Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter
Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter
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CAT Tracks for April 20, 2005
NEA FILES NCLB LAWSUIT |
Our own NEA has leapfrogged Connecticut to strike the first legal blow at NCLB. Below is today's news release, immediate coverage by the Associated Press and the Washington Post, a response from the U.S. Department of Education, and a "day after" article by the New York Times...
NEWS RELEASE
NEA Stands Up for Children and Parents, Files
Parents Want Feds Accountable for Law's Requirements
First-Ever National Lawsuit Against Administration
for Not Paying for Education Regulations
WASHINGTON - Today, a diverse network of school districts, the National Education Association (NEA) and several state education associations filed the first-ever national lawsuit to force the Bush Administration to pay the costs of its own rules and regulations under the No Child Left Behind law.
"Today we're standing up for children, whose parents are saying, 'No more' to costly federal regulations that drain money from classrooms and spend it on paperwork, bureaucracy and big testing companies," said NEA President Reg Weaver. "The principle of the law is simple; if you regulate, you have to pay."
The plaintiffs represent several school districts in Vermont, Texas and Michigan as well as the nation's largest teacher's organization. These groups say they are filing the suit because the Administration has not heeded its own demands of accountability which states:
"Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the Federal Government to mandate, direct, or control a State, local education agency, or school's curriculum, program of instruction, or allocation of State or local resources, or mandate a State or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this Act."
The suit, Pontiac School District v. Spellings, was filed today in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. It was unveiled at simultaneous news conferences in Laredo, Texas; Pontiac, Michigan; and Washington, DC.
At all three events, parents of school children from some of the communities involved in the suit spoke about the effects the rules and regulations have had on their children's classrooms.
"The school district has to pay for this law, and it is taking away from my child's classroom subjects like music, art, foreign languages, social studies, and sports," said Jose Zuniga, a parent from Laredo, Texas. "Those activities are being replaced with high-stakes, high-stress tests that don't help my child learn."
Since the law's enactment in 2002, there has been a $27 billion funding shortfall in what Congress was supposed to provide schools to meet the law's regulations and what has been funded. Cost studies in Ohio and Texas estimate that the price of the regulations to state taxpayers could run as high as $1.5 and $1.2 billion, respectively.
For more information about the lawsuit, visit: www.nea.org/lawsuit.
The National Education Association is the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing 2.7 million elementary and secondary teachers, college faculty, school administrators, education support professionals, retired educators, and students preparing to become teachers.
From the Associated Press...
First national suit over education law
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's largest teachers union and school districts in three states Wednesday launched a legal fight over No Child Left Behind, aiming to free schools from complying with any part of the education law not paid for by the federal government.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for eastern Michigan, is the most sweeping challenge to President Bush's signature education policy. The outcome would apply only to the districts involved but could have implications for all schools nationwide.
Leading the fight is the National Education Association, a union of 2.7 million members that represents many public educators and is financing the lawsuit. The other plaintiffs are nine school districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont, plus 10 NEA chapters in those three states and Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, as the chief officer of the agency that enforces the law, is the only defendant. The suit centers on a question that has overshadowed the law since Bush signed it in 2002: whether the president and Congress have provided enough money.
The challenge is built upon one paragraph in the law that says no state or school district can be forced to spend its money on expenses the federal government has not covered.
"What it means is just what it says -- that you don't have to do anything this law requires unless you receive federal funds to do it," said NEA general counsel Bob Chanin.
"We want the Department of Education to simply do what Congress told it to do. There's a promise in that law, it's unambiguous, and it's not being complied with."
The plaintiffs want a judge to order that states and schools don't have to spend their own money to pay for the law's expenses -- and order the Education Department not to try to yank federal money from a state or school that refuses to comply based on those grounds.
Spending on No Child Left Behind programs has increased 40 percent since Bush took office, from $17.4 billion to $24.4 billion, federal figures show.
