Bush's centerpiece: five years on, how is 'No Child Left Behind' faring?(George W. Bush)

THE No Child Left Behind Act has been something of an anomaly during the Bush years. Enacting it was a central pledge of Bush's 2000 campaign. When it passed the House in 2001, however, it drew more Democratic votes than Republican ones. George Miller and Ted Kennedy, the leading Democrats on the House and Senate education committees--and both proud liberals--had at least as much say over the final bill as Bush did.

This victory for bipartisanship occurred over conservative objections. Critics on the right complained that the administration had abandoned its support for school choice and had gone too far in federalizing education policy. The White House answered that federal action was necessary to force states to raise academic standards, and that it had struck as good a deal as it could on choice, since vouchers didn't have enough support among congressional Republicans to overcome solid Democratic opposition.

As the new law was implemented, and as the 2004 elections drew near, a lot of the bipartisan support vanished. Congressional Democrats accused Bush of breaking his end of the deal by failing to provide adequate funds. Liberal education theorists, and many suburban parents, complained that the law's vaunted "accountability system" resulted in too much "teaching to the test." State governments, including many Republican ones, complained about federal meddling and unfunded mandates. Secretary of education Margaret Spellings, meanwhile, insists that the law, "like Ivory soap," is "99.9 percent pure" and just needs a tiny amount of tinkering to be perfect.

The bill was more than 1,100 pages long, and sufficiently complex that rendering an overall judgment is difficult. When I asked Frederick Hess, an education expert at the American Enterprise Institute, to do that, he responded, "It's a little bit like asking how happy you are with what's in the phone book." But four years into the law's implementation, it is possible to assess which criticisms have proven valid and which haven't.

The accusations of underfunding don't have much merit. It's true that Washington hasn't spent as much money as the law authorized, and there may even be some areas where additional federal spending would help (and other areas that could be cut to provide the funds). But the situation is not as scandalous as the Democrats make it sound. In fact, it's routine for spending levels in authorizing laws to be treated as spending caps--to signify the upper limit of spending, not the required amount. And even though the maximum amount of funding has not been provided for No Child Left Behind, overall federal spending on education has increased 25 percent since 2001. The mandates of the law--new testing procedures and the like, which aren't very expensive--are fully funded.

What of the charge that the act has encouraged teaching to the test? "That is not a big sin in my book if you've got a good test," says Chester Finn, who studies education policy at the Fordham Foundation. He points out that Advanced Placement classes in high school are pretty openly devoted to teaching to tests--that is, to giving students the knowledge and skills necessary to do well on tests about the classes' subject matter--and people applaud them.

Earlier this year, the New York Times carried a front-page story alleging that No Child Left Behind, with its emphasis on reading and math, had caused schools to narrow their curricula by sacrificing other subjects. The data on which the Times relied were shaky. But over time, it is likely that the act will have that effect. In some schools, that won't be a bad thing: How much science are kids going to be able to learn if they can't read or multiply? In other schools, it could be a problem.