5/17/05 -- The opposition to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) appears to be growing as Utah Gov. John Huntsman Jr. signed a bill May 2 giving the state’s accountability and testing system priority over the testing requirements in the federal law.
Meanwhile, legislation to opt out of NCLB or prohibit the state from spending its own money to comply with the law is under consideration in about 10 states. In addition, the National Education Association (NEA) has filed a lawsuit, and Connecticut and Maine have threatened lawsuits.
All these actions indicate “widespread agreement that things need to change with the law,” says Scott Young, education policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Although “states still believe in the overall goals of NCLB,” Young predicts “a growing public backlash, beginning this fall when the new AYP [adequate yearly progress] numbers come out.” He says there will be a “substantial increase” in the number of schools and districts failing to make AYP and facing sanctions.
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has struck back in defense of NCLB. During an interview on the PBS program “NewsHour,” she called opponents of NCLB “un-American” if they believe minority children can’t compete.
She addressed the growing opposition to NCLB in a speech to the Education Writers Association May 6, when she said: “I really wouldn’t call that a ‘rebellion.’ The bulk of states are hard at work, helping students achieve.”
In Utah, both Huntsman and Rep. Margaret Dayton, chair of the state’s House Education Committee, who sponsored the legislation, are Republicans. Their main complaint is that NCLB is an intrusion into state policies and is an underfunded mandate.
The Utah law lets school districts ignore provisions of NCLB that conflict with the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students (U-PASS). That system does not call for student testing data to be broken down into racial or other subgroups, which is a main facet of NCLB.
Although Spellings has approved some plans to grant states more flexibility, she has called that aspect of NCLB not negotiable. The U.S. Education Department has warned Utah it could lose $76 million in federal education funds.
Both Connecticut and Maine are considering lawsuits against the U.S. Education Department, charging the law is an underfunded mandate.
According to Connecticut Education Commissioner Betty J. Sternberg, expanding the state’s testing system to comply with the law would cost the state an additional $41 million from 2002 through 2008.
The NEA lawsuit seeks an injunction establishing that states and districts “must comply with the NCLB mandates only to the extent that they are provided with sufficient NCLB funds to pay for such compliance.”
The other plaintiffs in the NEA suit are the school districts of Pontiac, Mich.; Laredo, Texas; Sudbury, Whiting, Leicester, and Pittsford, Vt.; the Neshobe Elementary School District, Otter Valley Union High School District, and Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union, all of Brandon, Vt.; the state NEA affiliates of Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, Texas, Utah, and Vermont; and the Reading, Pa., NEA affiliate.
The suit quotes from the “unfunded mandates provision” of NCLB, which states: “Nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the federal government to mandate, direct, or control a state, local education agency, or school’s curriculum or program of instruction, or allocation of state or local resources, or mandate a state or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this act.”
The suit notes that Congress underfunded NCLB by millions of dollars and that implementing the law imposes significant additional costs on districts and states.