NCLB: Act II

At some point during January, someone downloaded a spreadsheet from this link on the Department of Education Web site. The document contains every state's allocation under the department's state-grant programs, dating back to fiscal 2001. But this curious Excel expert clicked on a button to "unhide" data, and PRESTO: A new column appeared. It included estimates for fiscal 2009.

Through the magic of e-mail, the spreadsheet started flying around Washington. Just about every Capitol Hill aide with an interest in education appropriations has seen the numbers, one source tells me. And plenty of people in the lobbying community have looked it over. A tipster e-mailed me the "unhidden" data yesterday. (Don't bother trying this yourself now. Someone at the department discovered the mistake and re-posted a spreadsheet without hidden columns.)

No one I've talked to has asked the department whether the numbers are the ones that will appear in the president's budget, which is due out on Monday. They guessed no one in the department would tip their hand. (I decided to ask the press shop and am still waiting for an answer.)

People I've talked to say the numbers appear to be authentic. Programs President Bush has favored in the past would get increases, while some he has proposed to eliminate in the past have a '0' in their columns. Programs for which Mr. Bush has proposed nominal increases in the past would receive similar increases, according to the spreadsheet.

The air of authenticity doesn't guarantee that these numbers are going to be in the budget the White House sends to Congress. Everything in the spreadsheet could be old data that the Office of Management and Budget rejected long ago.

The mysterious spreadsheet includes data from state grant programs. There are no numbers from competitive grant programs.

Here's a quick summary:

Reading First would be restored to $1 billion. That's the amount it received in fiscal 2007, before Congress whacked it down to $393 million.
Title I grants to schools districts would increase $406 million, or 2.9 percent, to $14.3 billion.
Special education grants to states would increase $337 million, or 3.1 percent, to $11.2 billion.
Teacher quality grants under NCLB's Title II would decrease $100 million, or 3.4 percent, to $2.8 billion.
Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities would be cut down by $194.8 million, or 66 percent, to $100 million.

The 21st Century Learning Centers also would receive a significant cut, falling 26 percent from $1.28 billion to $800 million. This number raises an interesting question. Is this the president's $800 million proposal for the 21st Century Learning Opportunities program? (See this White House document.) The proposal would give parents money to pay for after-school and summer programs designed to improve student achievement. Faith-based providers would be eligible to receive the money. It looks as if the Bush administration wants to end the current program and replace it with a new one giving money to parents.

Some programs that would be eliminated:
Career and Technical Education ($1.16 billion)
Tech-Prep Education ($102.9 million)
Educational Technology ($267.5 million)
Even Start ($66.5 million)

On Monday, we'll see how accurate these figures are.

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The National Education Association plans to spend $40 million on campaign activities this year. Most of that will go to phone banks, get-out-the-vote efforts, and other standard campaign priorities. But the union wants to do more than support the candidates it favors. It's hoping to influence the future of NCLB.

In researching this story on teachers' unions' campaign efforts, I found that the NEA's affiliates in Iowa and Nevada urged their members to propose resolutions on NCLB during their local caucuses. You can see the materials here and here. The resolutions are identical and raise all of the issues that NEA is lobbying for (multiple measures, class-size reduction, and the like). The ultimate goal is for the language to end up in party campaign platforms.

In addition to what I reported, George Wood from the Forum on Education and Democracy says that the NEA local in Des Moines was active in raising concerns about NCLB during candidates' Iowa appearances. Now, Wood writes, NCLB has disappeared from the campaign agenda. Will it return after Super Tuesday? I think the answer depends on what Congress attempts to do in the next few months.

Also in the current issue of Education Week, see Why Arts Education Matters by Stephanie Perrin in the Commentary section.

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Last week, Alexander Russo took me to task for my blog item about a piece of performance art built around NCLB. It's something he wrote about last year, he noted. But I thought it was news (and I still do) that the show has moved from New York to Washington—a town where a substantial number of my readers live.

