WEAC members stand up against Bush administration education program

WEAC members and other union members turned out by the hundreds to protest Bush administration policies during the president's appearance in Janesville last week.

Protesters lined a street leading up to the hotel where President Bush spoke on Friday.

"President Bush's so-called 'No Child Left Behind' law has a great name but it's a bad law," retired Janesville teacher Dorothy Vogel said at a rally. "It imposes a one-size-fits-all approach on children, regardless of their individual learning differences and needs. President Bush and his administration have imposed impossible standards on our educational system. The law labels children as failures, imposes punitive sanctions instead of solutions, and sets rigid requirements without adequate financial support."

Vogel said the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, misleadingly called the "No Child Left Behind" law by the administration, needs to be fixed and fully funded.
"Politicians should honor America's priorities by providing adequate and equitable funding for public schools rather than mandating without funding," she said. "It is important that you contact your legislators and ask them to correct their legislation. This legislation gets an F."

"Thousands of children in Wisconsin are left behind" by the ESEA, Cedarburg teacher Mark Cebulski told the rally.

Cebulski, a member of the National Education Association's Executive Committee, said the Bush administration wants to tear public education apart and "voucherize it and privatize it."

Cebulski said the administration is telling local educators they cannot be trusted.
"We want to return government to where it belongs" – local communities, he said.