Posted on 08/23/2005 5:45:00 AM PDT by OESY
As if we needed another frivolous lawsuit, yesterday Connecticut became the first state to sue the feds over funding for No Child Left Behind. That education reform, which passed with bipartisan majorities in 2001, provided the largest increase in education spending in the nation's history. But never mind. According to state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who filed the suit, it's an "unfunded mandate."
In fact, the money complaint is a red herring used by Mr. Blumenthal, Republican Governor M. Jodi Rell and others to avoid the real issues of accountability and transparency. In return for federal funds, No Child Left Behind requires states to develop academic standards and curriculum-based tests to measure whether students are meeting those standards. The law's requirements were nothing new; they existed under NCLB's predecessor, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The only difference is that the Bush administration, backed by Democrats in Congress, decided to actually enforce them.
Connecticut wants to go back to the days when it could receive federal aid without complying with the law. No Child Left Behind says states must test children annually in grades three through eight, and then disaggregate the data so that parents can discover if a school is educating all students. No more gimmicks like reporting "average" test scores to hide achievement gaps among racial groups. Connecticut only wants to test in grades four, six and eight.
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spelling deserves credit for not giving into Connecticut and the accountability-averse National Education Association, the teachers union that has been pushing for the lawsuit. Other states have pleaded for "flexibility" (read: exceptions) but she's mostly held her ground. The Bush administration decided correctly that Connecticut was asking too much. If the state wins this suit, students lose.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
This lawsuit should be used to destroy the liberal mantra that "No Child Left Behind" was an unfunded mandate.
I blame the President and Republicans, in general, for not countering liberal claims against the program.
How about we just get the Feds out of the education business altogether?
If we don't let the government dictate the content of our newspapers, why are we insisting that it dicate the content in our classrooms?
All of this new spending and systemic change is necessary, we are told each year, because our schools are in crisis. Thus, we have George W Bush and Ted Kennedy teaming up in 2001 to fix public education by giving us “No Child Left Behind,” which was supposed to fix a system supposedly already fixed by a 1994 piece of federal legislation called “Goals 2000,” which was supposed to fix a system already fixed by “America 2000,” which was a 1991 response during the first Bush administration to a 1983 Reagan-era federal report on education called “A Nation at Risk, which was published a full four years after Jimmy Carter fixed the nation’s public school system by first establishing a cabinet-level Department of Education in 1979.
I thought the Republicans were supposed to get rid of the Department of Education. Public education was much better before the Feds got involved.
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but could someone explain this "unfunded mandate" thing to me? How much does it cost to hand out and correct a test? Is it "unfunded" because the schools have to teach to the test because the children haven't learned these subjects?
It just seems that if the tests are grade appropriate and they are a measure of the students in that grade, that it should just be a matter of giving another test during the school year. Where do these claims of millions of dollars of underfunding come from? What costs the state $41.6 mil? The paper to print the tests on?
The reality is that _no_ state legislature in the country has been as freehanded with imposing mandates on its political subdivisions than ours in Hartford. If unfunded mandates are really as bad as AG Blumenthal says they are, even unto unconstitutional, then I'm sure we can look for our own legislators to stop doing it, right? Riiiiiiight.
DICK Blumenthal never met a lawsuit, or photo-op, he didn't like. He'd run over his own mother to get to a camera. Hard to believe this guy was a Marine.
I wish that people would accept the fact that public education only works if its held to standards...which is what NCLB is supposed to do...why must we pay so much attention to teh fact that Bush's plan "isn't" working when Clinton's and everyone's plan before him ALSO DIDN'T WORK OR NCLB WOULDN'T BE ON THE TABLE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Have to agree with this. I'm no fan of Connecticut but education is the province of the state, not the federal government.
I'll go ya one better: it should be devolved to the lowest level possible, the municipality in urban areas, the county in rural ones. And how they pay for it should be their own business. I am a proud product of the Washington DC and Prince Georges County school systems (1964 HS grad) and got a first-rate education from both. That was back in the days when they were public schools and not Government schools -- and therein lies the difference.
"Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but could someone explain this "unfunded mandate" thing to me? How much does it cost to hand out and correct a test?"
Yes, you are indeed missing something obvious. NCLB is NOT just giving every kid a test. Schools must meet certain criteria in numerous categories. To do this, each school and then each school system had to generate benchmark numbers and then every year has to recollect and refigure those numbers and file them. This work doesn't do itself and schools are definitely not overwhelmed with volunteers begging to do it for free.
When schools fail two years in a row, parents must be allowed to transfer their children if they want, even when there's nowhere to transfer them to. Nobody's beating down school system doors to take on this task for free, either, so systems have to hire people, buy computers, find office space, pay for benefits, and, in some cases, buy trailers or renovate schools to make space. Some tiny systems with no other school to send children to have to pay to send them to another locality.
The paperwork and bureaucracy to keep up with all the requirements is ridiculous. One school in the city where I live "failed" this year because three minority students who were supposed to take the NCLB test never showed up to take it. The school did everything short of breaking down the kids' doors to get them there, which, by the way, cost more money. Another school failed because attendance in one subgroup was 93.8 percent and not 94 percent.
"Is it "unfunded" because the schools have to teach to the test because the children haven't learned these subjects?"