Now, Russo gives me the chance to raise questions about one of his posts. He asks whether he has the exclusive news that the leaders of Senate education committee have circulated draft NCLB language. Well, it's not an exclusive. And it's not news. The documents first went out in October, and I wrote about it then. Nothing new has been distributed since, I've been told by the committee's spokeswoman.

While Russo may have pointed to old news as a sign of current developments, the gist of his entry is correct. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., appears to be serious about moving an NCLB bill this year. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., told me so on Monday night. And I hear that Sen. Kennedy is telling people he believes that he can write a bill that the National Education Association would support and that President Bush would sign.

Russo and many people I talk to are expressing skepticism. But many of my sources add that the chairman of the Senate education committee is one of Capitol Hill's best legislators. Perhaps he'll be able to get something done.

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President Bush used his State of the Union address to once again call on Congress to reauthorize NCLB. But the one concrete idea he proposed in the speech—$300 million school choice program open to private schools—won't generate much enthusiasm from Democratic leaders in Congress.

Democratic leaders plan to move forward on their own terms. Still, they hope to work with the president. "I hope this is a turn [of events] that he will be a positive force," Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, told me last night. "But the track record is not good."

In particular, Rep. Miller said that the president and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings were two of the most vocal critics of the discussion draft that Rep. Miller and his Republican counterpart on the committee released last fall. What's more, the president has "poisoned the well" with many members of Congress by failing to propose adequate funding for the law in the past, Rep. Miller said.

Rep. Miller and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the chairman of the Senate education committee, are planning to push reauthorization, with the hopes of sending a bill to the president this spring. Rep. Miller would prefer that the bill be bipartisan, but he appeared to willing to move forward with a Democratic bill.

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A coalition of civil rights groups is working to upgrade the importance of graduation rates under NCLB.

The groups want it to be a mandatory part of the accountability decisions (states now have the option of using it). They want states to use a standard way to calculate the rates (states now can set their own methods, with U.S. Department of Education's approval). And they want graduation rates to be disaggregated by various subgroups of students. (Read all about it in the Campaign for High School Equity's report outlining its priorities and its press release describing its event on Capitol Hill yesterday.)

Graduation rates are the "cornerstone" of high school accountability, the coalition argues. Without them, school officials can raise their schools' test scores by encouraging low-achieving students to drop out. With them, that wouldn't happen because the school's graduation data would suffer.

But it would be one more thing to disaggregate. That would add several more specific goals that schools and districts would need to meet to achieve their AYP goals.

The group has significant support on Capitol Hill. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., appeared at a briefing the coalition held yesterday. On its Web site, you can watch videos of three House members discussing the coalition's agenda at its launch last year.

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NewTalk, an online discussion tool, has a discussion on education that has quickly evolved into a conversation about the issues that are at the heart of NCLB: testing and accountability.

Some of the participants have their own outlets where they regularly air their opinions. It's no surprise that Checker Finn believes in national standards. He writes about that regularly in the Education Gadfly. Diane Ravitch wants to scale back the federal role to standard setting and data collection. She espoused the same idea in The New York Times and her Bridging Differences blog.

The fresh voices in the NewTalk conversation belong to the educators. Like the others, Deb White and Ryan Hill criticize the current use of standardized tests and once-size-fits-all accountability systems.

"We are limiting ourselves, and our students, by focusing only on tests," writes Deb White, a high school teacher in Cody, Wyo. "Other mechanisms for evaluation will take more time and effort on the part of educators, and more explanation to parents and community members, but are so much more effective."

Ryan Hill, who runs the network of KIPP schools in Newark, N.J., says KIPP uses standardized test scores as one measure to evaluate its schools. But it also puts its schools through a rigorous evaluation of classroom practices, student achievement on classroom work, and the school's leadership.

"From this inspection (which takes multiple days)," Hill writes, "you get a real sense of the quality of the schools, and the training and experience of the inspectors lead to reliable and consistent analyses."

