Quote

The No Child Left Behind Act will be one of President Bush's enduring legacies. And it was engineered and inaugurated with a truly bipartisan coalition in Congress. Accountability, standards, and truly measuring student performance just makes sense. The only real debate about the law was and is whether or not it was adequately funded.

If we do not get No Child Left Behind right for Limited English Proficient students, the law will be a failure for most schools in the 15th Congressional District, and for many across the nation.

If there's one thing that 'No Child Left Behind' has proven, it's that more academics don't make for smarter children - or even higher test scores. And yet we somehow refuse to accept this reality.

Enacted under President George W. Bush's administration with the promise to focus on individual student achievement and overall school performance, No Child Left Behind was heralded as groundbreaking. And in some ways, it was.

Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.

We have seen that, in another unfunded mandate, the so-called No Child Left Behind Act, which created tougher standards, and we all support that, but Congress did not provide the money to attract and hire the best teachers.

No Child Left Behind widens the gap between the races more than any piece of educational legislation I've seen in 40 years. It denies inner-city kids the critical-thinking skills to interrogate reality.

And I think that's righteous, I think that's what parents want to know. They want to know what's going right in the school, and what needs improvement, and that's what this law does.

Every day, new laws are created that further hamper the ways children can engage with the world.

'No Child Left Behind' requires states and school districts to ensure that all students are learning and are reaching their highest potential. Special education students should not be left out of these accountability mechanisms.