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Extracurricular PoliticsAUGUST 5, 2008 Teachers' unions are expert at presenting the interests of their members and of public school students as one and the same. Which is why it's always illuminating to see how the nation's largest teachers' union, the National Education Association, spends its political money. Each year, NEA members pay into a "Ballot Measure/Legislative Crises Fund" that allows the union to spend tens of millions of dollars on all manner of state and national political issues. Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency, a longtime union watchdog, has tracked this fund's spending. In the 2007-08 fiscal year, not...

Health Care: Seven months. That's all it took before Hawaii concluded that the only state universal child medical coverage program in the country is unsustainable. Give officials credit for heading off a disaster.On March 1, the Hawaii Medical Service Association began enrolling children in the state Keiki (child) Care program. The grand plan was to provide medicine for every child between birth and 18 years old who didn't otherwise have coverage. But then parents who could afford coverage began dropping their private plans and placing their children in the program. Gov. Linda Lingle's office, seeing a sure disaster ahead, pulled...

SACRAMENTO — Prairie Elementary School had not missed a testing target since the federal No Child Left Behind law took effect in 2002. Until now. The school, perched on a tidy, oak-shaded campus in a working-class neighborhood here, has moved each of its student groups — Hispanics, blacks, Asians, whites, American Indians, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, English... --snip-- Meanwhile, the law has had other unintended consequences — including its tendency to punish states, like California, that have high academic standards and rigorous tests, which have contributed to an increasing pileup of failed schools. A state-by-state analysis by The New York Times...

"The new ESEA must finally address the deep and tenacious educational debt that holds our nation's future in hock and insure that every child has access to adequate school resources, facilities and quality teachers."

California schools, required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act to lift more students over a higher academic hurdle this year, instead stumbled and slipped back, as nearly 1,400 fewer schools met test-score targets. The number of schools making "adequate yearly progress" plunged from 6,488 to 5,113 since last year, according to state educators who released school progress reports Thursday. That's a drop from 67 to 52 percent of the state's public schools. Officials said more schools faltered because No Child Left Behind requires a higher percentage of their students this year to have proficient scores in English and...

If New York’s commissioner of education, Richard Mills, is to be believed, one of the great success stories in the history of American public education is unfolding in the Empire State. The commissioner has released 2008 state test results showing that a stunning 97 percent of the 708 third-graders in upstate Warren County are achieving “proficiency” in math. Only five of the county’s third-graders scored at level 1, defined by the test protocol as reflecting “serious academic difficulties.” The state’s other third-graders aren’t doing quite as terrifically as those in Warren County, but they’re pretty close—with 90 percent demonstrating proficiency...

This is the story of educational romanticism in elementary and secondary schools —its rise, its etiology, and, we have reason to hope, its approaching demise. Educational romanticism consists of the belief that just about all children who are not doing well in school have the potential to do much better. Correlatively, educational romantics believe that the academic achievement of children is determined mainly by the opportunities they receive; that innate intellectual limits (if they exist at all) play a minor role; and that the current K-12 schools have huge room for improvement. Educational romanticism characterizes reformers of both Left and...

WASHINGTON - Seventeen of the nation's 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent, with the lowest graduation rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, according to a report released Tuesday. The report, issued by America's Promise Alliance, found that about half of the students served by public school systems in the nation's largest cities receive diplomas. Students in suburban and rural public high schools were more likely to graduate than their counterparts in urban public high schools, the researchers said. Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma and...

Opting Out of No Child Left Behind : Now Arizona must get its own house in order by Matthew Ladner, Ph.D. It looks like Arizona is set to opt out of No Child Left Behind. Arizonans need transparency and accountability in public schooling, but they do not need NCLB. The Goldwater Institute has written extensively about the flaws of NCLB. Chief among them is the fact that NCLB creates an entirely perverse incentive for states to lower their academic standards in order to meet a federal goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2014. A recent University of California Berkley study...

Willie Angelo's grasp of math, never firm, took a sharp nose dive just before Christmas. "Towards the end of last semester, it was all building up," said Angelo... "It was too much for me to handle." So there he was at a recent early-morning tutoring session with his teacher, struggling to learn polynomials - mathematical expressions studded with digits, X's, exponents and parentheses. He's not alone. Students across Colorado are struggling with math, according to results of statewide achievement tests. And the test scores go down as the students get older. The vast majority of students - 68 percent -...