White responds by endorsing the KIPP inspection system and adding other elements to NCLB accountability. Here are two:

Create a menu of assessment tools which states or districts could choose from to evaluate their students. (This would maintain a large degree of local control.)

Train teachers to create assessments and rubrics which are appropriate and interesting to their students (Wyoming has a consortium devoted to developing Body of Evidence assessments and corresponding rubrics.)

All of this sounds a bit like what Helen F. Ladd was outlining in her commentary in the current issue of Education Week. When Congress gets serious about reauthorizing NCLB, will they listen to educators like White and Hill?

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In most conversations about the future of NCLB, policy wonks and politicians point to growth models as the fix for what ails the law's accountability system.

But researcher Helen F. Ladd suggests that growth models probably aren't enough. In a commentary in the current issue of Education Week, Ladd writes: "Test-based accountability has not generated the significant gains in student achievement that proponents—however they perceived the problem to be solved—intended."

Instead, she proposes that accountability systems should assess students in core subjects—not just reading and mathematics, as NCLB does. Schools would be judged against "realistically obtainable gains in student performance." In addition to test scores, independent teams that would "evaluate school[s] on a far broader set of outcomes than student test scores alone."

The approach is expensive, Ladd acknowledges, but probably would deliver results that would be worth the cost. "It is time for policymakers and researchers to engage in serious investigation of this alternative model of accountability," she concludes.

With NCLB's renewal starting again from scratch, perhaps these ideas will emerge in the debate. Ladd's essay is based on a November lecture, which you can read here.

Also in current issue of Education Week, the Federal File mentions the first stop of Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings' pro-NCLB tour. She found some support from Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat. Spellings made other stops in Oregon and southern California. But this week she's in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum.

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After two prime-time references to NCLB in December, I haven't seen another TV reference to the law.

But on a stage in Washington this week, an actress will portray life in a New York City high school during the NCLB era. The one-woman show—called "No Child ... "—is a fictionalized story of the performer's experience working in a Bronx high school. The 70-minute show centers around a teacher trying to direct a play. But it raises questions about who should be held accountable for students' learning. You can watch an excerpt below. Buy your tickets here.

Meanwhile, education wonks are debating whether NCLB has narrowed the curriculum. Swift & Change Able and eduwonk say it hasn't. The Core Knowledge blog and eduwonkette say it has. Read the comments on eduwonkette and eduwonk to find teachers' perspectives that NCLB is narrowing the curriculum and dumbing it down. The John Thompson on eduwonk is a frequent commenter for NCLB: Act II. He can talk policy like a wonk and still make time to play hoops with his students.

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Even though a federal appeals court believes NCLB is an unfunded mandate, state and local officials should spend their money to comply with the law, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings says.

In a letter sent to state education chiefs today, Spellings writes that last week's 2-1 decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit doesn't settle the thorny question of whether states and districts must spend their own money on NCLB requirements. Spellings is "exploring all legal remedies to overturn the decision," she writes. Meanwhile, school officials should plan on meeting all of the law's requirements.

"No state or school district should regard the ruling as license to disregard NCLB's requirements," Spellings concludes.

The next step in the legal process could be in any of several different venues--before the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, a larger panel of 6th Circuit judges in Cincinnati, or a federal district judge in Detroit. The legal battle is unlikely to be resolved this year.

But the next step in the political arena will be when President Bush proposes his fiscal 2009 budget early next month. And the unfunded mandate debate will go on all year in Congress and on the campaign trail.

BACKGROUND: For earlier Act II posts on this topic, see here, here, and here.

NOTE: The department doesn't have a copy of the letter on its Web site. I'll add a link when it does.

UPDATE: EdWeek's crackerjack Web team posted a copy of Spellings' letter on our server here.

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It's easy to collect anecdotes of teachers and parents saying instruction has been dumbed down since NCLB became law in 2002.

But now one professor is saying she has the research to prove those stories reflect what's actually happening in schools.

