Bush Plan Puts Schools to Test

By Nick Anderson
Times Staff Writer

4:25 PM PST, January 12, 2005

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — Three years after he signed a landmark education law that tightened oversight of elementary and middle schools, President Bush called today for a mandatory battery of reading and mathematics tests in the 9th, 10th and 11th grades and $1.5 billion in federal aid for high schools next year.

Bush's high school initiative fulfills a pledge from his reelection campaign to build on the No Child Left Behind law, even though the bipartisan coalition that helped him enact it at the outset of his first term has weakened amid controversy over its funding and implementation.

The Bush administration suffered a public relations embarrassment last week with the revelation that the Education Department had paid $240,000 to conservative commentator Armstrong Williams to promote the law through television and other media. The department was almost alone in Washington in defending the Williams contract, which has drawn ridicule from the left and the right and spurred calls for independent investigations into whether the pact violated laws prohibiting the use of government funds for propaganda.

The president ignored the controversy in an appearance at J.E.B. Stuart High School, in this northern Virginia suburb. Rather, Bush relished the chance to return to an issue he championed as governor of Texas and in his first term: school accountability.

"We're leaving behind the old attitude that it's OK for some students just to be shuffled through the system," Bush told students, parents, educators and political officials packed into the school gymnasium, echoing a theme of education speeches he has used for years. "That's not OK."

Bush cited statistics showing that two-thirds of ninth-graders finish high school on schedule. He also said in an international math exam administered to 15-year-olds in 39 countries, those in the United States ranked 27th.

"I don't know about you, but I want to be ranked first in the world, not 27th," Bush said. "I view the results in our high schools as a warning, and a call to action. And I believe the federal government has a role to play."

Under Bush's plan, the federal law would require testing high school students for three years, rather than the single year of testing now required. (Some states, including California, already meet the three-year standard.)

Bush's $1.5-billion proposal, recapping many ideas he proposed at his renominating convention last year, included:

.A $500 million federal merit pay fund for teachers who excel in low income schools;

.An annual increase to $200 million, from $25 million, for a remedial reading program for teenagers;

.$250 million to help states pay for new testing;

.$269 million for mathematics and science instruction;

.$52 million to help develop Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs in low income schools; and

.$45 million for incentives to help students take more rigorous courses.

The funding is expected to be included in Bush's fiscal 2006 budget to be unveiled next month. If approved by Congress, the money would be available for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

Several key questions remained unanswered about Bush's education initiative, among them the total that he would propose spending on education at a time when Washington is focused on record deficits.

It was also unclear how much of the president's spending initiative represented new money and how much was repackaging of current programs. Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said he was unable to answer that question.

Democrats questioned whether the administration would meet its own goals, saying that Bush has fallen several billion dollars short of full funding for the No Child Left Behind law. In the current fiscal year, the law authorizes $20.5 billion for spending targeted at low income and disadvantaged children under a program known as Title 1. But Congress only appropriated about $12.7 billion.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who teamed with Bush to pass No Child Left Behind, today gave a cautious appraisal of the president's initiative.

"I welcome the president's remarks today on improving our high schools," Kennedy told reporters in Washington, "but it's clear that unless we fund the reforms under the No Child Left Behind Act for earlier grades and younger children, what we do in high school will matter far less.

"We are past the point where we can afford only to talk the talk without walking the walk. It's time for the White House to realize that America cannot expand opportunity and embrace the future on a tin-cup education budget."

Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Assn., a teachers union group that has criticized No Child Left Behind, said: "We think that [Bush's proposal] is premature. Schools, school boards and state legislatures already have problems right now with the implementation" of elementary and middle school reforms under the 2002 law.
 
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