As foreign affairs, the economy, and political strategy take center stage, one of the most significant pieces of Bush legislation seems to have been erased from the minds of many voters. Some of you may remember that, when signing the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation into law, President Bush declared that he wanted to be remembered as the "Education President." If that was his intent, then it is curious that he believed NCLB would achieve that end. Personally, I believe NCLB to be some of the most damaging and backward legislation ever imposed on America's school systems.
As students and teachers head back to school over the coming weeks (our opening day was Tuesday) I'm hoping those who have been affected by this administration's misdirection will stand up and make their voices heard. It would be too easy in this climate to have the agenda and campaigns move forward without hearing the candidates truly discuss this all-important aspect of America's future.
Watching CNN just now I watched segment on CNN that was supposed to be about the educational policies of both candidates.
I was interested in what was going to be covered on the McCain side so I pushed the unmute button. There was Roland Martin going on about how vouchers were a great idea and how it was a short term solution for people who had their kids in failing schools. Rick Sanchez came on with the lame "opposite" argument that the teachers unions wouldn't allow it. Promoting the idea that teacher unions were standing in the way of progress.
Mr. Martin was angry because there were so many failing schools and parents need help in the short term to solve their problem.
He said that for families there wasn't time for the educational system to fix itself and that vouchers to Catholic schools, etc. would help families in neighborhood with poor schools. Because after all, tax payers already paid into the schools.
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...both needs and deserves your help here. I regret feeding a troll diary, but while the majority of us already know we agree about public education (and so have nothing to debate),
the minority againstconverged , so they're winning now.
This take is from ManhattanMan (he must be from the Institute):
Large means-tested vouchers are certainly politically possible. All current voucher systems are already means-tested. We only need to increase their size.
Also, when I say "all schools must take all kids", I mean that schools can't cherry-pick the smart kids. We can require that they select from all applicants by lottery until their places have filled. This is how many charters already do it.
The political opposition comes not from the Left nor the Right. It comes from those who have a vested financial interest in seeing no change whatsoever in our school systems. And, no matter what they say, these people care as much about kids as McDonald's cares about cows.
If you care, please visit the diary and rebalance some mojo appropriately.
Well, i have been thinking alot lately about how this is the summer and teachers all over are thinking about where to go back to teaching or just walk away and do something else. In the month of August there is a greatr deal of anxiety amongst people in the teaching ranks because they are wondering what kind of year they are going to have. That note I am posting an old comment on a diary by teacherken
I had alot of fun at the netroots meeting folks and hanging out. I even got to ask a question about NCLB. My husband says I didn' t ask a question but rather made a statement. But I think I asked a question, I asked, "what about NCLB?"
My wife sent this on to me. She's an elementary art teacher working in a low-income, primarily Hispanic school district. In spite of the wonderful experience she has of helping children she also gets to experience the full scourge of the move to discredit and emasculate our public school systems that is occurring today in the name of greater accountability and standardized testing.
With the FISA vote coming up tomorrow, I plan to spend the day at Walden Pond, a place that has provided guidance and comfort to me at various points during my life. When I was a kid, I swam there. Granted, I didn't know about Thoreau back then. I was 6. But I also spent the day before the biggest professional challenge of my life: my dissertation defense at Walden Pond. It seems laughable to me now that I ever worried about that defense. Seven years later, I'm concerned more about defending the Constitution.
Let's assume triangulating Democrats and screaming progressives don't screw it up for us, and Obama is elected the next president.
I feel strangely confident that this will occur.
But it's been widely noted that President Obama will be taking over a wounded nation; by what measure should we judge his ability to lead us towards a brighter future?
You may have heard, "truth is stranger than fiction," and indeed, that often seems the case. While that strange truth is usually just entertaining and innocuous, there are times when it is exactly the opposite... stupefying, shocking, even threatening.
Mimicking Ripley is not the intent here, though. It is simply to point you to a variety of recent articles, some of which just bring a smile, some that give pause for thought, and some that deal with very serious issues. Not surprisingly, many involve government and elected officials at various levels.
Aside from the trivial 'fun' articles, many are important but have been beneath the radar for whatever reason. They need greater exposure, for they have implications which scream for attention.
