No Child Left Behind was always hated by Big Education because for the first time educational quality was being measured by output rather than input. Prior to its enactment during the Bush Administration the primary statistic used to “measure how our schools were doing" (?) was the amount of money being spent on them. No Child Left Behind created national testing standards that allowed parents and students to see what that money bought. The answer is, not much.
Given the death grip that the teachers unions and the educational establishment have on primary education, objections arose from the start. “We’re being forced to ‘teach to the test’” they howled. “It’s not our fault, it’s the rotten parents and the rotten kids” they proclaimed. And all along the line, Big Education resisted change. It turns out that many of those school districts who reported better test scores did so by cheating, and not just in Atlanta. Imagine that, little Johnnie wasn’t cheating, his teacher was!
Under the Obama administration, Big Education has won and the editorial writers are given them cover. An example is this editorial in today’s Virginian Pilot: No Child Left Behind runs into reality. Why yes, reality is that the Big Education is both big business but a major, major contributor to Democrat Party coffers, totaling about $5.4 million in 2008. 95% of teacher union contributions flow to Democrats and teachers are a major source of Democrat campaign workers.
The bottom line for the Education/Democrat/Media Axis is that No Child Left Behind was a noble but hopelessly flawed experiment and must be swept into the dustbin of history ‘cause nothing’s going to change. The Democrat answer will be to go back to the old playbook and throw more money at their contributors in Big Education. And another generation of children gets wasted. It does help the Media Guy get a cushy job though, so it's not a total waste.
No comments:
Post a Comment