Palast's take on "No Child Left Behind" — Educational Eugenics

[prolesunited]

No Child's Behind Left - The New Educational Eugenics in George Bush's State of the Union

... You've ordered this testing to hunt down, identify and target for destruction the hopes of millions of children you find too expensive, too heavy a burden, to educate.
Once the kids are stamped and sorted, the parents of the marked children ask you to fulfill your tantalizing promise to "make sure they have better options when schools are not performing."

But there is no "better option," is there, Mr. Bush? Where's the money for the better schools to take in the kids getting crushed in cash-poor districts? Where's the open door to the suburban campuses with the big green lawns for the dark kids with the test-score mark of Cain? And if I bring up the race of the kids with the low scores, don't get all snippy with me, telling me your program is color blind. We know the color of the kids left behind, and it's not the color of the kids you went to school with at Philips Andover Academy. You know and I know the testing is a con. There is no "better option" at the other end. The cash went to eliminate the inheritance tax, that special program to give every millionaire's son another million.

You know and I know that this is not an educational opportunity program - because you offer no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is the new Republican social Darwinism, educational eugenics: identify the nation's loser-class early on. Trap them, then train them cheap. No Child Left Behind is of one piece with the tax cuts for the rich, the energy laws for the insiders, the oil wars for the well-off. Someone has to care for the privileged. No society can have winners without lots and lots of losers.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0122-08.htm

Do you agree with Palast's assessment of this policy?

Do you think we should eliminate testing?

Should a Dem president advocate a repeal this measure?

How do you feel about vouchers?

How would you want to improve our educational system?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Right on, brother!

Bush's policy isn't going to help minority youth. Testing leads to teaching to the test-something I saw happening when I taught in an all-black school in Texas (with busing overturned, we're back to segregated schools). Teaching to a test isn't really teaching-it's training, like what you do with dogs. Teaching is stimulating a mind, building up self-esteem, destroying prejudices like getting good grades is 'acting white'.

Some sort of testing should still be there, but the emphasis on testing should be decreased, and the type of testing changed. What good does it do if a kid can color the circles on a sheet of paper but can't write a decent sentence, can't balance a checkbook, or read directions so they can assemble something?

The next president should repeal the measure immediately, and ask for a replacement that rewards innovative programs, such as before-after school enrichment classes, stress on minority mentors, use of computers for distance learning, etc, etc. It should be an intiative that rewards innovation at a grassroots level, and should not require uniformity over the entire country. Results can be measured in practical terms-dropout levels and the percentage of graduates getting and keeping jobs.

School vouchers should not be used for religious institutions. There should be a strict seperation of church and state.

I think the paragraphs above explain how I would improve our educational system.

[prolesunited]

2. Thank you for your input

particularly since you are in education. Do you continue to teach? What are the demographics of your school?

We had an interesting discussion the other day and someone contended the blame rested with the parents, particularly if they are single. Do you agree with that statement?

Here's an interesting article on the resegregation issue. I think most people don't even realize that this has taken place. Thanks for bringing it up.

School segregation on the rise

Almost a half century after the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that Southern school segregation was unconstitutional and "inherently unequal," a new study from The Civil Rights Project at Harvard shows that segregation continued to intensify throughout the 1990s.
<snip>

Researchers found that much of the progress for black students since the 1960s was eliminated during a decade that brought three Supreme Court decisions limiting desegregation remedies. The data also show that Latinos, the nation's largest minority, have become increasingly isolated for the past 30 years, with segregation surpassing that of blacks. Additionally, the rapid growth of suburban minorities has not produced integrated schools.

This resegregation is happening despite the nation's growing diversity, in particular the rapid growth (245 percent) in the Latino student population during the past 30 years. According to Orfield, co-director of The Civil Rights Project, resegregation is contributing to a growing gap in quality between the schools attended by white students and those serving a large proportion of minority students.

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/07.19/12-segregation.html

Please check out this link. It details the findings and provides policy recommendations.

[Beam Me Up]

3. My thoughts

Do you agree with Palast's assessment of this policy?

