Turn the Paige

[vs <victor.steinbok@verizon.net>(by way of Victor Steinbok <victor.steinbok@verizon.net>)]

<http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040329&s=borosage>

This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040329&s=borosage


Turn the Paige

by ROBERT L. BOROSAGE EARL HADLEY

[posted online on March 11, 2004]

At a meeting with the nation's governors last month, Bush's Education 
Secretary, Rodney Paige, called the National Education Association (NEA) a 
"terrorist organization" because teachers have been decrying Bush's broken 
promises on his education reforms. When Paige later "apologized," he 
accused the teachers of "obstructionist scare tactics." In response, the 
Campaign for America's Future and MoveOn.org have joined together to launch 
a petition calling on the President to fire Paige. The petition can be 
joined at <http://www.firepaige.org>www.firepaige.org.

We launched the petition not simply because Paige's comments libel 
America's teachers but because they represent an Administration mindset 
that is threatening to America's children.

Bush's education reforms--the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)--imposed 
sweeping mandates on the schools, requiring mandatory testing and 
reporting, with schools that fail to show progress facing cut-offs in 
public funding. Bush gained bipartisan support for the reforms in part 
because the President promised a dramatic increase in funding to provide 
schools with the help they need to make the law work. By all accounts, the 
law has encouraged new attention to students that have been too often 
slighted in schools--minorities, slow learners, new immigrants.

But the promise of the law has been undermined by how it has been 
implemented. As Representative George Miller has detailed, the President 
has broken his promise on funding, falling more than $25 billion short to 
date on what he initially promised. At the same time, with the states 
facing their worst fiscal crisis in fifty years, the President insisted on 
his top-end tax cuts, opposing any protection for school budgets. The 
resulting cuts across the country have made implementing the new law even 
more difficult.

But when teachers began explaining what the effects were on students, 
Secretary Paige--and the Administration--ignored their comments and 
attacked their motivation. Turning conservative ideology on its head, the 
Administration now suggests that the bureaucrats around Paige are better 
informed than the teachers in the classroom. As Paige's insult exposed, the 
Administration treats teachers as an enemy that has to be defeated instead 
of enlisting them in a process to make the law work. This isn't just an 
affront to conservative dogma; it's a clear and present danger to children 
in public schools.

Now state legislatures are beginning to revolt against the lack of funding 
and the inept administration of the law. Republican strongholds in Virginia 
and Utah have passed resolutions challenging the law by overwhelming 
majorities. Paige hasn't yet labeled the Republican state legislators 
terrorists, but he hasn't listened to them either.

The President has sought to portray himself as an "education President," a 
reformer with results. But after passing NCLB, he's basically been AWOL. He 
chose tax cuts over help to schools, so the country has been laying off 
teachers while giving tax breaks to millionaires. He broke his promise on 
funding his own reforms, and then broke his promise on lifting the level of 
Pell Grants for deserving university students, even though tuition hikes 
are pricing more and more kids out of school. And he has left Secretary 
Paige in office, a man who seems to consider his job one of quashing 
criticism rather than listening to it.

Making certain every child succeeds is an enormous challenge. But this 
Administration has defaulted even on helping to provide the 
basics--insuring that every child has the nutrition, healthcare and 
preschool vital to coming to school ready to learn, providing small classes 
in the early grades, schools that aren't dangerous to children's health, 
teachers who are respected and engaged in lifetime learning, after-school 
programs vital to working parents, and the certain knowledge that all 
children can afford a college education if they deserve one.

America's Future strongly believes that standards and accountability are 
vital. Holding schools accountable for subgroups can force attention on 
students that too often have been shunted aside. But enforcing high-stakes 
tests without the resources to help schools succeed merely sentences them 
to failure.

Paige claims his libels and anger derive from his concern about minority 
children being left behind. Were that the case, he'd be picking his fight 
with Bush and not the NEA. And when the new Bush budget was published 
calling for cuts in education funding across the board for the next five 
years, Paige would have resigned in protest. But Paige isn't protecting 
children, he's protecting the President.

So it is time to turn the Paige. Paige's dismissal is a necessary first 
step to getting the Administration to fulfill its promises and begin 
listening to those whose job it is to make the reforms work in the 
classroom. We invite all who agree to sign the petition at 
<http://www.firepaige.org>www.firepaige.org. Join us--this is but an early 
round in what we anticipate will be a growing struggle to get this 
Administration and this country to meet the challenge of educating the next 
generation.