President Bush is calling it the cornerstone of his administration. He seems desperate to leave something resembling a legacy behind him — other than choking on pretzels and falling off scooters — but the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the most recent attempt at continuing public education reform, is a bitter recipe for disaster.

It has the appeal of homemade apple pie a la mode. The act demands more accountability from teachers, requires more standardized testing and allows more local control of schools. The NCLB comes on the heels of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the principle federal law affecting kindergarten through high school.

On a level, the NCLB is an attempt at early intervention by targeting resources for early childhood education so that every youngster has equal advantages. Each state would be required to measure every public school students’ progress in reading and math every year in grades three through eight, and at least once during grades 10 through 12 in the 2007-08 school year, students will be tested in science. The NCLB also boasts of promoting better communication between parents and teachers by means of report cards, in which student achievement data will be broken down by race, ethnicity, gender, English language proficiency, migrant status and low-income status. That’s assuming all parents, regardless of race, ethnicity, English language proficiency or income status, will be actively involved in their children’s education.

Another major assumption is that schools are primarily to blame for below-average student performance. Public schools will be given more federal funding in order to make necessary improvements, such as hiring more teachers, aides, implementing after school programs or remedial classes. But critics of the NCLB are regurgitating their sample of the pie.

Currently, an average of more than $7,000 is spent per student by local, state and federal taxpayers, according to data from the No Child Left Behind Web site, www.nclb.gov. States and local school districts are now receiving more federal funding than ever — a total of $23.7 billion, most of which will be used during the 2003 — 04 school year. This represents an increase of 59.8 percent from 2000 to 2003. A large portion of these funds is for grants under the ESEA. President Bush’s fiscal year 2004 budget requests would increase spending by 48 percent since he took office.

Right idea, wrong way to implement it. Investing in the education of America’s future leaders is important, but increasing the education budget means decreasing funding elsewhere, and a panel of education officials from the general assembly’s education committee had plenty to say about that during an informational hearing a few months ago. Panelists included CEA Executive Director John Yrchik, David Larson, executive director of the Connecticut Association of public school superintendents and David Shreve, senior committee director for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Panelists want to know where the additional federal money is coming from after studying an already cinched budget.

Yrchik was convinced that public schools across the nation will never make the grade when faced with higher standards of student performance. Raising the bar is not the answer.

Larson noted the law does not compare the progress of students as they progress from grade level to grade level as Connecticut does. Instead, the law calls for comparisons of subgroups to subgroups, such as fourth-graders to fourth-graders. He explained that if the NCLB standards were applied to these subgroups in Connecticut, an estimated 70 percent of the schools would be doomed. Under the NCLB, high-stakes testing would hinder, not help learning.

What would be the effects of constant, rigorous high-stakes testing, one of the hallmark characteristics of NCLB? Does this essentially amount to a “weeding out” process, a convenient way of separating seemingly bright students from “not-so-bright” students? Would educators then resort to simply teaching the tests to save time and effort? Part of a teacher’s job is to instill in students a desire for lifelong learning, not the multiple choice answers for section A.

In theory, the NCLB is a noble idea. It might have potential if states could use it effectively. Maybe it’s the key element in challenging educators to prove that all children can learn, regardless of color, gender or family income level. More likely, however, NCLB will result in widening the gap between students who achieve and students who don’t.

Go back to the kitchen, Bush, and this time, add some sugar.