Summary:
• The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law -- not
well-thought-out & not properly funded
• Testing Standards need to be fair for ALL
• We need to let education professional set
the standards
• No more gimmicks or political footballs
-- we need leadership on the federal
level
• We need to fulfill our promises of funding
Full Explanation:
“The
failure of
American public education resides with many people,
and the common denominator of that failure is the
refusal of those people to be accountable for their
responsibilities."
In
1989 I published a book entitled Wisdom’s
Passing (New York: Excelsior) in which
I researched the decline of our schools and offered
many ways to reverse that decline. From holding
students accountable for their behavior, to making
up for the lack of proper parenting in many homes;
from insisting on the highest standards for our
teachers, to holding administrators accountable
for poor performance — we have let our educational
product erode for the better part of five decades.
There are many remedies, but the nonsense
of the No Child Left Behind
(NCLB) law is surely not one of them, both
because it is in itself not
well-thought-out and because
it has not been properly funded.
My
opponent’s vote for NCLB is one of the most damaging
ones he has cast.
To
ask all children to pass the same exam is on the
face of it a cruel silliness. There are kids with
learning disabilities, physical handicaps, language
problems—any or all of which make it impossible
to hold them to the standards of what we might call
normal or average kids. Moreover,
the NCLB tests deal only with the narrowest of educational
mandates. We have lumped our kids together in one
huge pot with little regard for different abilities
and different needs, and the result has been decline
upon decline.
Should
there be basic standards for math and reading? Of
course! But they must be spelled out for all
states in common with the realization that certain
kids will never be able to attain them.
Our
per capita expenditures should be equalized for
all of our children. We ought
to be dealing in much more meaningful ways with
career training and citizenship training, both of
which have taken a back seat to the mentality which
sees the three R's as the be-all and end-all
of education. From the establishment of
meaningful curricula to the training of our teachers
to the funding of our programs, America needs a
gathering of the education professionals of the
nation to set the standards for all of our states.
It
must then reside with each state — since Constitutionally
education is a state mandate — to implement the
standards. In this regard, Congress can
only suggest and reward good results with Federal
dollars. But Congress can also provide the
leadership to offer comprehensive solutions. To
date, it has merely treated education as a political
football and offered only gimmicks.
The following question came up and I would like
to address it: Adolescent driving and voting --
To help prevent high school dropouts, the state
of Tennessee asks that every youngster who applies
for a driver’s license be a student in good
standing. The privilege of voting can also be used
to keep kids in school. As a life-long teacher,
I support such measures as long as provisions are
made for exceptional circumstances. However, I have
never and would never take away anyone’s right
to drive or vote based on educational attainment.
Click
the button below to Help STEVE become YOUR Congressman
in Washington