A tax called 'No Child Left Inside' has been backed by New Mexico's Sierra Club, an environmental and outdoor preservation group. The proposed one-percent sales tax on video games and televisions is aimed at funding outdoor classroom initiatives and encouraging New Mexico's increasingly obese and diabetic youth to get off the couch and explore the great outdoors.

Today the President traveled to Chicago and spoke about "No Child left behind" at an elementary school and then about the economy at the Union League Club of Chicago. Click here for transcript for the speech on the "No Child Left Behind" Click here for transcript of the speech on the economy Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island Pray for President Bush - Day - 2671

WASHINGTON — Teachers cheered Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton when she stepped before them last month at an elementary school in Waterloo, Iowa, and said she would “end” the No Child Left Behind Act because it was “just not working.” Mrs. Clinton is not the only presidential candidate who has found attacking the act, President Bush’s signature education law, to be a crowd pleaser — all the Democrats have taken pokes. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico has said he wants to “scrap” the law. Senator Barack Obama has called for a “fundamental” overhaul. And John Edwards criticizes the law as...

No Child Left Behind, supposedly an antidote to the "soft bigotry of low expectations," has instead spawned lowered standards. The law will eventually be reauthorized because doubling down on losing bets is what Washington does. But because NCLB contains incentives for perverse behavior, reauthorization should include legislation empowering states to ignore it. NCLB was passed in 2001 as an extension of the original mistake, President Lyndon Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which became law in the year of liberals living exuberantly — 1965, when Great Society excesses sowed the seeds of conservatism's subsequent ascendancy. ESEA was the first large...

NCLB was passed in 2001 as an extension of the original mistake, President Lyndon Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act-- 1965, when Great Society excesses sowed the seeds of conservatism's subsequent ascendancy. ESEA was the first large Washington intrusion into education K through 12. NCLB was supported by Republicans reluctant to vastly expand that intrusion but even more reluctant to oppose a new president's signature issue. First, most new ideas are dubious, so the federalization of policy increases the probability of continentwide mistakes. Second, education is susceptible to pedagogic fads and social engineering fantasies -- schools of education incubate them...

New York City’s eighth graders have made no significant progress in reading and math since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took control of the city schools, according to federal test scores released yesterday, in contrast with the largely steady gains that have been recorded on state tests. The national scores also showed little narrowing of the achievement gap between white students and their black and Hispanic counterparts. The results for New York and 10 other large urban districts on the federal tests, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, paint a generally stagnant picture for the city, although there are gains in...

DESPITE the rosy claims of the Bush administration, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 is fundamentally flawed. The latest national tests, released last week, show that academic gains since 2003 have been modest, less even than those posted in the years before the law was put in place. In eighth-grade reading, there have been no gains at all since 1998. The main goal of the law — that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 — is simply unattainable. The primary strategy — to test all children in those subjects...

President Bush and first lady Laura Bush pose with fourth and fifth graders from P.S. 76 in the Bronx, Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007, after the president made a statement about 'No Child Left Behind'. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

The following is a summary of Thompson’s views on the issues of National Security, Federal Budget and Spending/Budgetary Reform, Tax Reform, Healthcare, Government Effectiveness, Building Strong Families, Immigration, Education, Appointment of Judges, Energy Security, and the Second Amendment. National Security In a post 9/11 world, Thompson recognizes the need for America to increase its ability to defeat its terrorist enemies. Therefore, his plans include upscaling the military, improving the missile defense system, enhancing the intelligence community, making homeland security robust enough to protect America from terrorists worldwide, giving backbone the judicial system so it will face the reality of terrorism...

Democrat and Republican liberals on the US House Education and Labor Committee have released their discussion draft for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).  Both Hillary Clinton, as the "mayor" of the government "village" which wants to raise our children, and the ghost of George Orwell, author of 1984, are well represented in this draft.  What began in 1965, ostensibly as an effort to help poor children improve academic achievement has grown and spread like a monstrous cancer that is destroying academic achievement and freedom, parental autonomy, privacy, and the ability to maintain our republic for ALL public...

