From contributor Mark Walsh
The early presidential debates finally got around to something more than lip service to education issues, as the CNN/YouTube debate on Monday night devoted a string of four questions to K-12 education issues.
The unusual format at the July 23 debate at the Citadel in Charleston, S.C., featured citizens’ delivering questions via YouTube videos, with CNN producers selecting which questions to direct to the eight candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.
The most provocative question came from Randy McGirr of Trona, Calif., whose heavy-metal style video was unequivocally opposed to the law: “NCLB was such scam. So now tell me, sir or ma’am, would you scrap the whole thing or just revise? Tell me the truth, don’t tell me no lies.”
CNN host Anderson Cooper directed the question to just two of the candidates—Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Sen. Joseph R. Biden of Delaware.
“I would scrap it. It doesn’t work,” Gov. Richardson said bluntly to applause from the audience. “It is not just an unfunded mandate, but the one-size-fits-all doesn’t work.”
“The worst thing it does is it takes districts and schools that are not doing well, takes their funds away, penalizes them,” Gov. Richardson added. “If a school is not doing well, we help that school.”
Sen. Biden said it was a mistake that he voted for the law in 2001 “against my better instinct” because he had great faith in Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who was a leading Democratic architect of the broadly bipartisan-supported of the law.
“My wife’s been teaching for 30 years,” Sen. Biden added. “She has her doctorate in education. She comes back and points out how it's just not working.”
Cooper moved on to the next question, about whether as president the candidates would send their children to public schools or private schools. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut used that question for a short defense of the NCLB law.
“Accountability is very important,” Sen. Dodd said. “This is one country—we’ve got to have the best prepared generation of Americans that we’ve ever produced in our educational system. No other issue, in my view, is as important as this one here.”
“And getting the No Child Left Behind law right is where we ought to focus our attention here so that we have resources coming back to our states,” Mr. Dodd continued. “You measure growth in a child. You invest in failing schools. But I would not scrap it entirely.”
Other questions were about the candidates’ favorite teachers:
and whether they have delivered sex education lessons to their children:
(See also Alexander Russo's take on the debate and the ed questions here.)
I agree with most who believe NCLB is the wrong direction to take education in our country. However, for Court & Community School students, it is the best thing that could happen in these less than adequate schools.
Before NCLB, as a teacher, I was instructed by my Principal to pass out packets and keep the students on campus. NCLB will, eventually, force these schools into re-structuring because many will never meet the standards required by NCLB.
It is bitter-sweet for most, but for a few students, NCLB will guarantee a minimum of standards for a change.
As a midwest teacher with 25 years of experience, I am not opposed to NCLB, nor do I think it is the answer to making our children the best educated in the world. This law, however, has forced school systems to include students, that are outside of the norm, into their improvement plans and to set increasingly higher expectations for those children. It has also improved the professional preparation of our teachers. Let's definitely keep the law and work together to continue to make it better: more responsive to needs of unique schools/communities and more cognizant of the challenges facing our teachers.