Thompson: Leave 'No Child Left Behind' behind

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

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Great post #21, thanks.

[SoftballMominVA]

I respectfully disagree. Whole language was by far more damaging that NCLB could ever be.

NCLB isn't as bad as people want to make it. It is forcing schools to be use research based reading programs, rather than the feel-good, loosey-goosey approaches of the past. It is not a perfect policy by any means, and in some areas, it is not even a good policy, but it hold schools accountable and it places the scores right out there for the public to see and judge.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

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?

Because Fred is being hypocritical here just like the Fredheads accusing Paul of supporting shrimp/earmark subsidies. Even though I like Fred and will no doubt support him if he's the nominee, I will not actively support him in the primaries. Part of the reason is the Fredheads trashing Paul, nevermind the fact that both Fred and Paul share the same belief of federalism. In fact, Fred was on the tail end of some 99-1 votes himself. He was the Ron Paul of the Senate.

[SoftballMominVA]

hold = holds

[MissEdie]

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...

Especially when the results of these tests are not used to modify teaching in order to hit the areas the students are struggling in the most.

[SoftballMominVA]

When you say 'the last 9 weeks' do you mean that in every 9 weeks the school spends 3 weeks on standardized testing or do you meant that during the last 9 weeks of the year the school spends 3 weeks on standardized testing?

The first way leads to 12 weeks of school year spent in testing, the second leads to 3 weeks of the school year spent in testing.

[A_perfect_lady]

Neither. We’re a year-round school, so we do 16 weeks on, 8 weeks off. And during this fall semester, we started school, and seven weeks later had the CAT-6, (I think it’s called; I still have a hard time keeping all the California acronyms straight). A week after that, my English students had their Narrative assessment, and at the same time the ESL students had a series of tests that spread out over about 2 weeks. It was chaos with bubble sheets. And before we leave, the English students will have another assessment in October. The spring semester won’t be quite as bad, but it was three weeks of WTF.

[George W. Bush]

Let’s throw millions of dollars into a project. Then, before we have enough data to conclude whether its a success we abandon the project and spend millions more on a different project. See any similarities here to Iraq?

No. Education policy, a local matter, is not and cannot be a federal matter by the Constitution.

Defense is. The Founders spelled it out clearly and many of the early presidents fleshed out that vision in various ways when they served in Congress and as president.

Whether you agree with the Iraq invasion and occupation (depending on which of the shifting war aims and causes we've had over time), there is no serious debate over whether national defense is a legitimate federal responsibility. Period.

[George W. Bush]

Things will improve once they make the test the actual curriculum. I promise.

Every day, every hour can be more testing. It's for the children.

[firebrand]

Freddie just lost me. The only problem with NCLB is it didn’t go far enough. Too many compromises were made the first time around. We should have a national curriculum. Otherwise just forget about competing with the rest of the world.

[firebrand]

When education becomes a matter of national defense, it is constitutional.

[asparagus]

I’m talking about short-term thinking. It is in the process of destroying the left in their obsession to end the war. We need to bring strategic, long-term thinking to Washington.

[asparagus]

We’ve long ago left the local schoolhouse on the prairie. If we can’t graduate kids who can compete with the rest of the world, we are going to be a third world nation in a matter of decades.

[George W. Bush]

Hillary, is that you?

You guys must just love Teddy Kennedy and the DoE bureaucrats.

Quite obviously, you know nothing about DoE, NCLB and the other major distractions the liberal education establishment inflicts on teachers and schools.

I can't count the number of times idiots have tried to tell me that all we need to improve education is better tests. It's so simplistic, so far from the real needs of education and the hard work teachers try to do in the classroom that it astonishes me to hear people suggest we need even more of the failures of DoE.

You two should vote for the Democrat nominee if this is what you really want.

[asparagus]

No, just smart enough to realize that the world is changing and we need to get some competent people in Washington with long-term strategic thinking and accountability, or we're going to be in deep do-do. Throwing money at the problem isn't the solution, but neither is ignoring education at the national level.

Tell me which candidates are advocating the abolition of the Department of Education?

[firebrand]

As George Bush said at a charter school in Harlem, if you don't care about something, why measure it?

The idea of schools without accountability is one whose time has passed. And accountability without tests is impossible.

That was not my point, however. The main index of achievement in countries that are doing better than we are is adherence to curriculum. Not discipline, although that helps. And adherence to some of the curricula we have in disparate parts of this country brings us backward rather than forward.

[SoConPubbie]

The NCLB is the worst thing to happen to education for any community impacted by Illegal Immigration. NCLB imposes strict sanctions on schools that do not continually increase their scores year after year to a finally acceptable level. On the face of it, it sounds just great. However, these communities have an influx of children from third-world countries that are not even fluent in their own language, much less English. The NCLB makes no allowance for dealing with this problem and this one issue makes meeting the goals set by NCLB impossible.

[Tennessean4Bush]

So if there was a way to mitigate for illegal immigrants (deportation, separate statistics, etc.) it is otherwise not so awful?