No Dollar of the Education Budget Left Behind
President's Initiative to Shake Up Education Is Facing Protests
By SAM DILLON
Democratic legislators in Oklahoma were so unhappy with President Bush's No Child Left Behind school improvement law that they drafted a resolution calling on Congress to overhaul it. But at the last minute one of the state's most conservative Republicans, State Representative Bill Graves, stepped up with his own suggestion: Tell Congress to repeal it entirely.
The resolution passed, and Mr. Graves got a standing ovation.
"Some of my Republican colleagues grumbled because they don't like to see the Democrats jumping on President Bush," Mr. Graves said. "But I've always thought Bush was wrong to push that law."
There is little chance that Congress will amend, much less repeal, the law in an election year, experts said, but the unusual alliance in the Oklahoma Legislature reflected the widespread outcry that the president's signature education initiative has provoked. Like similar measures being debated in legislatures across the country, the Oklahoma resolution brought together liberal Democrats and states' rights Republicans, angry over what they see as a cumbersome federal intrusion on local schools.
