In honor of RFK on the 40th anniversary of his death, I offer excerpts from the transcripts of the hearings on ESEA in 1965. RFK called for accountability among educators and proposed national testing to make sure that those receiving federal funds were using it improve student learning.
He proposed NCLB 35 years before Bush did. To be fair, NCLB is just the reauthorization of ESEA with a new name.
It was conceived to send federal dollars to offer more educational opportunities to disadvantaged students, and was packaged as part of LBJ's larger War on Poverty. Student failure in school was linked to adult poverty, so Congress got to work to pass Johnson's bill to help educate poor kids.
This is from the hearing on ESEA, by the Senate Education subcommittee, 89th Congress. Congress was considering whether to spend an additional $1 billion in the following year to improve education, which would double federal spending on schools. Most of the additional money would go to Title I.
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