What does it take to make it clear that the American people are fed up? The Republican grassroots are in open revolt against the “establishment” presidential candidates. Speaker John Boehner lost his job because of his dismissiveness toward the more conservative members of his caucus. In response, new Speaker Paul Ryan promised a return to “regular order” and to greater consultation with all members of his caucus.
But the last two days’ events with respect to reauthorizing the despised No Child Left Behind (NCLB) statute demonstrate that nothing has changed. The insiders still control, the American people are shut out, and the politically connected get their way amid much backslapping bonhomie.
This summer, both the House and the Senate passed bills to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, the current iteration of which is NCLB). Although both bills were marketed as reining in the U.S. Department of Education and reinstating state control over standards and assessments, a reading of the hundreds of pages of legislation showed they did no such thing. Moreover (among other failings), they extended federal tentacles over toddlers, incentivizing states to expand useless if not harmful government preschool programs, and they provided grants to shove states into embracing “brave new world” technology to psychologically profile students.
All of these shortcomings led a coalition of over 200 grassroots organizations to oppose any reauthorization based on these bills and to urge Congress to avoid the trap of sending our leftist President anything he would find acceptable. Continue Reading
The post Speaker Ryan, No Head Fakes on ‘No Child Left Behind’ Please! appeared first on The Pulse 2016.