Dean vs NCLB

["Monty Neill" <monty@fairtest.org>]

      Dean says states should turn down No Child Left Behind money 
      By Kate Mccann, Associated Press, 11/30/2003 19:17 

      MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean on Sunday urged states to reject federal No Child Left Behind funding, and said he would if still governor of Vermont. 

      ''It's going to cost them more in property taxes and other taxes than they are going to get out of it,'' Dean told The Associated Press following a campaign stop. 

      Earlier in the day, he told a crowd of teachers and supporters at Merrimack High School that ''Vermont would have been the first state to turn down that money'' if he still was governor. 

      Dean criticized President Bush, saying his administration will lower the standards for good schools in New Hampshire, making them more like poorly performing schools in Texas. 

      The Bush administration believes ''the way to help New Hampshire is to make it more like Texas,'' Dean told supporters in Manchester, adding that ''every school in America by 2013 will be a failing school.'' 

      ''Every group, including special education kids, has to be at 100 percent to pass the tests,'' Dean said. ''No school system in America can do that. That ensures that every school will be a failing school.'' 

      Republican state committee spokesman Julie Teer said Dean's attack ignores that Bush enacted the most sweeping education reform in 20 years and that he has increased funding for education. 

      Dean acknowledged that rejecting the money would force Vermont to find $25 million in lost education funds. 

      ''But it's much better to do that than accept the money and allow your school systems to be run by the federal government,'' he said. 

      Dean, who decided not to run for re-election and left office last January, did accept the federal education money in 2002, but said the state would later assess the financial impact of the requirements attached to those funds. 

      Dean initially asked Vermont school superintendents to consider whether the state should forego millions of Title I money in order to opt out of the accompanying requirements. 

      But in October 2002, Dean said state officials planned to wait and see how costly it ultimately would be to comply with the new federal education law. At the time he said the final cost would not be clear until 2003. 

      Dean's successor in Vermont, Republican Gov. James Douglas, accepted the federal funding this year, several months after Dean left office. 

      Dean has said he opposes the No Child Left Behind Act because it amounts to a mandate for local schools to put new achievement standards in place, but provides no federal money to pay for it. 

      The law, approved two years ago, requires schools and states to shoulder unprecedented federal accountability for test scores, dropout rates and teacher credentials. 

      Schools that don't meet standards can be listed as failing and their funding can be endangered. 

      Dean has said that by setting rigid standards, schools have an incentive to force out low-performing students to raise their average test score, benefiting neither the student nor the school. 

      Though Dean supports some No Child Left Behind measures including efforts to improve scores by minorities he said Sunday he would cut unfunded mandates, testing and the ''highly qualified'' standard teachers must meet. 

      ''I just rode in a car with a woman who taught for twenty years and she's been told she's not a highly qualified professional,'' Dean said. 
     

Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Executive Director
FairTest
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