Re: New Hampshire School Board Condemns Federally Mandated

[Rick Parkany <rparkany@borg.com>]

Bob:	excellent article! thank you for it. Along these lines...

...I think one of the most perceptive postings this past year goes to our own Alan Young--a radical
who makes sense--who posted the following in the beginning of Dec. It follows along the lines of my
prediction 3 years ago this list when I announded that the HST scandal will end when the politicians
leave the field of battle, realizing that (a) these testing protocols are going to be WAY too
expensive; and (b) the schools are too visciously political for them.

Thank you, Alan, for your presence among us...	;-} rap.

Subject: Re: NCLB help!!!!
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 13:14:53 -0600
From: "Young, Alan" <alan.young@DMPS.K12.IA.US>
Reply-To:  Assessment Reform Network Mailing List <ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU>
To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU

Actually, when they find out it is costing them far more than 7% to impose something that will harm
our children and society by REDUCING their education and educational opportunities. . . that they
have WASTED their money on pseudo-science, they will likely be glad to spend their money more wisely
than on this federal joke/nightmare. Even without the federal money, they may even be better off
(though that is not what I would hope for), since they could reorganize their approaches around
meaningful improvement. My guess is that schools would improve from just stopping reorganize their
approaches around dead end, warmed over, psychometric hocus pocus left in the hands of inept
legislators who have little or no education about education. 

Cutting off fed money is a short term solution, however, since it lets the feds off the hook and
means they do not have a role in education any more. So it is strategy but not a panacea. This is
part of the plan, I think, to destroy the USDOE by imploding or gutting it from the inside. The
USDOE does have a legitimate role that is being skirted now and that is one of EQUITY. That is the
reason for their existence. We do not want federal control with local support, but local control
with federal support. So, we must fight within and without, at the local, state, and federal level
to systematically dismantle this destructive approach to public education. DEMAND the DOE return to
its job of supporting equity, and assert that control is local first and foremost.

Alan Young

Bob Schaeffer wrote:
> 
> Check out his very interesting story describing what might be the
> tip-of-the-iceberg of a potent, grassroots challenge to the No Child
> Left Behind nonsense. Similar New England town meeting/local government
> resolutions have launched major national campaigns, such as the Nuclear
> Weapons Freeze.
> 
> http://www.vnews.com/01022003/847760.htm-------------------------------------------------------
> ARN-L archives:
> http://interversity.org/lists/arn-l/archives.html

-- 
"Dein Wachstum sei feste und lache vor Lust! 
Deines Herzens Trefflichkeit
Hat dir selbst das Feld bereit', 
Auf dem du bluehen musst." JS Bach: Bauern Kantata
Richard A. Parkany: SUNY@Albany 
Prometheus Educational Services
http://www.borg.com/~rparkany/ 
Upper Hudson & Mohawk Valleys; New York State, USA