WASHINGTON - As they sat in the Oval Office one day in January, President Bush and Senator Edward M. Kennedy put their differences over the Iraq war behind them and focused again on ways to reshape the nation's education system.
"We're going to get moving on this, right Ted?" Bush asked.
Yes, Mr. President, Kennedy said. He could pass it by March.
Ten months later, the optimism has vanished and the campaign to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind law has bogged down. Not only has it not passed, but no legislation has been introduced.
In an interview last week, Kennedy said it will not happen this year after all. "It's going to tip over to next year," he said, right into the teeth of a presidential campaign with candidates on both sides denouncing the program.
This was supposed to be the one area where the embattled White House and the assertive new Democratic Congress would find common ground, thanks to the unlikely partnership between a Texas conservative and a Massachusetts liberal.
But like the rest of Bush's legislative agenda, No Child Left Behind has fallen victim to political deadlock, leaving a weakened president struggling to salvage perhaps his most important domestic achievement with the help of one of his toughest critics.
The politics of No Child Left Behind have always been difficult to navigate. In the strange-bedfellows world of education reform, Bush finds himself fending off foes from the left and right. Teachers' unions stand alongside hard-line conservatives against the program while civil rights groups team up with business organizations in support of it.
Opponents said the law had turned schools into test-taking factories, diverted attention from subjects other than reading and math, promoted dumbed-down standards, crowded some schools at the expense of others, and imposed more bureaucracy.
Bush, among other things, wants to require testing on science and to give money to low-income students in bad schools to go to private school. Kennedy wants to expand the criteria for judging schools beyond test results and do more to help struggling schools avoid being labeled failures.
Thinking back on seven years working with Bush on the issue, Kennedy grows glum. "It seemed to me the president had a golden opportunity to reform education," he said, "and it's in very, very great danger of being missed."
