President's initiative to shake up education is facing protests

[CShine]

Democratic legislators in Oklahoma were so unhappy with President Bush's No Child Left Behind school improvement law that they drafted a resolution calling on Congress to overhaul it. But at the last minute one of the state's most conservative Republicans, State Representative Bill Graves, stepped up with his own suggestion: Tell Congress to repeal it entirely. The resolution passed, and Mr. Graves got a standing ovation.

"Some of my Republican colleagues grumbled because they don't like to see the Democrats jumping on President Bush," Mr. Graves said. "But I've always thought Bush was wrong to push that law."

There is little chance that Congress will amend, much less repeal, the law in an election year, experts said, but the unusual alliance in the Oklahoma Legislature reflected the widespread outcry that the president's signature education initiative has provoked. Like similar measures being debated in legislatures across the country, the Oklahoma resolution brought together liberal Democrats and states' rights Republicans, angry over what they see as a cumbersome federal intrusion on local schools. Legislation or resolutions that call on Congress to amend or repeal the law, prohibit spending state money to carry it out, or otherwise criticize the law have been passed by one or both legislative chambers in at least 12 states. And the actions reflect broader public discontent.

"The pot is definitely boiling on this law," Senator Arlen Specter, the powerful Republican chairman of an education subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said on Friday, noting that 138 Pennsylvania superintendents protested provisions of the law in a meeting Monday. "The law is good on standards and accountability, but it clearly needs some modifications, because it's going through growing pains."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/08/education/08CHIL.html