Make fun of teaching to the test all you want, but when some giant government bureaucracy is telling you EXACTLY what your children must learn, you have no choice (this is more at the state level). I've seen what my child must know for our state tests (which are much tougher than the NCLB standards, by the way), and while much seems essential, some of most certainly isn't. NCLB wants our kids tested every year; my state thinks that's a waste of money and I agree.
This is the system that a fair number of Republicans supported and that Bush pushed and signed. It's a GIGANTIC expansion of government. Eleven years ago conservatives vowed to eliminate the education department; today it's more powerful than ever, thanks to NCLB.
Are we really proud of this?
"I loathe public education. All we're asking is that they check the kids out to see what they know. How much does that cost, Blumenthal?"
If that were really all NCLB were asking it might be sort of OK. That's not all it asks by a long shot. See post #12. What I wrote there is just the tip of the iceberg.
If the Feds get out of the education system, then each state can develop its own standards. How tempting for Mississsippi to develop "attainable" student standards for its low income rural population, and California to develop standards (that can change) that purport to show the competency of a massive ESL population....and does anyone here think DC would develop realistic competency standards" without federal oversight?
No wonder teacher's unions hate NCLB. Nowhere to run,
nowhere to hide on nationally compared academic standards. Except the red herring of "unfunded mandate" ..which obscures the fact that the districts must choose how to allocate funds internally, and some feel-good pet programs may have to be dropped in favor of basic, hard core programs that actually produce increased competency as measured by those test scores.....even among groups of students so difficult to teach that the libs prefer to pass them along stupid but feeling good about themselves. Oh the horror.
I definitely see a role for the Federal Govt in developing and enforcing national educational standards. After all, we are a national economy and we need a nationally educationally competent work force.
That's great, I suppose, as long as your side is the one developing and enforcing the "standards."
I'm sure the standards won't ever be multiculturalism, diversity, PC Blame America History, a literature curriculum that is "inclusive" of every cultural group except Dead White European Males (unless they can be portrayed unfavorably).
I think the whole idea that there should be Federal "standards" is really a vestige of old-fashioned, obsolete 20th Century Progressivism -- which basically dominated the 20th century.
That model turns the educational process on its head. The true education model is that parents are the customers, and buy education services based on their judgment regarding the best course of education for their child.
You might argue, as a matter of policy, that the government ought to be paying for the education of our kids. But even if you accept that notion, there is no reason for having the government involved in actual curricula content and choices.
As Milton Friedman said, government provides food stamps for the needy, but it doesn't run the supermarkets.
The fact is that in the 21st century, with all the delivery options and life-long learning trends, there IS no such thing as "standard" education. That whole idea is so retro, a product of four (more like 10) decades of social engineer-speak at the command of Progressive idealists, pandering politicians and labor unions.
The idea of a "standard" education is based on a naively Progressive world view that is so pervasive in our society, that our very language and frame of reference is mired in it. Even conservatives have a hard time getting past it, so deeply ingrained is it in our social consciousness after a century of social engineering.
Some might argue that there are bad parents who can't be trusted to make good educational decisions for their kids.
But that kind of argument is dangerous and arrogantly elitist. True there are bad parents. It reminds me of Bill Clinton's remark about not trusting the American people to spend their money right.
Society is a bell curve, and the fact is that the most parents want to do the best we can. There are degenerate lowlives at the bottom of every society, and if we aim our policy as if this group were the majority, the resulting system is guaranteed to be a disaster. (See my earlier post.)
As far as education goes, the only two critical survival skills are reading and basic math. Teaching those things does not require a collossal government budgetary and political boondoggle, let alone at the federal level.
Everything else in education is really best decided at the student parent-level. The idea of "standards" and a monopoly educational delivery system is preposterous in an age where educational content can be delivered in a thousand different ways through countless channels to the consumer at a range of price points. And where experts can market their skills directly to students without really needing the infrastructure of a government institution. And where curricula can be micro customized to the needs of individual students and parents.
You talk just like a teacher or school admin. Are You?
No. I'm just a working stiff parent.
Bump that, Maceman! If the state of Connecticut, or any other state, really wanted to improve education, they would tell the Feds to take their money and their bureaucracy and their race-mongering and get out of Dodge.
Then they would outlaw all public-sector unions (might as well have a clean sweep :-), deconsolidate school districts to the lowest levels, and allow dollar-for-dollar state income tax and property tax credits for those not using the public schools (up to the amount of your taxes allocated to education.)
If there's a public school left after this, it's going to be a high-performing and financially-efficient one!
Call it whatever you want.
In my kids' Title One inner city school (70% of population below poverty level)... reading scores for 3rd graders went up 40% in the past 2 years. Two years ago, 38% of the 3rd graders tested in my school could read at grade level or better. Last spring, 78% could. That is why I have decided to keep my kids in public school. The majority of their peers can read at grade level and next year, even more will..and if they don't, I'll know about it.
I have no idea what your rant about multiculturalism and PC has to do with federal standards, which at elementary level, measure competency in reading and math.
In my school district the PC/multicultural stuff comes from the liberals who run the state, the teacher's unions, and the school board. They are screaming because they can't use all that nice federal money to pay for fluff stuff while they're being held against a wall to show progress for ALL school populations (including my son in special ed) in reading and math! Hence, their pitiful moans about "unfunded mandates".
As far as Friedman's quote about the govt paying for food stamps...yes, the govt that issues the food stamps doesn't run the supermarkets. But the Feds do tell the supermarkets they cant't accept food stamps to pay for Cheetos. ("unfunded junk food")
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