18 years ago, Mike Pence voted against No Child Left Behind. So did Bernie Sanders. Their reasons weren’t the same.
Two of the leading candidates for this year’s Democratic presidential nomination were in Congress at the time: former vice president Joe Biden, then a senator from Delaware, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I), then a member of the House from Vermont.
Vice President Pence was a Republican House member from Indiana.
How did the three vote? Biden voted in favor of the final legislation. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, did not. Neither did the very conservative Pence, but their reasons were far from the same.
Pence viewed the measure as a federal intrusion into education policy he believed rested with the states.
Sanders has said, including in a USA Today opinion piece published Wednesday, that he opposed it because he knew then that “so-called choice and high-stakes standardized testing would not improve our schools or enhance our children’s ability to learn.” The long-term effects of NCLB, he said, “have been disastrous.”
NCLB’s chief mechanism required all public schools to give students standardized tests in most grades every year and use the results to determine how well schools were helping students achieve. Schools were supposed to review the scores of certain groups of students, aiming to show how historically CONTINUE READING: 18 years ago, Mike Pence voted against No Child Left Behind. So did Bernie Sanders. Their reasons weren’t the same. - The Washington Post