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Don’t Move the Spotlight: Bush and the Dangers of NCLB, Vouchers |
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While the 22nd Amendment and bitter policy mistakes ensure that our sitting leader cannot run for a third presidential term, Bush seems to be running damage control. They may distance themselves from him, but few Republican candidates, if any, are immune to the economic failures of this administration. The ability of the Republican Party to get its footing in this volatile time will depend on how Bush 43 handles this downturn, and whether he does so with their core elements of conservatism.
So you can bet that Bush and congressional Republicans will fight like hell. And Democrats need to be cautious, because a number of his ideas, laid out in Monday’s State of the Union, and in a preceding agenda¹ are troublesome, dangerous initiatives.
As a liberal and someone involved in the field of education, I’ve always been bothered by the No Child Left Behind Act. Fundamentally, it targets underperforming schools and “solves†the problem by taking away the one resource that’s key to any sort of turnaround: funding.
But it goes further. The standards of underperformance that the program spells out seem to be ignorant of the education industry, and don’t address the real issues that public education struggles with, namely resources and recruitment.
I spoke recently with Dr. JoAnn Vorst, who is the head of the Lafayette (Indiana) Adult Resource Academy. As an adult education center that splits funding between federal and state sources, LARA is subject to No Child Left Behind. Already at a disadvantage because the majority of students are high school dropouts seeking GED training, Dr. Vorst must fight ridiculous NCLB standards to keep the center’s funding. Test standards. Attendance standards. Standards that seem impossible for a school whose students are almost always low-income, possibly homeless, and who generally have to split their time between class and one or two jobs.
When we talk about economic downturn, Americans defaulting on mortgages, citizens unemployed, we must talk about these kind of people. We must address their educational concerns, and here’s some cold legislation like NCLB that stands in the way of direct progress. NCLB is actually regressiveâ€â€a virus that destroys employment training services like LARA. And that’s not an isolated occurrence. This administration’s education policy is destructive and sickening. Are there no educators in the Department of Education!?
Which is why I was upset to read Bush’s economic initiatives. First page: “President Bush will call on Congress to pass bipartisan legislation reauthorizing and strengthening No Child Left Behind. He will also ask Congress to support a new $300 million “Pell Grants for Kids†program to help poor children in underperforming school afford the schools of their choice and announce a White House Summit on inner city children in faith-based and other non-public schools that will be held this spring.â€Â
Not just a call for further cementing of NCLB, but also the number two enemy of public schooling: school vouchers. Vouchers steal money from public school systems much like NCLB does, but instead of transferring it to other public schools, it gives it to private/parochial schools outside of government oversight and outside the stipulation of the Establishment Clause.
But I worry that congressional Democrats and other opponents to these problematic programs are distracted. I worry that they’ll see something like “Pell Grants for Kids†and not read “school choice†as a funding cut for underfunded schools. I worry further that as a nation we could rightly steer clear of the GOP candidates, only to get a Democratic candidate who not only voted for NCLB initially, but who supports its continuation in present form.
I hope the State of the Union speech reminded the American people to watch our president. He may only have a year left, but he’s not a lame duck if no one’s holding him accountable.
¹ - “Building A Better Future Through Trusting And Empowering The American People†- President Bush’s agenda highlights for bringing about economic change in the United States during the remainder of his term in office. Available online in PDF format from BBC News at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28_01_08_sotu_2008.pdf
Edward VanBogaert studies Government and Economics Economics education at Purdue University, and is the host of WCCR-Purdue’s “A Metric Hour”, Sunday Nights at 10pm (ishgnurecords.com/ametrichour).
I’m pretty confident NCLB will be one of the first things to go under a new administration. It clearly isn’t working, neither side seems really happy with it, and every president wants to be the one to “solve” education.
That said, I’m not sure anyone really gets it right most of the time. Education is an issue that encompasses so many others, it is hard to talk about really improving it without talking about the tax code, housing prices, poverty, social issues, and all sorts of other things.