No Kerry Waffle Left Behind
From Fox News:In a series of events this week, Kerry is challenging President Bush on one of the signature issues of his presidency — education. The Massachusetts senator voted for Bush's education policy known as No Child Left Behind, but now says the president has failed to back up the law with enough money to help schools raise academic standards.
On Tuesday, Kerry was focusing on the estimated 1 million to 1.25 million students who drop out each year. Kerry says Bush is ignoring the part of his law designed to help stem dropouts and that under current regulations, administrators can push lower-achieving students out of school to boost test scores.
The success of Kerry's pledge to increase graduation rates would be difficult to judge, since estimates on how many students drop out vary.
Kerry says more students would graduate if the federal government encouraged smaller schools and required them to improve graduation rates. He is proposing a national effort to align the standards of what students learn in school to what they're supposed to know when they get to college or work. And he is backing laws already on the books in some parts of the country that allow states to withhold driver's licenses of those who drop out.
Matt's Chat
let's put this one to bed, shall we? NCLB is suffieciently funded. Always has been. The Heritage Foundation points out that states have the option to back out of NCLB if they felt it wasn't properly funded. How many states have pulled out? They also point out that the real story here is that the federal government is telling states how to spend federal dollars:States have grown resentful of the federal government – despite receiving $400 billion per year in federal funding – because they now consider themselves entitled to this money with no strings attached. States expect federal money to subsidize their own education and homeland security visions. When Washington instead requires that federal dollars be used only for federally approved purposes, states feel cheated.I don't know how an increase in federal education dollars represents an "unfunded mandate" but that's what Waffles and his Democratic cronies are selling. Don't buy it.
For example, states have received federal funding for educating disadvantaged children since 1965. Flexibility in the original federal law allowed states significant control over how those federal education dollars were spent. Over time, states came to feel entitled to federal money subsidizing their own education programs. When the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act placed different restrictions on how states spend this federal money (which was substantially increased), they could no longer allocate as much federal money to their own preferred education programs. Somehow, this assertion of federal authority over how its money is spent became known as an “unfunded mandate,” despite the program being neither unfunded nor mandated. States still consider this federal funding more than worth the new restrictions, as no state has yet opted out of the program.
The beauty of it is, John Waffles Kerry is making more promises that he can't fulfill. In the opening paragraph of this article, Waffles says that if he's elected president, he will push for 1 million more students to graduate high school within five years. There is no way for him to do that. Education is managed by the state, not the federal government. And the only way for him to make good on the promise is to lower standards. He'll make it look good by throwing more money on the fire, but in the end there is no way he can make good on that promise without making America's schools produce even less qualified graduates. How will Kerry pay for it?
Kerry's campaign said he would pay for his education initiatives by repealing Bush's tax cuts for people making more than $200,000 a year. It would cost $100 billion over 10 years to fully fund No Child Left Behind, and Kerry's other proposals to stem drop outs would cost $4.5 billion over 10 years, they said.Just how many programs has he said he'd fund by repealing tax cuts? [I don't know how much money we're talking about here either, maybe someone can find the numbers and clue us in in the comments section. I suspect it isn't enough to cover all the programs Kerry has promised with it.]
Now I know what you're thinking: Where is the Kerry Waffle? John Waffles Kerry voted for NCLB and knows that it is properly funded.
Mark's Remarks
As Matt has shown in his defninitive reply, John "Waffles" Kerry continues to sound like he has not a clue! A study we highlighted at WMD weeks ago, from his own home state of Taxachusetts, shows that NCLB IS being properly funded, and is getting more funds than education has before. However, states do not get to be as "creative" in pocketing it for other ends, as has been in the past.
As Matt said, state school systems began to feel ENTITLED (I hate that word) to the money, even as their experiments in social engineering in education continued to fail (anyone remember the "common classroom" idea of the 1970s and 1980s? My school had to spend 100,000s to redesign the school when that idea didn't work). However, they still felt they should figure out how to spend it, even as standards were not achieved and students not served. Now, finally, we have some directives, and some of these bureaucrats are whining and moaning because their cash pork projects are not getting attention any more. It SHOULD BE ABOUT STUDENTS AND RAISING ACHIEVEMENT, NOT YOUR PETTY FEELINGS OVER YOUR SOCIAL ENGINEERING PROGRAMS, for heavens sake!
As to the aligning standards with what they need to know for college, I have to ask, which college? Should every student know how to style hair for barber college, just in case? Or should every high school student know how to tear down an engine, since some post-secondary schools require that? And which colleges do we use? Harvard? Yale? Suck U? As usual, Mr. Kerry is tapping into state displeasure at not being able to suck money from the Federal govt., and tapping into class distinctions. However, he gives us no specifics, just generalities. He offers no hope, and we have seen his type of education initiatives before. It results in lowered, not raised, standards, ala the efforts to make achievement in the 1990s look good by lowering the standards on the ACT and SAT. Look it up...they did that. Whatever happened to simply supplying a broad knowledge base, combined with critical thinking skills, based on the foundation of reading and math skills? I guess we have to have more than that so we can continue social programming. How sad. Only the students lose. Remember that.
And, indications are President Bush's program is working. Schools that got by with little are now being told to step up, even if they were considered high achievers before, they now have to go farther. This program has specific guidelines and initiatives, not generalities to allow Waffles Kerry and Co. to manipulate it so as to get federal money and spend it on something other than improving education.
As an educator, I welcome NCLB. Unlike the radical left which dominates the NEA, I realize that too long state school boards and teacher associations have been screwing over the student. They have been more about self-promotion and social experimentation than helping students achieve. With NCLB, that changes. Get used to it.
