Wash Post (a little old - sorry)

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

  Ex-Aides Break With Bush on 'No Child'

  Conservatives Giving Vent to Doubts; Support for Opt-Out Proposals Grows

  By Amit R. Paley

  Washington Post Staff Writer

  Tuesday, June 26, 2007; A04

  President Bush urged lawmakers yesterday to renew No Child Left Behind, his
  landmark education initiative, but one of his biggest political liabilities
  in achieving that goal comes from an unlikely source: his former aides.

  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.

  Speaking in the East Room of the White House yesterday, Bush repeated his
  plea for speedy passage of the law. "The No Child Left Behind Act is working,
  and Congress needs to reauthorize this good piece of legislation," he said.

  Bush might have expected that Eugene W. Hickok, a relative of the legendary
  frontier lawman Wild Bill Hickok and the original sheriff of No Child Left
  Behind, would support his drive for renewal. As the No. 2 Education
  Department official in Bush's first term, Hickok wrangled states and schools
  into compliance with the law so forcefully that foes called him "Wild Gene."

  But Hickok, who is now urging Congress to revamp the initiative, said in a
  recent interview that he always harbored serious doubts about the federal
  government's expanding reach into the classroom.

  "I had these second thoughts in the back of my mind the whole time," said
  Hickok, a former deputy education secretary. "I believe it was a necessary
  step at the time, but now that it has been in place for a while, it's
  important to step back and see if there are other ways to solve the problem."

  The rift among Bush's advisers mirrors a GOP0000,0000,0000 intraparty
  struggle that erupted in March when 57 Republican lawmakers -- including Sen.
  Mel Martinez (1999,1999,FFFFFla.0000,0000,0000), 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.

  Many Republicans contend that the administration's criticism of an idea it
  once proposed shows the White House has strayed too far from conservative
  principles. 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.

  In his comments yesterday, Bush said the law has been a success, citing a
  recent study by the nonprofit Center on Education Policy, which found that
  the nation's students have performed significantly better on state reading
  and math tests since the measure went into effect. He also trumpeted some of
  the conservative education policies that his administration has pursued:
  creating a private school voucher program in the District; subsidizing
  private tutoring for public school students; and promoting public charter
  schools.

  "When schools fail to make progress, No Child Left Behind needs to give
  parents different options," Bush said. "In other words, you cannot tolerate a
  system where a child is stuck in a school which will not teach and will not
  change."

  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. Like most
  of the dozen former officials interviewed for this article, he spoke on
  condition of anonymity to preserve his relationship with the administration.

  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.
  Then-Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige and his lieutenants began to set
  the law in motion. Hickok and his colleagues said they supported the law at
  the time, despite misgivings, in part because it focused unprecedented
  attention on public education and achievement gaps between privileged and
  disadvantaged students.

  But former officials said Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, the top
  White House education adviser in Bush's first term, stymied efforts by top
  department officials to grant states more control over how they carried out
  the law. "Margaret wasn't very interested in flexibility," Hickok said.

  Spellings and Paige declined to be interviewed.

  Yesterday, Bush rejected the criticism that No Child Left Behind is an
  inflexible federal intrusion. "Quite the opposite," he said. "The federal
  government has said: 'We believe in local control of schools. You reform
  them. You fix them. We're just going to insist you measure in return for the
  billions we spend on your behalf.' "

  Former officials say the Education Department is not fighting hard enough for
  private school vouchers. "It will literally determine whether some kids have
  a future or not," said Gerald A. Reynolds, assistant education secretary for
  civil rights from 2001 to 2003 and now chairman of the U.S. Commission on
  Civil Rights.

  Katherine McLane, a department spokeswoman, said Spellings is pushing for
  private school vouchers to be included in the renewal of No Child Left
  Behind.

  Conservatives were also disappointed that a provision of the law allowing
  companies to receive federal funds to tutor disadvantaged students was not
  widely used. "We certainly had hoped for more opportunities that parents
  would have for choice," said Ronald Tomalis, a former assistant education
  secretary.

  Some former senior department officials said they have a strained
  relationship with Spellings over first-term disputes and her second-term
  agenda. That friction might hinder her efforts to gain support from key
  education groups and lawmakers for renewal of No Child Left Behind, several
  senior officials said. Many of those groups and lawmakers have close ties to
  top officials from Bush's first term.

  The legislation Republican critics introduced in March is drawing support
  from several former department officials, including Hickok and Brian W.
  Jones, the department's general counsel from 2001 to 2004, who said he
  endorses the concept.

  "There has been disappointment among conservatives like me," Jones said.
  "Those of us who consider ourselves federalists believe that at some point,
  the federal government needs to step back and vest states and local
  authorities with the power to get to the original goals of No Child Left
  Behind."

  Staff writer Michael A. Fletcher contributed to this report.

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