No Child Left Behind

This is one of my favorite posts on the subject of NCLB:

Democrats claim the President’s No Child Left Behind act is not working, and that in fact is hurting children. In fact, the DNC website claims that the “ most well-known policy failures” is “the No Child Left Behind Act.”

Democratic National Committee Press Secretary Stacie Paxton said:


“The broken promises of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act are disgraceful. No matter how hard the Bush Administration tries to spin today’s events, they cannot hide the fact that President Bush’s repeated under-funding of his own No Child Left Behind legislation has denied millions of American schoolchildren the opportunity to succeed. Democrats will keep our promises to our schoolchildren with a new direction that makes sure every child in America has the opportunity to succeed in the classroom.”

Not to worry, this is more liberal rhetoric devoid of reality. If it was created by a Republican, it must be demonized. Democrats claim that:

Test Scores Raising Slower Than Before NCLB. From 2000 to 2003, before NCLB took full effect, the percentage of fourth graders scoring proficient in math rose eight percentage points, compared with four points this year. The percentage of eighth graders proficient in math rose three points before the law, compared with one point this year.

Click to read more ...


If you do read the rest of the post, the facts speak loudly for themselves. The No Child Left Behind act is doing the following:

1) Improving reading scores in schoolchildren
2) Improving their math scores
3) Raising the scores of minority kids
4) Raising the scores even in inner-city schools

It is also making teachers work hard at their craft and rewarding the schools that excel while denying extra funding to the schools that consistently fail. Who does this hurt? Not the kids who are learning more or the parents who are glad they are learning more. Just the incompetent teachers.

Hey, I believe more teachers are caring and hard-working individuals who give a lot of themselves to helping kids learn and grow and fewer just want to "mail it in." But it is the teacher's unions and the Democratic Party who are angry, largely because said teacher's unions contribute heavily to the Dems and many of the union rank-and-file are the lazy and incompetent among the teachers who are damaged by being made accountable for their work. The unions and the Dems want to put an end to NCLB, even though it works, for selfish ends. Shame on them!!!