Sunday, July 10, 2005

NCLB IN TROUBLE

As bureaucratic compromises always will be

Schools are preparing for their fourth year under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) this fall even as a state-led grassroots rebellion rages against the education law. The revolt is expected to intensify in the 2005-2006 school year as stricter testing requirements and penalties take effect. Several states have launched legislative and legal attacks against NCLB, or are openly defying provisions of the law, which calls for annual student testing in grades 3 to 8 and penalizes schools that fail to improve test scores in all racial and demographic groups.

Congress passed NCLB, President Bush’s signature education reform law, with strong bipartisan support in 2001 with the intent to raise academic achievement for all students and close the gaps in achievement that separate students of color and low-income students from their peers. However, states have complained since the law went into effect in 2002 that it is too costly and that federal standards usurp state and local control of schools.

Leading the revolt has been the solidly Republican state of Utah, which handed Bush his largest margin of victory in the nation in the 2004 presidential election. After more than a year of debate, the GOP-dominated Legislature on April 19 authorized schools to ignore NCLB mandates that conflict with the state's own testing regimen or that require state dollars to meet them. In Bush’s own home state, also a Republican stronghold, the Texas commissioner of education has unilaterally decided to disregard NCLB requirements for testing students with learning disabilities. The Lone Star state – also home to U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings -- already has been fined $444,282 of its $1.1 billion federal education allocation for missing a data-reporting deadline, and stands to face more costly sanctions if it continues to flout NCLB. Georgia and Minnesota also have been fined for failing to meet requirements of the act.

According to Communities for Quality Education, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group tracking state actions on NCLB, 15 states (Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming) have considered legislation to "opt-out" of NCLB and forgo federal education funds, and four states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Wisconsin) considered bills that would prohibit the use of state money to comply with NCLB.

Long-threatened legal challenges to NCLB are materializing in at least five states. The National Education Association (NEA), the nation's largest teacher union, and school districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont sued the U.S. Department of Education April 20, alleging it has failed to fund NCLB adequately. Connecticut's attorney general said he will soon file a similar lawsuit on behalf of the state Legislature, and Maine lawmakers in May passed a bill ordering their state attorney general to sue the federal government if the state determines NCLB is not fully funded.

In an effort to pacify the states, the Bush administration in April 2005 offered greater flexibility on testing requirements for students with severe learning disabilities. But resistance to the overall law is expected to increase nonetheless as its requirements become harder to meet.

NCLB requires annual increases in the number of students who pass standardized tests in reading and math until all students are passing by 2014. Many states soon will face even higher benchmarks for how many students must pass. Most states opted to meet their goals in three-year increments, with the first jump in 2005. At least two states, Florida and Missouri, recently asked permission to scrap their three-year "stair-step" plan to avoid the higher standards and instead will join at least five other states (Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland and North Dakota) that raise testing targets in smaller, annual increments.

In addition, 2005-2006 is the first school year that all states must have in place NCLB's central requirement that students be tested in reading and math annually in grades 3 through 8 and once in grades 10 through 12. This year, more than 6,000 schools -- about 13 percent of the number receiving federal funding – were rated "in need of improvement" because too many students failed the tests. The number of failing schools is down slightly from the previous year, but is expected to rise under stricter testing requirements.

Fifteen states are conducting or have finished studies on the cost of complying with NCLB, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Studies by Ohio and Texas estimated that the price to state taxpayers of complying with NCLB could run as high as $1.5 billion and $1.2 billion, respectively, each year. NEA, the teacher's union, contends that since the law's enactment in 2002, there has been a $27 billion shortfall in what Congress should have provided to meet the law's regulations. NCSL estimated a shortfall of $9.6 billion as of 2004. Twenty-five states are considering or have passed resolutions asking Congress to fully fund NCLB.

The conflict over NCLB is about federalism as well as funding. States have long considered education policy to be their exclusive province, especially because the federal government pays less than 8 percent of the states’ education costs. Their challenges against NCLB increasingly are focused on one paragraph in the 1,100-page act -- Section 9572A -- which prohibits the federal government from requiring states to pay any costs incurred by complying with the law.

