When George W. Bush became president, he invited Kennedy and his family to the White House for a movie and popcorn as a way of crossing the political aisle to form an alliance with a key leader of the Democratic Party – and to discuss Kennedy’s love of education and its reform. The brainchild from Kennedy was NCLB. Bush blessed it because he believed in Kennedy’s expertise and wanted to initiate across the political lines a beginning of both parties working together for a common goal. I am distressed when research is not clean and presented from a teacher’s point of view as it shows we look at the icing on the cake and not the ingredients.
I also call foul as former Gov. Gary Locke invited several teachers to form a specialist group to look at the creation of what became the WASL. Now, after blessings from that group (teachers) and of course others, we struggle with results, and now we have the Measurements of Student Progress, which is still under scrutiny – all a direct result of placating the NCLB requirements for education reform. Kennedy didn’t include funding resources, so we cut other things for these “assessments.” Perhaps that “C” grade point average that Bush had led him to realize reform was needed, and therefore he left it to the experts with passion for reform.