In a word, yes. Although, in a sense, this "policy" isn't anything new. That is to say, like so many things *Bush, what it really is is an extension and exageration of a "defacto policy" that has been embedded in our society for a very long time.

Do you think we should eliminate testing?

I don't see Palast suggesting that we should eliminate "testing." The question is, WHAT are we TESTING FOR and how do the TESTS themselves SKEW the results? Again, the problem is embedded deep in our society and has been for a long time. What is NEEDED is an entirely NEW educational SYSTEM. Nearly a half century ago there were some experiments made in that direction in the public schools of this country. What happened to them? Same thing that has happened to almost everything progressive in our society. Gone. Poof.

Should a Dem president advocate a repeal this measure?

Yes. And much more.

How do you feel about vouchers?

I honestly don't know enough to have an informed opinion.

How would you want to improve our educational system?

My ideas are so impractical that--short of a social revolution on many levels--they could never be implemented on a mass scale. Having acknowledged that, the problem is that our society has very little agreement about WHAT A HUMAN BEING IS AND WHAT A HUMAN BEING IS FOR. We don't know that, of course. We 'think' we do. We do not understand that there are different kinds, or 'types', of human beings. For example, it is my observation that so called "Attention Deficit Disorder" is a) NOT a disorder and b) NOT a deficit in most instances. What is being observed and wrongly classified (and often exacerbated) is a kind of attention and a kind of learning that is different from what the educational system WANTS. SO MUCH of our educational system is based on VERBAL SKILLS--the tests mentioned by Palast test only VERBAL SKILLS--but this tells us NOTHING about what is really going on in the child. What interests the child? What attracts the attention of the child? What does the child want to learn? Do all children learn in the same way? Do they all learn at the same rate? Do they need to ALL learn the same skills at the same time?

What we have in this country is MASS PRODUCED (so called) education and the consequence of that is the DUMBING DOWN of our society. That's how we end up with a Chimpanzee in the White House and a lot of people either not notice or not care. A human being is a balance between a body, a heart and a mind. A society has to value all aspects of the human being and help each of these aspects develop and learn in a harmonious way--that is a way that suits the individual character of the being in question. That's a BIG task but not an impossible one. It has only been MADE impossible by an elitist overview that has KEPT the masses ignorant and blind.

BMU's opinion. Yours will probably vary.

[prolesunited]

6. You have an interesting perspective

I like the more holistic approach that you advocate, but I don't see it happening here any time soon.

Here's a good article that appeared in Harper's in September 2003

AGAINST SCHOOL

By the time I finally retired in 1991, 1 had more than enough reason to think of our schools-with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers-as virtual factories of childishness. Yet I honestly could not see why they had to be that way. My own experience had revealed to me what many other teachers must learn along the way, too, yet keep to themselves for fear of reprisal: if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness-curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insightsimply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.

But we don't do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the "problem" of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no "problem" with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would "leave no child behind"? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?
<snip>

Inglis, for whom a lecture in education at Harvard is named, makes it perfectly clear that compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole.

http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm

Take a look and let me know what you think.

[Beam Me Up]

12. That is an EXCELENT article, thank you.

I was not aware of the history of our 'educational' system. It truly does not deserve that word. I like this quote:

". . .we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants."

I've noticed that schools have increasingly taken on the trappings of prisons. We are led to believe that this is to 'protect the children.' Nothing could be further from the truth.

My understanding of all this has come about as a result of being an "escapee" from this system. (Some maintain I'm from another planet to begin with.) Suffice it to say that a) my early schooling years in rural southern Indiana looked like something out of Dickens novel. However, strangely enough, b) my high shool education took place in an experimental setting (that subsequently "ruined" me for "higher education"--but that is a whole other story). Suffice it to say I am one of those people the author of this article referes to as "unschooled"--which is not to say "uneducated." For the most part I am self educated. I have also noticed that academic accrediting institutions are used to PREVENT innovative education from reaching the masses.

BMU

[JohnOneillsMemory]

25. More from 'Against School.' I put this in thread re: military recruiting.

Prussian education tactics+Nationlism+Fundamentalism=Nazi America.

Read the 9/03 Harper's magazine essay by John Taylor Gatto, a former NYC and NY state Teacher of the Year, author of ‘The Underground History of Public Education.’

