NCLB Background

Nice piece by David Gunther from the Bonner County Daily Bee:

SANDPOINT -- When President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) into law on Jan. 8, 2002, he was riding a tide of overwhelming bipartisan support from Congress, which passed the legislation by a vote of 381-41 in the House and 87-10 in the Senate.

The Democratic chairmen of both the House and Senate education committees, Rep. George Miller and Sen. Edward Kennedy, stood behind the president at the signing ceremony. Dozens of Republicans hailed the law as the new benchmark for improving performance in public schools.

Initial support was so widespread that then-Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the National Education Association (NEA) "a terrorist organization" when the union came forward with concerns about how the legislation would impact the classroom.

Six years later, Miller has pledged to seek "significant revisions" in the law, while Kennedy finds himself in a very small minority fighting to reauthorize NCLB this year -- something even administration officials say is highly unlikely. Quoting current Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, lawmakers have broken ranks with the president and now profess publicly that they merely "held their noses" when they voted for NCLB in the first place. . . .

More here.