"ugliness and stupidity"

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@uclink4.berkeley.edu>]

> Letter to the editor of the NY Times, by Joanne Yatvin
>
> Although I disagree with your opinion (Editorial, 3/2/04) of the
> motives of both the Bush administration in pushing the No Child Left Behind
> Act (NCLB) and the National Education Association (NEA) in opposing it,
> motives are not the issue.  Results are.  So far, NCLB has, proportionally,
> done the most harm to the poor and minority students it purports to help, by
> denying so many of them graduation, holding them back in grade, pushing them
> out of school, and offering them test prep instead of good teaching. So
> far, instead of putting a highly qualified teacher in every classroom, NCLB
> has driven the best teachers toward affluent suburban schools or premature
> retirement, offered early career teachers "training" in how to parrot
> scripted programs, tarnished the reputations of experienced teachers who are
> teaching courses in addition to the ones they are certified for, and
> facilitated the issuance of "quickie" licenses to those who think they
> "might like" to teach.  What new wonders does this deceitful and vicious law
> have in store?
>
> Democrats are talking about the under-funding of NCLB because
> that is what members of the public who do not have children in school can
> most easily understand.  Many politicians of both parties know-as Howard
> Dean was not afraid to say-that money alone can't transform this sow's ear
> into a silk purse. The repeal of NCLB, with all its ugliness and stupidity,
> and replacing it with true education reform should be the goal off all
> Americans who sincerely care about education.
>
> Sincerely yours,
>
> Joanne Yatvin
> (Former public school teacher and administrator;
> member of the National Reading Panel)
>
>
>
> New York Times editorial
> Rescuing Education Reform
> 2004-03-02
>
> Democratic presidential candidates have discovered that there's no more 
> surefire applause line than an attack on the No Child Left Behind Act. The 
> law was meant to deliver on President Bush's promise to improve public 
> school education. But many teachers and school districts resent being 
> forced to meet the law's tough standards. Some of the strongest resistance 
> has come from Republican states like Utah, which are considering laws that 
> would limit their compliance.
>
> The Bush administration has the high ground here. Although the program 
> needs more funds and better administration, No Child Left Behind is 
> tackling one of the nation's most critical problems: the substandard 
> educational opportunities offered to poor and minority children.
>
> Fifty years have sped by since the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board 
> of Education that the practice of confining black children to segregated 
> and often inferior schools violated the Constitution and generally 
> consigned African-Americans to second-class citizenship. Nevertheless, all 
> around the country, poor children are still trapped in failing schools, 
> which poison their futures from the very start.
>
> The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was intended to fix this problem. It 
> requires the states to adopt high standards for all children and to place 
> a qualified teacher in every classroom by 2006 in exchange for federal 
> dollars. The new law will need tinkering here and there. But its goal and 
> its general road map for getting there are the right ones. For the effort 
> to truly equalize education to succeed, Congress will need to fight off 
> destructive schemes by lobbyists and bureaucrats of both parties who are 
> working hard to undermine the new initiative and to preserve the bad old 
> status quo.
>
> No Child Left Behind was the result of one of George Bush's most famous 
> campaign promises. But the Bush administration has sadly turned out to be 
> part of the problem.
>
> The Department of Education, under the inept leadership of Rod Paige, has 
> been painfully slow in adopting regulations on how the states can comply 
> with the law. The administration was forced by Congress to accept the most 
> crucial provision, which requires the states to hire only qualified 
> teachers, and it has failed to enforce that provision adequately.
>
> One of the most serious complaints about the law is that the federal 
> government is asking states for big improvements in local schools but is 
> not providing the money to pay for such changes. The Bush administration 
> is correct when it says that school financing went up sharply under the 
> new law. The money for Title I, which is aimed at the poorest students, 
> went up by nearly a third - with proportionately more of the money going 
> to the poorest districts. But the Title I allotment is also $6 billion 
> short of what Congress authorized when it passed the law, and the amount 
> states are getting is certainly not adequate to meet the tough standards 
> the law sets.
>
> A retrograde faction of Democrats wants to use the financing gap as an 
> excuse for backing away from the law. Last year, for example, Senator 
> Richard Durbin of Illinois floated an amendment that would have exempted 
> the states from complying at all until the federal government had paid out 
> all of the money it had promised. The bill was morally indefensible and 
> deserved to fail. Students are already entitled under law to quality 
> education, no matter how poor the neighborhood in which they live. The 
> fact that the federal government should be giving more aid does not exempt 
> the states from their fundamental responsibilities.
>
> Democratic legislators are also fearful of the National Education 
> Association, the country's largest and most powerful teachers' union. The 
> union has a history of vigorously resisting standards-based change and is 
> dead set against making teachers subject to federally dictated 
> qualification and performance standards. While Mr. Paige made an egregious 
> error in referring to the union as a "terrorist organization," the N.E.A. 
> has not served the cause of quality education well in this fight, 
> particularly when it attempts to turn suburban parents against the new law.
>
> Instead of pandering to the law's opponents, whoever wins the Democratic 
> nomination needs to seize what may be the country's last opportunity to 
> achieve basic fairness in public education. That means standing up to 
> wavering Democrats who are eager for a chance to jump ship.