In a Q&A published by the University of Maryland, Associate Professor Linda Valli said that test-prep pressures have significantly changed teachers' instruction. They aren't spending as much time on higher-order thinking skills or assigning as many projects that require critical thinking, said Valli, who started tracking classroom instruction in 2000.

"Because of NCLB," Vallli says, "teachers are now called upon to produce very concrete outcomes for students that work against good teaching."

NCLB backers will have responses to this. In this book review, Kevin Carey of Education Sector argues that the rudimentary skills low-income students are being taught are probably better than the education they received before NCLB. And in It's Being Done, Karin Chenoweth suggests that not all schools serving low-income kids are teaching low-level skills.

But which message is resonating more? The one about dumbing down the curriculum for all? Or the one about increasing the rigor of the curriculum for the lowest achievers?

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As I pointed out earlier this week, the National Education Association is using a tactic from the Republican playbook in its legal fight against NCLB.

Some of its key allies aren't playing along.

The American Federation of Teachers decided to stay on the sidelines when the NEA filed its lawsuit claiming that NCLB is an unfunded mandate.

"We took a different tack," Ed McElroy, the AFT's president, told me this week. "We said: 'Let's try to fix it at the congressional level' because we felt we had a decent shot at doing that." McElroy said he remains confident that he made the correct choice.

And a legal advocate who has dedicated 15 years to winning increased funding for New York schools also questions the strategy. In his blog, EdFunding Matters, Michael Rebell writes that he's concerned that "the kids will lose whatever the outcome." If NEA wins, states and districts may use that as an excuse to cut funding. If it loses, the federal government will be emboldened to set policies from Washington that it won't pay for.

"The best outcome here would be a political solution that forces all concerned finally to focus on the critical cost question that has largely been ignored since NCLB went into effect six years ago," writes Rebell, who worked closely with the New York City teachers union to win a lawsuit that has delivered dramatic increases in funding for the city and across the state.

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While Title I and other NCLB programs did well under the fiscal 2008 budget, Reading First took a gigantic cut. The budget bill, which President Bush signed Dec. 26, reduced funding for the program from nearly $1 billion to $393 million. The Education Gadfly called the cut "the Christmas massacre."

State officials clearly are unhappy about the cut, Kathleen Kennedy Manzo reports in this story in the current issue of Education Week. But they're optimistic that the program's practices will stay in place, even if the money dries up in some schools. The Department of Education is promising to help schools find creative ways to use other federal funds to support Reading First's goals. (For an estimate of the Reading First cuts in selected states, click on the chart, right.)

Congressional Democrats put Reading First in their cross hairs after the Department of Education's inspector general issued a report saying department officials improperly influenced states' decision over curriculum decisions. But President Bush remains a steadfast supporter of it. I'm guessing the president will propose to restore most, if not all, of the cuts to Reading First when he proposes a fiscal 2009 budget next month. Will the Democrats go along?

Other NCLB Stories in the Jan. 16 issues of the newspaper
Court Ruling in NCLB Suit Fuels Fight Over Costs (See my comments here.)
Bush Presses NCLB Renewal on His Terms (See my comments here.)
Utah School Faces Unusual Challenge Under NCLB Law

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In this comment on a previous post, a mom says that the goal of 100 percent proficiency is possible. Using the real-life example of her dyslexic son, she says that students can make dramatic progress. But can they all reach proficiency?

That question would be a lot easier to answer if everyone knew what proficiency means. As I reported last year, nobody can agree on the definition. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings says that it means students achieving at grade level, as she repeated again at the National Press Club last week.

But does everybody believe that? In its statement of purpose, the law says that states' definitions of proficiency should be "challenging." It says nothing about average performance. What's more, the law also requires states to participate in the National Assessment of Educational Progress to hold states' definitions up to a common benchmark. Advocates use those scores to say that states are setting the bar too low. (For just two examples, see here and here.) But NAEP's proficiency definition is so challenging that not even those countries with the highest performance on international tests would meet NCLB's goal of universal proficiency, Richard Rothstein argues in this 2006 paper and the American Institutes for Research concludes in this 2007 analysis.