As Fred D. Thompson moves around the country delivering his folksy stump speech, he routinely makes his way through a laundry list of top concerns: national security, immigration reform, federalism and activist judges, among others. But he seems most energized when he discusses the ballooning cost of entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, and what he calls a need for more fiscal responsibility and less government in Washington. It is a recurring campaign theme of his. Mr. Thompson, a former Republican senator from Tennessee, made his greatest plea for the presidency, for instance, at the end of such remarks...

Thompson: Leave 'No Child Left Behind' behindby Mark Silva Sometimes, it doesn't take long for a party to disavow the gains of its own leaders. And sometimes, candidates regret their own votes.... Today, Fred Thompson, the former senator from Tennessee and television and film star who has entered the campaign for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2008, suggested that it's time to leave No Child Left Behind behind. Thompson, campaignining in Florida -- where the president's brother, former Gov. Jeb Bush, also had made public school funding contingent on public school performance -- suggested that the federal government has...

THE VILLAGES -- Fred Thompson began the presidential campaign's first Florida-wide multicity bus tour Thursday, standing on a platform of classic conservatism while offering few specifics that would set him apart from the other Republican candidates. But there was one politician he distinguished himself from frequently during his campaign swing: President Bush, whom he never mentioned by name. Though Thompson supports the Iraq War and bashed Congress the most, he repeatedly criticized the failed immigration plan the White House backed last year, brought up the need to veto spending that has bloated the federal budget and even swiped at the...

SUMMARY: Fred Thompson has been consistent — though not perfect — on issues of federal power over states. But it sometimes comes at the expense of conservative ideals. WASHINGTON – Fred Thompson is casting himself as the conservative’s choice for president. The question is, whose version of conservatism is it? In explaining his opposition to certain positions considered sacrosanct to the Republican Party’s conservative base, Thompson, a former U.S. senator from Tennessee, describes his views as federalist and calls himself an old-school conservative whose philosophy was once mainstream for the GOP but in recent years has been squeezed out. “I’ve...

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson says President Bush's No Child Left Behind program isn't working, and he would make changes to education spending. Campaigning today in Florida, the former Tennessee senator says No Child Left Behind is a good concept, but it needs improvements. Thompson says he's not opposed to students being tested, but says "it seems like now some of these states are teaching to the test." He's proposing the federal government provide block grants to states that establish objective testing programs. He also chided a woman who asked what he would do for education, saying it's the parents'...

In 2002, two of Congress' liberal Democratic lions - Rep. George Miller of Martinez and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy - stood behind President Bush as he signed the No Child Left Behind Act, a law they promised would shine a bright light on the failures in America's public schools and kick-start reforms. Five years later, Miller, now chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, is still a believer. But after traveling the country - listening to complaints from parents, teachers, school administrators and governors about the law's testing regime and stiff sanctions - he now admits it needs fixing....

With reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act high on the agenda as Congress returns from its recess, lawmakers must confront the fact that the law is causing many concerned parents to abandon public schools that are not failing. These parents are fleeing public schools not only because, as documented by a recent University of Chicago study, the act pushes teachers to ignore high-ability students through its exclusive focus on bringing students to minimum proficiency. Worse than this benign neglect, No Child forces a fundamental educational approach so inappropriate for high-ability students that it destroys their interest in learning,...

Last week I went shopping in our small rural hometown, where my family has attended the same public schools since 1896. Without exception, all six generations of us - whether farmers, housewives, day laborers, businesspeople, writers, lawyers or educators - were given a good, competitive K-12 education. But after a haircut, I noticed that the 20-something cashier could not count out change. The next day, at the electronics outlet store, another young clerk could not read - much less explain - the basic English of the buyer's warranty. At the food market, I listened as a young couple argued over...

The Bush Administration is looking to reauthorize the president's signature education law he constructed with Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy -- No Child Left Behind. However, many lawmakers in the president's own party have grave concerns about reauthorizing the law. Scott Garrett (R-New Jersey) is one of them and he has introduced a bill that would allow states to opt out of No Child Left Behind. The bill is called the LEARN Act (HR 3177), which stands for Local Education Authority Returns Now. "If states really don't want the federal government to be dictating to them as to how they run...

