I hear President Bush getting ‘blamed’ for No Child Left Behind frequently. I say, it wasn’t Bush that made the legislation.
The NCLB Act of 2001 was co-Authored by Democratic Rep. George Miller of California and Democratic U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and rejected by only 10 Democratic Congressmen and 2 Democratic Senators.
Presented with this fact, the claim will be that Bush failed to fund NCLB. That itself is a dubious claim.
As the Heritage Foundation points out: “Annual U.S. Department of Education spending on elementary and secondary education has increased from $27.3 billion in 2001 to $38 billion in 2006, up by nearly 40 percent.
The fact is that the educational system in America costs too much and performs too poorly. We cannot simply throw endless amounts of money at the established entrenched bureaucracy. We cannot play so loosely with facts.
This leads me to Obama’s Education Platform. Below is my point by point commentary on Obama’s plan.
Obama starts off by citing the unfulfilled funding promises of NCLB. Then he proposes his solution.
1) Comprehensive Zero to Five Plan: voluntary universal pre-school for kids 0-5. This is a teachers union move to expand the education system to cover 5 more years of our kids lives. More teachers, more money, more power. I heard that 1 in 10 at the Democratic convention was a teacher. I love teachers, but their unions are driving California and the US into the ground.
2) “Obama will quadruple Early Head Start, increase Head Start funding . . .” enough said.
3) Affordable High Quality Child Care: because educating kids starts with making sure the government babysits them while Mommy is working.
4) Fund NCLB: where is the money going to come from? Answer: Taxpayers. How will spending be managed to ensure return on investment? Answer, it won’t. Note the slam “Teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests.” Didn’t Uncle Teddy write the law? By the way, I sure needed to know how to fill in the bubble on my SAT and college exams. If teachers are spending too much time on that then maybe they aren’t that good of teacher.
5) Make Math and Science a National Priority: Recruiting math and science teachers is a fine objective but how are you going to do it? Buy them off with taxpayer dollars. Also, what do you think he really means when he says he will work to ensure that all children have access to a strong science curriculum at all grade levels. Does that mean Darwin in kindergarten? Perhaps the benefits of stem cell research at age 6? That last line in his platform bothers me even though I support teaching the theory of evolution.
6) Address the dropout crisis: funding for outreach. “Personal Academic Plans”, parent involvement through government intervention.
7) Double Funding for afterschool programs. My tax dollars at work. Probably better to keep the kids involved if you can, but Obama sure has a givernment cure for everything that ails us.
8) Summer Learning for Disadvantaged: same as #7.
9) Support College Outreach Programs: I like this one. Hopefully it does not cost too much to teach ‘low income families’ that college is the way to go. Maybe we could pay 50 Cent or Snoop Dogg to rap about the virtues of a high quality education.
10) Support for English Language Learners: Obama supports transitional bilingual education. I say the transition is accelerated by English only in the classrooms. If parents need alternative language support then that is fine with me.
11) Recruit Teachers: Taxpayer funded undergrad and grad school for teachers in exchange for 4 years of service to high-need field or location. Kind of like the military. Will the media call these recruits stupid and hopeless?
12) Prepare Teachers: will require all schools of education to be accredited. That seems fine.
13) Retain Teachers: “incentives for paid common planning time so they can collaborate to share best practices.” Isn’t that what discussions in the teachers lounge are for? My California kids have half days on Wednesdays already because teachers need some time to do their work without the kids. Isn’t that what summer is for?
14) Reward Teachers: “new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay” More money. No talk of eliminating non-performing teachers.
15) Tax Credit for College: “Universal and fully refundable tax credit.” I prefer tax cuts and deductions rather credits. The fully refundable language of this promise makes me think it will be like the earned income credit and people will be getting money from the government that they never earned.
16) Simplified Application for Financial Aid: Great idea to eliminate red tape . Linking application to IRS forms is a little big brothery but that is what we get in Obama’s Marxist world that he calls being “neighborly.”
No comments:
Post a Comment