In an essay called 'How Public Education Cripples Our Kids and Why,' he details how Prussian culture was adopted when public education became widespread in the 1800s.
>snip<
"...compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table.

Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these under classes...

The actual purpose of modern schooling...six basic functions:
1) THE ADJUSTIVE OR ADAPTIVE FUNCTION-
Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting things should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) THE INTEGRATING FUNCTION-
This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3) THE DIAGNOSTIC AND DIRECTIVE FUNCTION-
School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.

4) THE DIFFERENTIATING FUNCTION-
Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits-and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.

5) THE SELECTIVE FUNCTION-
This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit-with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments-clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.

6) THE PROPAEDEUTIC FUNCTION-
The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country...the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers."

Pretty horrifying, isn't it? I went to that school for sure. There is a concerted effort to re-militarize our culture to push back the cultural changes brought about by the Vietnam War horrors. The Glorious Lies need to be re-established and the draft will be back in 2005 after the election season. Teach your children well.

[LWolf]

8. I enjoyed reading this, BMU.

I agree with you re: ADHD in the vast majority of cases. It's a problem because the kids don't fit the system; not because they can't learn successfully. It's the mass production model we work under.

I'm an individualist. I've been lucky enough to have spent much of my career in small "schools of choice," where we went our own way regardless of what the rest of the district was doing. We were happy, our kids were thriving, and our parents were happy. I've worked several years where no grades were ever given; instead, we did a minimum of 5 conferences a year with every family, where we: formulated a plan based on individual needs, evaluated progress, and reported progress as "strengths and goals." I've worked in multiage classrooms where nobody's "grade level" counted. What counted was where the individual was at this moment in time, and where we were going. I've worked a flexible calendar where the school year was extended, and each family chose the number of days they would take off during the year to achieve the required number of days. I've worked in a school that gave teachers 10 paid days throughout the school year for team planning and parent conferences. I've worked at a school with an open door policy, where parents were encouraged to drop in at any time, and their presence was appreciated, not just tolerated. I've worked where the organizing principle of the school was nurturing children, and it was just accepted that nurturing them and providing them with the opportunity to learn would lead to learning. And it did. All in regular public school. Not a private school, not a charter school. A plain old public school. All we needed was permission from the school district and the teachers' association. Which we got, grudgingly, for awhile. Permission, not support.

I don't fit today's factory model for education. It's crushing me. But it doesn't have to be that way. Public schools don't have to be the way they are. We need, not just permission, but support from the community. And then we can step outside the stepford school box.

[Beam Me Up]

13. Ultimately it is a much bigger and far more serious problem:

But none I know have put it better than Gregory Bateson in a lecture entitled Form Substance and Difference, delivered to the Institute of General Semantics in 1970. He foresaw precisely where we are today, confronting an economoic/political/environmental crisis stemming from an epistemological error with not only civilization but the fate of humanity in the balance:

. . . The individual mind is immanent but not only in the body. It is immanent also in pathways and messages outside the body; and there is a larger Mind of which the individual mind is only a subsystem. This larger Mind is comparable to God and is perhaps what some people mean by "God," but it is still immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology.

Freudian psychology expanded the concept of mind inwards to include the whole communication system within the body--the automatic, the habitual, and the vast range of unconscious process. What I am saying expands mind outwards. And both of these changes reduce the scope of the conscious self. A certain humility becomes appropriate, tempered by the dignity or joy of being part of something much bigger. A part--if you will--of God.

If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your folks or conspecifics against the environment of other social units, other races and the brutes and vegetables.

If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or, simply, of over-population and overgrazing. The raw materials of the world are finite.

If I am right, the whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured. This is not funny, and I do not know how long we have to do it in. If we continue to operate on the premises that were fashionable in the prescybernetic era, and which were especially underlined and strengthened during the Industrial Revolution, which seemed to validate the Darwinian unit of survival, we may have twenty or thirty years before the logical reductio ad absurdum of our old positions destroy us. Nobody knows how long we have, under the present system, before some disaster strikes us, more serious than the destruction of any group of nations. The most important task today is, perhaps, to learn to think in the new way. Let me say that I don't know how to think that way. Intellectually, I can stand here and I can give you a reasoned exposition of this matter; but if I am cutting down a tree, I still think "Gregory Bateson" is cutting down the tree. I am cutting down the tree. "Myself" is to me still an excessively concrete object, different from the rest of what I have been calling "mind." (my emphisis BMU)

"Reductio ad absurdum" just about says it all, doesn't it?

