Moses says, however, that Bush has been dead set against disturbing that equilibrium. That may be true, but it's also true that Bush has declared opposition to Robin Hood. The idea of holding kids back in grades until they pass minimum standards is, of course, an old dog that has never hunted. The first experiments with this policy date back to the 1930s, and it has been tried on and off for the past 30 years. The results have seldom been good.
Kids do no better the second time around, become potential dropouts, and cost the schools bundles.
Bush's message to educators is that Texas schools are now equipped with sufficient resources to remediate low achievers and put them back on track, and he cites his third-grade Reading Initiative as a centerpiece program. The foundation has been laid. The tools are in place. Funding for the Reading Initiative will be supplied through grants which local districts apply for. Currently, minority advocates say, districts are using legislatively mandated Alternative Education Programs as a repository not only for violent kids, but for low-performing ones as well.