No Teacher Left Standing
Reported by Marie Therese - September 1, 2004 -
The O'Reilly Factor. August 31, 2004. 8:41 PM EDT.
The ubiquitous and frequently wrong Republican strategist, Dick Morris, made yet another of his outrageous statements: "First of all, I think his [Bush's] education program is magnificent. Bill Clinton could only dream about as good a legislation as George Bush passed on education."
"He [Clinton] used to take me aside and say 'How can we get Congress to approve national testing?' and I said 'We can't because the Republicans will kill it.' But Bush made them vote for it. And he passed Bill Clinton's dream program."
O'REILLY (Interrupting): National testing in conjunction with huge money...
Comment:
Huge money, Bill? Hah! That's a laugh! Had Clinton passed a "dream education bill" it would have been fully funded and less mean-spirited. Bush's folly tags the dispersal of funds to the actual scores of the schools. A lot of the money is going unclaimed because states are withdrawing from the program.
A few weeks ago on CNN Paula Zahn hosted a Town Hall Meeting in Canton, Ohio. When the topic of "No Child Left Behind" came up, the audience literally booed. I was amazed. Democratic spokesman Tad Devine jumped right in with the reason: The people of Canton have seen their taxes go up to subsidize the underfunded mandate.
The Washington Post (More States Are Fighting No Child Left Behind Law) reports:
"Two years after President Bush proclaimed a "new era" in American public education with the passage of his No Child Left Behind initiative, a growing number of state legislators and school administrators are looking for ways to opt out of requirements they view as intrusive and underfunded. "
And later in the article:
"No Child Left Behind, enacted in 2002, requires annual testing of students in grades three through eight and forces schools whose students do not improve at a steady rate to take remedial action. The remedies include professional help for teachers, extra tutoring for students and transfers of students to higher-achieving schools. Schools that continue to underperform could ultimately be forced to replace their staffs or even reopen as charter schools.
The unhappiness with No Child Left Behind could develop into a major election-year issue, said John F. "Jack" Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy, an independent think tank that has studied the implementation of the law. He noted that states are due to publish updated watch lists of failing schools in August or September, and that "there are bound to be more schools that don't make the grade."
Especially hard hit are schools with large immigrant populations. Teacher friends of mine are exhausted by it. They bear the full brunt of accountability and are judged by their "product", i.e., the test scores of their students, rather than on the quality of the educational experience the children are actually receiving. The national standards don't take into consideration the individual profiles of each school. My friends contend there's no way to take a group of kids from poor immigrant backgrounds and, overnight, make them into students that can pass a national test.
No child left behind?
Not in San Francisco.
No. Here it's known as "No Teacher Left Standing"!
