CHICAGO — President Bush said Monday that if Congress doesn’t reauthorize the No Child Left Behind education law, he’ll make as many changes as he can on his own.
Bush also said that if Congress does renew the law but weakens it in the process, he’d “strongly oppose it and veto it.” That scenario seems unlikely for now, because the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Education Committee have said they would put off rewriting the 6-year-old law until later this year.
The law requires math and reading tests in grades three through eight and once in high school. Schools that miss testing benchmarks face increasingly stiff sanctions. Bush regards the law, which took effect in 2002, as one of his signature domestic achievements and sees expanding it as key to his legacy.
If the law isn’t revised by Congress, the existing law stands.
There is broad agreement that it should be changed to encourage schools to measure individual student progress over time instead of using snapshot comparisons of certain grade levels. There also is a consensus that the law should be changed so that schools that miss progress goals by a little don’t face the same consequences as schools that miss them by a lot.
But deep divisions remain over some proposed changes, including merit pay for teachers and whether schools should be judged based on test scores in subjects other than reading and math.
Many educators and lawmakers who once supported it now say the law has failed to live up to its promise.
Bush laid out what he said were some changes he would consider making administratively if lawmakers fail to act: ensuring “that a high school degree means something,” increasing flexibility for states and school districts, providing extra help for struggling schools, and devising an accurate system for measuring high school dropout rates.
