In two separate stories published last week [here and here], Education Week reports that former U.S. President Bill Clinton and New York Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have gone public with criticisms that No Child Left Behind has led to excessive, out of control testing.
Speaking to the National School Boards Association’s annual convention, Bill Clinton declared that “I would get with you and make some changes in that Leave No Child Behind Act.” “You don’t need to test every child, every year,” he said, joinging with critics of the yearly standardized testing regimen instituted by NCLB. Three tines over a student’s K-12 education would be sufficient in Clinton’s opinion.
Hillary Clinton, who voted for NCLB in 2001, told the annual convention of New York State United Teachers that the Bush’s administration’s implementation of the law had harmed education. “We do need accountability. But not the kind of accountability that the NCLB law has imposed on people. Not only has it been funded at less than has been promised, it’s been administered with a heavy and arbitrary hand.”
“It’s time we had a president who cares more about learning than about memorizing,” Sen. Clinton told a full house of thousands of cheering delegates. “The tests have become the curriculum instead of the other way around.”
1 Comment:
1 xkaydet65
· May 1, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Then Senator Clinton should discuss this with her good friend Joel Klein. It is one thing to make a rousing speech in front of a sympathetic audience which promises much but has no pressure to deliver the goods. It’s another to make an actual demand on another powerful political figure who sees things in a completely different perspective, who has staked his career on an opposite viewpoint, and who is a personal and political friend. When Hillary approaches Klein I’ll believe het platiudes from her oratory.
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