WASHINGTON - Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is on an energetic campaign to persuade the Democratic-led Congress to expand President Bush's hallmark "No Child Left Behind" education program.

The five-year-old program requires states to adopt state-determined educational standards and annual testing in reading and math in the third grade, eighth grade and once in high school, as a condition for receiving some federal funding.

Spellings wants Congress to broaden the program in high schools when lawmakers vote later this year on whether to reauthorize the plan, which amounts to an unprecedented federal role in public education, traditionally a local responsibility.

"I am convinced that we are on the right track with No Child Left Behind, but I like to say that we are pleased, but not satisfied," Spellings recently told a business group in Chicago. She proudly cited the latest national report card on student performance that showed young readers have made more progress in the past five years than in the previous 28 years combined.

Nonetheless, Spellings contends an estimated 1,800 of the nation's 88,000 public schools are failing to educate students so they can pass grade-level tests in math and reading. The Bush administration goal is to require public schools to make sure that all children can read and do math at grade level by 2014.

Rallying support

Spellings has visited at least five states in the past month in her campaign to revive the bipartisan support that launched the program in 2002 under a Republican-controlled Congress. Then, the program won overwhelming backing from the Senate, on a vote of 87-10, and from the House, 381-41.

Bush administration officials see the coming congressional deliberations offering a potential respite from the contentious partisan battle that has engulfed Capitol Hill over U.S. policy in Iraq. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., may be a fierce critic on Iraq, for example, but as chairman of the Senate education committee, he has vowed to work with the Bush administration to improve No Child Left Behind.

Spellings' proposal would continue to expand the role of the federal government into public education in an effort to close a so-called "achievement gap" afflicting some blacks, Hispanics and impoverished people. Nearly 90 percent of the $400 billion the nation spends each year on public education comes from state and local authorities, limiting the direct role the federal government plays in public education.

The Bush administration's proposal would:

* Add science testing at three grade levels by 2008; present testing is limited to math and reading.

* Add high schools to student testing and performance data collection.

* Require states to develop college-prep English and math standards for high schools and to test high school students on the revised curriculum by 2013.

* Offer $4,000 vouchers to students in chronically underperforming schools to help them switch to private or religious schools.

* Empower superintendents to bypass union-negotiated teacher contracts in order to transfer teachers to poorly performing schools.

* Allow more independent charter schools as alternatives to failing public schools.

Democratic leaders in Congress, who claim that the Bush administration fell $55 billion short of required funding for the program over the past five years, already are challenging the renewed effort to win congressional approval for vouchers, a proposal the lawmakers rejected in 2001.

"It didn't pass muster when Republicans controlled the Congress, and it certainly won't pass muster now that Democrats do," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.