I'll only add that the end of the age of oil ultimately means the end of global corporatism--that is, an expansionist movement that has been afoot since the Renessance. What we are facing is nothing less than "the end of the world" as it has been known since that time. We will be facing tremendous challenges in the immediate future and the systems we have in place now, for the most part, will prove completely ineffective and inadequate. Those of us that survive will have to contrive new ones. Let us hope that at least some of us can yet "learn to think in the new way." What Bateson is really talking about is a paradigmatic shift in our self awareness and self understanding of what we are.

on edit: added one line and some italic

[LWolf]

16. Much food for thought, there.

I'll be digesting awhile!

[Beam Me Up]

17. Learning to "think" in a new way. . .

requires contemplation. It will be worth the effort. The article is found in a book of essays by Bateson entitled Steps to an Ecology of Mind. However, Form, Substance and Difference can be found in its entirety here:

http://www.rawpaint.com/library/bateson/formsubstancedifference.html

[Jose Diablo]

18. We are not separate but part of the whole

Mankind (humankind if you will) is not separate from the world. We are part of it. The key word is "part".

Like all hives we interact with the whole.

The view that somehow mankind is separate and must overcome and subjugate anything outside mankind to harness to mankind's benefit will destroy the system the hive depends on to exist.

The system is interconnected in ways we cannot comprehend. Mankind is not smart enough to know the end results of our actions we take to further economic interests.

The message is not intended to digress from the thread, but rather to express further the ideas of the previous message.

The end of oil may not be a "bad" thing. Maybe the world we have now should end.

[Beam Me Up]

32. I agree the end of the age of oil may not be a "bad" thing. . .

the question is, in what way does it come to an end? Cay we lay the groundwork for a NEW civilization, based on NEW principals NOW; or are we about to descend not only into chaos but a form of technologically enhanced barbarism--our worst nightmares come true? Do you agree that that is a real possibility?

Just beyond what I've quoted above, Bateson goes on to say: The step to realizing—to making habitual—the other way of thinking so that one naturally thinks that way when one reaches out for a glass of water or cuts down a tree—that step is not an easy one. And, quite seriously, I suggest to you that we should trust no policy decisions which emanate from persons who do not yet have that habit. But how many of us have that "habit"? How many of us not only "think" but know directly through our many senses and feelings that deep connection with the "implicate order" and "wholeness" that is the world?

Your are right, what is being discussed here is not an 'aside' to the main topic. The question is: What is worth learning--and ARE WE LEARNING IT? If not, why not.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

28. I wish I'd had teachers with your perpective. Teach your children well.n/t

[JCMach1]

4. This is why I left the public schools in Florida

and got my daughters out.

The system is intolerable.

My daughters now attend one of the best elementary schools in the Emirates (British Curriculum) and I teach with the American University of Sharjah.

[prolesunited]

5. You're in an excellent position to contrast and compare

Why do you think they are succeeding? What aspects and components do you believe are most beneficial? What are the most damaging aspects of education in the U.S.?

Would love to hear more from you on this.

[JCMach1]

35. The focus on testing is stifling... it is obsessive in Florida

My daughter was going into third grade where virtually THE ENTIRE YEAR is spent JUST preparing for the exam.

That is completely bogus and unreal.

[pmbryant]

7. Palast doesn't exactly pull any puches there, does he?

Not that I can disagree with what he says. The NCLB policy will be disastrous for our public education system in the long run. And I think that's exactly what conservatives would like to see. It is far easier to give your own kids a leg up when the vast majority of other kids are handicapped by underfunded schools. This is not new, of course, but the new policy will make sure this pattern continues and probably even gets worse.

