Education
President Bush's domestic agenda carried forward the theme of increased responsibility for performance that had characterised his days as Texas governor, and he worked hard to lobby for the adoption of the No Child Left Behind Act, with Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy as its chief sponsor. This legislation aimed to close the achievement gap between the most and the least able children, measure student performance, provide options to parents with students in low-performing schools and target more federal funding to low-income schools. President Bush also increased funding significantly for the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, creating education programs to strengthen the grounding in science and mathematics for American high school students.
Looking back on his first term, on August 1, 2005, in response to a question from the media about the teaching of intelligent design versus evolution in public schools, Bush answered, "Both sides ought to be properly taught... so people can understand what the debate is about.... I think that a part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought." Bush did not elaborate upon his personal views concerning "intelligent design".
President Bush heavily promoted his No Child Left Behind education program in 2001, visiting schools across the country. This program was endorsed by Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and during this period of his presidency, Bush's approval ratings rose at times to 63 percent. In terms of overall performance, however, the Associated Press noted that, of Bush's campaign promises for the first 100 days in office, he managed to keep about a quarter of them while shelving all the others. The political climate in Washington, it argued however, had changed since the campaign.
Read more about this topic: George W. Bush's First Term As President Of The United States
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line.... Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“We find that the child who does not yet have language at his command, the child under two and a half, will be able to cooperate with our education if we go easy on the “blocking” techniques, the outright prohibitions, the “no’s” and go heavy on “substitution” techniques, that is, the redirection or certain impulses and the offering of substitute satisfactions.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war?—not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)