The Response

Jack Jennings, president and chief executive of the Washington-based Center on Education Policy, responds to Forster's criticisms:

Mr. Forster alleges that the center is really a partisan organization under my leadership. Let me lay out my record as well as that of the center's. I am a Democrat and have made no pretense that I am not. I worked for the Democrats on Capitol Hill for many years. But I always have thought that education is too important an issue to be partisan. Therefore, when I crafted legislation in the three decades I was on the Hill, I always tried to be bipartisan. Almost every meeting that I convened was for both Democrats and Republicans, and the results were that nearly every law I helped to write was passed by large bipartisan majorities.

When I established the Center on Education Policy, I carried that same policy of nonpartisanship into this work. The first chair of our board of directors, Chris Cross, had been a former Republican staff director on Capitol Hill and was also a political appointee in [George H.W. Bush's] administration. In the last several years, as we have tracked [No Child Left Behind], we have been contacted by Republican and Democratic members of Congress who have wanted our advice on whether they understood correctly the effects of NCLB, and we have happily helped all of them. A week and a half ago, three days after we released our fourth annual NCLB report, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House education committees asked us to brief the aides of all members of Congress on our report. Members of Congress do not sponsor such events if they believe you have a partisan agenda.

The value and nonpartisan nature of our work can be seen in the fact that the [current] Bush administration, and particularly Secretary Margaret Spellings, made changes in four areas of NCLB administration that we had recommended in our annual NCLB report issued last year. This year, in our report on the fourth year of NCLB, we commended the Department of Education for these actions.