“The principle of the law is simple. If you regulate, you have to pay.” -- NEA President Reg Weaver, on the reasons for the ESEA/NCLB lawsuit filed on April 20.

What’s New in Washington, D.C.

Backed by a number of state affiliates and nine school districts, NEA filed the first-ever national lawsuit to force the Bush Administration to pay the costs of its own rules and regulations under ESEA/NCLB. The lawsuit was announced April 20 at press conferences held in Washington, D.C., two school districts that are plaintiffs (Pontiac, Michigan, and Laredo, Texas), and 12 other cities around Texas. In Washington, NEA President Reg Weaver discussed the reasons for the lawsuit and how it will benefit children. Testimonials were provided by parents and teachers from Laredo and Pontiac and by a superintendent from one of the seven school district plaintiffs in Vermont.

So far, almost 1,000 media stories have appeared about the filing, including front-page articles in USA Today, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune; an Associated Press article that ran in newspapers across the country; segments on CNN, CNN Radio, C-SPAN, NPR, ABC, FOX News, Univision, Latino USA, BET.com, the Tavis Smiley Show, and Joe Madison - The Black Eagle; and stories in many local TV, radio and print outlets. U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings now has 60-90 days to respond to the filing. For more information about the lawsuit, go to www.nea.org/lawsuit.

ED Watch: In response to complaints that ESEA/NCLB’s requirements are placing an unfair burden on schools, school districts, and states, U.S. Education Secretary Spellings announced April 7 that the Department will be more flexible in evaluating compliance. The one concrete change mentioned by Spellings affects rules governing the assessment of students with cognitive disabilities: States that meet a series of criteria can now provide a different test to up to three percent of these students, rather than the current one percent, and the Department will allocate $14 million nationwide to help schools create new tests for those students. President Weaver called the changes “a step in the right direction,” but added that the NEA will be watching to see if the Department applies them in a fair and even-handed manner to states and school districts. The Department expects to issue proposed regulations this spring to formalize this policy.

On April 15, the Department released its Inspector General’s final report on the Armstrong Williams scandal, which found that “department officials made some poor management decisions and exercised poor judgment and oversight” in paying Williams $240,000 to promote ESEA/NCLB. The report added: “As a result, the department paid for work that most likely did not reach its intended audience and paid for deliverables that were never received.” However, the Inspector General was not allowed to interview officials who were in the White House at the time to find out what they knew. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Federal Communications Commission are continuing separate inquiries.

More Republicans in Congress are airing their discontent about ESEA/NCLB. On April 20, Republican Rep. Jeb Bradley (R-NH) introduced a bill (H.R. 1722) that would amend the “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) requirements of the law. His proposed changes include codifying the new 3 percent limit on students with disabilities taking tests based on different standards, lowering the threshold for making “safe harbor” from 10 percent to 7 percent, and extending the exemption from AYP determinations on reading tests for newly resettled refugee Limited English Proficient (LEP) students from one to two years.

Fellow Republican Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) sent a letter April 6 to the U.S. Department of Education to express concerns about how students with disabilities and LEP students are tested. “I am particularly concerned about the number of students who are being tested in English that do not speak the language fluently,” Shays said. “I believe we need to be able to provide states with not only the flexibility to accommodate these students, but do so realistically within the framework of the law.”

But the biggest news occurred yesterday when Sen. George Allen (R-VA) and Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) introduced the Flexibility for Champion Schools Act, which would give states, that meet certain criteria, waiver authority from ESEA/NCLB’s AYP provisions. In a joint press statement, the two Republicans said, “aspects of the federal No Child Left Behind law are confusing parents and undermining the progress of our high academic standards and accountability in Virginia.” The bill has bipartisan support, with two Virginia Democrats also signing on.

Growing Chorus of Voices in the States

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced April 5 that his state plans to sue the U.S. Department of Education over lack of funding for ESEA/NCLB’s testing mandates. Blumenthal is basing his argument on the same “unfunded mandates” provision in the law first identified in the NEA lawsuit, which the Connecticut Education Association shared with him before his announcement. According to a recent cost study conducted by the Connecticut State Department of Education, the state will have to spend $8 million of its own money by 2008 to carry out just the testing requirements of ESEA/NCLB.

Shortly after Blumenthal’s announcement, Secretary Spellings said in an interview that the protests of Connecticut officials were “un-American…to take the attitude that African-American children in Connecticut living in inner cities are not going to be able to compete, are not going to be prepared to compete in this world and are not going to be educated to high levels.”

The Republican-dominated Utah Legislature passed a bill April 19 that orders state officials to ignore ESEA/NCLB provisions that conflict with Utah’s education goals or that require state financing. The Utah Senate passed the bill 25-3, hours after the Utah House approved it 66-7. The vote came after weeks of intensive but failed negotiations between the U.S. Department of Education and Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who said he will sign the bill. Secretary Spellings warned in a letter that the Department might withhold $76 million of the $107 million that Utah receives in federal education money.

The U.S. Department of Education announced April 22 that it is fining the Texas Education Agency $444,282 because the state agency released information too late for schools to notify parents about their school transfer options under ESEA/NCLB this past fall. Under the law, schools found “in need of improvement” must notify parents before the school year begins that they have the right to transfer their child to another school in their school district. Because the Department waited until July 29 to approve Texas’ AYP plan, the state was not able to release its list of schools “in need of improvement” until a month after the school year had begun. According to the Department, the fine had nothing to do with the state’s defiance of the one percent cap for providing alternative tests to students with disabilities under AYP, as some press had reported. Because many other states also missed this deadline, it is unclear whether Secretary Spellings will also fine other states.

An ESEA/NCLB task force in Maine presented its findings March 30 to Republican U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins at the University of Maine. Formed a year ago by Snowe and Collins, the task force found 26 areas that need to be addressed to make the law work in Maine. The senators said they would deliver the report to Secretary Spellings, and pledged to work to change the law when it comes up for reauthorization. “We have a number of concerns about the No Child Left Behind Law,” Snowe said.

ESEA/NCLB research report update: A study released April 13 by the Northwest Evaluation Association found that although student achievement scores in reading and math have improved since ESEA/NCLB went into effect, student academic growth has apparently slowed since its passage. And a paper recently released by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing suggests that the hard-nosed reforms employed by school districts over the last decade, which are similar to the ESEA/NCLB sanctions for low-performing schools, have produced decidedly mixed results.

Taking Action Now

Let President Bush, your Senators and Representative know you expect them to honor their promise to children and public schools. Sign NEA's petition today and join the more than 12,500 signers to help schools receive the funds they so desperately need to enable all children to succeed. Share this e-mail with others who believe we must value our children, and urge them to sign the petition.

The Council of Chief State School Officers is putting together an NCLB Cost Consortium for 2005-2006, which provides an opportunity for states to pool scarce funds to accurately calculate the cost of implementing the law on a state-specific template, obtain technical assistance with the template, and create a forum for discussion of cost issues. Encourage your state to sign up for the 2005-2006 NCLB Cost Consortium.