Denis Boyles has an interesting commentary in National Review Online about the school finance case — though it is sometimes over the top and has a few inaccuracies (such as saying the District Judge Terry Bullock ordered the Legislature to increase funding by $143 million). Among Boyles’ criticisms:
“For lawyers, education is the new tobacco, and business is smoking.”
“Consultants like A&M (Augenblick and Myers) are notorious for their methodology — findings are often heavily influenced by simply going to school administrators and asking, ‘How much money do you need’ — roughly akin to asking a meth-head, ‘How much crack do you need?’”
“But studies like the one commissioned for Kansas are seized on by lawyers who follow in their wake and arrive in court armed with bales of data harvested from George W. Bush’s massive, ill-conceived joint venture with Ted Kennedy: The hideous ‘No Child Left Behind’ education plan.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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13 Comments
I here people, especially educators complained about ‘No Child Left Behind’ , but when I asked about the specifics of what they do not like about it, they always say the unfunded mandates. That was their only complaint.
Is it a Bush policy? Then it stinks. Here’s why:
1. It forces teachers to get extra training beyond their state certificates. It’s really difficult to find “super qualified” teachers in many rural districts or areas with high housing prices.
2. It imposes a uniform standard on all students regardless of any factors beyond the school’s control. For instance, a “passing” school has to have all students passing math tests for 6th grade level, let’s say. That includes mentally retarded students, mentally ill (ADD) students, and non-English speaking students.
3. One way a school can improve its score is by having poor students drop out. That’s how Bush created the amazing increase in test scores in Texas when he was governor there. More drop outs are a good thing to the Bush administration.
Of course all of this testing and federal meddling only applies to PUBLIC schools. Private schools of the type that Bush went to need not admit students they don’t like (non-Christians, for instance) and can kick students out for any reason they want.
They can hire any teachers they want, qualified or not, and are not subject to any federal oversight even though they often receive federal money in the form of “faith-based initiatives.”
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2004/June/13/edit/stories/04edit.htm
By the way, why is The Eagle posting anything from The National Review, let alone reading the dang thing?
I’d rather have a disease in my house than The National Review . . .
NCLB is a smoke screen for the advancement of vouchers for private schools. It is designed to ensure all schools fail therefore adding fuel to the argument that we should use public funds to finance private education.
Twister, there already is a disease in your house. It happens that National Review slams the administration when it is warranted. It is not all one-sided. But you are. And it destroys your credibility.
Funny how it’s all about blaming Bush when — in fact — your buddy, Teddy Kennedy, was in the middle of writing that NCLB legislation. Lots of democrats voted for it, too. But diseased minds blame it all on Bush.
You link to an uncompromisingly leftist Santa Cruz, California newspaper’s editorial by yet another whining school administrator who only proves that he can’t handle his job. Instead, why not link to those trying to make the law work, such as:http://www.wrightslaw.com/nclb/goodlaw.pw.htmor this site, which gives a negative view but also offers a solution (too bad, like so many educators, he can’t spell — sigh)http://www.readingsuccesslab.com/NoChildLeftBehind.html
Most of us hear the real message from the complainers; it hasn’t changed:
“Give us more money, and don’t you dare insist on accountability.”
I’m happy to see that we’re finally insisting on accountability first.
Tricia, you right-wingers are so predictable.
Let’s look at your thoughtful critique of my points.
1. I’m diseased. Ad hominem2. I’m one-sided. Ad hominem3. Teddy Kennedy and the Dems are just as much to blame as Bush. Two wrongs make a right.4. I have a diseased mind. Ad hominem5. My link is leftist. Name calling6. I must be leftist too. Guilt by association7. Educators can’t spell. Over-generalization and red herring8. We’re insisting on accountability. (But not from private schools.) Inconsistency
Also, “accountability” is so general, it means whatever Bush wants it to mean.
********Every single “argument” is a logical fallacy designed to attack the speaker rather than attack the content of the argument.
Ann Coulter, you have taught your minions well.
Mister Twister,
I will remember this post of yours in our future discussions…
Twister, pardon my unthoughtful slaps against your manhood. I hope you will soon recover from having been so fairly categorized.
Here, then is a revised version of my above note — carefully edited by a dozen thin-skinned liberals to avoid taxing your amygdala any further.
You will note that the truth is still there. Deal with it for once.