Bush administration officials contend that NCLB is not an unfunded mandate and that states have received record increases in federal dollars for education in the past three years. Since 2001, Congress has increased education spending about $10 billion, or 2 percent of states' overall education costs. Whether the states' or the federal government's competing cost claims about NCLB are correct is an ongoing dispute. Two commentaries published in Education Week examine different sides in the debate: "Two Very Different Questions," by William J. Mathis, a superintendent of schools in Rutland, Vt., looks at the unfunded mandate arguments; "Money Has Not Been Left Behind," by Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West, both of Harvard University and the journal Education Next, argue the law is fully funded.

Source




SCHOOL CHOICE REVIEW

How well has the school choice message been promoted to the public since we started in 1996? What have we done well since then? And what do we need to do In 1996, when the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation was founded, the school choice movement had a very fractured message. There was a lot of conservative rhetoric, a focus on how markets work, and a lot of groups speaking with a lot of different voices--nothing really cohesive. On the other hand, school choice opponents have and will always continue to speak with one voice against the movement. It's a simple but dramatic difference.

Whether it's the school boards, the National Education Association, or their various allied advocacy groups, opponents of school choice speak with one voice, using similar phrasing, labels, and stories to make a persuasive case against allowing parents to choose their children's schools. The school choice side was handicapped because there were too few programs in place in the country to draw stories from, so we didn't have enough real-life examples. We also really didn't have many good messengers at that stage. Who could deliver this message of school choice and freedom in a credible way to members of the public? It was right-wing white folks who were delivering the message, and that doesn't sell in many ways. That's where we were in '96, and when the Friedman Foundation started, we said, "We need to change the message on school choice. We need to get groups speaking with one voice."....

The "ladder" of values that people climb goes like this: I want a better school with good performance, and I want it because my children are going to learn better and learn faster, and that means they're going to get a better job. And if they get a better job, that means they're going to have a chance to succeed in the future. They're going to have a better life, and I'm going to be less worried as a parent. I will have done the right thing by my child. The most effective messages are oriented toward child advancement or parental pride in doing the right thing for their children. Those were the two messages we wanted to get out, and we did. Many groups started to use those. Other messages come out of this new focus, messages that are very simple: School choice is widespread unless you're poor. School choice works. Opponents of school choice lie when confronted by the facts. Those were our messages. And we hammered those in many different ways.

Since 1996, the school choice movement has adopted a more unified message. The Friedman Foundation, Alliance for School Choice, Cato Institute, and many others are working to advance school choice, using different methods and aiming at different audiences, but working together so that we speak with one voice. We did a great job getting the moral high ground. For example, opponents of choice often claim we are taking away a fundamental right to public education, a right we've had since the beginning of our country. We've countered that with, "You know what? If you're poor, the current system does not deliver on its promise. You're totally being abused by this system." Parents themselves got out front with this message, through groups such as the Black Alliance for Educational Options. We've also linked school choice with performance. All the studies say school choice works not just for parents, who are more satisfied, but for students, who are better educated. Even public schools do better when they have to compete with other schools. This message works. And we helped destroy several reigning myths about school choice, such as that it helps only those who are rich. Or that it's illegal. The Supreme Court proved that wrong in 2002 ... but we were making that case three years before the Supreme Court ruled.

We need to avoid defining school choice by specific terms such as "vouchers" or "tax credits" or "charter schools," and instead position the concept as an objective that can be achieved in a wide variety of ways. Otherwise we get caught up in debates about means instead of benefits. We need to have a better response to questions about holding choice schools accountable to taxpayers and elected officials. The debate right now often consists of school choice opponents saying choice schools should be subjected to the same kinds of rules as public schools, and we're saying, "No, no, no," and that's the end of it. We should be saying, "We think accountability for schooling should look like this, and this is what we're going to promote," instead of being reactive.

Finally, we need to shift away from the message that school choice is primarily or only for the benefit of the poor, and move instead to a message about the importance of freedom in education. Freedom has no boundaries. According to one of the polls we've done, 41 percent want all parents to be able to exercise choice in education, and only 10 percent believe choice ought to be limited to people with low incomes.

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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