Dodd: Reform No Child Left Behind
Posted: Friday, August 10, 2007 11:54 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
Democrats, 2008
From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro
Sen.
Dodd called for No Child Left Behind to be reformed -- not scrapped as other Democratic presidential candidates have proposed. He also repeated his call for a subsidy program to make community colleges free, wants to double the number of nationally certified teachers and widen eligibility for Pell Grants “to reach into the middle-income families.”
“The ideals of this bill [NCLB] are admirable,” Dodd said today on a conference call with reporters. “The objections to it, rightly so, are the rigidity and lack of financing for it … But I don’t think repealing this all together and rolling back the clock to five years ago is the answer.”
To double the number of nationally certified teachers, he would pay the cost of certification provided these teachers go on to work in the neediest school districts for at least five years.
On the issue of higher education, Dodd said he would match state subsidies for community college students up to 50 percent, and would pay for these programs, in part, by repealing government subsidies for banks that provide student loans.
Dodd also said he wants to put “a spotlight on skyrocketing cost” of college tuition by publishing an “accountability index,” which would track by how much colleges are increasing their tuition from year to year. Currently, Dodd said college tuition is consistently increasing 5 to 7 percent each year, about double the rate of inflation.