Tricia–
Slaps against my “manhood?”
After wrestling in high school since 7th grade and at a Big 10 university, I don’t have that many qualms about my manhood . . . and that’s what she said, heh.
Anyway, thanks for the rehash of your first post. On looking at it again, I find
1. administrative “whiners” –name calling.
2. he can’t handle his job–ad hominem and hasty generalization
3. private schools aren’t accountable because they do a “far better job.”–question begging, how can you prove they do a better job when they don’t have to take the test public schools do. Wouldn’t they WANT to take the tests, just so they could show how much better they are–if they really WERE better that is.
In Kansas, virtually all of the national merit scholars are coming from East high and its special program–not from Kapaun, not from Bishop Carroll, not from Collegiate.
Oh, but I forgot, private schools “do a better job,” except when you do the research to actually determine that.
And unfortunately private schools are getting money through the “faith based initiatives.”
Twister, one more time:
National Review slams the administration when it is warranted. It is not all one-sided.
Funny how it’s all about blaming Bush when — in fact — Teddy Kennedy was in the middle of writing that NCLB legislation. Lots of democrats voted for it, too. But you seem to blame it all on Bush.
You link to an editorial by a negative school administrator who doesn’t seem happy about doing his job along the lines of the majority who are trying to make the law work, such as:http://www.wrightslaw.com/nclb/goodlaw.pw.htm
or this site, which gives a negative view but also offers a solution (too bad, like so many educators, he can’t spell — sigh) [By the way, when I start getting flyers from my kids' school administrators that aren't misspelled, I'll let up on my complaints about their ignorant and careless spelling.]http://www.readingsuccesslab.com/NoChildLeftBehind.html
Most of us hear the real message from the complainers; it hasn’t changed:
“Give us more money, and don’t you dare insist on accountability.”
I’m happy to see that we’re finally insisting on accountability first. If private schools aren’t similarly accountable, there are two reasons: 1. They already do a far better job, overall, than public schools, and 2. They don’t get the federal money.
It’s interesting that you had to dig up the IB Program at East High in order to find a carefully culled group of high school students (many from private elementary & middle schools) who outperform local private high schools on one measure. Naturally, private schools cannot afford the IB-type program, so they lose some of their best students to it.
Each year, the Eagle publishes the Kansas standard test results for local schools. It takes very little effort to see how dramatically the private schools outperform the public schools at all grade levels. Sure, there are spotty exceptions, but my point still stands. Private schools do a much better overall job.
I reject your comment about faith based initiatives and insist on real proof from you. I don’t know of any money from faith based initiatives being used by private schools in Wichita. I am not even aware of any tangential services being provided by faith-based providers to private schools in Wichita. In fact, I will go out on a limb and say that there are no significant faith based initiative funds being used for our private schools in Wichita.
I am aware that Secretary Spellings, recognizing the superior results of Catholic schools, has asked the nation’s bishops to consider opening their inner-city schools for secular tutoring of public school kids in the late afternoons and evenings. So maybe some faith-based initiatives will be underway, but not as you think. In this case, it’s the inner-city private schools being asked to tutor the hopelessly under-educated inner-city public school kids in their spare time. Anyway, you can rest easy. It hasn’t happened yet.
Okay, I give up. You win. It’s that inferior public school education I got.
If only my parents had vouchers and then I could have gone to Trinity and learned about Jesus, but no, I got stuffed full of evolution theory and sex ed and look at me.
I . . . CAN’T . . . THINK . . .
BTW, remember when Edison came in and took over an Elementary and a Middle School. They are a private company . . . they lengthened the school day and gave every family a computer. And they had five years to run their little experiment . . . remember that?
Remember how it turned out–TEST SCORES DID NOT IMPROVE AND EVEN WENT DOWN.
This object lesson shows as clearly as possible that given an apples to apples situation(that is, the students at equal levels of acheivement to start with, without weeding out the difficult cases like private schools do), private schools do no better than public schools.
Twister,You bring up a good point there. What did go wrong in Edison schools? I’ve Googled around and found some predictable opinions by the NEA, but nothing that amounts to a solid rationale for their instances of educational failure. Apparently, they had some successes, too.
Charter schools might be another area that would lend insights.
Perhaps the biggest difference is really the parents, after all. So how do we get this accountability to be shared by parents?