Good Enough for Our Children, But Not Bush’s Vanity War

I made the point this morning that the whole premise of No Child Left Behind is that, by determining whether every school–and every child–was passing or failing, you could require improvements on the schools.

Well, not surprisingly, Bush is unwilling to undergo the same kind of tough scrutiny that the six year olds in our nation’s schools undergo:

Stung by the bleakfindings of a congressional audit of progress in Iraq, the Pentagon hasasked that some of the negative assessments be revised, a militaryspokesman said Thursday.

[snip]

At the White House,officials argued that the GAO report, which was required by legislationPresident Bush signed last spring, was unrealistic because it assigned“pass or fail” grades to each benchmark, rather than assessingwhether the Iraqis have made progress toward reaching the benchmarkgoals.

"A bar was set so high, that it was almost not to be able to be met,” White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.

I don’t know which is more tempting–to point out the failure of the NCLB logic, so we can get funding for the borderline schools that are improving but not "passing." Or to force the NCLB logic onto Bush’s failure of a war so we can bring our men and women home?

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  1. mighty mouse says:

    Right on, EW. Say amen, everybody. NCLB is causing the loss of so many fine teachers who don’t want to spend their time teaching to a test in order to keep their jobs. And what students are receiving is NOT education, it’s test-taking. And has GWB ever passed a test? Good teachers are gifts–they should not be treated like machine parts. Nor their students.

  2. Alyx says:

    tsk tsk tsk…they cannot admit failure fer nuthing! What a mess! This morning I heard on the news that there are some rumblings starting with Iran and Iraq around the Kurdish side of the border….? Boy won’t they just love to ’exist stage right’ (quoting Snagglepuss)and point the finger to the next bad guy in line…ha ha ha oh my!

  3. Anonymous says:

    Marcy, sorry to be OT here, but have you taken a look yet at the Secrecy News story about the CRS (Congressional Research Service) on â€The Protect America Act†otherwise known as the FISA – Bill of Rights Surrender Bill?

    Via Rawstory, the Secrecy News story can be found here:

    http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

    And the actual CRS analysis can be found as a PDF here:

    http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL34143.pdf

    Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging. *g*

  4. Neil says:

    Bush will insist on staying no matter what the facts are until the Iraqi constitution is amended so that oil production can be regulated by a panel comprised of â€international oil company executives†rather than the current nationalized management. The endgame is to develop into production the massive oil reserves in Iraq and also break the Opec cartel. Even if the Iraqis agree and oil production in Ieaq is privatized, who do you think will provide the security necessary to protect the investments? And what American President will walk away from that energy source?

  5. calugg says:

    Let’s force NCLB onto the White Huuse, including the â€reconstruction†of the failing office (after 3 years).

    It would be poetic justice, now?

  6. emptywheel says:

    Mad Dog

    I bookmarked it. Will get to it before the HJC hearings. But I had day job stuff today–argh.

  7. JohnJ says:

    I’ll see your NCLB and raise you an FCAT. Let’s see Chimpy pass the 6th grade version!

  8. sojourner says:

    My wife is a career teacher, and NCLB is not just about the testing — it is about some pretty onerous requirements that Bush saw fit to impose on school systems. In typical Bush fashion, though, the funding for the implementation never happened, or it happened marginally — meaning, school systems across the country were saddled with new (and somewhat arbitrary) requirements for performance by our illustrious president, and no funding, which put quite a hole in the school budgets. Then the idiot had the nerve to march around proclaiming it as such a great thing he had done.

    To that point in time, I had tried to give Bush the benefit of the doubt. He knew nothing about what he was doing, and didn’t give a damn, anyway, so long as it made him look good.

    The best thing that can happen is for NCLB to die, with Bush crying… What a joke!

  9. KLynn says:

    As a parent and former educator, NCLB has watered down education. Overall, performance has not improved. In fact, at many levels, students are falling further behind. NCLB has been about a mechanism for forcing school choice and for privitazation of our public schools. Furthermore, it is amazing that the National Science Foundation, in it’s role with NCLB, can fund the research on new, new math. Fund the publishing of new, new math books and fund the districts to buy the curriculum. All the while there is a national movement (by parents, mathematicians and educators) to end the reform math movement. The remediation rates for college math are terrible in most states and the rates grow higher and higher with reform math. Math tutoring rates in many communities has risen 60+%. Math Tutoring profits have risen threefold on a national average since NCLB as well as the NSF funded reform math. Who is listening to those concerned? Nobody. Oh, and those of us who speak out…we are called leftists, communists and snobs.

    Likewise, the war is about cronism, gettting to another hidden goal other than the stated goal, benefitting a small group of people while hurting the larger majority who happen to be speaking out against the war. Oh, and if you oppose the war, I think I recall swiftboating language along the lines of leftest, communists, terrorist lover, etc…

    Our leader’s view on performance evaluation is an us-them perspective. Different rules for for us in the WH and a whole set of rules for the little people I want to keep in the working class. Why? The Department of Commerce issued a report when Bush entered office that the largest employment sector by 2012 would be the service sector. In that report, it mentioned that there would not be enough people to fill the demand of the service sector. The NCLB set it’s goal of 100% proficiency (a passing grade of 40% on proficiency testing for all students) by the year of 2012. So what I mean by watered down is just that, watered down to make sure that there are enough only educated enough to fill this large forcasted employment sector. Just after WWII a similar educational experiement happened in order to feed large corporatons with the working class. This has never been about closing a gap. That’s just been the PR campaign for NCLB.

    As for this President, this war and this WH… like NCLB, the Constitution has been watered down, large numbers oppose the war and our future is going down the tubes.

  10. eyesonthestreet says:

    KLynn, â€NCLB has been about a mechanism for forcing school choice and for privitazation of our public schoolsâ€

    This is exactly right, they met their goal- they want the tests to prove that public schools are failing to teach (the evidence being the poor test results) voila!

    Let me state it again: The business model was to overwelm the public school system so that it would fail, overwelm it by redirecting the whole system to teach to the test, wherein energy that should be spent on teaching is spent on teaching how to take a test….

    and to make a profit from the testing materials along the way, this is a huge industry…

    and get parents to demand vouchers to send their kids to privately run schools, schools run as a corporation or with a religious affiliation(or both).

    the NCLB demanded the tests, so the business of testing was a sure thing,

    and almost all wealthy parents with big tax breaks can use that money to send their children to private schools, in fact, here in the Bay Area (CA) there is so much demand for private schools, and so little space, that the cost of a private high school is $27,000 per year. See, those test results work!

    (it should be noted my children have attended both public and private schools, both have their pluses and minuses)

    But once again, they failed in their final implementation, because they counted on outrage from parents. In the end, the only outrage was directed at them for their use of public officials for paid propoganda, their lack of follow with funds, their failure to provide an alternative. Same old, same old.