Ex-Aides Break With Bush on 'No Child' -- Support for Opt-Out Proposals Grows

From The Washington Post:

Five years after they helped craft and implement the initiative, senior administration officials from Bush's first term are speaking out against the law with increasing boldness. The shift, combined with mounting criticism from both the political right and left in Congress, is causing supporters of the law to worry that it might not win renewal this year.

The rift among Bush's advisers mirrors a GOP intraparty struggle that erupted in March when 57 Republican lawmakers -- including Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.), a former Bush housing secretary -- signed onto bills that would allow states to opt out of key No Child Left Behind mandates. The legislation, which the White House has criticized, draws on a proposal Bush himself made in early 2001 but quickly dropped.

Conservatives, some of whom supported the law only out of fealty to Bush, feel freer to speak out against No Child Left Behind now that the president's popularity has sagged and many parents and educators have complained about what they call onerous federal mandates.

Some conservatives were leery of the largest expansion of the federal role in education in a generation, but most wanted to support Bush in his first year, especially after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"The president said, 'Jump!' and you said, 'How high?' " said a former senior education official who described the law as fundamentally flawed.

Many Republican lawmakers supported the Bush education plan because it proposed publicly funded vouchers for students to attend private schools. The original Bush plan also promised, "States and school districts will be granted unprecedented flexibility by this proposal."

But Bush dropped those ideas in negotiations with lawmakers, and the measure passed both houses of Congress in 2001 with overwhelming bipartisan support.
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No Child Left Behind is not my favorite federal legislation.