No Child Left Behind

Martin was working for Bingaman in 2001 and 2002, when Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Bingaman was on the Senate HELP committee and the Albuquerque Journal described him as "one of the principal authors of the act."

But after the bill was enacted, Bingaman advocated for increased funding for both dropout prevention and academies, which are smaller, more focused learning environments. He criticized President Bush for increasing education funding just 2.8 percent in his 2003 budget proposal. "I think it's a good bill. I supported it strongly," Bingaman said. "The question is: will we provide the resources? The president's budget does not do that." Kennedy, who was chairman of the HELP committee for part of the time Martin worked for him from 2005 to 2008, also played a key role in getting NCLB passed in 2001.

But Kennedy supported modifying the bill before reauthorizing it. Martin said Kennedy considered the reauthorization an issue "that can't wait," but she said he wanted some key changes to the bill, such as a financial incentive to teachers who transfer to schools in low-income areas. A fight over NCLB reauthorization will likely take place in the 111th Congress.

Though Martin didn't speak about her personal views on NCLB before it was enacted, she and Bingaman and Kennedy shared similar views of the law after it was implemented. While working for the CAP, Martin penned an essay entitled, "The Failed Promise to Leave No Child Behind," in which she claimed that the Bush administration regularly underfunded certain programs such as the ones Bingaman supported like school academies and drop-out prevention.

Teacher Training

While at the CAP, Martin wrote several memos about necessary policy changes to improve the U.S. education system, a couple of which focus on the need to improve the quality of public-education teachers. "We now know that teachers - the educational resource that accounts for our biggest annual educational expenditure (nearly $200 billion per year) - are also the most critical resource for student learning," the report said.

In another essay entitled, "Leave No Teacher Behind," Martin argued for a training program for teachers similar to the one existing for doctors, where students who want to become teachers undergo rigorous evaluation in the classroom and then in a residency program. She also argued for a program where the best teachers could be promoted to a supervisory teaching position (similar to the role of a chief resident at a hospital) to train other teachers without leaving the classroom. "No matter how qualifications are measured - by experience, subject matter expertise, academic skills, or proven effectiveness in raising test scores - low-income, African American, and Latino children consistently get less than their fair share of good teachers," she wrote.

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