Your Take: Bill a Threat to Poor Students | The Defenders Online | A Civil Rights Blog

Your Take: Bill a Threat to Poor Students | The Defenders Online | A Civil Rights Blog:

Your Take: Bill a Threat to Poor Students

Posted By The Editors | August 5th, 2011 | Category: Education | No Comments » Print This Post

Source: The Root

While some of the gridlock among policymakers today can be chalked up to principled differences in political philosophy, some political stalemates are the result of policies that defy common sense. This most often happens when politicians ignore basic realities in order to further their own ideologies. This behavior is frustrating in any instance but is particularly galling when the needs of kids are involved.

The latest example of this phenomenon is a bill deceptively named the State and Local Funding Flexibility Act. A product of the Republican stronghold on the House Education Committee, the bill is less about “flexibility” than it is a conscious attempt to dismantle many of the rules within the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that direct federal funding to groups of disadvantaged students. ESEA was reauthorized under the name No Child Left Behind in 2002.

Originally enacted in 1965 at the height of the civil rights movement, ESEA is the landmark education law championed by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the War on Poverty to “bridge the gap between helplessness and hope” for millions of educationally deprived children. The law was designed not only to address the needs