More than 50 GOP members of the House and Senate -- including the House's second-ranking Republican -- will introduce legislation today that could severely undercut President Bush's signature domestic achievement, the No Child Left Behind Act, by allowing states to opt out of its testing mandates.
.....Some Republicans said yesterday that a backlash against the law was inevitable. Many voters in affluent suburban and exurban districts -- GOP strongholds -- think their schools have been adversely affected by the law. Once-innovative public schools have increasingly become captive to federal testing mandates, jettisoning education programs not covered by those tests, siphoning funds from programs for the talented and gifted, and discouraging creativity, critics say.
......"We've made a lot of progress in the past five years in serving the children who have traditionally been underserved in our education system," McLane said. "Now is not the time to roll back the clock on those children."
But so far, the administration's efforts have borne little fruit, Republican critics said.
"Republicans voted for No Child Left Behind holding their noses," said Michael J. Petrilli, an Education Department official during Bush's first term who is now a critic of the law. "But now with the president so politically weak, conservatives can vote their conscience."
God forbid we might have to take away from the few in gifted programs to make sure everyone can read when they graduate. By all means lets shift the system back to "lucky sperm lotto" to give gold plated educations to the few at the expense of the many. That whole "equal opportunity" thing is a hollow promise with this crowd. Of course the louts who push for this are the same ones grousing about how poorly educated the workforce is.
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