As President George W. Bush leaves office with the No Child Left Behind Act as his education legacy, advocates look to the Obama administration with high expectations.
President Bush’s education legacy is inexorably tied to the No Child Left Behind Act, the comprehensive K-12 reform law he signed in January 2002. The law has drawn praise for requiring schools to show specific progress in educating minority and low-income children or face sanctions for failing to do so. But critics say the Bush administration failed to provide sufficient funding to support the law’s goals. Some also contend that the law forces educators to rely too heavily on “teaching to the test.”
What efforts Bush put into the country’s colleges and universities, many experts say, were too little too late.
“When they introduced No Child Left Behind, that was such a major change and kind of a shift altogether, and I think it took up a lot of the policy discussions on education,” says Alisa Federico Cunningham, vice president of research and programs at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. “It’s not that they didn’t focus on higher education. I think other things were more important.”
President Bush’s legacy on education, particularly for underserved minorities, though tarnished, isn’t all bad. His failures, however, may present opportunities for President-elect Barack Obama, who will face his own hurdles, education advocates say.
Bush steered more grant money to Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) and appointed an African-American as secretary of education, Rod Paige, during his first term, the first of many diverse cabinet appointments. During his second term, Bush’s secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, formed a Commission for the Future of Higher Education, which told many advocates much of what they already knew: that too many young people of color do not graduate from college because they are ill-prepared, can’t afford tuition or don’t know how to navigate the complex financial aid system.
