White House official touts unpopular 'No Child Left Behind'

OLYMPIA -- The Bush administration sought advice from Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire at a local elementary school Wednesday in an effort to tune up and promote its unpopular No Child Left Behind program.

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings met with Gregoire and state educators to discuss planned improvements to the program. But while the governor and educators applauded No Child Left Behind for initiating much-needed reform, they criticized the act as being "all stick and no carrot" for placing an unfair burden on local schools.

The act, passed with bipartisan congressional support in 2002, has come under fire for creating an unfunded mandate which critics say requires schools to set unrealistic improvement goals while providing limited federal funding to achieve results.

"We learned a lot in the implementation, and now it's time for us to make some changes to it so that it can be more successful. Making sure that, rather than penalizing as we're making progress, we're reinforcing the progress," Gregoire said.

The Department of Education announced the allocation of $1.9 million in funding for Washington state schools that fail to meet No Child Left Behind benchmarks.

Spellings' visit comes as the Bush administration is trying to build congressional support for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.

"We may or may not get reauthorization this year," Spellings said. "In the absence of that we all know that we're going to continue to have school and try to get to kids on grade level by 2014 as the law requires."

With November elections approaching, there is doubt over whether Congress will take up the issue, though President Bush has vowed to make changes to the law with or without lawmakers' participation.

"I'm hoping that instead of hurrying to do the reauthorization now, Congress members will take more time study the bill ... and come back later to approve a bill that will include funding," said Mary Lindquist, president of the Washington Education Association.

No Child Left Behind mandates that failing schools are subject to restructuring, which could lead to the firing of administrators and teachers deemed inadequate. Educators say the law unfairly penalizes schools that are improving or come up short of the act's requirements in some, but not all, areas.

Since the law was implemented, Washington students have performed slightly above their peers, with fourth- and eighth-graders ranking higher than the national average in reading and math, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress. But the state falls just shy of the national graduation rate, with 74.6 percent of freshmen completing high school, based on figures provided by the National Center for Education Statistics.

"The federal government's own ... data contradicts Secretary Spellings' statements about (No Child Left Behind's) impact in Washington and across the country," said Dr. Monty Neill, executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.

"In Washington state and nationally, NAEP reading scores have stagnated since the passage of NCLB and the rate of improvement in math has slowed."

On Jan. 7, a federal appeals court judge in Michigan brought new life to a lawsuit filed against the federal government by school districts in Texas, Michigan and Vermont. The suit seeks to waive forced school district compliance with No Child Left Behind in the absence of federal funding to achieve its requirements.

But even critics of the law admit there have been some benefits.

"On the plus side, it has forced the system to look at desegregating data so that you can't hide the fact that the system hasn't done a great job with children of color and children of poverty," said Steve Pulkkinen, executive director of the Seattle Education Association.