State Seeks to Block "No Child Left Behind"

News article

By: Anonymous

Date: February 2, 2006

Source: "State Seeks to Block 'No Child Left Behind.'" CNN.com. February 2, 2006.

About the Author: This article was written by a contributor to Reuters, a major worldwide news agency based in London. It appeared on CNN.com, the Web portal for the Cable News Network.

INTRODUCTION

Public education in the United States has gone through many reforms in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Child labor laws and compulsory attendance laws in the late 1800s and early 1900s increased school attendance and literacy while decreasing child labor abuses. Desegregation of public schools in the 1940s and 1950s, by court order or by choice, shaped the social atmosphere and racial makeup of schools, driving some southern white parents to choose private schools in the south while increasing the quality of education and opportunity for African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics in the United States. The Russian launch of Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957 sparked a scientific race; school curricula changed to include more intensive science and math courses to allow the U.S. to stay on pace with the Soviet Union's technological achievements.

In the 1960s and 1970s, parents of children with mental and physical disabilities lobbied successfully for federal and state protections of education rights, leading to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in the mid–1970s. The 1983 report A Nation at Risk, published by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, chronicled overcrowded classrooms, twelfth graders unable to read, and disparities in teacher salaries and spending per pupil, all part of a public education system in crisis. With test scores declining, public education reformers worked on a series of measures such as tighter teacher licensure, exit exams for graduation, and earlier reading intervention programs to improve the quality and experience of public education in the United States.

In the 2000 presidential election, Republican candidate and then-Governor of Texas George W. Bush pointed to education reform laws he had signed regarding public education in Texas. Campaigning on the promise of a sweeping education reform bill that would hold school administrators and teachers more accountable, once in the White House President Bush worked to pass the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. NCLB requires states and schools to create accountability procedures, mandates yearly standardized tests for grades three through eight, holds teachers more accountable for performance, and gives students the option of other public or private schools if the school they currently attend fails to meet basic NCLB standards three years in a row.

Within two years of NCLB's implementation, state education agencies and local schools struggled to meet the act's demands. Teachers began to trim subjects covered to focus on test material to improve scores. Many of NCLB's requirements came with no matching funds from the federal government. These "unfunded mandates" placed schools in a precarious position; unable to follow the law because they lacked the funding, many schools came closer to being labeled a "failed" school. NCLB requires that achievement gaps based on income, race, and other factors be eliminated in twelve years, but does not provide the funding needed; according to critics from Fairtest, an additional $8 billion in federal funds would be needed to meet this particular unfunded mandate.

By 2006, Connecticut determined that meeting the requirements of the No Child Left Behind act was impossible without appropriate funding—the state faced compromising education quality in order to meet the letter of the law.

PRIMARY SOURCE

STATE SEEKS TO BLOCK "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND"

Connecticut rebels against Bush education policy

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (Reuters)—The Bush administration's "No Child Left Behind" policy will lead to "dumbing down" tests in public schools because Washington has not fully funded the policy, the state of Connecticut said in a court hearing Tuesday to try to block the program.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal told the U.S. District Court in New Haven that President Bush's signature education policy was "mistaken" and "misguided," as he fought a motion by the federal government to throw out his lawsuit.

The suit, filed in August, makes Connecticut the first state seeking to block the 2002 policy that calls for standardized testing of students.

"If the federal government asks us to undertake the mandate, we would be willing to do it, but they have to provide the money," Blumenthal told the court in New Haven.

Blumenthal said federal funding was not enough for the state to test in a way that maintains its high standards, leaving Connecticut $41.6 million short of what it needs to comply with the law. He said that dynamic would force Connecticut to rely on multiple choice tests rather than costlier written tests which would better challenge students.

"There is always the option of dumbing down the test to the point that would be inadequate, and we are not willing to do that," he said. "We're left with no choice but to either defy the statute or (follow) an interpretation that we believe is mistaken and misguided."

U.S. Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Goitein, representing the U.S. Education Department, said Connecticut was avoiding its obligations and was aware of the law's demands when the state accepted education funding from Washington.

The promise of education reform has bolstered Bush's support among minorities in a country where only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school and only 50 percent of black Americans and Hispanics graduate.

Connecticut has taken the strongest legal stand yet against "No Child Left Behind" but other states have also challenged it. A judge in November threw out a similar lawsuit by the National Education Association on behalf of school districts in three states. The state of Utah has rebelled by passing a measure defying the law.

The heart of the law is standardized testing, currently conducted in Connecticut in grades four, six and eight.

The law requires that students also be tested in grades three, five and seven. Scores and other variables like graduation rates can lead to sanctions against poorperforming schools. In some cases, schools can be forced to close.

Tuesday's arguments also focused on whether the federal government would suspend hundreds of millions of dollars in education funding if Connecticut appealed through the Department of Education rather than through the court.

Connecticut has the highest graduation rate in the country. But it also has the nation's worst gap in academic achievement between rich and poor children, with 18 percent of low-income 9-year-olds proficient in reading, against 53 percent of those who are not poor.

Connecticut Education Commissioner Betty Sternberg says that reflects the extreme wealth and poverty in Connecticut, where Greenwich ranks among America's wealthiest cities and other cities such as Hartford are among the nation's poorest.

SIGNIFICANCE

As the article notes, Connecticut faced the greatest achievement gap of all U.S. states: a thirty-five percent difference between higher-income and lower-income nine-year-olds on test scores. Like many other states, such as Utah and Texas, Connecticut determined that the law placed educators in an untenable position; the lawsuit filed by the Attorney General of Connecticut was viewed by education officials as a necessary measure.

One of the major complaints by educators and parents is the provision in NCLB requiring that all students—including students with academic and behavioral disabilities—sit for the standardized tests, and that their scores are included in the aggregate data used to determine whether schools are performing on target. In many poorer school districts, a higher-than-average percentage of students have Individual Education Plans (IEPs), used for students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia or auditory processing disorder as well as developmental disabilities such as autism. The variations in performance on standardized tests from such students can have a dramatic impact on overall test scores, and the time taken from other educational goals to prepare such students for rigorous testing can contribute to poor outcome and overall delay in educational progress for students with IEPs. NCLB does not provide flexible options for students with IEPs, leaving special education teachers with the challenge to assist students in meeting goals and adapting to educational environments while preparing them for testing.

Critics of NCLB, such as Princeton History professor Theodore K. Rabb, also point to the shrinking curriculum for subjects other than those on the tests; time devoted to social studies, certain sciences, art, and music have all dropped since 2002, while time spent on reading and math has increased. The crowding out of non-test subjects has created a form of education that is less well-rounded and more focused on the test; "teaching to the test" has become a pejorative term for some parents and educators.

Private schools and homeschoolers in most states are exempt from NCLB standards; NCLB has helped to create an explosion in demand for private tutoring and on-site, after-school tutoring for standardized tests. As schools shave physical education, lunch time, and recess to increase test teaching time, the social experience for students in academic settings diminishes at the same time that childhood obesity rates climb.

Connecticut's challenge to the No Child Left Behind Act, as of mid–2006, was still making its way through the courts. Viewed as a test case by other state Attorneys General considering similar actions, the court's decision will be watched carefully by professional educators and parents alike.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Mondale, Sarah. School: The Story of American Public Education. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002.

No Child Left Behind?: The Politics and Practice of School Accountability, edited by Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003.

Pulliam, John D. and James J. Van Patten. History of Education in America. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2002.

Web sites

National Commission on Excellence in Education. "A Nation at Risk." April 1983. <http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatA-tRisk/index.html> (accessed June 15, 2006).