others reading at kindergarten. Slowly, but surely, the reading levels are ticking up. This is a good thing. Now my goal is to take these 6th graders and add 3-4 reading levels by 8th grade and give them a fighting chance at high school.
Uh oh. We need another fix for federal meddling in education, a federal power which is no where mentioned (let alone authorized) in the Constitution, and which is arguably illegal under a fair reading of the 9th and 10th amendments found therein.
But that's OK, because federal fixes for education have worked out so well in the past. Just look at the record:
We have George W Bush and Ted Kennedy teaming up in 2001 to fix public education by giving us “No Child Left Behind,” which was supposed to fix a system supposedly already fixed by a 1994 piece of federal legislation called “Goals 2000,” which was supposed to fix a system already fixed by “America 2000,” which was a 1991 response during the first Bush administration to a 1983 Reagan-era federal report on education called “A Nation at Risk,” which was published a full four years after Jimmy Carter fixed the nation’s public school system by first establishing a cabinet-level Department of Education in 1979.
I mean really.
Bingo! (Too bad it's too long for a tagline...)
I just watched Michelle Rhee, the new chancellor of the DC schools. Very encouraging! She is just a few years older than my daughter, and like her, she is a whole lot more conservative and focused than any fuzzy brained boomer.
It's not a 'boondoggle' for two reasons. Reason one, it was signed into law by a Republican. Reason two, 8 of the 9 candidates currently running for President support it in some fashion or another. So to be a good 'conservative' you can't ask questions like how much it costs.
Never mind if it's a waste of money, the federal government was never intended to be in the business of schools (I expect a good 'conservative' to throw up the Northwest Ordinance about now...), and the Republican party (along with 8 of 9 Presidential candidates) advocates wasting more of my tax dollars however they see fit.
The DC schools? Good luck with that! Hope the corrupt teacher’s union is cleaned up by now:
http://teachers.net/states/dc/topic63/2.09.03.15.24.08.html
Secondly, it's not being implemented as it should be, because the social promotions are still occurring. I'd like to see a lot more remediation and a lot less social promotion, which I think was the intent of the law.
Finally, success in school - perhaps especially at the high school level - requires some degree of personal motivation, and some students just don't care. I do think that ensuring that all students have the skills to succeed at their current level would alleviate some of that problem, however.
Crimials runnng our schools :-)
Amen to that, and I say that as someone with a child in a public school.
I can’t address the MS or HS level at this point with any hands on experience because my child is stil in ES..........but I can grasp everything you are saying.
The “social” promotion thing really bothers me. If they do not make the grade they should not be promoted - end of discussion. Students working at or above grade should not be kept back because of those who are not working at that level. Most especially at the early grade levels.
Thankfully, my daughter is in a school district that understands that
Close Jimmy Carter’s Department of Education. Turn education back over to state and local governments as well as the private sector including churches where it belongs to start with. Problem Solved!
bump
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