An Unlikely Partnership Left Behind (p. A01, WPost, NCLB-Bush battling foes)

[rodeodance]

Source: wpost


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/04/AR2007110401450_pf.html

An Unlikely Partnership Left Behind

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 5, 2007; A01

It felt familiar, as if the past five years had not happened -- the Republican president and the Democratic senator together again, plotting ways to reshape the nation's education system. As they sat in the Oval Office that day back in January, President Bush and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy put their schism over the war behind them and focused on the agenda at hand.

"We're going to get moving on this, right Ted?" Bush asked.

Yes, Mr. President, Kennedy said. He could pass it by March.

Ten months later, the optimism has vanished and the campaign to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind education law has bogged down. Not only has it not passed, but no formal legislation has even been introduced. In an interview last week, Kennedy said it will not happen this year after all. "It's going to tip over to next year," he said -- right into the teeth of a presidential campaign with candidates on both sides denouncing the program.

This was supposed to be the one area where the embattled White House and the assertive new Democratic Congress would find common ground, thanks to the unlikely partnership between a Texas conservative and a Massachusetts liberal. But like the rest of Bush's legislative agenda, No Child Left Behind has fallen victim to political deadlock, leaving a weakened president struggling to salvage perhaps his most important domestic achievement with the help of one of his toughest critics.

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Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/04/AR2007110401450_pf.html

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1. It is shit...and it must go.

The next president will and should be able to put their own direction on educational policy. Let this thing die.