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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (7017)	10/1/2001 4:43:27 PM
From: TigerPaw	Respond to of 93284

Bush's education plan draws fire By Andrew Mollison American-Statesman Washington Staff Monday, October 1, 2001 WASHINGTON -- The National Conference of State Legislatures has informed Congress that the terror attacks persuaded it to publicly oppose President Bush's "seriously and perhaps irreparably flawed" education plan. "The attacks on our country lead all of us to reflect and re-evaluate our priorities, commitments and responsibilities," says a letter in which leaders of the 7,500-member bipartisan group explain its switch from neutrality to opposition. The letter lists nine objections, the most serious of which is that "the testing requirement at the heart of (Bush's plan) is an egregious example of top-down, one-size-fits-all federal reform." Congressional leaders said the conference's letter will not hurt the chances of Bush's plan being approved, and an Education Department spokeswoman said she was surprised by the group's stance. "This kind of odd, late-stage advice not to do anything at all is not consonant with what anybody on the Hill or over here feels," Lindsey Kozberg said. The letter was sent last week to the House and Senate conferees who will meet again this week to negotiate compromises between the versions passed by the House in May and by the Senate in June. Although supporters of Bush's plan vowed to pass it anyway, some said the switch by the country's largest organization of state lawmakers poses the most serious challenge to Bush's approach to improving preschool and K-12 education. Bush's public campaign for his plan broke off abruptly when he learned, during a visit to a school in Florida, that airliners had crashed into the World Trade Center. But he asked Congress to finish work on his "No Child Left Behind" plan as soon as possible. However, the National Conference of State Legislatures letter says that "expediency has triumphed over good policy" as Congress works on Bush's plan. "The proposals were not researched thoroughly and their ramifications were not thought through adequately. Ideas were not properly vetted and principles of federalism were ignored," the letter says. The drive to kill the bill will fail, predicted aides to the conference committee's lead negotiators, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. "This is a disappointing endorsement of the status quo from an organization that has shown little interest in meaningful reform," Dave Schnittger said on Boehner's behalf. Kennedy "disagrees with their arguments and believes this legislation will direct aid to schools that need the most help and hold schools responsible for the results," Kennedy aide Jim Manley said. The conference's mention of the Sept. 11 attacks was "really strange," said Roberts Jones, president of the National Alliance of Business and the manager of the Business Coalition for Excellence in Education, which coordinates corporate lobbying on behalf of Bush's plan. "The argument that because of a terrorist attack we shouldn't invest in our young people is one I find a bit odorous," Jones said. "There may be some politics behind this. It probably has more to do with declining state revenues than with the merits of the bipartisan reform plan." ---------------- As for really important education things: Westwood takes down top-ranked Westlake (Westwood is our highschool) But Saturday, Westwood outplayed the defending Class 5A Division I state finalist at Dragon Stadium.....Westwood's win halted a Westlake run of 29 straight regular-season victories. It was only the Chaparrals' fifth regular-season loss in 12 seasons. Few things in Texas are more important than high school football. TP