Molly Ivins' spends a chapter in her recent book on the implications of the new testing-oriented, "accountability", education policy, and it is extremely depressing. It is incomprehensible how Ted Kennedy allowed himself to be used to pass this atrocious measure.

With funding dependent upon getting a huge majority (in a few years, it is supposed to be 100%, I believe) of students to pass these tests, the incentives to 'hide' students that will fail is huge. And probaby irresistable.

Here is a study I found via a quick search that reports on what happened in Texas in the 1990s after it moved to this kind of system that GW Bush has since taken national (emphasis is my own):

http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41/

The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education
Walt Haney
Boston College

Abstract:
I summarize the recent history of education reform and statewide testing in Texas, which led to introduction of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) in 1990-91. A variety of evidence in the late 1990s led a number of observers to conclude that the state of Texas had made near miraculous progress in reducing dropouts and increasing achievement. The passing scores on TAAS tests were arbitrary and discriminatory. Analyses comparing TAAS reading, writing and math scores with one another and with relevant high school grades raise doubts about the reliability and validity of TAAS scores. I discuss problems of missing students and other mirages in Texas enrollment statistics that profoundly affect both reported dropout statistics and test scores. Only 50% of minority students in Texas have been progressing from grade 9 to high school graduation since the initiation of the TAAS testing program. Since about 1982, the rates at which Black and Hispanic students are required to repeat grade 9 have climbed steadily, such that by the late 1990s, nearly 30% of Black and Hispanic students were "failing" grade 9. Cumulative rates of grade retention in Texas are almost twice as high for Black and Hispanic students as for White students. Some portion of the gains in grade 10 TAAS pass rates are illusory. The numbers of students taking the grade 10 tests who were classified as "in special education" and hence not counted in schools' accountability ratings nearly doubled between 1994 and 1998. A substantial portion of the apparent increases in TAAS pass rates in the 1990s are due to such exclusions. In the opinion of educators in Texas, schools are devoting a huge amount of time and energy preparing students specifically for TAAS, and emphasis on TAAS is hurting more than helping teaching and learning in Texas schools, particularly with at-risk students, and TAAS contributes to retention in grade and dropping out. Five different sources of evidence about rates of high school completion in Texas are compared and contrasted. The review of GED statistics indicated that there was a sharp upturn in numbers of young people taking the GED tests in Texas in the mid-1990s to avoid TAAS. A convergence of evidence indicates that during the 1990s, slightly less than 70% of students in Texas actually graduated from high school. Between 1994 and 1997, TAAS results showed a 20% increase in the percentage of students passing all three exit level TAAS tests (reading, writing and math), but TASP (a college readiness test) results showed a sharp decrease (from 65.2% to 43.3%) in the percentage of students passing all three parts (reading, math, and writing). As measured by performance on the SAT, the academic learning of secondary school students in Texas has not improved since the early 1990s, compared with SAT takers nationally. SAT-Math scores have deteriorated relative to students nationally. The gains on NAEP for Texas fail to confirm the dramatic gains apparent on TAAS. The gains on TAAS and the unbelievable decreases in dropouts during the 1990s are more illusory than real. The Texas "miracle" is more hat than cattle.

As for your questions:

Do you agree with Palast's assessment of this policy?

Do you think we should eliminate testing?

Should a Dem president advocate a repeal this measure?

How do you feel about vouchers?

How would you want to improve our educational system?

(1) I guess I do basically agree with his assessment, though I would have perhaps phrased it somewhat differently.

(2) Standardized testing has a role, no doubt, but making it the be-all and end-all of education is mind-bogglingly stupid, in my own, perhaps ignorant, opinion. So no, I don't think it should be ended, but it should be drastically scaled back. And funding should absolutely not be dependent upon test scores. As mentioned above, this results in rather perverse incentives.

(3) Yes yes yes! :-)

(4) Vouchers, as most commonly proposed, appear to be simply a mechanism by which to de-fund public schools and divert the money to private entities. As a means of actually helping people escape bad schools, they are terribly inefficient and insufficient, as far as I can tell.

