ABSTRACT
With the No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law in early 2002, the Bush Administration put its stamp on the central federal law governing K-12 schooling, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) enacted in 1965. During his campaign for the presidency, Bush hailed the ideas that are now law as a way to improve public education across the board, especially for poor children. Vowing to end “the soft bigotry of low expectations” that he said has allowed too many poor children to fall permanently behind in school (Sterngold, 1999), President Bush declared, “It’s time to come together to get it (educational reform) done so that we can truthfully say in America, ‘No child will be left behind, not one single child’” (“Excerpt,” 2001, p. A14).
