Six States Support NEA's Challenge of NCLB's Unfunded Mandates
News release from Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager announced today (April 4, 2006) she has joined the State of Connecticut in an amicus brief in the case of the Pontiac School District v the U.S. Secretary of Education – a landmark case arguing the federal government cannot impose unfunded and costly educational mandates to state and local governments through the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. “The overreaching No Child Left Behind provisions seek not only to strip local control from democratically elected Wisconsin school districts, they would also impose a crushing tax burden upon Wisconsin taxpayers without our consent,” Lautenschlager said. “Not only is this one-size-fits-all federal educational mandate an affront to Wisconsin’s tradition of local control -- it’s a violation of the unfunded mandates provisions of federal law.” The case is now on appeal in U.S. District Court in Eastern Michigan. Filers of the brief argue that although the federal government provides only 5% to 8% of total educational funding, NCLB dictates wide-ranging policies from teacher qualifications to timing of student assessments. These are decisions that have traditionally belonged to locally elected school districts throughout Wisconsin, but which would be overruled by the intrusive and encompassing federal act. Lautenschlager cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s own clear record of identifying education as a vital responsibility of state and local government, and state and local government control. This special responsibility, directly engaging parents and schoolteachers district by district in Wisconsin, is nullified by NCLB – and replaces it with a crushing new tax burden upon working Wisconsin citizens who can ill afford it. And while the federal government has generally directed some educational policies that relate to poverty and high-needs children, NCLB aims to now cover all school children – and yet provides no financial support to do so. Rather, NCLB expressly requires states such as Wisconsin to spend its own limited resources and funds on multiple unfunded mandates, directed not by communities such as Milwaukee, Appleton, Eau Claire or Superior, to fit their own needs, as has been accomplished since statehood – but by Washington. |
Six states including Wisconsin, as well as the District of Columbia, the governor of Pennsylvania, school administrators, and state and local elected officials went on record in support of the National Education Association’s legal challenge to unfunded federal mandates in No Child Left Behind.
“To get an idea of why support for this lawsuit is snowballing, just take a look at the recent series of blows to No Child Left Behind,” said Reg Weaver, president of NEA. “We learned that schools don’t have the money they need to comply, they’re cutting back on core subjects to teach to the test, and they’re going to suffer even more from historic budget cuts pending in Congress.”
No Child Left Behind states that “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to . . . mandate a State or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this Act.” NEA filed a lawsuit arguing that this provision has been violated since the law is underfunded by approximately $40 billion with Congress having cut another $1 billion last year, forcing states and school districts to foot the bill themselves.
Approximately 80% of school districts said they have costs associated with the law not covered by federal funding, according to a report released last week from the Center on Education Policy. And the law’s heavy emphasis on reading and math tests has prompted thousands of schools to reduce, and even eliminate, time spent on other subjects, the report said.
Statistics reported to the Education Department reveal that 27% of schools failed to meet “adequate yearly progress” under the law for 2004-05, a 1% increase from 2003-04. Schools that fail to meet adequate yearly progress face stiff penalties. The failure rate is significantly higher than the administration had anticipated, NEA said, indicating that the law has set schools up for failure, not improvement.
The states of Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, along with the governor of Pennsylvania, the American Association of School Administrators, and state and local officials in California on March 31 filed four separate amicus briefs supporting NEA’s position. On March 22, NEA, several of its affiliates, and nine school districts announced they were appealing the ruling in Pontiac v. Spellings. The case was dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Freeman of the Eastern District of Michigan in November.
“Although the federal government provides only 5% to 8% of total educational funding, through the NCLB Act the federal government is now dictating education policy on a wide variety of education issues, from teacher qualifications to the timing of annual student assessments,” wrote the states. At its passage, states understood “that neither states nor local school districts would be required to spend their own funds to comply with the NCLB mandates.”
“Parents in communities where school districts are financially strained were promised that this law would close the achievement gaps,” said Weaver. “Ultimately the students are paying the costs of this bill. Core subject areas are being cut in schools all across the country to allow more time in the day to teach to the test solely in the area of math and English, leaving our students ill prepared to compete in a global economy.”
The American Association of School Administrators, representing superintendents nationwide, said in its brief: “…the Secretary’s insistence that states and school districts fully comply with the NCLB mandates no matter how far short federal funding falls from covering the costs of doing so, has forced states and school districts to divert funds away from other educational programs and priorities that, in their professional judgment, are essential to a sound educational system.”
Additional information, including copies of the briefs, is available at: www.nea.org/lawsuit.
Resource page on 'No Child Left Behind' \ ESEA
Posted April 3, 2006