This letter to the editor by Secretary Rod Paige appeared in The Des Moines Register (Iowa) on March 23, 2003.
The Register's March 16 editorial, "How to Educate 'A Country Left Behind'," asserted that the No Child Left Behind Act "actually undercuts national interests." That reflects a basic lack of understanding about the law.
No Child Left Behind has provided states and local school districts with tremendous new flexibility and unprecedented resources for reform. Despite all the priorities competing for our tax dollars, President Bush's budget provides the U.S. Department of Education with the highest dollar increase for any domestic Cabinet agency.
Iowa alone will receive $434 million in federal education funding, including more than $124 million to implement the No Child Left Behind reforms. If the President's budget is approved, federal education funding for Iowa will have gone up $81 million since President Bush took office, and the flexibility for how those funds can be used will also have been expanded.
At the same time we dramatically increase funding and flexibility, the law also insists that schools be held accountable for improving student achievement, especially for minority and low-income students. For the first time in the history of the world, a society has said that we are going to educate every child regardless of ethnicity, income or background.
The Register's concern that No Child Left Behind focuses too much on "students who lag behind," which the Register calls "an unrealistic mission," is representative of the thinking that perpetuated the old, failed system that taught only some students well while the rest -mostly poor and mostly minority -floundered or flunked out.
Low expectations can take many forms, but in the end it's still a form of bigotry. There is no room for that kind of attitude in the public schools that President Bush envisions. In our nation's classrooms, every child will be educated and no child left behind.
Rod Paige,
U.S. Secretary of Education,
Washington, DC.
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