Swift & Change Able

I have been trying to cut Bill Clinton some slack. Respect an ex-President who is doing admirable work around the world to fight AIDS and global poverty and help victims of disasters. Assume he learned a lesson in January.

But Bill Clinton has got to be kidding. Is he so desperate for his wife to win that he will say anything, even if it’s not true, that he thinks will help get her elected?

Bill Clinton must think average voters are stupid. That they won’t do their homework, being too busy this weekend with Superbowl parties and guacamole. That nobody will check what he says now against his actual record.

One can only speculate about his state of mind right now. Let’s say that, at best, something is severely clouding his memory.

Everyone has a critique about NCLB. Get in line. But what is Bill Clinton complaining about (referring to himself Bob Dole-like in the third person)? That it amended one of his pet programs. 

Here’s Clinton according to ABC news:

"The deal was supposed to be, we will give the schools more money and get rid of two programs that Bill Clinton actually started – hiring more teachers in the early grades which actually does help performance and help schools with construction needs if they are overcrowded," he said.

Well, Bill Clinton left a lot of things out. Let’s start in this post with a few BIG things.

First, NCLB was packaged with a record increase in funds - a 19% increase for the federal investment in education, dwarfing, even when adjusting for inflation, any increase in education that accompanied any of Bill Clinton’s education proposals. That’s one key reason why people like Ted Kennedy and George Miller, two of the most skilled legislators on Capitol Hill, supported the bill.

Second, NCLB targeted those funds at the schools most in need of help, something Clinton was unable or unwilling to do during the entire eight years of his (co?) Presidency. Areas with high concentrations of poverty got federal funding increases in the neighborhood of 30% (that’s right, thirty percent) or more in the first year of NCLB alone. Ask the Council of Great City Schools, which represents urban school districts, if they got a better funding deal under NCLB or Clinton’s 1990’s versions of education reform. Ask the Urban League. Ask anyone with half a brain.

Third, hiring teachers [to reduce class size] in the early grades does "help performance"  but only if those teachers are fully trained and certified. Because of pressure from the teachers’ unions, Clinton was unwilling to require that teachers hired under his program had full certification and training. In turn, Clinton bullied Congress into allowing anyone to be hired as a teacher under his program, even if they had no degree in education, no training to be a teacher, no experience in the classroom.

At the time Clinton pushed his "100,000" teachers initiative, there were already 40,000 "emergency-certified" teachers - no training, no experience - in the California classrooms with the highest concentrations of minority and poor students because of a similar initiative there. Clinton went ahead with his policy anyway. Because that’s what he was told to do by the teachers’ unions.

So, Bill Clinton took a good policy idea, sold it as such, changed it based on the lobbying power and, face it, campaign cash flowing from the teachers’ unions, and implemented a policy that was actually detrimental to poor and minority children. Now he’s upset that that policy was changed. That’s the reality here folks. It’s really that simple.

Fourth, he never really executed a school construction program. I’m not aware of a single school building that owes its existence to the efforts of President William Jefferson Clinton.

Mr. Clinton, it’s not all about you. And it’s only partly about the teachers, most of whom work hard and strive to do their jobs better every day under difficult circumstances, but have leaders who, for whatever reason, want to enable practices that actually take away from the prestige and allure of teaching.

It’s also about students. And parents. And communities.

One can only hope that voters are much more thoughtful and clear-headed than Mr. Clinton seems to be on the campaign trail.

Maybe everyone should take tomorrow off. And remember, no double dipping.

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Update #1: This just in: Leo Crasey at the UFT asserts that Presidential politics and federal education policy have little or nothing to do with each other, then touts all the time he and the AFT have spent on it. Then he piles on postal workers. Where’s the solidarity? And, last but not least, Joe Williams weighs in. Click: here. 

Update #2: The Nation: here.