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Raging Against the
Anti-NCLB
Propaganda Machine
Education/Nancy
Salvato |
January 12, 2005
- Sometimes in order to see an issue with clarity, it
must be framed in the proper context. Such is the case with Secretary of
Education Rod Paige’s decision to pay a pundit to promote a more "truthful”
message about NCLB to combat the misinformation campaign led by the NEA.
The attempts to discredit No Child Left Behind as an unfunded mandate with
impossible demands made on the states has been swallowed hook, line, and
sinker, as truth by the mainstream media and "Educrats”. Yet, the
misinformation floating around about NCLB ranks right up with the propaganda
spewed out by the likes of Michael Moore in F 9/11, Dan Rather commentating
about President Bush’s National Guard Service, and the Kerry campaign
attacks on the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth.
What NCLB is attempting to accomplish is really quite simple. Students are
to be taught with sound (scientifically proven) educational methodology and
leave school with cognitive abilities that would allow them to function
independently in the "real world”. The hard reality is that those who
graduate high school often have to take remedial courses in college to be
able to handle the workload –which has gotten easier. Many don’t earn their
college degrees. Many of those who get jobs after high school have to be
taught how to write. They cannot fill in simple forms. How many young
cashiers can’t count back change? And that’s not the whole picture. There
are many who drop out of high school with sub par skill sets.
I’ve written on this subject before. So I don’t feel the need to explain how
the individual states are responsible for carrying out this "mandate”. But
it should be mentioned that the federal government does not tell the
individual schools the specifics of how to accomplish the educational
process. That is determined by the states and the school districts. The end
goal is what is important here.
Obviously the Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, felt that NCLB was so
important that he had to get the word out about it. Had the tables been
turned and Paige stood behind the NEA rather than call it a "terrorist
organization”, a categorization of which I wholeheartedly agree, had he
allowed the status quo to continue by giving boatloads of federal dollars to
be used by the schools in a manner that wasn’t achieving excellence, he
wouldn’t have had to pay a pundit to discuss NCLB. The media would have
covered Paige more favorably, or with less ferocity –he was a Bush
appointee, after all.
As part of NCLB, concerned parents were to have more comprehensive choices
in deciding where to send their kids for a sound education. Accountability
measures weren’t intended to just enable parents to know where their
district schools rank in terms of accomplishing what would seem to be very
reasonable expectations –advancing students with grade level skills. If a
school is found not making the grade, NCLB wanted to offer alternatives to
parents feeling trapped into continuing their children’s mediocre education
because they simply could not afford moving to another district or paying
for independent schooling.
Unfortunately, NCLB was hamstringed on the choice issue. Although parents
have been afforded more options within the public school system, there are
many problems. First, it’s difficult to find transportation to schools far
from the home. Second, some kids miss the camaraderie and convenience of
going to school in their own neighborhood. Third, some schools don’t have
the space to accept more students. Individual districts have placed their
own restraints on choice, limiting it to the more economically disadvantaged
students -in and of itself not fair.
President Bush's original No Child Left Behind plan called for parents to be
given the option of transferring their children to any better performing
school - public or private. "The private school choice provision was voted
out of No Child Left Behind in 2001 over the objections of Boehner and other
school choice supporters as the President's No Child Left Behind plan moved
through the legislative process.”1 The liberal wing of the Democratic Party,
headed up by the Kennedy machine and supported by the NEA, made sure that
wouldn’t be a reality. No, "Choice” has to take place within the public
school system (ensuring those tax dollars stay within the public schools)
and "Choice” has become almost a non issue because most parents choose not
to take advantage of this "opportunity”, if you can call it that.
Still, there is another way to permit this option. Universal Tuition Tax
Credits would take government funding out of the equation and allow parents
to send their kids to independent schools that might have a religious or
other agenda.
Many teachers are heard complaining about NCLB but are misinformed. The
impossible task ahead of them, to get kids up to speed embracing the same
old "progressive education ideology”, teaching the entire school day, lesson
planning and grading on their own time, teaching classrooms of students with
mixed ability and lacking the necessary basic skills required in that grade
level –that is exactly what NCLB is trying to end.
If parents aren’t hamstringed into keeping their students in the system, if
there was competition introduced between schools instead of perpetuating an
NEA sponsored monopoly, there would be true educational progress.
Rod Paige was a teacher before he was the Secretary of Education. He knows
that a person has to hear something over and over again before it is
learned. He wanted people to hear the truth about NCLB and it wasn’t getting
out. Compared to the cost of remedial instruction required by those
advancing through the public schools, $240,000 is a drop in the bucket!
Related Reading:
GAO Study is Evidence Parents with Children in Underachieving Schools
Need Option of Choosing Private Schools, Boehner Says
December 13, 2004 Press Release Committee On Education And The Workforce
U.S. House Of Representatives
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