Editorial: Teach our children well

Monday, Sept. 17, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind law in 2002 and educators were given a year to study its 400 pages of regulations before it took effect in 2003.

During the year of study, it was the same in state after state: School board members, superintendents, principals, teachers, education consultants and state officials all weighed in with criticisms.

Educators said the law, which Bush championed as long overdue reform, was too punitive, too obsessed with test scores and too rigid. Many predicted the law would produce statistics that could be quoted in political speeches but that would not depict actual learning. State officials were upset that the law fell well short of providing sufficient federal funding.

In 2003 we wrote that the law's goals - increased learning by all students and educational parity among students of different ethnic, racial and income groups - was praiseworthy. But we also said that the federal government should listen to the law's critics and be flexible enough to adopt many of their suggestions.

Few changes were made, however, and in the past five years the criticism has only gotten stronger. States still complain about insufficient funding and educators have made "teaching to the test" a household phrase.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who co-sponsored the No Child Left Behind law, is now leading a push in the House to finally incorporate some of the critics' suggestions into the law. The changes would come as part of a congressional bill to extend the law, which expires this year.

Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, has traveled the country, listening to complaints. "We've learned a lot and shouldn't ignore the evidence," he told the San Francisco Chronicle.

We hope Congress rises to this opportunity and stands up to the Bush administration, which sees any substantive changes as a "watering down" of the law.

In our view, listening and responding to the genuine concerns of lifelong educators would not be a watering down, but a major improvement that has been too long in coming.