(5) I'm not informed enough to answer this one. But the deficiencies of NCLB are stark enough for even me to see them. :-)

One thing I would like to see is public schools funded on a state-wide basis, rather than on a local district basis. Funding would then be equalized across entire states. To ensure no schools lose a significant amount of funding, this would no doubt require large increases in funding for public education.

Of course, this would then mean that suburban kids no longer had an automatic huge advantage over urban kids. So even if the suburbs don't lose any funding, they will (and do) vociferously oppose any such plans. I find this very sad, but probably a basic fact of human nature. Everyone wants the best opportunities for their own kids; and if that means handicapping everyone else's, then so be it. :-(

--Peter

[pmbryant]

9. And the backlash against NCLB has apparently already begun

From a front-page Washington Post story on Saturday that I found via Ruy Teixeira's blog Donkey Rising:

Va. Seeks To Leave Bush Law Behind
Republicans Fight School Mandates

By Jo Becker and Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 24, 2004; Page A01


RICHMOND, Jan. 23 -- The Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates sharply criticized President Bush's signature education program Friday, calling the No Child Left Behind Act an unfunded mandate that threatens to undermine the state's own efforts to improve students' performance.

By a vote of 98 to 1, the House passed a resolution calling on Congress to exempt states like Virginia from the program's requirements. The law "represents the most sweeping intrusions into state and local control of education in the history of the United States," the resolution says, and will cost "literally millions of dollars that Virginia does not have."

(snip)

Officials in other states also have complained about the effects of the act, signed into law in 2002. But Friday's action in the Virginia House represents one of the strongest formal criticisms to date from a legislative chamber controlled by the president's own party.

(snip)

"The Virginia resolution is the strongest-worded Republican-sponsored initiative to pass," said Scott Young, an education policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

He also said that "there is definitely a bipartisan backlash in the states."

Democrats, who plan to make the No Child Left Behind Act a major issue in this year's presidential and congressional elections, seized upon the Virginia House's action. "These Republicans realize what others have for quite a while, which is that No Child Left Behind is just a campaign slogan and it doesn't offer real hope for kids," said Tony Welch, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.

(snip)

More here...

[LWolf]

15. tinfoil hat here

All of these republicans opting out...Virginia isn't the first bunch to have this discussion. When the law is so bad that even your supporters are willing to opt out of federal money to avoid it...what happens to the federal dept of ed? When no one will listen, comply, or take its partial funding, it becomes obsolete. We can do away with it. And let all of the states turn to privatization, corporatization, and corporate sponsorships to fund education.

[prolesunited]

22. I know that they've long wanted

to do away with the Department of Education. Why? What would they gain? You can no longer say it fits with a smaller government, states rights platform because the GOP apparently no longer supports that.

[LWolf]

27. They gain support for the core agenda.

Which is to educate children privately. It's easier to segregate schools by class, etc. It's easier to spin, or "lean" the curriculum to support certain viewpoints. It's easier to train them to be good little citizens that never question one group, or believe the other. It's easier to control the flow of information.

[prolesunited]

21. Granted, Palast's style

may be over the top for some. He certainly isn't diplomatic. I had the opportunity to hear a lecture by him and speak with him briefly afterward. He definitely knows about DU.

Thank you for finding that article. I'm afraid that is their model for the entire U.S. education system. Frankly, I don't think they even want the general public to be educated — intelligent, critical thinkers are a threat to them and their control.

I agree that there are huge deficiencies in the way schools are funded. There is no reason why some kids should be attending school in the best building money can buy and equipped with state-of-the-art technology while others are crammed into crumbling classrooms with limited access to computers.

We simply need to invest more money so that we don't have to take away from the suburban schools and still be able better outfit the urban and rural ones.

[Pobeka]

33. YES. "intelligent, critical thinkers are a threat to them!"

This I think is the crux of the matter. An informed, critical thinking public would never allow this (GOP) nonsense to go on, in the government, commercial or (hate to say it) religious institutions. My point about the religious institutions is not that critical thinkers aren't religious, it's just the pranks of Falwell, Roberts et. al. would go nowhere.

I know 1 teacher (friend) who thinks this is what's behind the failure to fund education properly.

[tinrobot]

10. Let me get this straight...

If a school is doing poorly, NCLB cuts funding to the underperforming school.

