Unfunded mandate my eye!

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Everybody and their momma is crying about how the No Child Left Behind law is an unfunded mandate. Some are going so far as to sue the government because they can't afford to comply with NCLB. So let me get this straight. The government passes a law that basically says to schools this is your job, these are the standards to which we expect you to perform your job, do your job well and you get paid, do your job poorly and you won't get paid. Schools then respond, we can't meet those standards and we aren't even going to try unless you give us more money.

What have they been doing with all of the money that has been previously given to them?

Now imagine that you are a service provider in a community. For years your service has been crappy. You've been telling customers it is because you don't have enough money to provide them with quality service. You keep asking them for money. They keep giving it to you. Finally after years of giving you money and still getting crappy service your community decides to establish a set of standards for the service you were supposed to be giving them. If you don't meet those standards your community will stop giving you money and find someone else who does meet their standards to give it to. You decide that you can't meet their standards unless they give you more money. You insist that your community give your more money to meet the most basic of standards for your service. What do you think should happen to you?

Apparently some educators and their supporters think they should be bribed paid even more to start doing the job they should have been doing all along. Perhaps these people need to talk to homeschooling parents about how to provide a good education for children with out spending exorbitant amounts of money.



Please note that this challenge comes out of Connecticut, the hot bed of urban decay and perennially blighted failing schools. How much money are they going to spend trying to get more money out of the federal government?

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