HAMILTON, Ohio – President Bush sat at a school desk Tuesday and signed the most far-reaching federal education bill in nearly four decades, a $26 billion plan to broaden academic testing, triple spending for literacy programs and help children escape America’s worst public schools.

With his signature, Bush fulfilled a campaign promise to increase federal education spending and offer the money as incentive to make states and educators accountable for failures in teaching the nation’s 48 million public school students.

“We do not want children trapped in schools that will not change and will not teach,” Bush told several hundred foot-stomping students, teachers and parents in a packed high school gym.

Though some of his initial ideas did not survive in Congress, Bush claimed success on his top domestic priority. He meets Wednesday with educators and will urge them to implement the changes. He may propose an education tax credit later in the year, aides said.

The most immediate changes will appear next school year when children in some 3,000 poorly performing schools will be eligible for taxpayer-financed tutoring or other educational services. The money can go to private companies and religious institutions.

Children in an additional 6,700 failing schools will be eligible for transfers to more successful public schools, and federal money could pay for their transportation.

A new regime of student tests in math, reading and science will begin to take effect in the fall of 2005, identifying more failing schools that could lose federal money as students take advantage of the new options.

To students who don’t like taking tests, Bush said, “Too bad, because we need to know” whether the schools are working.

After a year of debate, a strong majority of Democrats and Republicans approved the bill – a rare point of bipartisanship that Bush hopes will impress voters weary of political bickering. He celebrated its passage during a 12-hour, 1,600-mile swing through the states of lawmakers who sponsored the bill.

The education bill authorizes the federal government to spend $26.5 billion, though the actual amount spent will be slightly less. The current budget is $18.5 billion.

The increase from current spending, combined with the strings attached to the money, makes the legislation the most significant federal school measure since the 1960s, many analysts say.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a member of the Senate Education Committee, authored several key provisions of the bill, including an early reading intervention initiative and a rural schools provision.

“The signing of this bill is the culmination of many, many months of hard work by both parties to write and pass a bill that takes into account the best interests of our children and our schools. But it is also the beginning of a new era in education that promises to leave no child behind,” said Collins in a prepared statement.

The provisions of the bill authored by Collins are:

. The Reading First Program, which builds upon an early literacy program advocated by President Bush, is a cooperative approach that calls upon the federal government, states, and school districts to work together to help students learn to read. It targets competitive grants to programs that help children reading below grade level.

. The Rural Education Act gives rural school districts more flexibility in the use of federal funds by allowing them to combine small funding streams into a single grant that can be used to target local needs. The additional funding and the flexibility provided by the Rural Education Act will help rural school districts meet the higher expectations and improved achievement demanded by the bill.