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"That's why the act that we passed out of Congress, the law was called the No Child Left Behind Act. And the reason why it was called the No Child Left Behind Act, it set out a goal for the country that every child deserves a good education. And it said, no child should be left behind, which means we'd better understand whether any -- we'd better answer the question, is every child learning?”
- In a July, 2003 speech at Washington D.C.’s KIPP Academy
Bush has invested more political capital in the No Child Left Behind Act than in any other piece of domestic legislation. But when it comes to actual investment, Bush is falling short. The president's 2004 budget increased funding for the act by a slight amount -- so slight, that it actually doesn’t even match inflation. What's more, the president's funding proposal falls more than $9.7 billion below than was initially authorized for 2004 in the bill Bush signed with such fanfare.
Bush's unwillingness to fully fund No Child Left Behind may become the educational albatross around his neck, but at least he hasn’t proposed cutting its funding outright -- as he has for dozens of other education programs. In his 2004 budget, for instance, Bush proposes cutting funding for after school programs by $400 million. He has also consolidated grants for vocational and technical education, cutting more than $50 million in the process, and has eliminated all funding for class size reduction initiatives. What's more, while college tuitions continue to climb, Bush has repeatedly proposed capping federal Pell Grants at $4000.
At the other end of the schooling spectrum, Bush has taken aim at early childhood education programs. While the president has proposed increased funding for Head Start each year, those increases have fallen short of what would be required simply to match the rate of inflation, and last year Bush actually proposed a 20 percent cut in funding for Even Start, which provides at-risk families with coordinated early childhood education, adult education, and parenting guidance. Finally, Bush wants to shift the focus of Head Start, away from social, emotional and physical development towards reading, and shift more authority for administering the program to the states.