Dozens in GOP Turn Against Bush's Prized 'No Child' Act

[cal04]

More than 50 House and Senate GOP members -- including the House's second-ranking Republican -- will introduce legislation today that could severely undercut President Bush's signature domestic achievement, the No Child Left Behind Act, by allowing states to opt out of its testing mandates.

For a White House fighting off attacks on its war policy and dealing with a burgeoning scandal at the Justice Department, the GOP dissidents' move is a fresh blow on a new front. Among the co-sponsors of the legislation are House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a key supporter of the measure in 2001, and John Cornyn (R-Tex.), Bush's most reliable defender in the Senate. Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), the House GOP's chief deputy whip and a supporter in 2001, has also signed on.

Burson Snyder, a spokesman for Blunt, said that after several meetings with school administrators and teachers in southwest Missouri, the House Republican leader turned against the measure he helped pass. Blunt was convinced that the burdens and red tape of the No Child Left Behind Act are unacceptably onerous, Snyder said.

Some Republicans said yesterday that a backlash against the law was inevitable. Many voters in affluent suburban and exurban districts -- GOP strongholds -- think their schools have been adversely affected by the law. Once-innovative public schools have increasingly become captive to federal testing mandates, jettisoning education programs not covered by those tests, siphoning funds from programs for the talented and gifted, and discouraging creativity, critics say.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/14/AR2007031402741.html

[opihimoimoi]

1. One of Many Signature F/Us by BushCo...Leave No Dufus President Behind

[senseandsensibility]

41. Yes, but

although I admire Kennedy I blame him too. For him to be so naive as to give "cred" to the chimp so soon after the 2000 debacle was very poor judgment. I hope he regrets it.

[saigon68]

2. Treats children like cattle

USDA inspected++++++++++++++

[Qutzupalotl]

30. ...and treats schools like businesses.

Cutting funding doesn't solve a school's problems. That's counterintuitive to the business model.

Businesses make money. Schools educate kids. They're nothing alike.

[UpInArms]

3. oh no!

Ignite! might not get to rake in all that dough!

It is easy to improve academic performance and test scores when a school is scoring low. Improvement is very difficult when your scores are at the top to begin with, but that is what this school has done. Every year since the Governor of California instituted the Academic Performance Index, Whitney High School has had the highest API of any school in the state. Even so, they actually improved this year (from 956 out of a possible 1000 to a new high of 964.) This score is 110 points higher than the state’s 854-point goal for the school.

The Statewide Testing and Reporting system (STAR) is not the only standardized measure of their academic excellence. All students at Whitney take SAT I in preparation for college admission and mean scores remain high at 1327. Each year, at least one student scores a perfect 1600 – with three such scores in one year! Many students repeat SAT I if they get lower than 1500. Studying hard provides pleasing results.

<snip>

Neil Bush, President of Ignite!Learning has visited the campus several times. He is in schools all over the country. When asked why he so often returns to Whitney his answer was simple, “because of the respect the staff has for students. I’ve never seen anything like it. Every school should be this way.”

...more at link...

[southerncrone]

4. Guess they don't support Neil raping the country again, this time

using the children!

Soulless bastards! Would sell the nickels off their grandmother's eyes!

[buddysmellgood]

5. Now would...did. I don't have time to find the link to the EBay auction. sorry.

[tanyev]

15. No Bush family member left behind.

What's with Biofuel Bush? The (dirty) secret of the new ethanol craze is that it is, once again, a Bush family business. Brother Jeb is one of the three chairmen of the Miami-based Inter-American Ethanol Commission (set up in December) along with a former agriculture minister in the previous Lula administration, agribusiness tycoon Roberto Rodrigues, and Colombian Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the Inter-American Development Bank.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x401858

I'm scared to ask what Marvin is up to these days.

[southerncrone]

26. I read a few years back when the alternative energy

ideas were getting some support, that the "powers that be" (including Bush dynasty) were buying up all the stock in these companies so they would already have control of them.

Isn't Marvie involved with Gen. Mod. Seeds or something related to poisoning our food supply?
For some reason, I think I heard that.

That is why Americans need to become inventive again, so we don't have to depend on giant corporations for all our needs.

An excellent reason to: Grow a garden & buy heirloom seeds!

[Nikki Stone1]

39. What's an heirloom seed?

Thanks

[southerncrone]

42. Non-hybrid, non-genetically-modified.

Real seeds the way God intended them!
They have become rather difficult to get, and cost more than the hybrids, but worth it!

[Nikki Stone1]

43. Are they marked that way?

Thanks

[southerncrone]

44. If you mean at your local garden supply store, they probably don't carry them.

Unfortunately corporations have a stronghold over the garden supply distribution network, so you will only get hybrids or GMO seeds from them. Sometimes hybrids are marked as such, but you will NEVER see them marked as GMO, because the public actually finds them offensive, & rightly so. There has been a push for forcing GMO seeds to be labeled as such, but no legislation has made that happen yet.

