That's Why He's Called Duh-bya
The smart money is on Kerry, according to Antonius, who has correlated the ranking of states by education with how the polls show each of those states leaning.
But then we shouldn't be surprised that people in states with lousy educational infrastructures are more likely to support a guy who is barely competent to compose a sentence and whose campaign is based on shameless manipulation and empty rhetoric. He's playing to the people who aren't astute enough to know better, or can't be bothered to think too hard about anything. Sadly, there are entirely too many of those. Which is another reason "No child left behind" is sloganeering at best, and detrimental to public education at worst (I'll invite Rob to explain why, as he has the front-line viewpoint): the Bush administration has absolutely no incentive to make people smarter. In fact, it seems to be to their benefit to do the opposite.
But then we shouldn't be surprised that people in states with lousy educational infrastructures are more likely to support a guy who is barely competent to compose a sentence and whose campaign is based on shameless manipulation and empty rhetoric. He's playing to the people who aren't astute enough to know better, or can't be bothered to think too hard about anything. Sadly, there are entirely too many of those. Which is another reason "No child left behind" is sloganeering at best, and detrimental to public education at worst (I'll invite Rob to explain why, as he has the front-line viewpoint): the Bush administration has absolutely no incentive to make people smarter. In fact, it seems to be to their benefit to do the opposite.
posted by Maines at 4:18 PM
1 Comments:
Well, just a short comment on the No Child Left Behind act (of terrorism) at the moment, as I am spending the weekend grading my students. For those of you who don't know, I am a New York City public school teacher working in a school that's gone through some bad times in the past couple of years. We just had a regime change of our own after a particularly difficult year that saw us lose a lot of funding thanks to the NCLB disaster. Of course, the easiest way to bring those averages up is--no, not find better ways to reach the student--eliminate all grades below 55. That's right--at my school, if the child shows up to just one of the 30 school days a marking period, he gets a 55. With this new 45 point scale, it should be pretty hard to fail anybody. I'd put this one on the school, except we are really fighting for our lives (and funding). We've already been told we might be broken up next year, so our administration is doing what it can to see that our 45th year of operations is not our last. This is truly sad, and I blame the policies of the current administration and the lack of funding. Anyway, that's just a little of what's wrong with Duh-bya.
Rob Stauffer
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