Read the headline George W. Bush’s Education Law, No Child Left Behind Abandoned By Texas Might any us wish to write our own ironic statement? The iconic former Governor of Texas, George W. Bush, or perhaps more accurately, his iconic legislation, No Child Left Behind, has been summarily dismissed in the President’s home state of Texas. What might Mister Bush say? What would you like to offer? Could it be that the Bush policy and children Left Behind are not the source of our pain? Let us ask ourselves how do we account for the before-Bush adoption of high-stakes standardized tests? Might we look to another Bush or are the American people to blame for the burden we placed on our children and our schools?
George W. Bush’s Education Law, No Child Left Behind Abandoned By Texas
Originally Published at Huffington Post. September 30, 2013
It’s official. Texas is leaving behind George W. Bush’s baby — the No Child Left Behind education law.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Monday that he approved the application of Texas, Bush’s home state, for a waiver from the No Child Left Behind Act. This makes Texas the 42nd state to receive permission to ditch the notorious education law’s most onerous strictures.
No Child Left Behind, a signature Bush initiative, was signed into law more than a decade ago. It required standardized testing of students and a system of penalties for schools whose students scored below benchmarks chosen to demonstrate proficiency. At the time, the law was notable for both its bipartisan support — House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) both appear in the portrait of the bill’s signing — and for dramatically expanding the federal government’s reach into the nation’s schools.
No Child Left Behind was primarily based on education reforms that originated in Texas. In the late-1990s, Sandy Kress, a White House official during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, became interested in education and proposed an accountability plan designed to shock Dallas’s schools out of their stagnation. Kress, a career politician with ties to business, called for giving schools more control over spending in exchange for consequences based on standardized test performance. These ideas became law under then-Gov. Ann Richards.
Bush, as Texas governor, renewed the law in 1995. Bush used Texas school accountability during his campaign for president, and signed No Child Left Behind into federal law a few years later.
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