It Never Ends

So Bush is on in the background giving his State of the Union Address. I can't claim to have heard any of it, but it's on. One of the things I'm guessing he's talked about is No Child Left Behind, his "education" program that amounts to testing and more testing. One of the key components to this program is that schools who fare poorly in the tests are penalized by having their funding taken away. I've just never quite understood how that works--the schools that are doing the worst and are most in need of help to improve have their money taken away; how does that help them, exactly? How does that insure they improve so their students aren't left behind? Anyway, I wasn't aware of this, but apparently the program has included giving preschoolers standardized tests to assess Head Start programs. Standardized tests and preschoolers? And you're basing important decisions on the results?

. . . Not so George W. Bush. Billed as a major component of the administration's domestic agenda, his Head Start plan involved slashing the budget and shifting its administration to the states, which would be free to eliminate most of the program's social-service elements. Zigler says conservative thinkers told him, "'If we could bring Head Start down, we could bring down any government program.' It's symbolic for them. . . . "

Crayons Down!