Claire rips No Child Left Behind law

   The federal No Child Left Behind act should be renamed, Democrat Claire McCaskill told reporters today.

   She suggested this: "Many, many children left behind."

   The law is faulty because the Bush administration has failed to fund it and because it imposes Washington control of programs that should be run by states and local school districts, McCaskill said.

   She also ripped her opponent, Republican Jim Talent, for his education stands.

   More in Friday's Star.

Posted by Steve Kraske

Comments

Liberal Steve,

You didn't mention that TED KENNEDY co-authored "No Child Left Behind" or that it increased federal education spending.

Did McCaskill call you up and say, "Steve, would you print some of my talking points?"

Will the Star write a fair article about this tomorrow? Probably not.

Silly, liberal Steve.

[Pat]

Ted Kennedy supported NCLB with the Bush's promise that it would be fully funded. That hasnt happened.

[tom]

Maybe Claire is talking about NCLB because she didn't want to talk about this:

http://www.redstate.com/stories/elections/2006/whats_up_with_claire_mccaskill

Not that Kraske would ever dare to ask her about it.

[FarRight]

NCLB is not a Washington mandate. The states write their own tests and determine their own standards. Federal funding for education is up by almost 50% since 2001.

Parents want to know their children are learning. Taxpayers spend a half a trillion dollars on education from Kindegarten to Universities...they'd like to know that our teachers have standards that must be meet. There aren't many jobs where people give you money without a performance objective.

This is a sop to the teacher's union. You might try looking for voters in the middle, Claire. You have the lefties all sewn up.

[ClaireWrongOnEducation]

McCaskill came out recently against legislation that would provide a $4000 tax deduction to people to help pay for college. She's wrong on education issues.

[Political Moderate]

It's about time that Claire and the Democrats expose the stupidity of the NCLB act.
On the surface it was a good piece of legislation. It passed with bi-partisan support.
The ink wasn't dry from the President's pen before he reneged on the money necessary to fund this legislation.
Whre was Jim Talent? He wasn't in the President's face as he should have been regarding the missing funding.
Jim Talent, therefore, should lose this election based solely on this tragedy to American education.

[John Evans]

Jim Talent and his buddies who are rubber stamps for George Bush don't want to fund any programs for the ordinary citizens because it would cut into the amount they could be stealing and giving away to thier big contributors. They are driven by greed and they have been out of control. We need to put the Democrats in control to be our attack dogs on the Bush Administration for knowingly misleading us into an illegal war based on lies and forged documents. Attacking our basic principles of liberty. Leaving us with free speech zones, prisons full of nonviolent prisoners of the war on drugs that are brought here through our own governments covert operations, illegal warrantless wiretapping and data mining. Total Information Awareness Program is collection information on Americans so vast that it can predict a persons actions. It was ordered to stop but they just changed it to Terrorist information program. Talent has no problems with all this and is a strong supporter of the Patriot Act which reads like something out of a Nazi wishbook of laws allowing the government to intrude into every aspect of your life. Total disregard of our constitution and the bill of rights is dangerous to the survival of the United States remaining a free nation. Send Claire to the Senate.

[SPSLE]

FarRight, please provide even the slightest documentation that "federal funding for education is up almost 50% since 2001"; that's the most specious statement I've ever seen on this blog.

Kennedy, Bush, the Democrats and the Republicans were wrong on NCLB for a multitude or reasons (e.g., allowing the individual states to define "proficiency", which could be an eighth grader knowing his left hand from his right). However, the biggest mistake is taking control of education away from the local level and making it a state and national concern. Every year in J.C. and D.C., we get a batch of bills from people who are certain they know what is best for everybody. As a result, we are "educating" high school students on how to write a check, while trying to make certain they don't know how to use a rubber, but failing to inform them that Kansas City is actually located in Missouri (or used to be, before everyone moved to Kansas).

If the elected local school boards could have half their original powers restored, and if the state and federal governments would focus on what they do well--unfettered spending of the taxpayers' money, the quality of education would triple.

