CAT Tracks for April 13, 2005 IT'S GETTING HOT IN CONNECTICUT

From today's Hartford Courant...

Education Chief Seeks An Apology
State Official Rebukes Federal Counterpart

By ROBERT A. FRAHM, Courant Staff Writer

State Education Commissioner Betty J. Sternberg asked for an apology Tuesday from U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings for remarks implying that Connecticut's attitude toward black children is "un-American."

In a three-page letter to Spellings, Sternberg said she was outraged by Spellings' comments in a television interview, especially her use of the phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations" in discussing the state's approach to educating inner-city black children.

"Anyone knowledgeable about the track record I and this department have had on relentlessly pursuing higher expectations for all of our students is appalled by your characterization of this department and Connecticut's educators," Sternberg wrote.

The letter reflects an increasingly chilly tone in a dispute between Connecticut and the U.S. Department of Education over the interpretation of President Bush's school reform law, the No Child Left Behind Act.

Sternberg's ire was directed at Spellings' remarks during an interview on the PBS program "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" last week.

"Not since the last episode of the secretary of education's words about terrorist organizations have we been confronted by such name-calling," Sternberg said in a reference to former Secretary of Education Rod Paige's characterization of the National Education Association.

"I have higher expectations of the secretary of education," Sternberg wrote, "and would suggest that, at a minimum, an apology is in order."

A U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman said late Tuesday afternoon that Sternberg's letter had not been reviewed. "I haven't seen it," said Susan Aspey. "It sounds like the secretary's comments were taken out of context. ... The secretary's point was that all kids can learn and that all kids count."

Aspey also said that the department is preparing a response to an earlier letter from Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell requesting a meeting between Sternberg and Spellings to discuss differences of opinion over the law.

In the TV interview, Spellings criticized Connecticut for requesting a waiver on portions of the law's testing requirement and for threatening to file a lawsuit contesting the cost of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal pledged last week to make Connecticut the first state to file a lawsuit challenging the 3-year-old federal law, contending that it will unfairly cost state and local taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

The law calls for a broad expansion of testing and a shake-up of schools that fail to make sufficient progress with all students, including groups such as low-income children, special education students and members of minority groups. The law is designed to close the academic gap in which many low-income minority children lag behind middle-class white students.

Connecticut's 20-year-old mastery test of fourth-, sixth- and eighth-graders is regarded as among the most rigorous in the nation, but Spellings has said that it is not sufficient to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind. Last month, she denied the state's request to waive a requirement to expand testing to third-, fifth- and seventh-graders.

In the PBS interview, Spellings accused Connecticut officials of "trying to find a loophole to get out of the law as opposed to attending to the needs of those kids."

She said, "I think it's un-American ... for us to take the attitude that African American children in Connecticut living in inner cities ... are not going to be prepared to compete in this world and are not going to be educated to high levels. That's the notion, the soft bigotry of low expectations, as the president calls it, that No Child Left Behind rejects."

In his speeches about education reform, President Bush has used that phrase repeatedly since his first presidential campaign in 1999.

Sternberg wrote to Spellings, "I must tell you as a Jewish American whose family was deeply affected by the pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and later by the Holocaust, bigotry is never soft. Bigotry always has a hard edge. It is simply outrageous that you would accuse me and my associates of `the soft bigotry of low expectations.'"

In her letter to Spellings, Sternberg also said that the secretary appears to be misinformed about Connecticut's position on the law. What Connecticut wants, Sternberg said, is flexibility on the types of tests that might be given to third-, fifth- and seventh-graders.

Instead of adding more statewide standardized tests, Sternberg said, it would be less costly and more beneficial to develop tests that could be used by classroom teachers to diagnose individual students, especially in the state's most troubled schools.