Thompson talks No Child Left Behind in Clinton
TODAY: (Updated 7:21 p.m.) CLINTON, Iowa — Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson, who has been critical of the No Child Left Behind education reform law, said Tuesday that his vote for it six years ago was an example of “hope” winning out over “experience.”
Thompson met with about 100 people at the Sweetheart Bakery here as part of a campaign swing through Iowa that began last Friday and concludes today in Dubuque.
Thompson, who was in the U.S. Senate representing Tennessee when the education law was passed, said he liked it in the beginning, but it was watered down by the time it came to a vote.
“It didn’t look nearly as good. But I went ahead and maybe in another case of a triumph of hope over experience, I voted for it,” he said.
He said the law has had “mixed results.”
“One of the negative parts of it is that states have now set these standards in a way that’s most likely to have everybody have high achievement to keep the federal money flowing,” he said.
The education law, while lauded by President Bush and winning near unanimous approval from Congress in 2001, has been criticized by people in both political parties since then.
Democrats say not enough money is being spent and the law is too punitive toward schools.
Some Republicans, like Thompson, say test scores aren’t accurately measuring academic progress. And some conservatives still are unhappy that school vouchers for private schools weren’t included in the package.
In its annual report card last week, the administration said students were progressing or holding steady in 48 states. “To those who would suggest that No Child Left Behind is not working, our nation's 4th- and 8th-graders and their teachers just proved the naysayers wrong,” Education Secretary Margaret Spelling said last week.
Thompson took another view.
He said he prefers a block grant program to send money to states setting “objective standards.”
He also spoke highly of vouchers and charter schools.
Thompson was making his second trip to the Quad-City region since announcing his candidacy.
A handful of people here, none of whom had firmly decided on a candidate yet, said he is toward the top of their list of possibilities.
“His comments were all down to earth and common sense,” said Floyd Marx, a farmer from Goose Lake who’s attended the caucuses since 1980.
Thompson spent about an hour here. He gave a 30-minute stump speech and took two questions. He didn’t talk with reporters.
While here, he also suggested the country isn’t spending enough on the military and hasn’t come to grips with the threat in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.
“We’re funding this thing in large part with supplemental appropriations, and we don’t really want to acknowledge the nature of it. And everybody’s thinking about x troops in x days and that sort of thing,” he said. “We’re going to have to deal with radical Islamic fundamentalism for some time to come.”
Ed Tibbetts can be contacted at (563) 383-2327 or etibbetts@qctimes.com.