Responding to the suit, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush has overseen "historic levels of funding" and a commitment to holding schools to high standards. States are making strong achievement gains under the law, and Spellings has made it clear she will help state leaders as long as they are making proven progress under the law, Perino said.
Yet the suit accuses the government of shortchanging schools by at least $27 billion, the difference between the amount Congress authorized and what it has spent. The shortfall is even larger, the suit says, if the figures include all promised funding for poor children.
The suit, citing a series of cost studies, outlines billions of dollars in expenses to meet the law's mandates. They include the costs of adding yearly testing, getting all children up to grade level in reading and math, and ensuring teachers are highly qualified.
To cover those costs, the suit says, states have shifted money away from such other priorities as foreign languages, art and smaller classes. The money gap has hurt schools' ability to meet progress goals, which in turn has damaged their reputations, the suit says.
Plaintiffs include the Pontiac School District in Michigan, the Laredo Independent School District in Laredo, Texas; the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union in Brandon, Vermont; and six of the school districts that are part of Rutland Northeast in south central Vermont.
The NEA promised to bring the suit almost two years ago and began recruiting states to be plaintiffs. But the union found no takers -- in part because states had no firm cost estimates, and in part because states were wary of the political fallout of suing the federal government.
More than a dozen states, however, are considering anti-No Child Left Behind legislation this year. On Tuesday, the Utah Legislature passed a measure giving state education standards priority over federal ones imposed by No Child Left Behind.
The school districts involved in the lawsuit give the NEA the diversity it wanted, from rural Vermont students to limited-English learners in Laredo to poor students in Pontiac. In the suit, Spellings is accused of violating both the education law and the spending clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The NEA and the Bush administration have had a testy relationship.
When the union first promised the lawsuit, then-Education Secretary Rod Paige accused the NEA of putting together a "coalition of the whining." He later referred to the NEA as a "terrorist organization" for the way it opposed the law, a comment for which he later apologized.
From the Washington Post...
National Teachers' Union, Three School Districts File 'No Child' Lawsuit
By Michael Dobbs
The nation's largest teachers' union today joined school districts in
Michigan, Texas and Vermont in filing a federal lawsuit against the
Department of Education for failing to provide adequate funding for the
No Child Left Behind initiative.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal challenges to the Bush
administration's signature education reform, which aims to make every
student in the country proficient in reading and math by 2014. On
Tuesday, the Utah legislature voted to give priority to its own state
school accountability system over the federal law in the event of a
conflict.
"The rebellion is growing," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center
on Education Policy, a Washington-based think tank that has been
tracking implementation of No Child Left Behind. "These actions are all
ratcheting up the pressure on the Bush administration to either relax
some of the requirements of No Child Left Behind or provide more money
to fund it."
Newly appointed Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has been
attempting to defuse protests against the No Child Left Behind law by
promising a "commonsense" attitude toward interpreting the law and
broadening exemptions for disabled students. But she has been unable to
bridge the gap with several states, including Utah, Connecticut and her
own home state of Texas, which are all demanding much greater
concessions from the federal government.
Lawyers for the National Education Association, the teachers' union that
has been at the forefront of protests against No Child Left Behind,
seized on a clause in the law that protects states from incurring "any
costs not paid for under this Act." Opponents depict the law as an
underfunded federal mandate that has imposed billions of dollars of
extra spending on the states.
"The principle of the law is simple," said the teachers' union
president, Reg Weaver. "If you regulate, you have to pay."
Bush administration officials dispute studies carried out by several
states that purport to show that they are being forced to pick up the
costs of additional standardized testing required by the 2002 No Child
Left Behind legislation. They argue that federal funding for education
has increased significantly during the past five years.
The Education Department had no immediate response. But Dana Perino, a
White House spokeswoman, told the Associated Press that while committed
to holding schools to high standards, the administration has also made
clear that it will help states as long as they are making proven
progress under the law.
