What House Republicans did right with the education bill
There are many things to oppose in the legislation that the Republican-led House of Representatives just approved to rewrite the much-maligned 2002 No Child Left Behind bill.The bill, passed on Friday without a single Democratic vote in support, would, if it were to become law, dramatically alter the public education landscape as we have come to know it over the past dozen years.
The legislation slashes the federal role in public schools that, ironically, Republican President George W. Bush ushered in with NCLB, eliminating the system that holds schools accountable according to standardized test scores. It sends back to the states decisions on such matters as what to do with poorly performing schools and how to spend most of the dollars they receive from the federal government to educate poor, disabled and English-language learners.
The bill also cuts public education funding, setting funding authorization for 2014 and five succeeding years at the amount that was being spent — $22.85 billion — after the sequester (which forced automatic across-the-board budget cuts because Republicans
Less than a month ago, the president of the Chicago Board of Education, David Vitale, said that officials taking steps to close a giant budget deficit would "minimize the effect in the classroom." This was after the board said it was closing some 50 public schools that were underutilized, the largest mass closing of public schools in American history, which is now being contested by parents i