Re: Strong Letter

[Scott Hays <shays@ccwebster.net>]

Art

Thanks for clarifying what a "wonk" is ...

You seem to miss the point I am trying to make, however.  I am not,  
as you say, unfamiliar with ESEA, nor the changes to it wrought by  
NCLB (and will ignore your paragraph pointing out my purported  
ignorance of the law).  Rather, I do not draw the same conclusions  
from it that you seem to have drawn.  Instead of me reading the  
entire thing and attempting to read your mind, I was merely asking  
that you to supply me with the relevant passages that support the  
claims you make.  This is pretty much what I required my seventh  
grade students to do ... they were free to draw conclusions from  
information presented in a book they read (and cited in their  
bibliography), but they also were required to cite the specific  
passages that supported their conclusion for me to check.  It was  
much too time-consuming for me to have to read the entire book and  
guess what it was that lead them to think as they thought.

You do point to one relevant passage:  Section 1117(a).  However,  
given the fact that ESEA Title I funds have not been sufficient, on  
their own, to raise academic achievement to the level(s) required by  
NCLB, I fail to see how requiring states to "establish a statewide  
system of  intensive and sustained support and improvement for local  
educational agencies  and schools receiving funds under this  
part ..." does not entail or require states to "raise additional  
resources" for their schools.  Oh, I suppose the states could  
transfer funds between existing categories of expenditure (they could  
rob Peter to pay Paul, as it were), they could "cut waste" to carve  
out an additional pool of money ("cutting waste", of course, being a  
sufficiently ambiguous catch-all phrase used by "reformers" of all  
stripes to suggest where nonexistent funding might be found ... akin  
to waving one's arms over a sick subject and saying "umma gumma"), or  
they could "be more efficient" in strategic allocation of limited  
resources (an equally ambiguous approach) ... but those are not  
really meaningful solutions to problems that are more fiscal than  
strategic.

Especially since the best thought-out strategic plans for systemic  
reform are precisely the type of change that supporters of NCLB reject

Editorial comment aside, I do not understand the logic of saying that  
some funding is available to help support historically unsuccessful  
efforts at educating broad categories of children (but it has  
historically not been enough to do the job), and to accept this  
funding, you must come up with a statewide system to provide  
sustained support and improvement, but you don't have to spend any  
additional money of your own to make it happen because we know you  
don't have that money and it would be illegal for the federal  
government to require you to do that.  However, if you don't show the  
improvements that we expect (and are identified in the plan you gave  
to us that met our guidelines), then we can begin to apply a series  
of escalating sanctions which lead, ultimately, to all schools being  
restructured and/or operated by the state (which can't do an adequate  
job of supporting the local and independently operated schools, in  
the first place).  Nothing that you have said, Art, and certainly  
nothing that you cited from ESEA, assures me that my conclusions are  
based on a misunderstanding.