Quotes About No Child Left Behind

#1. No Child Left Behind ... is a giraffe with an elephant's body ... You can't take the vision of Ted Kennedy and merge it to the public policy of George Bush and come out with anything that works.

Steve Rauschenberger

#2. No Child Left Behind has diminished [teachers'] sense of control of their own classroom, narrowed the focus of their jobs, and stifled pedagogical innovation.

James M. Lang

#3. One of the most important improvements in the No Child Left Behind Act for migrant students was the requirement for electronic transfer of migrant student records.

Ruben Hinojosa

#4. I don't think losing 3 million jobs, having deficits as far as the eye can go, having 2 million people lose their health insurance, turning your back on kids in schools and not funding No Child Left Behind represents a vision.

John F. Kerry

#5. Enacted under President George W. Bush's administration with the promise to focus on individual student achievement and overall school performance, No Child Left Behind was heralded as groundbreaking. And in some ways, it was.

John Kline

#6. This system is really broken. No Child Left Behind has really failed and the only way to solve education is to leave one governor behind.

Kinky Friedman

#7. We have seen that, in another unfunded mandate, the so-called No Child Left Behind Act, which created tougher standards, and we all support that, but Congress did not provide the money to attract and hire the best teachers.

Bob Filner

#8. No Child Left Behind taught us that parents, teachers and state and local leaders are more suited to address students' needs than a one-size-fits-all accountability system developed by Washington bureaucrats.

John Kline

#9. You'd think after 8 years of things called 'The Patriot Act' and 'No Child Left Behind' they would know that we have figured out the 'Call it what it ain't' PR ploy by now, but ... um ... no.

Hal Sparks

#10. If there's one thing that 'No Child Left Behind' has proven, it's that more academics don't make for smarter children - or even higher test scores. And yet we somehow refuse to accept this reality.

Darell Hammond

#11. Allow states to opt out of No Child Left Behind.

Jim DeMint

#12. The President's call for more math and science students is not being heeded by his party's leaders in Congress. They are cutting over $10 billion from student aide while refusing to fully fund No Child Left Behind. Something doesn't add up.

Jim Clyburn

#13. The No Child Left Behind Program was an incentive to the schools to get their kids up to snuff on math and science and reading.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#14. Hillary Clinton wants to leave behind No Child Left Behind.

Nancy Gibbs

#15. There's a perception that's been put out into the marketplace by No Child Left Behind that schools aren't doing enough for kids.

Mark Jackson

#16. Congress has an opportunity to take advantage of the opening created by Justice Kennedy later this year when it reauthorizes the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Jonathan Kozol

#17. I opposed No Child Left Behind, I opposed the Medicare prescription drug bill, I opposed the Wall Street bailout. What the American people are starting to see is that Republican, Republicans on Capitol Hill get it and the Democrats, from the White House to Capitol Hill, just don't get it.

Mike Pence

#18. No Child Left Behind's fourth-grade gains aren't learning gains, they're testing gains. That's why they don't last. The law is a distraction from things that really count.

Jonathan Kozol

#19. Hence [through No Child Left Behind] the state has been given power...to fire all teachers and principles. So here we have an unusual case in which the students are engaged in the performances, but the high stakes have been displaced onto the teachers who are preparing their charges for the exams.

James M. Lang

#20. With the enactment of the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act, we have taken an important step toward achieving federal education policies that will allow students to learn and achieve at the highest possible level.

Sue Kelly

#21. 'No Child Left Behind' requires states and school districts to ensure that all students are learning and are reaching their highest potential. Special education students should not be left out of these accountability mechanisms.

Dianne Feinstein

#22. The importance of local governance may not be obvious to an America accustomed to treating city and state downfalls with doses of federal comeuppance. Sometimes there's a reason for that - the Civil War. More often, all reasoning seems absent - No Child Left Behind.

P. J. O'Rourke

#23. I want to fully fund education, No Child Left Behind, special-needs education. And that's how we're going to be more competitive, by making sure our kids are graduating from school and college.

John F. Kerry

#24. No Child Left Behind widens the gap between the races more than any piece of educational legislation I've seen in 40 years. It denies inner-city kids the critical-thinking skills to interrogate reality.

Jonathan Kozol

#25. If the goal of the No Child Left Behind Act is to ensure that all children meet state standards, then allowing large numbers of the most disadvantaged children to fall between the cracks is unacceptable.

Roy Barnes

#26. If we do not get No Child Left Behind right for Limited English Proficient students, the law will be a failure for most schools in the 15th Congressional District, and for many across the nation.

Ruben Hinojosa

#27. From the Medicare prescription drug plan to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the passage of No Child Left Behind, President Bush presided over a major expansion of the reach of government.

Chuck Todd

#28. What we have done with No Child Left Behind is squeeze the creativity out of the classroom because teachers have begun to just teaching to the test.

Claire McCaskill

#29. When I talk to teachers, parents, superintendents, my colleagues, everyone wants to fix No Child Left behind. There is great dissatisfaction with No Child Left Behind.

John Kline

#30. Obviously, this whole 'no child left behind' idea is more rhetoric than actual practice.

Hill Harper

#31. I looked at No Child Left Behind after it was enacted and saw what happened and saw the expansion of the federal government and the role of education. And I said, you know, that was - that's not what I believe in.

Rick Santorum

#32. No child should be left behind - I've heard this from President Obama. And here, we say in Latin America, no country should be left behind.

Sebastian Pinera

#33. What if they gave a test and nobody came? What would happen if, on the day teachers hand out the No. 2 pencils, parents decide that no child of theirs will be left behind to fill in the bubbles?

Marc Fisher

#34. People break all the time, no lie there and when that wretched break happens something is usually lost, left behind confused or some is hurt, a member of the family, a child, pure and innocent of the cruel world, dangerous adult men and women.

Abigail George

#35. In the very recent past, we have seen the Church of Rome befouled by its complicity with the unpardonable sin of child rape, or, as it might be phrased in Latin form, no child's behind left.

Christopher Hitchens

#36. Wouldn't it be great if we could look forward to a whole world in which no child will be left behind?

Colin Powell

#37. Even on education, his one accomplishment, the Leave No Child Behind Act, and he has left it unfunded.

Sidney Blumenthal

#38. The panther that has stalked you
since you were a child
is old now. No longer wild,
and tired of guarding the treasure
you yourself left behind -
blind and deaf, she will give it all to you
if you just let her go.

Pat Schneider