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School Beat: Son of NCLB
If you need a does of black humor, just pick any random piece of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. This law is replete with outrageous expectations disingenuously posing as the simplest of matters. My favorite joke of the moment comes from the section that details the requirements for involving parents for schools receiving “Title I” funds designed to assist low-income kids.
This portion contains a whole host of must do items for schools to implement that sound great on paper but are completely divorced from reality. The best one is where schools are informed that in order to encourage more parent participation they should feel free to provide parents transportation to and from school events.
Yeah, this would be great and makes me ask: “Mr. President, to which address should I send the receipt for our school minibus, the insurance, the salary for the driver and the weekly gas bill? And along the way, would you mind padding the reimbursement with a little extra to cover a full-time librarian, a full-time nurse, teachers’ aides for each classroom, a full-time PE teacher, new sports equipment, instruments and art supplies, sufficient text books, and a refurbished building? Oh, and don’t forget to make sure our students have adequate housing and health care and that their parents are offered meaningful, well-paying jobs. Thanks!”
The heavy sarcasm indicates how many parents, students and educators feel about NCLB and the possibilities for its rehabilitation in the upcoming reauthorization. Democrats are now in charge, so there may be some hope, but we can’t forget that Democrats were willing and equal partners in this fiasco, and that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to indicate that they know anything more about public education today than they did five years ago. Seriously, how many of these folks enrolled their children in public school over the recent years?
In fact, it seems that the reauthorization timeline may be bringing out all the sharks. Just this week the Commission on No Child Left Behind, co-chaired by Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson and Governor Roy E. Barnes of Georgia, supported by the Aspen Report, released a length report for the reauthorization of NCLB ( http://tinyurl.com/353fgu ). The report enumerates 75 recommendations, the bulk of which, based on a relatively cursory reading at this point, are more punitive and myopic than the original legislation.
More
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=4205#more
Yeah, this would be great and makes me ask: “Mr. President, to which address should I send the receipt for our school minibus, the insurance, the salary for the driver and the weekly gas bill? And along the way, would you mind padding the reimbursement with a little extra to cover a full-time librarian, a full-time nurse, teachers’ aides for each classroom, a full-time PE teacher, new sports equipment, instruments and art supplies, sufficient text books, and a refurbished building? Oh, and don’t forget to make sure our students have adequate housing and health care and that their parents are offered meaningful, well-paying jobs. Thanks!”
The heavy sarcasm indicates how many parents, students and educators feel about NCLB and the possibilities for its rehabilitation in the upcoming reauthorization. Democrats are now in charge, so there may be some hope, but we can’t forget that Democrats were willing and equal partners in this fiasco, and that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to indicate that they know anything more about public education today than they did five years ago. Seriously, how many of these folks enrolled their children in public school over the recent years?
In fact, it seems that the reauthorization timeline may be bringing out all the sharks. Just this week the Commission on No Child Left Behind, co-chaired by Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson and Governor Roy E. Barnes of Georgia, supported by the Aspen Report, released a length report for the reauthorization of NCLB ( http://tinyurl.com/353fgu ). The report enumerates 75 recommendations, the bulk of which, based on a relatively cursory reading at this point, are more punitive and myopic than the original legislation.
More
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=4205#more
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