Bush Threatens to Veto NCLB Reauthorization

But not for the reasons given.

George “I’ve Got a Veto Stamp” Bush has threatened to veto a bill being voted upon this week. It is the bill to reauthorize and revamp the 2001 “No Child Left Behind Act” – a little gift that the state of Texas, through its ex-governor, has foisted upon a nation.

Why, oh why would Bush want to refuse to reauthorize his own worthless piece of legislation, one would ask? From the Washington Post:

“’I know No Child Left Behind has worked,’ Bush said as he urged Congress to revise the law to increase flexibility for state and local agencies without watering down the annual testing and enforcement provisions that give it teeth. ‘If Congress passes a bill that weakens the accountability system in the No Child Left Behind Act, I will strongly oppose it and veto it.’”

What Bush isn’t telling you is that where the act has worked it hasn’t been due to any help from the feds. NCLB is, as they say, an unfunded mandate. The feds dictate to the states and school districts what they want and how these established benchmarks are to be evaluated through standardized tests. Bush says that by loosening the accountability system it weakens the entire thing. The accountability system mandated by NCLB, but paid for by the states.

Oh, please.

It couldn’t really be, could it, that the new NCLB act provides federal funding, previously promised federal funding, to support the goals of NCLB, but our friends in the Bush Regime simply can’t see wasting that kind of money, to the tune of up to $50 billion, on a bunch of lazy brats. Not when there is a war to fight. Not when there are bills to pay to Halliburton and Bechtel.

Squealing about a lack of accountability is really just smoke and mirrors, you watch. You watch when congress puts back in the accountability issues Bush is whining about, but keeps the federal funding intact.

Then, I think, they’ll be singing a different tune.

But really, really, this isn’t S-CHIP, where there are children’s health issues and lives in the balance. This is NCLB: the single greatest insult on American Education in decades. So, OK, George, do it. Veto NCLB. Veto it again and again. Veto it until all of a sudden we all wake up, it’s 2009, and we all realize that NCLB is NOT the be-all end-all in education.

It is, in fact, the biggest mess ever foisted on children 18 and under.

So . . . OK, George, veto NCLB . . . make my day.