The Education Wars: Obama is a Threat to Poor Schools

and poor school districts thanks to his Bottom of the Barrel bribery scheme and reauthorization of NCLB, which should be gutted.

Billionaires talk and bullshit squawks:

How the DOE will allocate its funds is also of critical importance. While details of the education proposal remain sketchy, the changes being pushed by Obama to what is known as Title I funding are to the right of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001—the law that is widely recognized by teachers and parents as an attack on education, particularly in poorer school districts.

NCLB is the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESAE), a federal statute enacted in 1965 that authorized and funded school development and resources and promoted parental involvement.

Under Title I of the act, the US Department of Education established a set of programs to distribute funding to schools and school districts with a high percentage of students from low-income families. To qualify, a school typically must have around 40 percent or more of its students coming from families with incomes falling below the federal poverty level, or about $22,000 annually for a family of four.

Under Obama’s proposals, a significant portion of these Title I funds would be distributed to poorer districts—not on the basis of economic need, but according to their “performance.” This would in effect penalize students and teachers in schools already operating with budgets funded by lower tax bases, and where increasing numbers of families are struggling under the growing impact of the economic crisis.