Obama’s Some Child Left Behind, but not the unions
Typical liberal “solution” – Throw more money at a problem: Obama to Seek Sweeping Change in ‘No Child’ Law
The Obama administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of President Bush’s signature education law, No Child Left Behind, and will call for broad changes in how schools are judged to be succeeding or failing, as well as for the elimination of the law’s 2014 deadline for bringing every American child to academic proficiency.
That gets the teacher unions off the hook. Of course, it’s poor on details,
Peter Cunningham, a Department of Education spokesman, acknowledged that the administration was planning to ask Congress for broad changes to the education law, but declined to describe the changes specifically.He said that although the administration had developed various proposals, it would solicit input from Congressional leaders of both parties in coming weeks to create legislative language that can attract bipartisan support.
Here comes the money,
Instead, under the administration’s proposals, a new accountability system would divide schools into more categories, offering recognition to those that are succeeding and providing large new amounts of money to help improve or close failing schools.
And their unions.
In other education-related news, Pamela has the latest on Organizing for America internships, and the National Intern Organizer Curriculum.
Tags: Department of Education, Fausta's blog, No Child Left Behind
February 2nd, 2010 at 12:40 pm
The NCLB was a good idea, but the problem was standards set by beancounters. Let me give you just one example: Michigan’s high school test was the MEAP. If 85% of the students passed the test, that was great.
For the other 15%, it USED to be that schools could identify them and give them remedial help so that they could retake it. Then the newer score counted. Now it doesn’t. (Which doesn’t make sense when lawyers retake the bar exam, grad students retake the GMAT and the LSAT, mechanics retake their ASE certification tests, etc.)
Also, the MEAP was replaced by the ACT because it was cheaper and ensured a lot more students were taking college entrance exams. But the percentage passing still holds.
Not only that, but the unlucky good schools that had excellent scores (e.g. 90% or higher) were still expected to raise the rates. That’s not maintain – that’s raise. So it was better to have rotten scores than good scores at the beginning of NCLB. You have to show adequate yearly progress (AYP).
This change to NCLB doesn’t mean that teachers won’t be held accountable, by the way. Michigan, like a lot of other states who decided to take the “Race to the Top” challenge, passed legislation to link teacher pay to student performance and to raise the age requirement to 18.
Sounds good on paper, but if you’re a math teacher, you’d have fewer discipline problems and a bonus by teaching honors classes than the regular math classes. And you won’t want to be the English teacher with a lot of ESL students who’ve just been mainstreamed, because you’d have to work harder to get paid the same as the college composition teacher. Not to mention, if the drop-out age is 18 and you can’t send a kid to “alternative” programs without it counting as a drop-out against you, you’d better believe that anything short of federal offenses won’t get a young criminal booted from school.
(I must add that the very idea that states had to rush legislation through in a month to make the federal deadline seems just another indication of this administration’s penchant for passing legislation first and THEN worrying about implementation and its consequences.)
February 5th, 2010 at 5:01 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Fausta, Fausta and Fausta, Ivan Osorio. Ivan Osorio said: RT @Fausta: Obama’s Some Child Left Behind, but not the unions. http://bit.ly/cOrnh8 [...]