These Small Halls

An independent report finally supports what our teacher friends have been saying all along: No Child Left Behind is a hinderance to teachers and a slap in the face to public school systems. Much like school vouchers. What tickles me more is that the report was immediately rebutted by Spelling's Education Department, because why would they want to listen to an independent panel of educators when they are quite busy fighting the gayness of Sponge Bob and Buster?

It kills me that this Republican plan is so much big goverment squeezed into the small halls of the local school system. I went to public school and there was plenty of testing. The vocab tests, physics tests, CAPT (Connecticut Aptitude Test for 8th and 10th grades), never mind the SATs. Granted, LHS is one of the finest public schools in CT, and probably the East Coast, but as a public school we never lacked for testing. This former republican has always felt that the needs of a town could hardly be met by big government programs which waste a ton of money on everyone and therefore help absolutely no one. NCLB takes the governing away from local school boards, where it belongs.