Daschle: Fully fund IDEA and NCLB
2/18/03 -- "Today, within the Bush Administration, and among some in Congress, there is a gap between the education rhetoric and reality," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) told the audience at NSBA's Federal Relations Network (FRN) Conference Feb. 3 in Washington, D.C.
Daschle says he is "deeply concerned about what that gap means for America's children, their schools, and our future."
Calling the President's proposed $1 billion increase for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) "absolutely unacceptable," Daschle called upon Congress to "fully fund the federal government's share of IDEA in six years."
"And we should make the spending mandatory, not discretionary," he says. "No more empty rhetoric. No more broken promises. No more passing the costs off to local and state taxpayers."
Noting that he supported the bipartisan effort to enact the No Child Left Behind Act last year, Daschle expressed disappointment that the President's budget proposals for 2004 fail to provide adequate funding for this law. "We cannot ignore the hard reality that real reform requires real resources," Daschle says.
Daschle later told School Board News it's too early for a legislative fix to make adjustments in the NCLB Act before we have a chance to see how well it's working. He concedes, however, that NCLB "will be a failure unless it's fully funded."
"Accountability ought to work both ways," Daschle told FRN members. "We should hold school board members, teachers, principals, students, and parents accountable. But we ought to have a minimum accountability standard for politicians, too. That standard ought to be: If you pass a law, fund it. No more empty rhetoric. No more unfunded mandates."
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| Reproduced with permission from the Feb. 18, 2003, issue of School Board News. Copyright © 2003, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789. |