Isn't that like taking food away from a man because he's starving?

[prolesunited]

14. Good analogy!

It certainly makes no absolutely no sense.

Do you have any suggestions on what we could do to improve our educational system?

[petrock2004]

11. f**k yeah!!

unfortunately i'm too tired and doped up on sudafed right now to get this out the right way, but, i also just want to point out that quite possibly the biggest problem with the US educational system is that parents seem to expect teachers to raise their kids for them.
why read to my kids? they'll learn to read at school!
why should i encourage them to do math? georgey told me they'll be tested on math at school!

... and it goes on.

but i think that the 'nclb' bullshit is quite possibly the worst thing to happen to american children since britney spears became a "role model."

i have so much more i want to write..... can't do it tonight. bring this up again, alright? :)

[qb]

19. The NCLB standards are so bogus.

My daughter attends a highly-rated public elementary school. At the beginning of the school year, we received a letter telling us not to be alarmed if our child gets low marks the first term. This is just to ensure that students "show improvement" throughout the year. They have to do this or they'll lose funding. What a bunch of crap.

I don't blame the school, they have to do what they can to keep their funding in this ridiculous setup.

[prolesunited]

20. So they are basically admitting

that they are playing the system by making sure the kids score low so their is room for improvement?

Perhaps you should write a letter to the editor. I'm sure others in your community would be interested in knowing what's going on.

[Pobeka]

34. Washington State does it too.

WASL - The Washington Assessment of Student Learning test.

It is only given on a single day. *No make-up exams*. Averages for entire schools are what counts. There are penalties (I can look them up if you are interested) for schools that don't meet expectations.

The students who are low scorers, somehow, oddly enough, tend to get sick a lot on the WASL test day.

[Solly Mack]

23. C. Boyden Grey and Bush are close friends...

I suspect anyone with close connections to Grey as being for eugenics...in all it's methods.

It may be wrong of me to feel this way...but I don't think so.

They can no longer openly sterilise people they deem unfit-so they have to use "cultural" darwinism to go after them now. Attacking education is just one more way of doing it.

[ulysses]

24. answers

Do you agree with Palast's assessment of this policy?

Yes.

Do you think we should eliminate testing?

As a basis of school reform, hell yes.

Should a Dem president advocate a repeal this measure?

Yes.

How do you feel about vouchers?

They suck ass. They are nothing more than a sop to the religious right and a way to end public education, not improve it.

How would you want to improve our educational system?

More teachers, more classrooms, more freedom to innovate at the class and school levels, better teacher pay, a fully funded Head Start, well-funded remedial and gifted programs...

If this sounds like it could be roughly translated into "more money", you're right. :)

Thanks for the link, btw.

[Pobeka]

36. But maybe not a *lot* more money.

Think of how much money is wasted on useless school administration, above the school principle level. Add to that the time and money spent researching "yet another moronic explanation for why students don't perform well" program. These "research" projects are often politically motivated/funded.

Take that money, and apply it directly to classrooms and teachers. I'll bet that's a pretty good start.

For crying out loud this isn't rocket science. We're just resource constrained. We need more teachers and classrooms!

[petrock2004]

26. okay, back with a clear head

(thanks, prolesunited!!)

alright so the things i really wanted to say:

i definitely agree with with palast's statements. i, personally, fought a lot of battles at my high school for increased funding. my sophomore year, the school system ran out of money and we had to shut down after school. no activities, no buses, no heat... there was only electricity from 7:30 am to 2:15. it wasn't very fun. they threatened to cut all the honors classes, which would have really sucked, but they never actually (thank goodness) got to the point where they took the funding away from the special ed. kids. and the reason people didn't want to pass school levies? when interviewed, many of the older residents of my city said that they didn't want to pay for "negro hooligans" to go to their schools. that sounds "colorblind"... :eyes: and that's probably why i feel the same sort of mistrust for the NCLB plan. it sounds to me like the same people with the same agenda.