Usually you find the heirlooms thru mail order.
Mother Earth News is probably your best bet to quickly locate sources. (It's also a terrific magazine!)
Actually, I just googled "heirloom seeds" and got a lot of sources. I would try that.
I personally have dealt w/Redwood City Seeds & Baker Seeds & found both were pleasant to deal with.

Good luck & happy gardening!:hi:

[Nikki Stone1]

45. Thank you. Mother Earth news it is.

:)

[rodeodance]

6. whow. I did not see this coming (from Repugs) WHOW

[grannylib]

7. "Signature domestic 'achievement' ?" There is nothing in the Chimpy

pResidency that could be considered an 'achievement.'
There is a positive connotation to that word, and there is NOTHING positive that the Imbecile has done since he stole the office.

[rodeodance]

8. Page A01

By Jonathan Weisman and Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 15, 2007; Page A01

[rodeodance]

9. and they are keeping Spellings buzy! see here:

Republican lawmakers involved in crafting the new legislation say Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and other administration officials have moved in recent days to tamp down dissent within the GOP. Since January, Spellings has met or spoken with about 40 Republican lawmakers on the issue, said Katherine McLane, the Education Department's press secretary.

"We've made a lot of progress in the past five years in serving the children who have traditionally been underserved in our education system," McLane said. "Now is not the time to roll back the clock on those children."

But so far, the administration's efforts have borne little fruit, Republican critics said.

"Republicans voted for No Child Left Behind holding their noses," said Michael J. Petrilli, an Education Department official during Bush's first term who is now a critic of the law. "But now with the president so politically weak, conservatives can vote their conscience."

[Hardrada]

10. Great News!!

I hope Ted Kennedy finally gets the message that NCLB sucks! Somebody really sold him a bill of goods on that one.

[ProudDad]

11. Ha, ha, ha, Ha, ha, ha, Ha, ha, ha, Ha, ha, ha, Ha, ha, ha

Hoisted on their own petard!!!

God damn... What a hoot.


On Edit: It was a bush success though, nothing in the last 30 years has done more than NCLB to fuck up public education...

[19jet54]

12. Whigs in action...

Excuse me, but didn't our founding fathers already have this debate?

The Wigs/Federalist wanted the Federal government to be in charge of everything, but we settled on both State & Federal powers being mostly equal. Why is "Bush" screwing with a 250+ year system that works?

Reagan would turn over in his grave; "Less Government, not more!" - Where do these whack jobs come from? Inbreeding?

[blondeatlast]

33. What? Those silly Founding Fathers? What the hell did they know?

They didn't have the taz-exempt Heritage Foundation and HalliKBRGE dictating how to run the country. Failures, all of them.

I mean, that damn Constitution just has to go...

:sarcasm: of course.

Welcome to DU! :toast:

[Hekate]

13. If states opt out, don't they forfeit federal funding?

All along I've been rather worried about this, because clearly NCLB is yet another Bush program so flaming incompetent that it seems tailor-made to get people to quit relying on the government for what should be an essential government function.

Do you see what I mean? Bush and the Neo-cons don't believe in public education in the first place, and NCLB is destructive to our public schools......

Hekate

[ClintonTyree]

14. Now, yes....

that's why they want to change the law.

Bush's NCLB program was a failure in Texas when he was Governor. Educators hated it because all it did was prepare students for, "THE TEST". Consequently, all teachers could teach were things covered on "THE TEST" and anything else in the curriculum was sidestepped. The Bush administration also fudged the numbers (surprise, surprise!) to make it appear as if it was working a lot better than it actually was. I remember 60 Minutes doing a piece about it before the 2000 election but it apparently fell on deaf ears. It shocked the crap out of me.

If this is hailed as Bush's crowning achievement that says a lot about his pResidency, doesn't it?

[madaboutharry]

16. The should do away with it altogether

It is BS and anyone who had a child attend a "Blue Ribbon School" knows this.

[Roland99]

17. Now that it's affecting those living in their McMansions.....

better late than never, though, I suppose.

[Aviation Pro]

18. In 1999 many of us saw the coming disaster of a Bush presidency....

...now eight years later the rest of the country sees the folly of putting a psychotic, deranged failure of a dry drunk in charge of the country.

[madaboutharry]

19. What is so pathetic

is that the news media treated it all as a big laugh. Bush was never held up to scrutiny. The way they dealt with Al Gore was a disgrace. Making fun of his environmental policy, making fun of his clothes, ridiculing him for even the way he spoke. The media is as responsible for this presidency as the SC that installed him.

[ejbr]

24. Sigh...I was almost fooled

into thinking that the repugs were doing this for the children and NOT for political reasons.Then came the end of the article. SILLY ME!:spank:

[Dickster]

20. Hallelujah!

As a school board member in Minnesota, this is the best news I've heard in a long time. NCLB is a major league disaster, just like everything else this administration has done.

