Bush Bite #5 - 18 Sep 2004
The broken promise of No Child Left Behind
When Bush said that he was going to put education as his number two priority (after tax breaks), educators ducked. It turns out that Bush didn't intend to SAVE public education, he intended to REPLACE it.
Bush's plan of "No Child Left Behind" was deviously simple. It required public schools to increase student test scores without providing the funding to do so. If they fail, NCLB cuts off federal funding.
During the middle of the Bush recession, states across the country were forced to cut millions (billions, in some cases) from school budgets due to income shortfalls. Federal funding accounts for merely about 8% of public education. Even if Bush's promise to raise federal funding by 40% had been kept, it wouldn't have prevented the mass teacher layoffs, school closures, and after-school and remedial program cuts that have already occurred nation-wide.
The type of programs that schools implemented in the 1990s to improve student proficiency were the first ones to go under during the current fiscal crisis and continuing federal cutbacks.
Bush's 2004 budget eliminated funding for rural education, dropout prevention, gifted and talented education and after-school programs for a half-million children. It cut $50 million from the Even Start Family Literacy Project (which Bush had previously lauded). It went on to cut the already limited "No Child Left Behind" budget by a third.
Bush delivered on his promise of tax breaks, though, to the tune of $700 billion in 2004 alone.
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