Comments on: No Excuse Left Behind

By: Geiger Research Institute Of Sustainable Building Home Page

Geiger Research Institute Of Sustainable Building Home Page — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 13:40:32 +0000

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By: Corral, Without Horses (or Shetland Ponies) at PunkAssBlog.com

Corral, Without Horses (or Shetland Ponies) at PunkAssBlog.com — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 22:58:22 +0000

[...] MahaBlog’s No Excuse Left Behind: From the Administration’s perspective, what’s not to like? NCLB is a wonderful program. The title of the Act is both catchy and warm/fuzzy at the same time. It provides an excuse for the President to get his picture taken with children (more warm/fuzzy). And even though in the long run it is unlikely to result in better educated children, I’m sure eventually some numbers will be creatively crunched, or cooked, to make it look as if something is being achieved, which to the Bushies is all that really matters. [...]

By: Erin

Erin — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 19:07:27 +0000

There’s not a thing about NCLB that makes a lick of sense. If a school fails, they take the funding away. And the school is going to then succeed… how?

If that weren’t bad enough, the greatest complaint I’ve heard from both my teacher friends and from the college professors I work with is that the standardized testing is killing education. Not only are they typically biased, but teachers end up “teaching to the test,” meaning it’s all rote and no critical thinking. I’ve spoken to many college science professors who are horrified by how little science their students know. College-level textbooks are being rewritten to include more of the basic stuff that should have been covered in high school but isn’t (isn’t taught or isn’t being absorbed because learning under this structure means students remember things long enough to take the exam and then promptly forget them).

I can see testing as having some value for determining whether individual students should advance or be held back, but not as a criteria on which to base school funding. And, it seems to me, maybe we should be putting some of that money spent on vouchers and charter schools towards, oh, I don’t know, fixing existing schools?

Colleges are shifting away from using the SAT as a criteria for admission because they know standardized test scores do not necessarily indicate whether a student will do well. Maybe that’s a lesson the administration should think about.

By: justme

justme — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 07:37:13 +0000

Bush and education in the same topic…OMG the that does not happen often so I am compelled to comment:
About “No child left behind”(Bush’s own seem to be the exception)…I swear I recall a PBS story (newshour) that said , at the time that a dozen states had already “opted out” of NCLB and the funding that came with it, and that other states were considering it or working on doing it themselves.
As I can recall the same story pointed to some who were upset by the action of the states that were rejecting NCLB and I was expecting to hear an agrument about EDUCATION, but instead those upset were upset not over education, but rather by a provision of NCLB that gave greater control of student records to the military for recruiting purposes, Including the childs home and or personal cell phone numbers.Their concern was about how states “opting out” of no child left behind would affect that provision.
NCLB aside , once again Maha I tend to agree with you that the goal here is to end public education or at least federal funding of it(which would end it IMHO).I think those in power see it as a social program rather than an investment in the future.I think it is money they see as taken out of the pocket of halliburton and bectel, taken out of the money they want to spend on wars and torture junkets.
Yes the less effective the public education system is, the easier it becomes for righties to make the case that it should be done away with all together,, so it is in their best interest to help it fail
I think the question the American people should be asking themselves is : Who wins if public education ends?Follow the money….

By: Donna

Donna — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 07:16:22 +0000

The diehard Bush fans are those who cannot face the cleansing process of feeling shame…… shame is unpleasant, even acrid, but is the one emotion that, when allowed to flush the system, opens a portal into the relief of being in reality.
Without shame, those diehards become enslaved by image, hardening into fools, ghouls, and unwitting tools.

By: Zeus

Zeus — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 04:17:43 +0000

Lest anyone misunterstand – that’s Barbara Bush I referred to – not maha!

By: Zeus

Zeus — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 04:14:58 +0000

Just give it a little more time and they will figure out a way to fit this into the defense budget. NCLB in Iraq. And a windfall for Neil – bid competition is not in Bush’s vocabulary – he’s a shoo-in. Barbara should be so proud!

By: maha

maha — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 01:56:57 +0000

The difference is, unlike Bush and the VWRC, there was no group pressure to blindly accept Clinton, no punishment from a cult if you said negative things about the man or abandoned him.

You’ve probably noticed that all righties make a knee-jerk assumption that we lefties are Clinton worshippers. In fact, I’ve never met a Clinton worshipper. Every liberal or Democrat I’ve ever met was wildly ambivalent about the Big Dog, as am I.

By: alyosha

alyosha — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 01:50:54 +0000

Bush, his family and his handlers excel at creating an image. Your post noted how a typical Bush program is largely about PR. They understand how critical image is to ruling, and given their obsessiveness about power, that’s their focus.

There are at least two or three types of Bush followers, and they somewhat overlap:

1) the ones who believe the Christian imagery and are thankful that a “godly” man is in the White House.

2) the ones who like having a strong, authoritarian father figure, and believe the imagery – and actual Bush persona – relating to this.

3) forgetting about image, the ones who are making piles of money, or have positioned themselves well from this arrangement.

Because these people basically like the guy – or his image – for the reasons listed, they’re willing to overlook a lot. It’s sort of similar to the way people fall in love – they’re infatuated with an image, not the real person. And Bush and the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy are very skilled at keeping this image alive and well.

The VWRC gives Bush followers the psychological safety of a group, but also feeds their fears and hatreds about the anti-group, in effect punishing those who dare stray from the groupmind. As such, this has some of the characteristics of a religious cult.

Flipping the mirror around, I liked Bill Clinton, and overlooked a lot of his sins, because I mostly liked what he was trying to do, was from the same basic ideology, and I appreciated his skill as a politician, in the face of difficult opposition. The difference is, unlike Bush and the VWRC, there was no group pressure to blindly accept Clinton, no punishment from a cult if you said negative things about the man or abandoned him.

By: Steve from Canuckistan

Steve from Canuckistan — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 01:32:58 +0000

The dead-enders who are still supporting Bush represent the worst of our species. Where we see slime ball; they see Messiah. The bushies want to use nukes in Iran so that Israel won’t have to. The human species has always been deceitful and arrogant but never more so than now.