SACRAMENTO, CA - With a clear victory Tuesday, President Bush now has the opportunity to enact significant education reform in a second term.

In his first term, the president won bipartisan support for No Child Left Behind, which calls for all students to reach state standards in reading and math by 2014. In the second term, this legislation will remain a cornerstone in the president's domestic agenda and continue to be hotly contested. The president should start with a report card and make an honest assessment of NCLB's costs and benefits, along with its implementation so far. There are already several flaws that await the president's attention.

NCLB gives parents whose children are in failing schools the option of private tutors and the right to transfer to a better public school. But studies in major cities have shown that few parents with children in under-performing schools know the status of their children's schools or are aware of the right to transfer. Many districts do not inform parents of their choices or deny transfer requests outright.

Federal funding does not follow the disadvantaged student from school to school, so better performing schools have little incentive to admit low-performing students. The districts, which have the least to gain from granting transfers and tutoring, control both information and options. The result? Tutors and transfers are often phantom comforts to the very students they are designed to help.

NCLB is also wrong to ignore "value-added'' approaches that gauge achievement by measuring the progress of each child from year to year. In his second term, President Bush should not be satisfied with rewarding schools for moving students to the proficiency level. He should push for schools to move students from any level to a higher one -- as from proficient to advanced.

The good news is that the public favors many aspects of NCLB. For example, over half of those surveyed in a national poll favored having more qualified teachers in every classroom. During his second term, President Bush will oversee the requirement that all teachers of core subjects be fully certified to teach the subject by 2005-2006. The public also agrees with the president on the need for testing. More than 60 percent say either there is too little or about the right amount of emphasis on standardized tests. The president fought hard for the preservation of testing and accountability in his education bill.

A great strength of NCLB is that it puts information such as test scores in the hands of teachers, parents, and the public, enabling them to make changes. Yet 68 percent surveyed said they know little or nothing about NCLB. That must change if, as the president said, "your school will be the path to the promise of America.''

In 2000, George Bush made education a successful central theme of his campaign. The actions the president takes in the next four years will determine whether his much trumpeted education reform will go down as the same old stuff with a few more tests, or if it will offer a real opportunity for students to escape failing and dangerous schools.

Xiaochin Yan is a policy fellow in education studies at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. She can be
reached via email at xyan@pacificresearch.org.