Politics & Power Quote by Bob Filner

Filner’s line is built to do two jobs at once: praise the virtue signal and indict the machinery. By calling No Child Left Behind an "unfunded mandate", he frames it as a familiar Washington trick - legislate aspiration, outsource the bill. The phrase "so-called" is doing quiet but aggressive work: it punctures the branding, implying the title is a sentimental decoy for a policy that, in practice, can leave plenty of children behind.

The most revealing move is the pivot: "created tougher standards, and we all support that, but..". That quick consensus claim ("we all") isn’t about unity; it’s about inoculation. Filner pre-empts the predictable counterattack - that critics of NCLB are soft on accountability - by endorsing standards before moving to the real target: Congress’s refusal to fund the conditions needed to meet them. The subtext is blunt: standards without investment become a blame machine aimed at schools and teachers, not lawmakers.

Context matters. NCLB’s era was defined by test-based accountability, federal leverage over local classrooms, and political incentives to look tough on education without committing to long-term spending. Filner’s emphasis on "attract and hire the best teachers" translates a budget argument into a kitchen-table metric: if you want outcomes, pay for inputs. The intent isn’t to reject accountability; it’s to expose how accountability becomes punitive when it’s not paired with resources.