Almost every Democrat in the US Senate just voted to keep Test and Punish.
But Republicans defeated them.
I know. I feel like I just entered a parallel universe, too. But that’s what happened.
Some facts:
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is a disaster.
It took the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) – a federal law designed to ensure all schools get equitable resources and funding – and turned it into a law about standardized testing and punishing schools that don’t measure up.
This was a Republican policy proposed by President George W. Bush.
But now that the ESEA is being rewritten, those pushing to keep the same horrendous Bush era policies are the Democrats.
That includes so-called far left Dems like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren!
It comes down to the Murphy Amendment, a Democratically sponsored change to the ESEA.
This provision was an attempt to keep as many Test and Punish policies as possible in the Senate rewrite.
The amendment, “reads more like NCLB, with its detailed prescription for reporting on student test results, for ‘meaningfully differentiating among all public schools’ (i.e., grading schools), including publicly identifying the lowest five percent, and, among interventions, potentially firing staff and offering students the option to transfer to other schools and using part of the budget to pay for the transportation,” according to blogger Mercedes Schneider.