Report Faults Bush Initiative
on Education
NY Times
By SAM DILLON
Published: February 24, 2005
Concluding a yearlong study on the effectiveness of President
Bush's sweeping education law, No Child Left Behind, a bipartisan
panel of lawmakers drawn from many states yesterday pronounced it
a flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional education reform
initiative that had usurped state and local control of public
schools.
The report, based on hearings in six cities, praised the law's
goal of ending the gap in scholastic achievement between white
and minority students. But most of the 77-page report, which the
Education Department rebutted yesterday, was devoted to a
detailed inventory and discussion of its flaws.
It said the law's accountability system, which punishes
schools whose students fail to improve steadily on standardized
tests, undermined school improvement efforts already under way in
many states and relied on the wrong indicators. The report said
that the law's rules for educating disabled students conflicted
with another federal law, and that it presented bureaucratic
requirements that failed to recognize the tapestry of educational
challenges faced by teachers in the nation's 15,000 school
districts.
"Under N.C.L.B., the federal government's role has become
excessively intrusive in the day-to-day operations of public
education," the National Conference of State Legislatures said in
the report, which was written by a panel of 16 state legislators
and 6 legislative staff members.
Several education experts said the panel had accurately
captured the views of thousands of state lawmakers, and local
educators. If that is so, the report suggests that the Bush
administration could face continuing friction with states and
school districts as the Department of Education seeks to carry
out the law in coming months.
Nine state legislatures are considering various challenges to
the law, and the Utah Senate is about to vote on a bill, already
approved by the House, that would require state education
officials to give priority to Utah's education laws rather than
to the federal law. An Illinois school district filed a lawsuit
against the Education Department this month in federal court,
arguing that No Child Left Behind contradicted provisions of the
federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, known as
IDEA.
The National Conference, which has criticized the federal law
in the past, represents the nation's 50 state legislatures, with
a membership that includes 3,657 Republicans and 3,656 Democrats,
as well as a few dozen elected from smaller parties, as
independents or without any party affiliation.
The task force worked for 10 months and held public hearings
in Washington; Chicago; Salt Lake City; New York; Santa Fe, N.M.;
and Portland, Ore. It also held deliberations in Savannah,
Ga.
"They went out and heard lots of things from different people
around the country, and this report reflects the breadth and
depth of what they heard, and the changes that many people want,"
said Patricia Sullivan, director of the Center on Education
Policy, a Washington group, who attended some of the
deliberations.
An assistant secretary of education, Ray Simon, met with
members of the panel in Washington yesterday to discuss the
report.
"The department will continue to work with every state to
address their concerns and make this law work for their
children," Mr. Simon said in a statement. "But the report could
be interpreted as wanting to reverse the progress we've
made."
He added: "No Child Left Behind is bringing new hope and new
opportunity to families throughout America, and we will not
reverse course."
A Republican state senator from New York, Stephen M. Saland,
the co-chairman of the task force, called the meeting with Mr.
Simon cordial.
"Everybody was in agreement about the goals of the law, but we
in the states are concerned that the existing structure is very
prescriptive," Mr. Saland said. "We think there are ways of doing
accountability that recognize differences among states."
The law will come up for reauthorization in Congress in 2007.
But Mr. Saland said he and other task force members hoped to
persuade Congress to change the law before then.
Several groups that strongly support the federal law took
issue with the report.
"My big concern is they did a better job of pinpointing
problems than identifying solutions," said Susan Traiman, a
director at the Business Roundtable, a group that represents top
corporate executives. "Most of what they call for would be a
reversal that would turn back the clock on what N.C.L.B. is
trying to accomplish, all in the name of federalism."
One chapter of the report says that the Constitution does not
delegate powers to educate the nation's citizens to the federal
government, thereby leaving education under state control. The
report contends that No Child Left Behind has greatly expanded
federal powers to a degree that is unconstitutional..
"This assertion of federal authority into an area historically
reserved to the states has had the effect of curtailing
additional state innovations and undermining many that had
occurred during the past three decades," the report said.
"The task force does not believe that N.C.L.B. is
constitutional," it said.
But Steve Kelley, a Democrat who serves in the Minnesota
Senate and a co-chairman of the task force, said the conference
had no intention of going to court.
The report also examined what the task force called conflicts
between the federal law and the disabilities act. Under No Child
Left Behind, a disabled eighth grader whom educators deem to be
working at a sixth grade level must take examinations for eighth
graders. The report said the requirement contradicted provisions
in the disabilities act requiring school authorities to devise a
unique program suited to the needs and abilities of each disabled
child.
"N.C.L.B. requires students with disabilities to be tested by
grade level, while IDEA mandates that students be taught
according to ability," the report said.
A Republican state representative from Utah, Kory M. Holdaway,
who is a special education teacher as well as a task force
member, said the federal law's provisions for educating the
disabled were a special irritant in his state.
Mr. Holdaway has long been a critic of the federal law and
voiced legislators' concerns to the White House last year.
"I hope the feds will have an open mind as far as letting us
run our educational system as we feel it should be run," he
said.
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