Redstate

Schools must be held accountable to ensure progress is made, even the most basic of conservatives believes that. I seem to recall Dick Cheney saying he is a conservative and he believes the exact same thing.

Should the Department of Education give poor performing schools resources to succeed? Yes. Should they do that by working WITH the states? Yes.

Unless you want to continue to watch truly needy school districts and students fail...

-EC

The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.
--B.B. King

Almost all k-12 schools are funded via property taxes and administered at the local levels. There are places where this is not the case but they are few and far between. Therefore the people paying for those schools (i.e. the property owners and taxpayers) that should hold those schools accountable. I am not arguing that schools shouldn't be held accountable, they just shouldn't be held accountable by the Federal government.

And I disagree completely that the Department of Education should give resources to schools. They should not. That is the Federal government encrouching into areas that they should have no say at all.

Parents and voters should be the one's holding them accountable.

- JG

its long-sought federal Department of Education in exchange for their having performed a "great service" for him. Don't see that toothpaste going back in the tube anytime soon.

In Vino Veritas

I remember not too long ago when republicans where united in getting rid of the Dept. of Education. But now many of those same Republicans have more than quadrupled the DOE's budget and doubled the staffing, in just 5 years!

Can't say as I blame Carter for telling the world he was a Liberal and then acting on it. I am much more concerned with people telling me they are conservative and then ignoring it.

- JG

it was Bush and Kennedy.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

Every employee of the DOE should be terminated and banned from employment in government at any level and any function. It is a total failure, on the order of the War on Poverty welfare programs of the '60's and '70's.

Education only works when administered and funded at the LOCAL level. As for your comment, Unless you want to continue to watch truly needy school districts and students fail..., that is simply the silliest, most removed from reality thing I've read in a long time. FACT: since Carter gave the NEA the DOE, primary and secondary education has gotten worse virtually every year. There is no performance measurement that has improved. High school graduates can't read. They don't know in which century the Civil War was fought. And on and on and on.

_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

so long as the National Extortion Association can buy school boards in practically any jurisdiction in the country. Schools do not exist to educate children, they exist to employee those creatures we foolishly still insist on calling teachers. Of course there are good, dedicated teachers out there, the NEA hasn't found them and weeded them out yet.

There isn't a school district in the country that will take on the NEA; until that changes, any notion of local control is a forlorn hope.

In Vino Veritas

It's EDUCATORS.

I'll never live long enough to see it, but nirvanna for me would be to close every university Education department or school, require all teachers to have "real" degrees and limit the "education" part to a post graduate certificate (NOT degree) that would include no more than three or four basic classroom technique type classes.

_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

In Vino Veritas

NCLB introduces ways in which people can compare schools. When it was first introduced I was prepared to swallow its centralising tone in the belief that it laid the groundwork for school choice: kind of like a labelling scheme for schools.

But the school choice never came.

Now you have made me grumpy. Shame one you.

Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net

Were schools truly local, it would be a matter for the taxpayers of that locality. If one community wanted to produce illiterates with high self-esteem and another nuclear physicists, that would be their choice and state and federal government should stay out of it. But it isn't that way and isn't likely to ever be that way again.

Schools consume, mostly waste, I believe, enormous sums of other people's money; money from outside their city, their county, and even their state. As long as that is so, I believe it is an appropriate, even necessary, measure to enforce some standards and accountability. NCLB must be working to some degree since the teachers' unions, the educrats, and the groovy schools are howling mad about it. With enemies like that, there must be something good about it.

In Vino Veritas

So… is it fair to say that as long as the Fed’s decide to give money to an organization, than they should be able to not just say how their money is spent, but how the entire business plan of the organization that accepts the money should behave, and what standards the organization needs to reach? Even if the amount of federal money in the pot is a small percentage of the overall budget for that organization. And even if the organization never actually asked for the money or the help?

- JG

I see no problem with having strings attached to receiving federal money. No one is forcing anyone to take the money after all. And if federal money is such a small percentage, why accept it?

One of the more bizarre critisisms of NCLB I've heard is that it is unfunded. If Federal funding doesn't cover the expense of NCLB, don't take the money. This is basic economics. If the cost outway the gain, don't take the money.

The problem isn't the strings attached to federal money. Its the people who accept it regardless of the strings. We could end NCLB very quickly if schools would simply stop accepting federal money.

with the federal government attaching strings to the money it spends. I only wish it had been made clearer in the Constitution that it was simply not allowed to spend these funds.

The problem is that these 'strings' become the way that the federal government can, de facto, take over things which, de jure, it is not empowered to do. After all, states which turn down the funding don't get to exempt their citizens from federal income tax. So any time you turn money down you are effectively making your citizens pay for it twice.

Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net

I should have said that I have no problem with the Federal government attaching strings to the money. But I do have problems with the Federal government handing out the money in the first place.

You're right. The federal government does use handing out money as way to stick its nose where it doesn't belong. I believe the only power the EPA really has is to revoke the highway fund. (Has this every actually happened?)

I think we need more governors like the governor of Utah who signed a law stating that Utah schools were allowed to ignore the provision of NCLB that conflict with the states law. According to wikipedia Ed has threartened to pull funding as a result. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

I'm not sure I agree with the pay twice comment though. I think there's a way for states to exempt their citizens from Federal income tax. This is the scenario I see. The Federal govt. revokes funding. The state increases the local income tax to compensate. The citizens of the state deduct the increased local tax from their federal tax. So they are not exactly paying twice. Of course this only really works in a state with an income tax. And since I don't live in a state with an income tax, I'm not really sure what the deduction rules are.

If you reduce your taxable income by $1 your tax liability goes down, but how much it goes down depends on your marginal rate.

People would only avoid paying twice if their marginal rate for federal income tax was 100%. And it never was, even under Carter.

Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net

Achance,
You of course have a point, but taken to its logical ends, your argument is the rationale for federalizing everything.

or thought it should be that way, I just described the way it is. I'd like the government out of the education business period but that isn't practical in a mass, industrialized society, so I'm a voucher advocate.

In Vino Veritas

all of it's buildings should be knocked down and the land they occupy should be turned into public parks. Just so there's no easy place to bring them back to...

_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

in 1995, and it didn't work. Recall that the GOP got a big black eye for trying. Personally I liked the "block grant" idea. That is, if we have to have a federal Dept. of Ed, let it basically be just a funding agency for local school districts.

but it's not. The local government (state in this case) is required to set standards and then measure (test) the kids to see whether or not they are meeting them in order to keep the federal funds flowing. The feds do not set the standards or tell them what their standards should be.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.