What is the true goal behind President Bush's program entitled "No Child Left Behind"?  In the beginning, it sounded like a great idea.  It included additional funding for schools.  It also created standards for which schools and teachers would be held accountable.  It was promoted as a way to "fix" the public school system.  Support for the program came from both sides of the aisle: Republicans and Democrats.  Even Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy supported the legislation.

However, support for the program is diminishing.  And Senator Kennedy is now a vocal opponent of "No Child Left Behind".  His position is that the program still requires the high standards set forth in the bill, yet it is underfunded to the point of making these goals unattainable.  In short, he feels like he was led on as part of a Bush administration scam.

At first, it was hard for us to understand what a possible motive would be for such a "scam", but we've assembled the following.  It goes something like this:  (1) Proclaim you're the education president and create a program with stated goals of increased funding and accountability testing.  (2) Set the standards very high.  (3) Underfund the program making it difficult, if not impossible, for schools to meet the standards.  (4) Again promote the school voucher system which allows public tax dollars to go to religious schools.  (5) Lower funding to public schools and even close public schools that aren't meeting the standards.

At first, the above scenario seems far-fetched.  Yet, look at what the highly-religious Republicans have been faced with in recent years with respect to teaching "intelligent design" vs. evolution in the public school system.  It seems conceivable that conservatives would like nothing more than to take the tax dollars collected for public schools and transfer them to religious schools.  Then, they bypass the separation of church and state rules.  They are no longer faced with defeats in the court system over creationism and intelligent design.

Could our current administration hatch such a devious scheme?  Are they intelligent enough to have even conceived it?  That's up to you to decide.  The Bush Secretary of Education claims that education spending is way up and the schools don't even know how to spend it all.  We find this hard to believe.  Public schools are constantly striving for additional funding to reduce class size, hire more teachers, obtain better resources, etc.  And, you cannot argue with the numbers.  In the years 2002 through the current 2004, Congress authorized between $26.4 billion and $32 billion.  In each of those years, Bush's budget was far short of the authorization.  And, in the past two fiscal years, the president's request of about $22 billion was less than what Congress had appropriated the year before [1].

What could be the reasoning behind setting very high standards, while underfunding the program?  You decide.