President Bush Visits Chicago

President George Bush and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings are visiting Chicago today to visit Greeley School in Chicago. They are here to highlight the sixth anniversary of President Bush's signature education bill of the No Child Left Behind Act. This laudable bill required that ALL students regardless of race, creed, or disability perform at grade level by 2014. The re-authorization of NCLB has been stalled in Congress over the past year and the President is determined to press this bill forward. While the bill is certainly noble, the devil remains in the outlandish details and lack of funding for this program. It is ironic that a major report issued last January found that NCLB has had no positive impact on student learning in Chicago and suggested many reasons for scrapping the plan. Many of the funds originally planned for this program have been diverted by politicians to support other priorities such as our military obligations. It will be interesting to hear what the President has to say regarding this bill today since he obviously considered this bill to be his greatest public policy accomplishment. It is to bad that there is no real commitment to provide the resources to truly implement NCLB. Stay tuned!