[phatkatt]

21. Discouraging creativity is a GOP objective!

Can't have people thinking for themselves, now can we?

[primavera]

40. Except of course in their kids who will be going to private schools

But there have to be mindless drones to slave away in their kids' businesses! Be reasonable now!

[The Backlash Cometh]

22. I predicted this would happen.

I said that there were some very successful public schools in Republican counties and that they would be the first to rebel against "No Child Left Behind."

[benld74]

23. 'Bout Effin Time

Same thing he did in Texas when he was Gov. Did'nt work there either. Molly Ivins stated it so in one of her columns, way back when. MSM dropped the ball on this one as well.

[endarkenment]

25. No Child's Behind Left

The rovian intention was to wreck public education with a facade of good intentions. Turns out that all those suburban voters actually want their schools to be good and do not want to take their kids and put them in private schools.

[Alcibiades]

27. Blunt is a tool

All the problems with NCLB were predicted by teachers, but he didn't listen. The elementary school reading proficiency scores in Blunt's home district hover around 30%, the same as before NCLB. If he had listened to the teachers in his own district, we wouldn't have to be fixing this problem again.

[yardwork]

28. Howard Dean was right about NCLB

Dean warned the country that the plan was untenable as soon as it was passed. He was mocked and laughed at, just like Al Gore.

Somebody should put together a list of the predictions that Democrats made that have come true.

[earth mom]

29. NCLB is a piece of sh*t and needs to go. Keep your fingers crossed ya'll!

:puke:

[WinstonSmith4740]

31. Please let this come true!!!

I just got back into teaching after many years away, and I can not believe the difference!! NCLB is a total piece of shit...I have not spoken to ANY teachers who like it, or think it helps in any way at all. It completely rips the creativity out of teaching...we've been reduced to the equivalent of the cashiers that push the buttons with the pictures of food at McDonald's. There's a "one size fits all" mentality to this approach that is just wrong.

[truthisfreedom]

32. Dozens in GOP Sign on to "Leave bush Behind" Act

I just love these days. It's always something, I tell ya!

[blondeatlast]

34. The end of NCLB cannot come soon enough for this parent of a 4th grader.

I have been seriously tempted to put my son in a private (shudder) school, but have held off because it appeared his teachers hated the mandates as much as I do.

They don't even have the time to teach proper cursive writing anymore--too much time on the GD AIMS test. )(shudder)(

[DuaneBidoux]

35. NCLB is actually MEANT to leave public education behind.

Read Molly Ivin's "Bushwhacked" to understand in more detail how it was designed (requiring 100% proficiency in ALL topics for the public school to be deemed successful) to gradually kill public education.

I teach and I can tell you that to demand the exact same path (through math, language arts, history, and science) is a recipe for disaster for many kids. Not everyone can do great math, or great science, or read fantastically. To not admit this is idiocy.

Many kids wash out of the process and then have no backup. We need alternate paths for kids with different abilities. A kid should be able to show aptitude at different things and then receive training for those things. Many of the jobs for which these kids could be qualified and quite highly paid (for example electrician) cannot be outsourced and there are tremendous shortages. Instead we demand that they all sit in advanced algebra and biology and physics (which many if not most fail) and then they have no backup except McDonald's.

We are pushing many kids off a metaphorical cliffs.

[cleverusername]

37. NCLB Disaster in Texas

In Texas, there is a 50% drop out rate. It's a disaster.

This year, the kindergarten teachers are implementing benchmarks. I think that the official requirements for kindergarten kick in next year. Absolutely insane! Somehow, my child's kindergarten teacher is still teaching and inspiring students. IMHO, she's nothing short of a saint.

[blondeatlast]

38. Exactly. My son excels at math and science and can TELL a great story--

he's only 10 and has a gift for comedy already--but he couldn't "write the process" out of a paper bag.

For that matter, neither can I, yet I'm published and received numerous awards for writing in my academic career.

I despise NCLB with every bone in my body. My major was education, but I couldn't "teach to the test" and had to get out.

My hat is off to you for managing to inspire while awash in that bureaucratic dreck that is NCLB.

[juno jones]

36. I hope NCLB gets s..t canned...

... My usually stoic 16-year-old has been in tears in frustration over the math WASL here in WA. He is a straight-A student otherwise who is showing a gift for writing and public speaking. To think that his problems with math (which he got from me, mom is not good at it either :) ) might, under the current rules, keep him from graduating, frankly pisses me off. He has hopes of college and his teachers are very committed to getting him there. None of them like the WASL either. The Glorious Soviet Five-Year Plan For the Benefit of State Education and Indoctrination has failed. Let's get back to teaching critical thought, why don't we?