It may be true that all students can make dramatic gains in their achievement. Maybe all of them can reach grade-level performance. But can they all reach the level of challenging standards?

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I've written before (here, here, and here) about the unique political alliances the NCLB creates and contradictory stances the actors in the game sometimes take. Last week's circuit court ruling reminded me of another.

In the case, the National Education Association is claiming that the U.S. Department of Education is violating NCLB's unfunded mandate clause, which says districts shouldn't be forced to spend their own money to comply with the law's rules. Although the case isn't over, NEA's top lawyer says last week's decision is a major victory. “Hundreds of school districts and all of the states now know that at least one court of appeals has said to them, ‘You are right; you don’t have to do anything you are not getting the money to do,’ ’’ Robert H. Chanin, the NEA's general counsel, told my colleague, Mark Walsh, for a story in the this week's Education Week.

Here's the irony: When the unfunded mandate language was inserted into federal law back in 1994, Republicans sponsored it. They're the ones who argued that districts and states shouldn't be required to spend their own money on federal priorities. Fourteen years later, a union usually aligned with Democrats is using that Republican-backed clause as the basis for its case against a Republican administration's secretary of education.

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Richard Simmons has upgraded his outreach in his campaign to incorporate physical education into NCLB. He's graduated from obscure blogs for policy wonks (here and here) to cable news talk shows.

Simmons also has shifted tactics. In an interview this week with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business, he says he's "heard a rumor" Congress won't act on NCLB this year. So he's pressuring the presidential candidates to take up his cause. In the interview, he says that under NCLB, "our children have become a test score." Sounds as if he's been talking to the National Education Association. (He also says he's made $30 million off "Sweatin' to the Oldies". Good work if you can get it.)

Watch the interview here. All of the references to Madeleine are to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Cavuto had a testy exchange with Albright immediately before Simmons' appearance.

As you watch, remember Kevin Carey's advice. Don't dismiss Simmons because he looks and acts crazy. There's a method to his madness.

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I'm a little late to blog about Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings' agenda-setting speech yesterday. (I was too busy writing a story about it and the rest of the events marking NCLB's 6th anniversary.)

Eduwonkette says Spellings' idea of 100 percent proficiency is a fantasy. (A belated welcome to edweek.org, Ms. Wonkette, whoever you are. People are talking about you.) Kevin Carey is impressed by the secretary's forceful defense of and knowledge of NCLB, but questions her legal authority to change it. Andy Rotherham sees an "outside chance" of NCLB being reauthorized this year, but warns it might not happen until 2010.

Here's what I can add to the discussion: All of the others noted that Spellings is unwilling to budge on NCLB's big issues. Maybe she doesn't need to compromise. As she said Monday on Air Force One, the law is permanently authorized. It will stay in place until Congress can pass a bill to revise it. The next president certainly will want to change NCLB, but that won't be at the top of his or her agenda, given what's being said on the stump. Spellings told me when I profiled her that she plans to be actively involved in education issues after she leaves the administration. I'm guessing she figures she'll have enough political capital left in 2009 to keep NCLB intact well past President Bush's last day in office. Maybe even past 2010.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

With New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on the verge of dropping out, the Democratic presidential field is about to lose its all-out NCLB critic. Over at the Campaign K-12 blog, Michele McNeil summarizes the nuanced stands that the leading Democratic candidates have taken on NCLB.

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Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings traveled to Florida yesterday to celebrate NCLB's 6th anniversary. While there, she promised to be on the road shilling for the law throughout 2008.

"In the upcoming months, I'll be visiting as many states as I can to discuss how we can continue to work together and move ahead with what is, in my opinion, our nation's most important business—ensuring that every student receives a quality education," she said in written testimony prepared for a committee hearing in the state capitol.

In her three years as secretary, Spellings has become the chief spokeswoman for the law. Yesterday's testimony is a good summary of her arguments for the law.

