Editorial: Under Bush, education is in a decline

Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2005 | 9:03 a.m.

In his major speeches and travels around the country, President Bush basks in the glow of No Child Left Behind. This is the name his administration gave to the federal funding of elementary and secondary schools -- in which he stressed accountability. Every president chooses a new name for his education program, and every president ties the funding to a series of goals and objectives. Bush's program went beyond that. The president believed he could fix all of education's problems by fiat. Without giving schools time to adjust, he established mandates for hurried improvements in academic achievement, and ushered in a new era of accountability through stepped-up standardized testing and by labeling schools as "needing improvement" if immediate results were not forthcoming.

What's happening, of course, is that school administrators, fearful of their schools being labeled as failures, are narrowing their course offerings to focus on what will be asked on standardized tests, eliminating recess and physical education to cram in more class time and emphasizing rote learning over reason and thought. And they are getting little support for their efforts, as the funding for Bush's politically motivated, multitudinous mandates was off by a mile. And the president's 2006 budget, released Monday, would just make it worse. A Clinton-era program, known as GEAR UP, is among the 48 educational programs Bush is proposing to eliminate.

GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) enables teachers to receive additional training and offers tutoring for poor and at-risk students so they will have a better chance of boosting their test scores and getting into college. The Clark County School District and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, have received millions under the program and thousands of Southern Nevada schoolchildren have benefited. One school principal told the Sun that she credits GEAR UP with a 10 percent increase in test scores at her school.

Agustin Orci, deputy superintendent of instruction for the school district, said the cut defies logic. "It's a real tragedy that GEAR UP and other federal projects are going to be cut when the obvious lack of funding for No Child Left Behind remains," he told the Sun. "It's a contradiction in terms that has us all shaking our heads."

For Bush, obviously, No Child Left Behind is simply a platitude, good for political rallies and sound bites. Congress should make it good for schoolchildren. Save the worthy education programs like GEAR UP, and reform No Child Left Behind so the program works as well as it sounds.