WASHINGTON, July 25 (UPI) -- Many U.S. school districts appear to be focusing their study efforts on math and English under the No Child Left Behind measure, a study has found. A report by Washington's Center on Education Policy found that most of the 349 school districts studied had substantially increased elementary students' math and English study time since the educational measure was initiated in 2002, The Washington Post said Wednesday. The center's study also found that 44 percent of the districts studied had drastically cutbacks for elementary grades in subjects such as social studies, music, art and science.

Richmond, Virginia In a classroom at Ginter Park Elementary School, a century-old brick schoolhouse on a dreary, zoned-commercial truck route that bisects a largely African-American neighborhood in Richmond, a third-grade teacher, Laverne Johnson, is doing something that flies in the face of more than three decades of the most advanced pedagogical principles taught at America's top-rated education schools. Seated on a chair in a corner of her classroom surrounded by a dozen youngsters sitting cross-legged on the floor at her feet, Johnson is teaching reading--as just plain reading. Two and a half hours every morning, systematically going over such basics...

Last time, we were analyzing the crucial rhetorical battle now joined over whether government can be allowed to expand forever, as demanded by those who tirelessly shriek: "You greedy rich people refuse to pay enough! We're not meeting the people's demand for services, their needs, their needs, their needs! We're at the bottom, at the very bottom, of all the social service rankings -- do you hear me? -- like some Third World hellhole!" The practical argument that we can't afford to see tax rates go up every year -- that this must eventually lead to tax rates approaching 100...

I can't believe this got by everybody. What a travesty. I thought Republicans were the dumb ones!

Today the President met with with education stakeholders in the Roosevelt Room of The White House to discuss the re-authorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. The President also met with Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to discuss their recent visit to Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Senator John McCain regarding his visit to Iraq. Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island

Now that Congress is debating whether – and in what form – to renew No Child Left Behind (NCLB), some legislators on both sides of the aisle are openly wondering whether it’s time to face the reality that some children will never catch up, no matter what.When Congress passed NCLB in 2002, the breakthrough federal education program aimed to have every public school student – whether middle class or poor, white or minority, native born or illegal alien - performing at grade level in reading and math by 2014. Robert L. Linn, co-director of the National Center for Research on...

President Bush expressed his condolences to all those that lost their homes and loved ones in the series of deadly tornados that struck the Southeast and Midwest yesterday. He plans to visit these areas and meet with families and officials tomorrow. Today, the president traveled to Indiana where he spoke at an elementary school about the No Child Left Behind program. (Transcript) He later traveled to Kentucky to attend a fundraiser for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and a dinner for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. (Transcript) First Lady Laura Bush was in Hawaii today to unveil the name for...

NEW ALBANY, Ind. - President Bush, who wants his legacy engraved with his education policy, lobbied Congress on Friday to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind law — and do it this year. "My claim is it's working," Bush said at Silver Street Elementary School where he stopped before heading to Kentucky for a dinner to raise money for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record), R-Ky., and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "We can change parts of it for the better, but don't change the core of a piece of legislation that is making a significant difference...

WASHINGTON - When Tori Boyles, of Columbia, Mo., takes a test at school, an adult often reads the questions to her because the 9-year-old has learning disabilities that make reading difficult. That kind of accommodation generally is not allowed for the reading test that public school students take under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Also, skipping the exam is not permitted for Tori, who has spina bifida, a condition often accompanied by learning problems. "Why isn't there an option to opt out of that?" asks her mother, Becky Boyles. "She just has to stare at this piece of...

New report cards have been issued by the Jersey Department of Education - not for students, but for the schools they attend. Report cards for more than 24 hundred public schools are now available at http://education.state.nj.us/rc/. Jersey Education Commissioner Lucille Davy says "this is an opportunity for us to provide a profile of each school- primarily for the public's use- to look and to gauge their local schools educational progress." She says "we see improvements, we see the achievement gap closing in 3rd and 4th grade particularly, in language arts literacy and mathematics as well." Davy says the data also...

California education officials are battling the U.S. Department of Education over provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, hoping Congress considers their complaints as it evaluates the five-year-old landmark education reform law. At the heart of the dispute is disagreement over how best to measure student performance. California says its incremental system is best for the state and wants to keep it. Federal officials say California must use another method to follow the law. The California Department of Education also wants to delay the federal law's deadline to have all students reading and doing math at grade level...