But Spellings has taken her message and persona to other forums, such as "Jeopardy!" and "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," which I detail in a profile in the current issue of Education Week.

The people I talked to said Spellings is effective at communicating her thorough understanding of education policy to a variety of people, whether they're Capitol Hill aides, state legislators, or talk show hosts.

But is her celebrity status helpful? Here's one anecdote that didn't make the story. A colleague reported that at a New Year's Eve party, Margaret Spellings' name came up. The discussion quickly turned to the variety of eyeglasses she wears (what Joe Williams calls "sexy librarian glasses") and speculation about the costs. (See examples, right.) That shows how well-educated, well-informed people (one of whom is an education policy wonk) think of her.

In the end, does that aid her advocacy for NCLB and other education policies? Maybe her celebrity status means people don't take her message seriously. Or maybe her message never would have gotten through if not for her celebrity appearances.

BONUS LINK: Click here to watch Spellings' appearance on the "Daily Show."

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On the 6th anniversary of NCLB's enactment, here are six questions to consider over the next year.

Will the Senate unify around an NCLB bill?
The House took small steps toward reauthorizing NCLB in 2007. It became evident quickly that the early drafts create intraparty splits among Republicans and Democrats, raising questions about whether that chamber could create a bill that would garner a consensus.

Yesterday, two key players in the Senate sent important signals on NCLB. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., argued that the law has many flaws; one of them is the failure to recognize "incremental progress." As chairman of the Senate's education committee, he promised to work for a bill to fix the law's problems. Later in the day, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., issued a statement saying the law's accountability measures have been "far too punitive" and mentioning that the law doesn't reward "incremental progress" in schools.

Although the rhetoric is similar, will these two agree on the details, and will they be able to create a consensus among their Democratic colleagues and the Bush administration?

What will Margaret Spellings do?
In a briefing yesterday, the Secretary of Education said she would make administrative changes to the law if Congress doesn't make legislative ones. She's already invited states to propose growth models. What's next? She's dropped hints about standardizing the way states calculate high school graduation rates. Will she set a maximum 'n' size? Will she allow additional states to switch the sequence of offering school choice and tutoring when intervening in schools failing to make AYP? What other options might she have?

What will the Detroit judge say?
Eduwonk pooh-poohs yesterday's 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling to reopen a lawsuit claiming states and districts don't need to comply with NCLB because it is an unfunded mandate. Yes, courts often pass cases back and forth. But yesterday's decision revives an issue once thought to be dead. And the majority's decision suggests they're buying the plaintiffs' argument. If the district judge issues a decision in favor of the plaintiffs, that would dramatically bolster states' and districts' complaints about funding.

Will Congress come up with money to satisfy districts complaining about the law?
Both Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Reid believe NCLB is inadequately funded. They probably won't find the money to fully fund the law; the NEA estimates that would take $14.8 billion. Getting that kind of money is unlikely, especially with a president willing to use his veto pen. But how much will they get?

Will the next NEA president maintain a hard-line stance against NCLB?
Just as George Bush must leave the White House in January, Reg Weaver must pack up his office at 1201 16th Street NW. Dennis Van Roekel, the union's vice president, is running for the job. Given the NEA's history of promoting vice presidents to the presidency, he must be a favorite to win. His campaign Web site doesn't mention his stance on NCLB. The election is in July. Maybe we'll know more by then.

How long will the Hollywood writers' strike go on?
With the writers on the picket lines, they aren't available to dream up plot lines that reinforce the common perception that NCLB is punitive and inflexible, as they did in "Family Guy" and "Boston Legal" last month. When the writers return, will they go after the law again?

Right now, I have no answer to these questions. I pose them (to you and to myself) as a way to keep track of the major issues. If anyone has questions to add, send them along.

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President Bush stopped in at a Chicago Elementary school to tout the success of NCLB on the day before its 6th anniversary. Usually that would be the biggest education story of the day.

