Expat

The President’s signature No Child Left Behind Law has been derailed. Despite rising test scores, California Democrat Representative George Miller, NCLB’s original chief sponsor, now calls the law “the most negative brand in the country.” Neither of our two major candidates for President is spending much time talking about NCLB these days and legislation to renew the law is dead.

Yet this was an Act passed in the aftermath of 9/11 that was supported by over 90% of Congress.

Now nearing the end of President Bush’s terms, it is easy to forget the promises from the man who proudly adopted the mantle America’s Education President. During his first week in office, the President said that his administration had “no greater priority than education.”

President Bush said: “We’ve got one thing in mind: an education system that’s responsive to the children, an education system that educates every child, an education system that I’m confident can exist;”. The President challenged Americans to overcome the “soft bigotry of low expectations” in exhorting schools to close the “achievement gap” among the races.

There is an enduring image from President Bush’s first term. On September 11, 2001, the President is in an elementary school classroom reading a storybook with a child. The usual interpretation of that image is that it is as an example of the President’s indecisiveness during a time of national emergency.

There is another interpretation of the picture. It is an interpretation that suggests that the education of America’s school children is a top priority, even as other compelling events would eventually force the President to discontinue reading with the child.

For all the “loose change” talk in this election season, neither candidate has apparently given much thought to an education agenda. Indeed, although we remain a country with many children still behind, the media has not challenged the candidates on educational issues either.

The first step our next President should make is to reaffirm the pledge of President Bush that our country has “no greater priority than education.” Our next President should use his public platform to reinstitute presidential visits to our nations’ elementary school classrooms to dramatize the importance of our commitment. Whomever is elected President must develop an educational agenda built upon the principles of NCLB, even if the program has a different name.

There have been many interpretations placed upon the significance of the events of 9/11 in altering the course of our nation’s history. No one, however, has paused to consider the important school mission that President Bush was embarked on that Tuesday in September when his day was interrupted by terrorists. One of the unfortunate consequences of 9/11 was to shunt the nation’s educational crisis out of the public’s consciousness. It is time to put the education of America’s children back on center stage where it belongs.