Often, I am asked about my decision to support President Bush’s unprecedented No Child Left Behind Act and if I think this initiative has hurt or helped schools’ primary goal—educating our children. 

The No Child Left Behind Act highlighted the most important issues that can ever be discussed in the Congress—children and their education.  Education is not talked about enough, and is certainly not provided with the appropriate funding to ensure this nation remains one of the most educated countries in the world. Not only did the legislation bring education to the forefront of national politics, it highlighted key issues such as additional training for teachers, accountability in our schools, access to alternative programs to enhance educational opportunity, and others that were rarely discussed on the national level.  In practice, the No Child Left Behind Act was expected to bring full accountability into the schools while providing adequate funding for the new accountability measures.    

Unfortunately, the law is not adequately funded, leaving teachers to meet standards without the funds they were promised.  The President’s budget for 2005 under-funded  the law by $8 billion. Under his budget 2 million children will not get reading and math help, 1.3 million children will not have after-school programs, and 56,000 fewer teachers will get high-quality training that is needed to help our children succeed.  

States and local school districts need the funding that was promised two years ago when the law was enacted.  Without adequate resources teachers’ efforts to help students reach federally mandated progress levels will be compromised.  Additionally, I am concerned that the mandated progress levels do not consider the special learning and instruction needs of English as Second Language students, students that receive assistance through special education, and other subgroups.  Not considering these students’ unique learning conditions may cause schools to be mislabeled as failing or in need of improvement despite having shown steady and significant improvement for all groups of students.    

As your United States Representative, I will continue to vocally oppose the underfunding of education and will actively support reforms that would make No Child Left Behind Act stronger and more realistic.  The future of this country rests on the quality of education our children receive.  We must make a national commitment to education by strengthening our schools, fully funding special education, and modernizing our classrooms.