Not today.

While Bush was flying to Chicago, three judges on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals outdid him. In a decision that could dramatically shift the NCLB landscape, the judges ruled, 2-1, saying the lawsuit shouldn't have been dismissed and suggesting they may rule in the plaintiffs' favor if the case comes back to them.

For the short term, the suit is in the hands of a federal judge in Detroit and the implementation of the law probably won't change much. In the long term, a decision declaring many of NCLB's rules as unfunded mandates could restrict the federal government's power to enforce NCLB's testing and accountability rules.

The decision is a significant victory for the National Education Association, which organized the lawsuit. It also puts a damper on President Bush's celebration of NCLB's 6th anniversary in Chicago.

EXTRA LINKS

You can read about this at edweek.org's brand new blog on school law. The blog's author, Mark Walsh, is talking to legal experts and promises to offer a better analysis that I've given here.

Here are the president's comments after visiting Horace Greeley Elementary School and here is Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings' briefing on Air Force One. Neither mentions the lawsuit.

And below are a bunch of stories from Education Week's archives. The links chronicle the lawsuit, starting with NEA President Reg Weaver's 2003 speech in which he called NCLB "the granddaddy of all underfunded federal mandates:"

NEA Takes Stand Against Bush Education Law
NEA Seeks Allies to Bring Lawsuit on ESEA Funding
NEA Files 'No Child Left Behind' Lawsuit
NCLB Cases Face Hurdles in the Courts
U.S. Asks Court to Throw Out NEA Lawsuit Over NCLB
Suit Challenging NCLB Costs Is Dismissed

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One year ago, as Washington was gearing up to reauthorize NCLB, I talked about the law's prospects with a former Senate aide. People on the local level need guidance on how to address some of the law's complicated rules, said Ellen Guiney, who is now the executive director of the Boston Plan for Excellence in the Public Schools. Without it, questions will be settled in court—something no one wants. (See Bush to Start NCLB Push in Congress.)

One year later, not much has changed. Neither the House nor the Senate has moved NCLB bills. And local officials are still crying for help—if this story from the Tennessean is any indication.

District officials in the Nashville area are saying NCLB is improperly identifying schools as failing to make AYP, is encouraging teachers to overlook gifted kids, and is diverting federal money for private tutoring. All are common complaints from the field. Policymakers acknowledge that the law needs fixing; Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., does so in the Tennessean (although his quote doesn't address his constituents' specific complaints).

Will Congress do something about NCLB 2008? That remains to be seen. But it sounds as if educators in Nashville have given up hope. Do others out there feel the same way?

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As 2008 begins, the press and the political world are focused on presidential politics. As Sam Dillon of The New York Times reported before Christmas, NCLB has been a punching bag for Democrats on the campaign trail. If you read to the end, though, you'll see that the leading candidates support the law's goals and use of accountability.

But state-level politicians want to beat up on NCLB, too. In Minnesota, Republicans plan to introduce a bill this legislative session that would require the state to pull out of NCLB, according to the Star Tribune. They failed to win passage of the same bill last year. The state would lose an estimated $250 million in federal money if the effort is successful.

"We've had five years of the No Child Left Behind regime, and I think it's safe to call it a failure now," state Rep. Geoff Michel told the Minneapolis newspaper. "We're giving it an F and trying to take back our schools."

Ironically, the Democrat who led an earlier effort to turn away NCLB money isn't impressed with the GOP plan. State Rep. Rep. Mindy Greiling said she's now in the "amend-it-don't-end it" camp.

State legislatures have had a history of making statements against NCLB. In 2005, a conservative Republican representative in Utah led the charge to pull the state out of the program. In 2004, Virginia's legislature passed a resolution calling for a radical overhaul of the law. Both states continue to accept NCLB money, though.

In 2008, you'll continue to hear NCLB messages from presidential candidates. But keep your ears open for what's being said in St. Paul and other state capitals.

Posted by David J. Hoff, edweek.org at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)