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WASHINGTON, DC -- The Bush administration has undermined the success of the No Child Left Behind Act by underfunding it and botching its implementation, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) said today. Miller, the senior Democrat on the House education committee and a co-author of the landmark education law, was responding to public appearances by President Bush today to tout his administration’s work on education. He issued the following statement today:
“The No Child Left Behind law was an historic reform that held out the promise of finally closing the academic achievement gaps among different groups of students in our schools. I helped write the law and I remain a strong supporter of its core goals. But over the last five years the Bush administration has severely undermined the law’s success by failing to give schools the resources and guidance they need to meet its demanding standards.
“President Bush also talks about the need to hold states and schools accountable for the progress of students, and I agree that accountability is critical if we want every student to achieve in school. But no one in the Bush administration is ever held accountable for anything, even when things go terribly wrong. When it comes to accountability, President Bush needs to practice what he preaches.
“Schools, children, and parents simply cannot afford more of the same from Washington Republicans. It is time for a new direction for America, one where we keep our promises to invest fully in schools and children so that they can truly succeed.”
BACKGROUND:
Since the No Child Left Behind law was enacted in 2002, the Bush administration and Republican-controlled Congress have provided $40.4 billion less to schools than they promised to provide when they wrote and passed the law. And a spending bill now pending in the House of Representatives would provide $16.4 billion less than promised for the law in 2007, which would raise No Child Left Behind’s cumulative underfunding to $56.8 billion. That lost funding could have been used to improve teacher effectiveness, develop better assessments for students, provide additional opportunities for after-school tutoring, and meet a number of other important needs.
In his speech today, for example, the President talked about the importance of incentive pay for those teachers who demonstrate results or agree to stay in the toughest schools. The law already allows for incentive pay; the problem is that states cannot take full advantage of it because Republican leaders have put up inadequate funding. Miller has introduced legislation to help bolster efforts to recruit and retain highly qualified teachers for hard-to-staff subject areas and schools, but Republican leaders in Congress haven’t considered it.
The Bush Department of Education has also botched the implementation of the law since 2002 by offering confusing and sometime contradictory guidance to states. Most recently, the Education Department has proposed regulatory changes that could make it harder to determine whether minority children are being left behind. [Democrats sent a letter expressing concerns about the proposed changes yesterday; click here for more information].
Moreover, the law’s implementation has been scarred by corruption at the federal level. Most recently, the Department of Education’s Inspector General found that Education Department officials had systemically violated the No Child Left Behind law by steering grants for reading curriculums to its favored vendors, despite objections from state and local education officials. [Congressman Miller has asked the Justice Department to launch a criminal inquiry into that matter; click here for more information.]
NOTE ON SCHOOL SAFETY: President Bush’s budget for the 2007 fiscal year also proposed to completely eliminate funding for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program.
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