NCLB

Below are some thoughts on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) from the Captain's Quarters blog. I'm not sure I completely agree with Ed. I certainly do not buy into anything the leftist, Bush hating NEA has to say about NCLB. I've read some very good things about NCLB that Bush accomplished while he was Governor of Texas. The results were outstanding, so much so that Bush brought the people who made NCLB work to Washington to impliment it. If I can find the articles, I'll link them later.

Another thing I clearly do not buy into the "unfunded mandate" meme. As Ed noted, the Bush Admin has increased Federal education funding over 130% in less than 6 years. I worked for ED/OIG until 2001. I can tell you with certainty that back then schools were receiving plenty of Federal funding before this 130% increase.

Funding from the Federal Gov't for most programs has always been supplemental (in addition to) & not a means to supplant (instead of) state or local funding. And believe me folks, I've seen every trick in the book to supplant every Fed education dollar for some program the school voluntarily chose to participate in. They want the cash, but they want to spend it elsewhere - and that frequently does not mean it went into the programs the school accepted the funds for or even physical improvements in the schools, textbooks, computers or any quantafiable improvement in educating the children. However, almost every Administrative Office I have visited was extremely well appointed (compared to the schools they administered). And based on how the Admin staff dresssed & the cars they drove, I have no doubt whatsoever that they were very well paid too.

The bottom line here is if you don't want to adhere to Federal regulations, you can always opt out & take no Federal funds. Then you can educate the children any way you please. But don't then throw out how important those Federal Education funds are when your original argument was that Federal funding was a joke.

Spellings: No Child Left Behind Just Needs Tweaking

By Captain Ed on Education
Captain's Quarters

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings spoke with reporters over coffee to mark the start of the new school year and to provide her perspective on the federal efforts to manage education. The hallmark policy of the Bush administration, No Child Left Behind, has accomplished what it set out to do, Spellings said, and just needs minor course corrections:

"I like to talk about No Child Left Behind as Ivory soap. It's 99.9 percent pure," Spellings told reporters over coffee. "There's not much needed in the way of changes. . . . As much grist as there was for the mill five years ago on various fronts . . . we've come a long way in a short time in a big system affecting 50 million kids."

In a casual meeting at the agency, and with no particular agenda, Spellings said she believes NCLB -- a law that requires annual student assessments -- simply needs tweaking, and she emphasized that it is time to take it to the next level of development. Critics have long complained that the compliance requirements for NCLB puts too much stress on state resources and educators, many of whom say they must teach to the test at the expense of other learning.

"We need to take a look at our data across the whole spectrum and we ought to say -- for people who say, 'Wah, wah, we can't have spelling bees because we have to focus on math and reading' -- let's measure the spelling," she said. "Let's ask ourselves not how many are barely getting over the bar, but how many are acing the test. . . . Now that we have the infrastructure in place, we can ask ourselves a fuller range of questions about kids and how they are doing."

My perspective on education is that it should be left to local school districts and the states as a last resort. Part of the reason that we have so much trouble with literacy in our schools today is because of national movements that changed schools five decades or so ago, using untried teaching methods in math and reading that replaced proven strategies that had created a fine system of public schools over a century. Increasing federalization only means that the same kinds of impulses that transformed public schools from places of learning to self-esteem workshops will continue to impact our children and grandchildren.

However, at least NCLB has the right idea, even though it represents another poorly-funded federal mandate that drives conservatives batty. Objective testing of skills should continue, but even that would not be necessary if our schools did not rely on social promotion. Teachers flunked students who weren't ready for the next grade level before schools started worring about socialization ahead of education. The plethora of high-school students who cannot read or write above a grade-school level demonstrates the damage that these policies have created, especially considering the amount of teacher involvement it takes to handle the low-performing students. That takes away from the students who are ready to improve themselves to their grade level and beyond. Most high schools now have to offer at least three tracks of coursework: remedial, normal, and advanced placement. Remedial education tracks exist at the high-school level because of a failure to address the problems in grade school.

We have increased education spending by over 130% in the Bush administration. For that kind of money, Spellings and Bush had better hope that Johnny can read, write, and earn some of that money back.