 |
| Source:American Enterprise Institute- with a look at the 2001 education reform law known as No Child Left Behind. |
"The Student Success Act rolls back regulations while reflecting the need for a principled, limited federal role in schools.
On Friday, the U.S. House will vote on the Student Success Act (H.R. 5). The bill would revamp the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act (formally known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act). It’s a promising bill and one that deserves the enthusiastic support of conservatives.
From Senator Richard Burr
There’s obviously not a lot that I agreed with President George W. Bush on and not much I liked about his presidency. And I even consider him to be the worst president of my lifetime. I actually like his father as president even though I would’ve voted against him twice if I was eligible to vote in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But one thing that I liked and respect about President G.W. Bush was his push for real education reform and push to deal with poverty in America.
President Bush saw education as the civil rights issue of the 21st Century and said things like the dangers of soft-bigotry of low expectations. Now, I don’t like No Child Left Behind, because as the late, great left-wing Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone said back in 2002 when the laws was past:“NCLB has mandates in it that Congress will never fund and will devastate states and localities that have to try to make up for the lack of funding to deal with these new federal mandates.” But at least the effort was there from the Bush Administration to deal with education and poverty in America.
A new federal education bill should be about fixing low-income and low-performing schools. Where a lot if not most of our low-income students attend school every year and eliminating the school to prison pipeline in America. Build off of Race to The Top and Common Core from the Obama Administration and reward schools that have high standards. And support things like public school choice including charter schools. And set up a new federal funding stream to help finance public schools in America. So states and localities can move away from regressive property taxes to finance schools. And so we can get adequate funding into low-income schools.
The teachers unions say that the problem with public education is that we underfund it and spend too much on corrections in America. And what they would do is essentially spend more money in a the current bad system that doesn’t produce enough high school graduates let along college graduates.
The Student Success Act (SSA) jettisons NCLB’s invasive system of federally mandated accountability and gives states the freedom to gauge school performance and decide what to do about poor-performing schools. It also puts an end to NCLB’s remarkable requirement that, as of 2014, 100 percent (!) of the nation’s students would be “proficient” in reading and math.
The SSA repeals the “highly qualified teacher” mandate, a bureaucratic paper chase whose most significant accomplishment was lending fuel to lawsuits attacking Teach For America (litigants had some success in California’s courts by arguing that TFA teachers failed to meet the “highly qualified” standard). It eliminates or consolidates 65 programs. It includes expansive new language intended to finally stop federal officials from pushing states to adopt Common Core (or any other particular set of academic standards).
The SSA is school-choice-friendly. It boosts funding for charter schools. In a significant win, it allows Title I funds to follow low-income children to the district school or charter school of a parent’s choice. This is a big deal. It doesn’t allow private-school choice — which would be even better — but the votes simply aren’t there in the House (much less the Senate) to let Title I funds flow to private schools. Meanwhile, allowing those funds to follow children to charter schools would be an important precedent.
The Student Success Act requires that states continue to regularly assess students in reading, math, and science and publicly report the disaggregated results, to the chagrin of some conservatives — but that’s misguided. It’s not inconsistent for conservatives to want Washington out of the nation’s schools while still keeping an eye on what taxpayers are getting for their federal education dollar. Moreover, competitive federalism and educational choice benefit when parents, voters, and taxpayers have comparable data on school outcomes that can inform their decisions. Finally, shorn of NCLB’s pie-in-the-sky accountability mandates, once-a-year tests will no longer distort schooling and infuriate parents in the way they have in recent years. Conservatives should be the party of transparency and citizen-fueled accountability, not of unaccountable federal largesse."
From National Review
"Senator Burr discusses No Child Left Behind with teachers, superintendents, and experts in the education field during a Senate hearing."
 |
| Source:U.S. Senator Richard Burr- (Republican, North Carolina) Chairman of the Senate Labor Committee. |
From Senator Richard Burr
There’s obviously not a lot that I agreed with President George W. Bush on and not much I liked about his presidency. And I even consider him to be the worst president of my lifetime. I actually like his father as president even though I would’ve voted against him twice if I was eligible to vote in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But one thing that I liked and respect about President G.W. Bush was his push for real education reform and push to deal with poverty in America.
President Bush saw education as the civil rights issue of the 21st Century and said things like the dangers of soft-bigotry of low expectations. Now, I don’t like No Child Left Behind, because as the late, great left-wing Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone said back in 2002 when the laws was past:“NCLB has mandates in it that Congress will never fund and will devastate states and localities that have to try to make up for the lack of funding to deal with these new federal mandates.” But at least the effort was there from the Bush Administration to deal with education and poverty in America.
A new federal education bill should be about fixing low-income and low-performing schools. Where a lot if not most of our low-income students attend school every year and eliminating the school to prison pipeline in America. Build off of Race to The Top and Common Core from the Obama Administration and reward schools that have high standards. And support things like public school choice including charter schools. And set up a new federal funding stream to help finance public schools in America. So states and localities can move away from regressive property taxes to finance schools. And so we can get adequate funding into low-income schools.
The teachers unions say that the problem with public education is that we underfund it and spend too much on corrections in America. And what they would do is essentially spend more money in a the current bad system that doesn’t produce enough high school graduates let along college graduates.
And the school choice crowd on the Right will say the problem with public education is that government is involved in the first place, at least at the federal level,
And with Libertarians saying the problem with public education is that it is public in the first place.
They are both wrong and with lets say the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party they are completely wrong.
They are both wrong and with lets say the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party they are completely wrong.
Spending more money on a bad system will just make that system worst because the people in it won’t feel the need to reform. Eliminating federal funding and standards will mean low-income schools in America won’t even get the resources that they are currently getting for education. And they are already underfunded. Education is one of the top three sectors of the American economy and that alone makes to a federal issue. We have to have people with the skills to do well in America. And need to know what is working and what isn’t.
This is not about spending more money on a bad system or eliminating public education funding even at the federal level all together. It is about making public education as strong as it can in America with the feds playing their limited part and seeing that public schools are as good as they possibly can be:
This is not about spending more money on a bad system or eliminating public education funding even at the federal level all together. It is about making public education as strong as it can in America with the feds playing their limited part and seeing that public schools are as good as they possibly can be:
You do that with more funding for low-income schools.
Paying good teachers more and well and encouraging highly qualified people to go into education and teach in low-income areas.
And giving parents the option to send their kids to the best school for their kids. Instead of the central office doing that for them. So public schools know they need to do a good job in order to get new students every year. So public education works for everyone in America who goes through it.
This is how I would fix public education in America, at least from the federal level, if I was in Congress today, or working at the U.S. Department of Education (which I believe shouldn't even exist) or just happened to be President or even Vice President of the United States. But this is just me.
