Education

The sad legacy of the once promising No Child Left Behind program may be characterized briefly but fairly as follows: It is very likely the largest ill-funded federal mandate in our nation's modern history. This program has proven that it is one thing to talk about a program but certainly another to support it. The federal government spends only 2.4%* of the entire budget on education. There is no long-term bargain in the failure to invest in the education of our youth. In the relatively near future it will be their job to lead this nation, to invent and deploy our new technologies, and do the many things necessary to maintain our nation's domestic and international strength. We need to increase our investment in both primary and higher education, particularly with an emphasis in the areas of new technology, math and science - an area in which we have been steadily losing our international competitive advantage.

(*Source U.S. Department of Education website available at http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html, last viewed November 21, 2007)