No NCLB exemptions for Katrina survivors

From Huffington via Yahoo by Deborah Rappaport. So, can BushCo get more heartless? The answer follows.

Just when it seems that the nation has reached the worst of the incompetent response to the victims of Katrina, along comes a new wave of fresh horrors. The hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren displaced by the hurricane and the flooding will not be exempt from what No Child Left Behind refers to as "adequate yearly progress." In an interview on NPR this morning, Margaret Spellings, head of the Department of Education, said that she "did not want to write off this school year for these children." These are children who have endured things that no one -- not a child, not an adult, no one -- should have to have seen or lived through. These are children who have seen everything they know, everything they have ever had or known, washed away by a combination of nature and neglect. These are children whose parents and communities are traumatized beyond our imagining. And now, the one safe haven children have when everything else is gone, the school house, is guaranteeing that many if not most of them will be labeled as failures.

Punishment for the school districts as well for accepting kids in trauma.

I hear over and over in my school district NCLB's intentions are wonderful for the kids yet, help me from rolling my eyes too far into my head, I'm not convinced. If you get past the words, it seems the underlying intent of NCLB is to dismantle to school system we have now. Any excuse will do to keep this juggernaut going. Hence, no exemptions for Katrina survivors is not a surprise.

UPDATE: I listened to the NPR link, especially since the written part of post said something about waiving testing requirements. NPR's statement is not true regarding NCLB testing requirements though other requirements are being waived.