WASHINGTON - The No Child Left Behind law was supposed to level the playing field, promising students an equal education no matter where they live or their background. From state to state, however, huge differences remain in what students are expected to know and learn. Each state sets its own standards for subjects such as reading and math, then tests to see whether students meet those benchmarks. It's a practice under increasing scrutiny as Congress prepares to review the five-year-old law. "Fourth-grade kids in the District of Columbia are learning different math from kids across the (Potomac) river in Virginia....

Oprah Winfrey's poke at the short-sighted materialism of some low-income students has delighted conservative commentators, but that doesn't mean she's wrong. Liberals love to "speak truth to power," but the powerless need to hear the truth, too. Knowledge, after all, is power. Don't keep it to yourself, I say. Spread it around. That's why the Queen of Daytime Talk did poor folks a favor when she candidly explained in a Newsweek interview why she decided to build her lavish new school for impoverished teenagers, the $40 million Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, in South Africa instead of the United...

For Immediate ReleaseJanuary 6, 2007 President's Radio Address       Audio      THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Earlier this week, the newly elected members of the House and the Senate took their oaths of office and became part of the 110th Congress. I congratulate them all, and I look forward to working with them over the next two years. Since the November elections, I've had a number of productive meetings with the new leaders in Congress, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. I was encouraged...

Republicans were elected to the House in 1994 on a grand promise to cut taxes, government, and spending. They were elected to rein in the government largess after 40 years of one-party rule. It was a revolution for the Republican Party. The movement started by Barry Goldwater had finally reached the pinnacle of politics—a majority believed in the conscience of Conservatives. The intentions were good, and the 12-year era of Republican rule accomplished some enormous tasks. Welfare reform under a Democratic president has cut the welfare rolls by nearly half since 1996. The economy is strong, thanks to much needed...

Freepers: I will be attending a meeting later this week in which the featured speaker--a self-proclaimed conservative--will be attacking "No Child Left Behind." I have no real knowledge of the program and its effects, do not trust the MSM accounts and am a bit out on a limb. So if anyone out there has some REAL data--as opposed to what we I would get if I googled "No Child Left Behind"--I would appreciate whatever you can give me. Thanks, McVey

On September 10, 2003 in Prague at the International Conference on Education for a Sustainable Future, the United Nations declared 2005 through 2015, "The Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)." To nobody's surprise, the UN also named UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) as the lead agency for this global effort. The official launch ceremony took place on March 1, 2005 in New York City.1 Few Americans paid attention. They should have.

Nine year-old Tyler Stoken, a student in the Aberdeen Public School District, didn't know how to answer an essay question on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning test. As punishment for leaving the question blank his principal suspended him for five days. Tyler paraphrases the question saying, "You look out one day at school and see your principal flying by a window. In several paragraphs write what happens next." He's asked, "So why didn't you answer that question?" He says, "I couldn't think of what to write the essay without making fun of the principal." He refused to answer the...

President Bush spent the day in North Carolina Traveling with the president were Press Secretary Tony Snow and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings After arriving in Greensboro, NC, the president enjoyed a barbeque lunch at Stamey’s Restaurant, then visited nearby Waldo C. Falkener Elementary School where he spoke about the No Child Left Behind initiative. Later, President Bush traveled a few miles further south to visit The Victory Junction Gang Camp in Randleman, NC, then on to speak at a private GOP fundraiser. Enjoy your Wednesday visit to Sanity Island

"This November, as dozens of state governors ask for your vote, ask yourself this: Do they deserve it? In states like Wisconsin, Maine and Michigan, NEA members see their governors finding money for programs and salaries, protecting jobs from privatization, and making sure students get what they need. (Can your colleagues in California say the same? We think not.) Yes, governors do make a big difference. And so do you, when you say yea or nay to them on the ballot................... Ohio U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland TWO WORDS: OEA alum THREE ISSUES: 1) WHO HE IS: Strickland is a psychologist...

For Immediate ReleaseOffice of the Press SecretaryOctober 7, 2006 President's Radio Address       Audio      In Focus: Education      THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. In recent days, we have seen shocking acts of violence in schools across our Nation. Laura and I are praying for the victims and their families, and we extend our sympathies to them and to the communities that have been devastated by these attacks. I have asked Secretary of Education Spellings and Attorney General Gonzales to host a conference on school safety this Tuesday. We will bring together teachers, parents, students, administrators, law enforcement officials, and other experts...