Thompson on NCLB
by Ryan Sager
Thu, 13 Sep 2007 at 1:01 PM
updated Thu, 13 Sep 2007 at 1:04 PM
This morning, as at many events, Fred Thompson was asked about education. And, as before, Mr. Thompson attacked No Child Left Behind:
"We've been spending increasing amounts of federal money for decades, with increasing rules, increasing mandates, increasing regulations," Thompson said. "It's not working."
He added that there are problems with Bush's No Child Left Behind program, which requires annual testing and punishes schools that don't make progress.
"No Child Left Behind — good concept, I'm all for testing — but it seems like now some of these states are teaching to the test and kind of making it so that everybody does well on the test — you can't really tell that everybody's doing that well. And it's not objective," Thompson said.
It's worth remembering, of course, that Mr. Thompson voted for NCLB (maybe George Will has another column). So, Mr. Thompson is against wasteful education spending and over-regulation of schools — except when he's voting for it.
What's more, it doesn't make a lot of sense to be for testing, but to acknowledge at the same time that most "testing" just leads to states gaming the system.
UPDATE: I should also note... Mr. Thompson mentioned in Iowa, when he got this question, that he voted for NCLB. He left that fact out this morning.
Related Topics: GOP Primary
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