Dean gets another one right

[dkf]

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/TheNote/TheNote.html

Well over a year ago, before the New York Times had given Dean stories Ornstein Banishment treatment (and then given up and allowed them again); before magazine covers became run-of-the-mill; before even Howard Fineman saw what was coming — before all that, Howard Dean was criticizing his party for signing on to No Child Left Behind.

Dean would tell any reporter or voter who would listen exactly what was going to happen with the law and why it wouldn't work and why Democrats in Washington had made both a substantive and political mistake by helping the president pass it.

Dean "knew" NCLB behind was not going to work out exactly as planned because he was a governor; because he didn't vote for it; because he knows how education works in the states; because he was confident that the Bush economic plan would keep full funding from being available; and because he had a good enough political ear to hear how well received his attacks on it by Democratic (and other) audiences from sea to shining sea.

The must-read story of the day is the Washington Post 's Jim VandeHei's I-told-you-so bouquet to Howard Dean on why the president just might be vulnerable on what the White House touts as one of the major 43 accomplishments.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17509-2003Oct12.html

[madfloridian]

1. About Tweety: "To get to the White House, they have to get past him."

From your link to The Note:
SNIP...."We wonder what the implications are for civic discourse to have this sentence appear in the full page USA Today ad touting Chris Matthews' admirably booked interviews with all of the Democratic presidential candidates over the next many Mondays:

"To get to the White House, they have to get past him."

Bam! Pow! Bang! Zap! Wham! ...."

Uh oh! I think Dean has already crossed Matthews. This is the ultimate in arrogance.

[boxster]

2. Yes, Dean and just about everyone else, especially

teachers, principals, superintendents, and others involved in the actual teaching of our kids. School budgets were already stressed; adding additional financial responsibility to the schools via the NCLB wasn't going to accomplish anything except force them to eliminate even more teaching positions and departments.

The idea that NCLB was going to be a monumental failure isn't anything new. Many teaching organizations decried it from day one.

[dkf]

3. Kerry, Edwards, Gephardt & Lieberman voted for NCLB

so they obviously didn't have a clue.

[wtmusic]

6. Dean's MD experience was invaluable

years of working with the public gives him perspective on the needs of the 'common man' that many bureaucrats don't have.

Thanks for the great post!

[boxster]

7. It's a conglomeration of pet projects and votes purchased with bribes.

It seemed so incredibly obvious that it would be a failure - let's take schools that have been cutting budgets for years and add further financial stress by adding another layer or two of bureaucracy.

Then, let's shift some of the financial responsibility from the Federal government to the states - states that are already flirting with bankruptcy. Great idea.

NCLB was very much a "compromise" bill - Congress kept adding pet projects to it until they bought enough votes to pass it. What they ended up with is wreaking havoc, especially in smaller school districts.

I find it thoroughly appalling that Bush can't fund schools here in the US, but he wants hundreds of millions to build them in Iraq.

No Child Left Behind...in Iraq!

[T Roosevelt]

4. Too bad so many in Congress didn't know

or maybe just didn't care...?

[clar]

5. After NCLB

passed, Dean toyed with the idea of Vermont opting out. He believed that NCLB would be a disaster in VT, and he was right. In my town the 7-12 school was labeled failing. It's not a bad school. The board has decided to reject federal funds rather than try to come into compliance. It's not the only school in the state to have made this decision.

[boxster]

9. I think that was the plan all along.

The board has decided to reject federal funds rather than try to come into compliance.

I think that Bush's underlying plan for the NCLB is to cut Federal funding of public schools. Obviously, it's working, because any schools that don't meet the standards have to decide between spending more money to come into compliance or turn down the funding. Spending more money is impossible for many, many schools.

Bush probably thinks that this will pave the way to vouchers. By "proving" that x% of public schools are "below standard", he can push Federal funding of private schools.

[Wwagsthedog]

8. NCLB is

nothing more than a testing program to foster rote learning and provide more idiots to the political process to further right wing radical objectives.