The entries here do not comprehensively quote their referenced sources, except for maybe a one or two line teaser that might pique your interest, and, of course a link, along with maybe short comment. Better that you follow the links and look in the horse's mouth yourself:) Hope you enjoy.
With all the recent distress over a couple of not-completely-progressive stances -- and the requisite not-more-more-dime comments, it's probably a good idea to step back for a moment for some perspective:
Barack Obama will be the most progressive president in the history of our great nations.
I'm not here to get into historical disputes about why, given the times, FDR or JFK or whoever may prove more progressive. My point is that, on issue after issue, Obama will be the most progressive than any President before him. By a long shot.
We know he's going to end the war in Iraq, restore habeas, reduce the influence of lobbyists, close Gitmo, engage in tough diplomacy with our enemies, appoint progressive judges, etc. But this just scratches the surface. Just a quick trip through some of Obama's issues pages reveals the breadth of progressive change that he wants to bring to American
Some talk has surfaced lately about the NCLB. Barack has mentioned it in speeches saying that the No Child Left behind law left the money behind. I wanted to point out that there are other provisions of the law that also need scrutiny and review.
No Child Left Behind, Subpart 2, Section 9528 requires that school districts release the names, addresses and telephone numbers of juniors and seniors to military recruiters upon request unless an opt-out form is signed by the student's parents and returned.
I am not yet done reading it, but find myself wanting to write about it now. And I will tell you more about this book. But now I am about to explode.
How large is your heart? Who is included in it? What is possible? I remember reading somewhere the words of Jerome Bruner that every child was capable of some level of mastery in every subject. My job as a teacher is to help that child connect with the subject and support the child so that the mastery becomes possible. Every child. Just as my job as a human being is two-fold, and here I refer again to the words of George Fox that guide me: that I need to walk gladly across the earth and answer that of God in each person I encounter.
I am writing this for myself. If it benefits anyone else that is a nice addition, but I need to write, to clarify my own thinking. Hopefully as I write what I mean will become clear, at least to me.
Daily Kos Friends: This diary is from my personal experience as a certified public school teacher. It will be one example of what is wrong with No Child Left Behind.
I am a high school teacher at a suburban public school in the Denver metro area. I have experienced, first hand, what Bush’s policies and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law have done to education and students.
When I first heard Obama speak about his views of education, I knew he was on to something close to my heart: we need to foster both creativity and critical thinking in our students. We do this by encouraging curiosity.
More than anything else, I see among the great failings of NCLB is that it has objectified students and stripped from them their capacity for creative, critical thought. This is what Obama wants to fix.
Given that Education is consistently rated as one of the top 2-3 issues (Pew May 29th) it is surprising that it hasn't been more visible in the campaign to date.
Yesterday the campaigns squared off at the Great American Education Forum sponsored by the Association of Education Publishers (AEP) in DC. Educational policy experts from the campaigns addressed a wide range of positions from vouchers to the federal role in education.
McCain sent Lisa Graham Keegan a notorious school privatization profiteer and probable felon. In a stunning admission, since McCain recruited her in 2006, she also admitted that they haven't released their education plan yet. The message was either a) the McCain DOE will double down on the Bush NCLB corruption or b) we don't really give frack about education or c) we are incompetent. Answer - d) all the above.
Obama sent an amateur who got eaten alive in the debate and then bailed on the press conference leaving the stage to McCain's team alone. Sigh.
As a first year teacher this year I started paying more attention to the NY Times' education section. One of my favorite writers for the NY Times' education section, Samuel Freedman is moving on. His columns were honest and often displayed an empathy missing from many other straight news stories. He wrote one final farewell, "Education Stories, Inspiring or Otherwise", a collection of stories and reflections on his reporting. A couple of pieces stuck out for me. My thoughts after the jump...
This is a short review of David Hursh's High-Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning. Hursh's book is important because it achieves three important aims: 1) to detail how the personal and the political intertwine at the level of schools and schooling, 2) to show how standards-based reform is based on an economic agenda, namely neoliberalism, and 3) to show that alternatives to neoliberal schooling are possible in all respects and that such alternatives can be created by politically-organized parents and teachers.