After meeting with Spellings earlier this month, Virginia State
Superintendent Jo Lynne DeMary said she was "very encouraged" by her
more flexible attitude toward No Child Left Behind, particularly on the
issue of disabled students. Both DeMary and Nancy S. Grasmick, the
Maryland state superintendent, predicted that the changes would lead to
a sharp drop in the number of schools failing to meet the "adequate
yearly progress" provisions of the law, putting them on a path to
eventual reorganization.
But the changes failed to satisfy several other states, including
Connecticut, which is preparing a lawsuit challenging a federal
requirement that students be tested annually between grades three and
eight, as well as grade 10. According to calculations by state auditors,
the extra testing requirement will cost the state $8 million more than
the federal government provides.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal delayed filing the
lawsuit to wait for the outcome of negotiations between state education
officials and the federal Department of Education. But little came from
a meeting this week between Spellings and Connecticut Education
Commissioner Betty J. Sternberg, and Blumenthal said he expected to file
the lawsuit "imminently."
Although several school districts have mounted legal challenges to parts
of the No Child Left Behind legislation, the section of the legislation
on unfunded federal mandates has yet to be tested in court. The case is
likely to revolve around complicated accounting arguments and
conflicting estimates of the costs of the standardized tests that form
the centerpiece of the accountability system promoted by the federal
Department of Education.
The case also illustrates the changing nature of the rebellion against
No Child Left Behind, which is shifting away from outright opposition to
complaints about lack of funding. The Republican-controlled Utah
legislature dropped an earlier threat to opt out of the law completely
in order not to lose tens of millions of federal subsidies for some of
the state's lowest-performing schools.
Instead of opposing the law outright, states are attempting to opt out
of certain requirements while continuing to receive federal funds.
Texas, for example, has exempted 9 percent of its students from regular
state tests on the grounds that they are learning-impaired. Spellings
has agreed to exempt up to 3 percent of students.
The new Utah law authorizes state officials to ignore provisions of No
Child Left Behind that have not been fully funded by the federal
government. Legislators from both houses voted in a special session in
favor of the law, despite warnings from Spellings that they ran the risk
of losing $76 million in federal funding.
"I'd just as soon they take the stinking money and go back to Washington
with it," said Republican house member Steve Mascaro.
Press release from the U.S. Department of Education...
FOR RELEASE:
U.S. Department of Education press secretary Susan Aspey today issued
the following statement regarding the National Education Association's
action regarding No Child Left Behind.
"Today's announcement is regrettable. No Child Left Behind is, at its
core, about fairness and educational opportunity for all students. The
preliminary results are in, and in just three short years, states across
the nation are showing strong gains in student achievement. The
achievement gap-decades in the making-is finally starting to narrow.
"President Bush and Congress have provided historic funding increases
for education, and yet we continue to hear the same weak arguments from
the NEA. Four separate studies assert the law is appropriately funded
and not a mandate.
"We're not alone in our efforts. Respected, national education
organizations, including the Council of the Great City Schools and the
Council of Chief State School Officers, are working with us to continue
this unprecedented national progress. We intend to continue moving
forward in partnership with national and state education leaders, and
look forward to the day when the NEA will join us in helping children
who need our help the most in classrooms, instead of spending its time
and members' money in courtrooms."
And finally, from The New York Times...
Districts and Teachers' Union Sue Over Bush Law
By SAM DILLON
pening a new front in the growing rebellion against President Bush's signature education law, the nation's largest teachers' union and eight school districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont sued the Department of Education yesterday, accusing it of violating a passage in the law that says states cannot be forced to spend their own money to meet federal requirements.
Some legal scholars said that the union, the National Education Association, had assembled a compelling cause of action. Still, they added, since the case has few close precedents, it was difficult to judge the suit's prospects.
But it was clearly another headache for Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education, who is trying to resolve a federal-state conflict over the law, known as No Child Left Behind, that has taken on new forms in recent days. A day before the suit was filed, Utah's Republican-dominated Legislature approved the most far-reaching legislative challenge to the law.
