Dive Brief:
- The St. Paul, TX, school board has unanimously voted to name a new elementary school after former president George W. Bush.
- The school will open in time for the 2016-17 school year.
- There is another soon-to-open school in Stockton, CA, that has also been christened George W. Bush Elementary School.
Dive Insight:
Stacie Gooch, the board’s school naming committee chair, told The Dallas Morning News that the decision was ultimately made in honor of the legacy that President and Mrs. Bush "continue to write both in Texas and across the nation."
So what exactly is Bush's education legacy? Most notably, he championed No Child Left Behind, a somewhat controversial accountability initiative that ushered in the era of high-stakes testing. Under the law, schools ran the risk of being closed if they did not meet rising "Adequate Yearly Progress" goals measured by standardized test. Currently, the Obama Administration is capitalizing on the somewhat stringent NCLB policies by giving states waivers if they agree to a number of the administration's own education reforms, which include test-based teacher evaluations and college-and-career-ready standards. There are 43 states with these waivers, and areas without them, such as Washington state, are put in a tough position — held to the rigid AYP goals, schools with steady test scores still run the risk of being deemed "inadequate" or "struggling."