[lbo-talk] leave a few teachers behind

[Dennis Redmond]

> U.S. School Budget Woes Trim Teacher Ranks
> By Karen Pierog
>
> The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 is another problem,
> Kaufman said, contending the program was inadequately funded and
> hurting school finances.
> The federal law requires annual student testing, training and hiring
> of qualified teachers and school accountability measures that allow
> students in failing schools to move to better schools.
>
> In Ohio alone, the shortfall for implementing the federal program has
> been pegged at $1.5 billion a year.

NCLB is evil, evil, evil, yet another testament to the toxicity of
bipartisan (mis)rule. It raises testing standards in huge, nonsensical
chunks -- something like 10% a year, I think -- while giving almost no new
money to schools. Each year, the standards go up automatically, as if kids
were nothing more than semiconductors on an assembly line, to be stamped
and tagged, instead of human beings. So what's going to happen is that
almost *all* schools will eventually fail the standards - and the Reps
will turn around and say, see, public schools don't work (despite the fact
they regularly achieve amazing results given their minimal funding), so
let's slash their funding even more.

-- DRR