Both the Utah measure, which requires educators there to spend as little state money as possible in carrying out the federal law's requirements, and the union lawsuit rely heavily on the same section of the federal law, which prohibits federal officials from requiring states to allocate their own money to fulfill the law's mandates.
This month, Connecticut's attorney general also announced the intention to sue the department on the same grounds, saying that the testing the law requires costs far more than the money the state is given to pay for it.
"If the facts about educational spending are as the plaintiffs allege, then this lawsuit has good prospects of winning," said David B. Cruz, a constitutional law professor at the University of Southern California. "It is a strong case because the statutory language is clear. The law says nothing in the act shall be interpreted to impose requirements that aren't being funded."
Since Ms. Spellings took office in January, she has pledged to improve relations with the nation's educators, which had frayed partly because of the law's demands for sweeping changes in local education practices.
The law requires that every racial and demographic group in every school must score higher on standardized tests every year. Falling short can bring sanctions, including the closing of schools.
Ms. Spellings has promised more flexibility, but those assurances have failed to blunt resistance to the law, even in strongly Republican states like Texas, which is defying a federal ruling on the testing of disabled children.
"If I were sitting in the White House, I would be concerned about the backlash against the law," said Patricia Sullivan, who tracks education politics closely as director of the Center on Education Policy, a Washington group. "It's growing, and it's breaking out in many states."
In Utah yesterday, Tim Bridgewater, an aide to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., a Republican, said that the governor would sign the bill that was approved on Tuesday. During the debate, several lawmakers protested the growth of federal influence on Utah's schools, asserting that while Washington paid 8 cents of every education dollar in the state, the law had given it virtually total control.
In a statement yesterday, Secretary Spellings said that though most school decisions should be made locally, "the federal government plays an important role" by keeping educators' attention on minority students who lag behind.
"States across the nation who have embraced No Child Left Behind have shown progress," she said. "The same could be true in Utah, whose achievement gap between Hispanics and their peers is the third largest in the nation and has not improved significantly in over a decade."
"Returning to the pre-N.C.L.B. days of fuzzy accountability and hiding children in averages will do nothing" to help Utah students, she added. Ms. Spellings did not comment on the lawsuit filed and financed by the National Education Association, but her spokesman, Susan Aspey, called it "regrettable."
"President Bush and Congress have provided historic funding increases for education, and yet we continue to hear the same weak arguments from the N.E.A.," Ms. Aspey said. "Four separate studies assert that the law is appropriately funded and not a mandate."
The union suit was filed in Federal District Court in Detroit, which has jurisdiction over one of the plaintiff school districts, in Pontiac, Mich., an urban system with 21 schools and 11,000 students, most of them blacks.
Other districts in the suit were Laredo, Tex., a mostly Hispanic district with 23,000 students and 30 schools; and six rural Vermont districts with a total attendance of about 1,500 students, most of them white.
In the complaint, the union argues that the law has already obligated the nation's schools to face "multibillion-dollar national funding shortfalls." The Bush administration contests this assertion, citing significant raises in federal education aid since President Bush took office.
The complaint seeks a court order notifying states and districts that they are not required to spend their own money to comply with the federal requirements.
"The law says that you don't have to do anything it requires unless you receive the federal money to do it," said Robert H. Chanin, the union's lead counsel. "There's a promise in the law, and it is unambiguous."
Robert W. Adler, a University of Utah law professor, said he was skeptical about the suit's prospects, because "generally, the Supreme Court has not been receptive to the unfunded federal mandates argument."
But the wording of the law, Mr. Adler said, might provide the plaintiffs a firmer legal standing than similar cases have enjoyed in the past.
Sylvia Bruni, superintendent of the Laredo schools, which have an annual budget of $170 million, said that her district this year had been obligated to spend $8.2 million of its own funds to comply with the federal law. Mostly, she said, those funds were spent to lengthen the school day and year, and to offer Saturday classes for students who had fallen short on standardized tests.
"It's all focused on passing the tests," she said.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 20, 2005; 2:26 PM
April 20, 2005