my father teaches children with severe behavioral problems. these are children with severe ADHD, and even things like schizophrenia and multiple personalities and stuff. it's currently a state-funded program, and it's the best help these children can get. some of these kids go home to no parents, let alone the ones who go to single-parent or group homes. so being in the cleveland area, it's probably somewhat obvious that most of them come from the "lower-class." they can't afford hospital care, or even prescriptions sometimes. but this special school is one of the first things on the chopping block for the state educational budget. so what happens when these children don't pass their tests? or when their school system gets a low score? these kids probably go back to group homes, or to jail.

i'm deeply disturbed by the idea that taking money away from schools that don't "perform" to a certain "standard" is supposed to somehow help. in the examples i already gave, how would it help either of those schools? it would do a lot to encourage less interested kids to stay home from school. it would do a lot to encourage teachers to ignore special needs children and focus on the ones who will be able to pass the tests.

having said all that, i think testing is and always has been a reasonably good idea - when well applied. if these diagnostic tests were used instead to identify and target areas that needed further reinforcement, that seems alright. but holding each child to the same standard is ridiculous. i used to tutor other children in my grade in math, and i still do a lot of tutoring for younger kids in elementary school. anyone who has spent even a few minutes with any group of kids should get a pretty good idea as to why they're not all going to score the same on a standardized test.

i think too that private schools can be a very good thing. i think that vouchers can be a very good thing. but being forced into attending one of these because of the systematic destabilization of the national public school system is very much not a good thing.

a democratic president's repeal of the NCLB act will be a great thing for the schools of this country. however, something must be there to take its place. we need to "beef up" public schools - perhaps re-districting some of them? lowering the numbers of students in each classroom? but secondly, i do think that people are ready to start seriously considering private, secular schools. i know i did when i was in high school, but they were prohibitively expensive. so in some cases, i think vouchers can be useful.

i believe that the best situation would be where different school systems would exist as supplements to each other. already in european countries, kids and their parents can decide whether they want to do college-prep classes, or technical classes, or whatever. (although i don't think that's the best plan, since it's very hard for the children to change tracks if they change their minds later, and that problem would have to be addressed before i would advocate that type of system)

if a child's only two options are a voucher school and a public school, there have to be definite strenghts in each to make the choice balanced. perhaps: public school has greater cultural awareness and interaction, while the voucher school offers more discipline? but i feel that each school's curriculums should be as similar as possible. private vs. public should never be a question of quality, only of taste.

i'm pretty sure that about covers it... thanks again!

[populistmom]

29. Testing is crap

I have a second grader who can explain wormholes and is stuck taking timed practice tests on basic addition. Back in the 80's and 90's, they were blatant in saying they wanted to get rid of the Dept. of Education. They are trying to do it now in an underhanded, sneaky way in order to privatize public schools, so the whole nation can be like the "Houston miracle".

[prolesunited]

30. Did you see Peter's post

about the so-called "Texas miracle." We are in serious trouble if they do that to the entire country.

BTW, congrats on raising such an intelligent child. :-)

[populistmom]

31. No, but I'll look for it

I've seen a couple of segments (the one on Now being the most memorable) on falsified stats from TX educational programs used to justify NCLB. He's not my only one either. Gifted education theoretically is supposed to fall under disability educational legislation, but I have found you still have to fight and make demands (not to mention supplement). And you basically have few people fighting on your side, because "why do the smart kids need extra stuff anyway?"

[prolesunited]

37. It's No. 9 in this thread.

Well, that's almost a good problem to have. As a concerned parent, I'm sure you're doing a lot of supplemental activities outside of the classroom.

[jobendorfer]

38. voucher systems

Vouchers sound great, in theory, but I have severe doubts
about them.

There seems to be an assumption that that the supply of
classroom seats is quite elastic -- that if students are
getting a lousy education in one school, parents will
shift them to another, better school.

But then you come down to cases. Assume that 1 in 10 of
the schools in a city or rural district "fail" and there
is an exodus of students from these schools. How, in the
space between June and early September, do you create the
new school capacity? How do you expand classroom space,
hire staff, and expand the transport capability to get the
new students from the old neighborhood schools to the new
ones? Even with "crash-program" style project management,
it could take a year or more for neighboring schools to
effectively respond.

I just don't see how voucher systems are going to realistically
address the problems.

J.