[southerngirl]

Claires idea of letting the mandates be ruled by the states or local entities will not work for several reasons

1. What if a child moves from state to state, standards are not the same so they will be ahead or behind their peers.

2. Drop out rates are not the same and literacy rates are not the same so obviously there is a need for curricular equality

3. While sections of the mandate could corrected, the funding depends on test scores for reading first etc, with more funding going to enhance the programs that are more necessary.

4. No child left behind has mandates on least restrictive environments for learning disabled, etc that without the mandates would again vary from locality to locality and state to state.

The purpose is so that a more uniform curicullum would most benefit a larger number of children with a more equal education.

All programs need refined after starting, but the idea behind the no child left behind is one that was necessary to enhance educational opportunities in areas that needed literacy enhancement for all public schools.

[Pat]

Remember when Republicans used to be against Outcome Based Education, i.e. Goals 2000? Phyllis Schlafly must be pulling her hair out.

[jenniferm]

I highly doubt that Schlafly was in favor of No Child Left Behind or any other idea that Bush/Rove came up with to define "compassionate conservative". She was only concerned with Supreme Court justices, which is why she b!tch slapped Bush over the Harriet Miers fiasco.

[Wondering]

Money alone is not the answer. Think back to the "deseg" money that the Kansas City School District and the St Louis School District received and what was accomplished with what they received. 'Nuf said. Perhaps there should be a limit as to how big a school district can be before it is split in to smaller districts. Perhaps a limit on how small a school district can become before it is combined with another school district. Logic dictates that there is a middle ground where local control and span of control are balanced.

[FarRight]

Between 2001 and 2006, Federal funding for all elementary and secondary level education programs has increased by 38.8% ($122,444,768 in FY 01 to $169,935,176 in FY 06).

My bad. I was thinking of veteran's funding that has increased by 49.1% since 2001. There are some fascinating documents online about federal funding.

If we can't eliminate the federal education department, then you have to make sure it works.

[southerngirl]

There is a good article in the Dexter Daily Statesman at this link-- it is Claire making same bashing statements and then not being able to uphold them...read it if you dare..she gets caught in a fib. I would like to know who on her staff is advising her?

http://www.dailystatesman.com/story/1165556.html

[tsquare]

Huummmmm…

Claire throwing ‘slop’ to the teacher’s unions, the only ones that really don’t like NCLB. Why? Because it makes them TEACH.

That’s news.

People thinking that failing schools can be fixed by throwing more money at them

That’s news

Claire getting caught in a lie.

That’s news

Claire’s husband, having given 1.6 million to her lost in 2004, says we the ‘little people’ don’t need to know where the money comes from. Says he might not give her any money this year. The STL Post took 10,000 words telling us this, w/o asking him on the record why.

Is any of that news?

Democrats think that everyone hates Bush as much as they do.

That’s news

If they don’t figure out that ‘Bush Sucks!’ would get them elected, they will lose again this year.

They won’t

And that is not news

[SPSLE]

FarRight, I certainly hope the numbers you are citing are missing some zeros; are you claiming that the federal government is only providing less than $170 MILLION for "all elementary and secondary level education programs"? You do realize that Missouri, alone, is expecting to receive almost $950 million in federal funds for primary and secondary education this fiscal year, so someone should alert them that there may be a slight shortfall. You have obviously found some really fascinating documents online about federal funding, but I don't think you've quite found ALL the documents.

And, tsquare (you don't have children, do you?), have you really considered "No Child Left Behind"? Let's consider this equation: your child has an IQ of 140 + my child has an IQ of 80, a learning disability and, let's say, behavioral disorders + the individual states get to define "proficiency" - Missouri initially set a pre-NCLB definition of "proficiency" which was fairly high - under NCLB, failure to reach "proficiency" results in some federal funding penalties = 0. Can you solve that equation?

The answer is: (a) ease the state's definition of "proficiency", which we have already done (and may do again) and (b) focus more resources on the marginal students while ignoring the exceptional ones, resulting in decreased challenges overall.