"Again, I would -- if you take a look at what Congress has mandated for this report, it says, have you met these? Have you met them in full? Well, the answer is, you're going to find in a lot of cases, of course they haven't met them. Now, the real question is, do you have progress in the right direction?
The other thing I would suggest is that it would be a mistake to limit one's view of what goes on in Iraq to the benchmarks." Tony Snow
(Emphasis mine)
This is not another war diary, although there are some parallels between the war and just about everything else going on in this country. Yesterday, teacherken posted a diary that touched the heart of every teacher who reads here. NCLB has successfully accomplished what most other education legislation has not been able to do. It has removed from the classroom nearly everything that fosters the creativity upon which we pride ourselves and replaced it with strict rules and timelines that would make any middle level manager proud. Long on paperwork and short on substance, this program demands that standards and benchmarks be met – or else!
The president has asked for $56 billion for education in FY 08. Whatever a district’s or school’s share of that pie, it is in danger of losing it if it does not meet these standards and benchmarks. In contrast, the FY 08 Defense budget is $481.4 billion for which the department is not now, nor has it been for some time, accountable. (The war is not included in this figure. All war funding has been through "supplementals" which, as I understand it, is a process that is supposed to be for unexpected, emergency costs. I have seen various figures as to the actual war costs so far. This is as good as any. Years ago, before the war, before Bush, this department was repeatedly admonished for not being able to submit the same kind of audit that every other department of our government is required to do. Every other department, including education, has managed to figure it out. Here is the link to the Defense Deputy Inspector General for Auditing. It is absolutely impossible to make any sense of it or to even wade through it all and one suspects that that is by design. One "current" example of lack of accountability is the following: (I can't get the link to work!) www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/pentagon_audit__TO_5_executive_summary.pdf
This is not intended to be an exhaustive tome on Defense spending, but merely to give a few examples of my point which is if every school, whose resources are vastly more limited than either the government or the contractors it hires, is responsible for its results under penalty of closing, why in the world isn’t the Defense Department? If every district and every school and every teacher must complete the reams of paperwork to prove they are accountable, why not Paul Bremer or General Petraeus? If I am going to be evaluated for merit pay based on whether or not my students achieve the appropriate benchmarks, why not the Iraqi government?
Our country, our government is rife with double standards. Some of them are easily recognized, some not. This one bothers me because it affects my kids and me directly. It steals from us the joy of learning, the creativity which has made this a proud and productive country, the unique characteristics of the individuals who have made us prosper. To paraphrase Tony Snow: The other thing I would suggest is that it would be a mistake to limit one's view of what goes on in our classrooms to the benchmarks.