fourth-graders from high-poverty backgrounds couldn’t read at grade level. Some 40 percent of minority students failed to finish high school in four years. How could a society that promised equal opportunity for all quit on its neediest citizens? Starting in the 2000 campaign I had called the problem “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” I had promised to take on the big issues. This was sure one of them.
In recent years, the national education debate had bogged down in modest proposals like school uniforms and unrealistic calls to abolish the Department of Education. Success was often defined by dollars spent, not results achieved. I had come from a world where accountability was a daily reality. In baseball, any interested party can open the newspaper, analyze your performance in a box score, and demand change. “More pitching, Bush!” was a familiar refrain. Education was a lot more important than baseball, yet most people had no idea how their schools were performing.
As governor, I worked with the legislature to pass a law requiring schools to test students on the basics every year, report the results publicly, and allow parents to transfer their children out of underperforming schools. Between 1994 and 1998, the percentage of third-graders performing at grade level grew from 58 to 76. Minority students showed the largest gains, closing the achievement gap with their white peers.
When I ran for president, I decided to propose federal legislation that set clear goals—every child would learn to read and do math at grade level—and held schools accountable for progress. Under No Child Left Behind, states would test students in reading and math every year between third and eighth grade, and once in high school. Schools would post scores publicly, broken down by ethnicity, income level, and other subcategories. The data would allow parents and concerned citizens to evaluate schools, teachers, and curricula. Schools that scored below standards would receive extra help at first, including money for students to attend after-school tutoring, public or private. But if schools repeatedly failed to make adequate progress, there would be consequences. Parents would have the option to transfer their child to a better-performing public or charter school. The principle was straightforward: You cannot solve a problem until you diagnose it. Accountability would serve as a catalyst for reform.
I highlighted No Child Left Behind at almost every campaign event, including the NAACP convention. I told reporters I hoped to be known as “the education president.” I told Ted Kennedy the same thing the night we watched
The next morning, a letter arrived in the Oval Office:
I was excited. No Child Left Behind stood a much better chance of becoming law with support from the Lion of the Senate. It was the beginning of my most unlikely partnership in Washington.
Ted Kennedy was not the only legislator I courted. Over my first two weeks in office, I met with more than 150 members of Congress from both parties. I hoped to replicate the productive relationship I’d forged with Bob Bullock, Pete Laney, and other legislators in Texas. One news story began, “If relations between Congress and the White House soon deteriorate into bitterness-as-usual, it won’t be for lack of effort to avoid that by President Bush.” Another suggested that I was conducting “the biggest charm offensive of any modern chief executive.”
Whatever the press called my effort, both houses of Congress soon took up No Child Left Behind. By March, the Senate education committee had completed a bill that included all the key elements of my proposal. The House moved next. Congressman John Boehner of Ohio, the skilled Republican chairman of the House Education Committee, collaborated on a solid bill with Congressman George Miller of California, one of the chamber’s most liberal members. The House passed it by a vote of 384 to 45.
The process of reconciling the House and Senate bills dragged through the summer. When Congress returned from recess in early September, I set out to reenergize the debate with two days of school visits in Florida. Laura agreed to give her first-ever testimony on Capitol Hill. As a teacher and librarian, she had great credibility on education. Her appearance was scheduled for September 11, 2001.
By the end of that morning, it was clear I would not be the education president. I was a war president. Throughout the fall, I urged Congress to finish No Child Left Behind. Ted Kennedy gave a courageous speech defending accountability in front of the National Education Association, a teachers’ group that contributed heavily to Democrats and strongly opposed the bill. Senator Judd Gregg and Congressman Boehner, once an advocate of abolishing the Education Department, rallied Republicans who were anxious about the federal role in education. Like me, they argued that if we were going to spend money on schools, we ought to know the results it produced. A week before Christmas, Congress passed No Child Left Behind by a bipartisan landslide.
Over the years, No Child Left Behind prompted plenty of controversy. Governors and state education officials complained that the bureaucracy was too rigid and that too many schools were labeled as failing. When Margaret Spellings became education secretary in 2005, she modified bureaucratic restrictions and increased flexibility for states. But we both made clear we would not dilute the accountability measures. The purpose of the law was to reveal the truth, even when it was unpleasant.
Some critics said it was unfair to test students every year. I thought it was unfair not to. Measuring progress was the only way to find out which students needed help. Others complained about what they called “teaching to the test.” But if the test was well designed to measure knowledge of a subject, all the schools had to do was teach that subject.
Another common claim was that No Child Left Behind was underfunded. That’s hard to believe, given that we raised federal education spending by 39 percent over my eight years in office, with much of the extra money going to the poorest students and schools.*
On a more fundamental level, the critics who complained about the money missed the point of No Child Left Behind. The premise of the law is that success cannot be measured by dollars spent; it has to be judged by results achieved.
By the time I left office, fourth- and eighth-grade math scores had reached their highest levels in history. So had fourth-grade reading scores. Hispanic and African American students set new records in multiple categories. The gap had narrowed in exactly the way we wanted: All students improved, but minority students improved the most.
In January 2008, I visited Horace Greeley Elementary School in Chicago to mark the sixth anniversary of No Child Left Behind. The school, named for the nineteenth-century abolitionist, was 70 percent Hispanic and 92 percent poor. It had outperformed most public schools in Chicago. Student proficiency in reading had risen from 51 percent in 2003 to 76 percent in 2007. Math proficiency had improved from 59 percent to 86 percent.
At Horace Greeley Elementary School.
It was uplifting to see a school full of low-income minority students thrive. A sixth-grader, Yesenia Adame, said she enjoyed taking tests. “Then your teachers can know what you need help on,” she explained. At the end of my visit, I told students, parents, and the press what I had long believed: No Child Left Behind is a piece of civil rights legislation.
I used to quip that I was a product of a faith-based program. By 1986, faith had changed my heart, and I had quit drinking. Ten years later, my eyes opened to the potential of faith-based programs to transform public policy.
In June 1996, two African American churches in the town of Greenville, Texas, were burned. Until 1965, a sign on the town’s main street had advertised “The Blackest Land, The Whitest People.” As governor, I feared we were witnessing a surge in old-time racism.
I traveled to Greenville to condemn the burnings. A mixed-race crowd of about four thousand people turned out in the football stadium. “From time to time, Texans boast that ours is a big state.” I said. “But as big as this state is, it has no room for cowardice and hatred and bigotry.” Then I gave the microphone to Tony Evans, a dynamic African American pastor from Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. He told a story about a house with a crack in the wall. The owner hired a plasterer to cover the crack. A week later, the crack reappeared. So he hired
