Include Nancy Kassebaum Baker among those critical of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates annual testing and achievement gains. The former Kansas senator said at a Kansas University Women’s Club scholarship fundraiser in Lawrence last weekend that she wouldn’t have voted for NCLB, the Lawrence Journal-World reported. One reason was that she knew it would be an underfunded mandate. She also believes that, in the long run, standardized testing isn’t going to solve the nation’s education problems. She said parents and teachers need to instill children with a respect for learning, rather than focusing so much on doing well on tests.
Kassebaum — whose son, former Rep. Bill Kassebaum, R-Burdick, led a revolt in 2004 to get more money for schools, then was targeted for defeat by anti-tax groups and lost a close re-election race in the GOP primary — also said that state lawmakers may need to raise taxes to pay for increased education. “It’s a tough issue, a divisive issue,” she said. “I’d rather raise some taxes, because you can’t do it with smoke and mirrors.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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11 Comments
The Independent School in Wichita earned a Blue Ribbon Award this year for achieving the No Child Left Behind requirments.
Seems like sour grapes from the districts that can’t improve their test scores.
“School’s hard. Math is hard…”
Stop making excuses for the children we’re leaving behind and start getting rid of the teachers that can’t get the job done.
It’s so easy – just cherry-pick your students and leave the rest behind.
Is Bill Kassebaum related to former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum? If so that’s really cool. She was nice and kinda pretty.
Talk to a teacher about NCLB. Teaching to tests does not a smart or educated student make.
Nancy K. Baker was the ultimate Republican, imo.
What a beautiful, gorgeous mind was grown here in Kansas but now lives in Tennessee.
It’s a shame, imo. She’s a great, great Kansan, and I for one miss her dearly.
All the kids in private schools can meet the criteria, because when parents have to pay a small fortune for a kid’s education they’re going to be involved and pay attention to what’s going on. In the public schools, NCLB is much more of a challenge because of the social problems many kids carry with them to school, problems that no amount of money can solve. If we want to get our kids educated, then we have to focus on solving many of the social problems that encourage kids to fail in the first place.
I like Nancy K, she’s a smart, classy lady.
Hey, BizHype, why don’t you saddle up and ride in there, big fella.
Show ‘em how it’s done, particularly in the public schools who can’t just scoot out the problems.
And speaking of business solutions, how did that Edison Project thing work out . . . privatizing public schools, giving everybody a computer, charging the district a mint and giving it to stockholders . . .
How’d that work out?
Oh wait, I remember now. It was a miserable FAILURE.
Public education isn’t failing to do its original mission, i.e. to teach most kids to be compliant, low-value industrial economy workers. It’s failing to prepare kids for a knowledge-based, thinking-based postindustrial economy, a mission for which it was NEVER DESIGNED.
Consider the deliberate recruitment of mostly women by the ed schools. Most of them have major household management and child-raising duties at home. They cannot possibly give 100%, or even 80% of their working efforts to the children in their classes.
In high schools, with 100+ students, it is impossible to give students frequent long-essay assignments, and “Blue Book” tests that have to be perused carefully in order to grade them.
Teachers are unionized, because THEY VIEW THEMSELVES TO BE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS. This is tragic. The unionized teachers ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT in assessing what they are. They cannot be blamed. The system is obsolete. It was once shrewdly designed for a low-value-predominant workforce. The paradigm no longer works here. It works now in the Third World, which is taking the First World’s role in low-cost mass production.
Ask any teacher if she would rather have 12 kids in an elementary classroom, to enable her to work with them closely, or teach two ms or hs classes in subjects that she is a full expert in, with 15-20 students per class. More time to self-study. More time to review homework and tests. More time to help individual students. How many teachers would say, “I don’t want this?”
This is what 21st century teachers need to demand, forcing teacher-and-student strikes if necessary. Working in a 19th century system that devalued teachers and students hurts everyone, except for the wealthy who can afford private education for their own children.
PS. On bad parents, don’t blame them either: five generations have been forced to cough their kids up to State education. Daytime training by parents of their kids doesn’t just help kids, it develops and expands parental skills.
We’ve just progressively lost these skills. Suppose a law was passed that mandated all but the wealthy to use mass-transit, and that did not allow people drive cars. After five generations, how many ordinary American adults would possess good driving skills, much less the ability to teach them to their children?
The teachers were teaching to the state test long before NCLB came into play. It just gives them something else to blame. So you can’t blame NCLB for that. Some school districts like Wichita also have their own tests on top of the state test. So they were already double testing.
Nancy liked the state she represented so much that she now lives in Japan and only makes an appearance in Kansas to campaign for someone. Her son was a classic example. She said she just happened to be visiting during his campaign yet she was not here before he ran for office. He was a one term wonder. He had only one issue and that was education with massive tax increases. That is one of the reasons you do not see other legislators proposing tax increases with the big plans they are proposing because they saw what happened to Kassebaum. He got beat the next election. What you will see is those legislators will push for a tax increase in a non-election year.
Nancy was a good Senator when she started and then just become part of the DC status quo. It was sad because she had so much potential.
As someone who works in schools, I can tell you that the tests are not necessary and provide unneeded and unwanted stress for students and faculty. Schools already had testing programs, NCLB is similar to special education, a directive from the feds on what states should do but not funded by any stretch of the imagination to the level that would allow the mandate to be fulfilled. NCLB is a ridiculus name for it to start with. Those children with cognitive deficits, emotional disorders, other impairments WILL be left behind, to some extent. If someone out there can tell me how to get a child with a 70 IQ to read at grade level (any grade for their age, I’ll make it easy, including Kindergarten), please post that so I can then know how to do my job. I agree with the comments that schools need to be redesigned, probably similar to European models where the less academically able dont go to a college prep high school, they go to some type of job training. Also, teachers belong to unions not because we believe we are factory workers but because we have been taken advantage of for so long. Can you take tickets Friday? You need to stay til 7 for a parent meeting. You need to be on this committee, you need to help coach, you need to watch the kids at recess, you need to watch the kids at lunch. It’s always do more and get less pay. Teachers need to be able to strike and then we might see decent pay/benefits. All teachers ask is to be paid as baby sitters. 20 students, 2.00 an hour, 8 hours, 320 dollars a day. Sound good to you? I thought not.