WASHINGTON - The nation’s largest union, the 3.2-million-member National Education Association, plus two other big unions and a coalition of more than 80 allies, are launching a fight to rewrite the "No Child Left Behind" Act. But Bush Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says the law needs tweaking, but not a major rewrite.
Teachers, school boards and their allies, members of the Forum on Education Accountability, sharply disagree with her. Besides NEA, the coalition includes AFSCME, the Service Employees and a third union, the School Administrators. It also includes civil rights groups such as the NAACP and the Urban League, and the national PTA.
All the groups say the law places too much emphasis on test scores and is too punitive, as it trashes even those schools that make progress in educating their students.
Indeed, one suburban Philadelphia school superintendent last month told the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies--a think tank that concentrates on issues of interest to minorities--that NCLB sets up inner-city public schools to fail. When schools “fail” under NCLB, their federal funds can get yanked and diverted to a favorite Right Wing cause: Taxpayer-paid vouchers for parents of private school students. . .
Tell me it's not so! The rest here.
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