Democrats and Republicans Coming Out Against No Child Left Behind

The No Child Left Behind Act is up for renewal this year and discussion is getting underway in Washington about what to do with the act. US News has this story about Bush losing Republican support for the bill.

Bush supports a fast renewal of NCLB, and his secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, is working hard behind the scenes to get it. The Republican legislation introduced yesterday would not just delay that process; it would gut the law, releasing states from testing and restructuring mandates without forcing them to lose federal funding. The legislation will almost certainly not win approval, but it did send a clear message: Republican leaders no longer stand strongly behind the Bush administration on education.

But the mutiny is against more than Bush. It is also against the law itself. In just five years, the law has transformed public education, giving the federal government more say over what and how children learn than perhaps ever before. To maintain federal funding, all levels have had to change practice: States have had to develop detailed math and reading standards for third through eighth grade, teachers have had to devote weeks of their school year to testing those standards, and schools have had to live by the tests' consequences, facing sticks like forced restructuring or mandatory after-school tutoring if their students don't perform.

While the Bush administration has declared this revolution a success, pointing to higher test scores in elementary and middle school, teachers, parents, and administrators across the country have railed against it, saying it actually hurts their ability to educate children–and they have not been quiet.

Republicans are falling by the wayside because they disagree with the federal government having more control over education at a local level and Democrats are against it because the law is underfunded, impossible to accomplish, punishes the schools that need the most help, and forces schools to teach to the test. This makes it nearly impossible for the No Child Left Behind Act to be renewed without major changes. That means the act will have to be fully funded, have more flexibility in testing, or be totally scrapped. What we do know is that this will be a hotly debated issue this spring.