Thompson: Leave 'No Child Left Behind' behind

Baltimore Sun ^ | 9/13/2007 | Mark Silva

[Spiff]

December 18, 2001

Thompson Praises Final Passage of Education Bill

WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) today voted for final passage of The Leave No Child Behind Act, legislation based on President Bush's education reform proposal.

"The Leave No Child Behind Act sets an important new direction for federal education policy," Thompson said. "The combination of flexibility, accountability, and choice provided by the Act is a significant step towards ensuring that all of our students receive a quality education.

"The legislation enhances local control by providing unprecedented flexibility in the ways that states and local communities can spend federal education dollars," Thompson said. "It increases parental involvement by providing new choices to parents of children in failing schools and in bilingual education programs, and it strives to ensure results by requiring testing to determine how our schools are doing and corrective actions when those tests show that our schools are not serving our children. This bipartisan bill is an important accomplishment for the President and will make a real difference in the lives of our schoolchildren."

[George W. Bush]

Sending money to school districts and establishing a standard test for a nationally recognized HS diploma are two very different things.

I think many people don't grasp that state/regional standards for curricula and a general standard for a HS diploma have never been the objective. Nor does NCLB include that.

You should read more about your state/regional accreditation organizations. By placing this testing in federal hands, you're advocating giving control to Hitlery and her minions in 2009. You're saying that's just fine.

How will you feel if Jocelyn Elders becomes Secretary of Education and decides we need to test children for their comprehensive skills in advanced masturbation and global hotting? Will your little federal diploma taste so sweet after that?

[tiki]

I’m not a teacher but EVERY time I am around one the conversation goes there and I haven’t met one, liberal or conservative who likes it.

[George W. Bush]

Spiff, why not concentrate on getting Mitt and the others to join Fred and Ron in opposing such a huge federal role to the problems of local schools?

Every candidate gets a plus from me when they put the boots to No Child's Left Behind.

[George W. Bush]

I’m not a teacher but EVERY time I am around one the conversation goes there and I haven’t met one, liberal or conservative who likes it.

Exactly. This is why it's such a great wedge issue against the Dims and the NEA.

En masse, those teachers generally will vote Dim. But give them a Republican who will pull the feds off their backs with useless and time-consuming work on "standards" and some of the teachers will have a real reason to vote for a Republican.

This is why we should be pushing all our GOP candidates to take Fred's position. Better yet, Ron Paul's abolition position (LOL). But hey, incrementalism to abolish or reduce this horror is a Good Thing, whoever our nominee is.

[TomGuy]

I'm not going to kick someone who flipflops toward my position, provided they have a convincing explanation and repudiate the failed policy of Xlinton, Bush, etc

I can understand anyone changing their view over the years on a topic, but Thompson's list is growing: CFR, border and immigration issues, No Child Left Behind. And he has only been an official candidate for a week.

Of course, as I stated, he is just one of the bunch, most of whom are flipflopping and pandering all over the map, too.

[George W. Bush]

I can understand anyone changing their view over the years on a topic, but Thompson's list is growing: CFR, border and immigration issues, No Child Left Behind. And he has only been an official candidate for a week.

Actually, I think we've seen most of Fred's "flipflop list" now. I do think that Fred tried to be a team player like most everyone else on this stuff but his natural inclinations are more conservative. This campaign will let Fred be Fred, for better or worse. Probably better.

Of course, as I stated, he is just one of the bunch, most of whom are flipflopping and pandering all over the map, too.

Exactly. If you apply that standard to the rest of the field, you knock out Mitt/Rudy/McStain as well. I find the leftwing mayor to be so liberal I don't believe anything he says and won't. I'm willing to accept more from Mitt or Fred or even McStain because they aren't fundamentally leftwingers like the pro-NARAL, pro-sodomy, gungrabbing leftwing mayor.

[TomGuy]

If you apply that standard to the rest of the field, you knock out Mitt/Rudy/McStain as well.

Add the Dems and the list gets longer.


[I have posted many times before regarding the list of wannabes from both parties: Is this the best we have?????]

[George W. Bush]

Add the Dems and the list gets longer.

I'll let those socialists worry about their own problems.

[tiki]

I agree, my first thought was with that position Thompson will get a lot of liberal teacher’s votes. They’ll be supporting him all the way.

[mnehring]

Ping

[the lastbestlady]

Go Fred!!

[George W. Bush]

I agree, my first thought was with that position Thompson will get a lot of liberal teacher’s votes. They’ll be supporting him all the way.

Exactly so. Some people fault him for having positions that might possibly attract some Dim votes. I don't find fault with being able to wedge some Dims away from their plantation. That's exactly the kind of candidate we need, not only to win the presidency but to return to a majority in one or both houses of Congress.

[Tennessean4Bush]

How is my statement wrong?

The hyperbole keeps the focus off the more important, debilitating problems. Further, it makes you sound shrill and makes people (IMHO) not want to read another word. I'll put it this way: let's take your second list, combine it with "the single, worst thing to happen in recent memory", and add a couple others I have seen complaints about.

• Teachers unions
• Liberal indoctrination
• Rise of the single-parent household
• Lack of enforceable classroom discipline
• Lack of parental involvement
• Lack of local control
• Mega school trend versus the small neighborhood school
• NCLB

Now, if I gave you a magic wand and said you can change, wipe away, or drastically reform any three but no more than three, would NCLB make your cut?

While NCLB may be bad, it probably would not make many serious reformers top 10, much less top 5. Technically, it may have followed these others chronologically, but calling it "single" and "worst" is hyperbole. If I had not called you on it, your second, more measured post would probably not been written.

[grellis]

You want I should split hairs? Oy!

The piece of recent government legislation which has had the worst effect on public schools is the NCLB act.

Is the NCLB act the only factor which contributes to the continuing downward spiral of public schools? Of course it isn't. It is, however, the ONLY one which is a federal mandate. If you want to see the complete and utter breakdown of the public school system, envision what would happen if our government were to federalize solutions to the other factors you cited. Liberal indoctrination, powerful unions, the breakdown of traditional families...these are all factors which are effecting our schools, that is not a dispute. Those factors can be addressed and even controlled at a local or state level. The NCLB is the worst because it is federal.

[af_vet_rr]

A woman asked what he would do for education. He told her decisions on how schools are run should be made by local and state decisions, not dictated out of Washington.

"It's your responsibility," he said. "If you don't like what's going on, don't get in your car and drive by your school board and maybe drive by the capitol and get on an airplane and fly to Washington and say, 'I don't like the way the school down the street is being run."'

I like the sound of that - I can excuse him for voting on it in the first place if he's willing to do something about it if he made it to office.

[af_vet_rr]

Hence, when NCLB came around, it became the single worst thing to happen to public schooling in recent memory.

Anytime the federal government tries to muscle in on local matters, it becomes the "single worst thing to happen to such-and-such in recent memory". I'm still amazed that so many Republicans thought that expanding the federal government's role in local matters was a good thing.

[napscoordinator]

What is good is that Fred is a flip flopper like Hilary is so they both will have their hands tide discussing their two votes. Fred will not be able to bash Hillary on her war vote and Hillary won’t be able to bash Fred on his “No Child behind vote”. They will have to discuss other issues.

[af_vet_rr]

And year after year we find that the white and Asian kids are doing fine and the black and Latino kids aren't... but out of the last nine weeks, we spent three weeks on various standardized tests!! I can hardly believe anyone thinks it's a good idea to teach them for six weeks and then test, test, and test some more...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, it's not really a racial thing, it's an economic thing - schools in the worst neighborhoods are going to do worse than schools in the richer neighborhoods.

The Jesse Jacksons and the like try to make it about race, but really it's economics. Maybe that's a taboo thing to say, but we've had our kids in schools in half a dozen states, and when I was growing up, I went through the same number of schools, and it was a given that the best schools were in the best neighborhoods, regardless of race.

With NCLB, that simply told us what we already knew. The federal government was trying to throw its weight around, when all it did was tell us that schools in bad neighborhoods are going to do worse than schools in good neighborhoods.

The biggest problem we face, at least in my area, is that as soon as a teacher has so many years in, they can transfer to other schools (i.e. away from the school the district placed them at when they first came on board). That means that teachers with 4-5 years of experience are going to move to better performing schools, and so the bad schools end up with a constant influx of teachers just out of college, which is the last thing they need - teachers with no experience.

I can't even blame the teachers - if you are paying me the same amount to teach at a school in a bad neighborhood or in a good neighborhood, I'm going to go where there is less stress and where the job is easier, and that means the better neighborhood.

That's not to say that there can't be good schools in bad neighborhoods, but a good school requires competent, experienced teachers (who don't have a "oh geez, just two more years and I can change schools to a better one" mentality), a competent staff, and parents who give a damn. The best teachers and most competent staff can't do much good if you have parents who don't care (or who aren't very educated themselves), and every time we transferred and started looking for schools for our kids, it was easy to spot the schools where parents didn't care (liberals will pull the "the parents are holding down multiple jobs and don't have time to help their kids" crap, but that's a cop-out as far as I'm concerned).

[redgirlinabluestate]

He's singing the small-government tune pretty well

Yeah, singing a new tune on this issue, according to post #21.