Connecticut to challenge No Child Left Behind

[BuffMacchio]

Connecticut to challenge education law


CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/04/06/no.child.left.behind.ap/index.html)

Wednesday, April 6, 2005 Posted: 10:31 AM EDT (1431 GMT)

HARTFORD, Connecticut (AP) -- Connecticut is preparing a lawsuit to challenge President Bush's No Child Left Behind education law, and become the first state to challenge the federal mandate in court.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Tuesday the federal lawsuit will contend the law illegally and unconstitutionally requires states and communities to spend millions more than the federal government provides for test development and school reform programs.

"This law is outrageously wrong. It's bad education policy, but it's also blatantly illegal," Blumenthal said.

While other states have questioned the law and asked the federal government and Congress to make changes, they have not gone to court. Blumenthal said he anticipates that other states will join his lawsuit. Signed in 2002, the law's aim is to have all students in public schools proficient in reading and math by 2014.

The U.S. Department of Education criticized Connecticut's looming lawsuit, pointing to large achievement gaps between the state's minority and white students as a reason Connecticut schools should be held accountable.

"The basis for the state's lawsuit appears to rest on a flawed cost study of the No Child Left Behind Act that creates inflated projections built upon questionable estimates and misallocation of costs," the statement said.

[desflood]

Good. It's about damn time somebody said out loud and officially that No Child Left Behind is a disaster.

[MannyIsGod]

Des, people have been saying that out loud for some time now, but nobody listens to them. Have a talk with a few of IDRA's people, they just loooooooooooooooooove NCLB.

[desflood]

Sorry, what I mean to say is, finally somebody is going to MAKE people listen.

[exstatic]

Unfunded/underfunded mandates should be illegal.

BTW, I know several teachers that believe that NCLB is simply a way to torpedo public schools so that vouchers fly.

[MannyIsGod]

Oh, I've heard that theory quite a bit. I must say, I tend to agree.

[RobinsontoDuncan]

My son said that many of his peers, the ones taking regular courses (he's not retarded he's in AP classes), learn almost nothing as a result of all the standardized tests other than how to pass... standardized tests. Virginia's tests are called SOL tests, short for something but they are the mantra of every school board in the state. I know my cousin complains about your tas or toss or something tests in Texas a lot to. The thing is, the federal government has cut funding to education several times since this No Child Left Behind Act

[billboardbill]

Just because a child is in regular classes does not mean he/she is retarded. Some children have a hard time and the regular classes are the place for them...................
Be happy and you are lucky that your child is such a brain.

[Kori Ellis]

Just because a child is in regular classes does not mean he/she is retarded. Some children have a hard time and the regular classes are the place for them...................
Be happy and you are lucky that your child is such a brain.


He wasn't saying that. He was saying his son wasn't retarded and in AP classes, because he didn't want people to assume that just because he said his son wasn't in regular classes that his son was in Special Education or redemial classes.

[bigzak25]

this just exposes another problem in the education system. teacher's shouldn't be teaching kids how to pass the tests. they should be teaching a curriculum that if learned, will allow the students to pass the tests. sure i could see a day or two for drills and or practice, but that's it.

[RobinsontoDuncan]

Yeah I wasn't saying the people in regular classes are retarded.... and on second thought i could probably have used diffrent language there, but Kori got what I was saying right, and if anyone was offended by my saying retarded I am sorry, I wasn't thinking about how that sounds.


teacher's shouldn't be teaching kids how to pass the tests. they should be teaching a curriculum that if learned, will allow the students to pass the tests. sure i could see a day or two for drills and or practice, but that's it.

I agree Zach, that is something I have found very disturbing, when my daughter was in high school, these tests were just starting out and I saw first hand the dumbing down of cirriculum, I dont think it was as severe before NCLB, because when you say everyone has to be pass proficient you can either wave a wond that makes everyone on an intellectually higher plateau or you can make the tests easier to pass.

My daughter decided to take her senior year off and took all easy classes (she had her mother sign her schedule, I didn't know what she was taking until the middle of the spring) and so she took a few of the new lower level classes for electives, one of them was world history (she had already taken AP Euro, which would be considered the upper level for that subject) and the class spent ONE DAY on the French revolution, just one. They started the Napoleonic wars at the congress of vienna. I remember finding this out and calling the school board in a rage, what happens to all those kids that hadn't already studied such subject matter in depth when they go to college? Maybe the colleges are dumbing down their curriculum too.

If that's true then I see some of the more elite universities accepting less students from public schools and drawing more heavily from the private schools which dont have such mandates on them. Can you imagine the new class distinctions? Harvard would once again be the Rockefellar University, a very distrubing idea.

[MannyIsGod]

Maybe the colleges are dumbing down their curriculum too.

Oh hell yeah they are. UTSA is a prime example of a university filled with non university level students. Yet, many of them leave with a degree.

However, I also feel that has much to do with the school being severly underfunded and the focus drifting away from academics.

[The Ressurrected One]

Hopefully, the suit will result in a disbanding of the NEA and the Teacher's union...then, and only then, can the community begin to educate their children according to local standards with local dollars again.

[Supreme Allah]

The No Child Left behind act is a bill that was designed to hold back inner city youths. It punishes schools, and the children in them, who dont have the budget to get materials needed for a proper education. It needs to die a horrific death.

[The Ressurrected One]

The No Child Left behind act is a bill that was designed to hold back inner city youths. It punishes schools, and the children in them, who dont have the budget to get materials needed for a proper education. It needs to die a horrific death.
We hear the same whining about surbaban schools...

The whole public education system needs to die a quick and horrific death. Let's re-invent it from a local perspective with local control.

[JoeChalupa]

Local control is only as good as the school district that represents it.
Teaching to a test is the problem and lack of parental involvement.

[The Ressurrected One]

Local control is only as good as the school district that represents it.
Teaching to a test is the problem and lack of parental involvement.
Well, at least then the local authorities can be held accountable for the product of their educational system instead of everyone pointing their finger at the big bad U.S. Government.

Then, parents can go back to selecting residence based on quality of schools...which is what we did until the Robin Hood plan here in Texas started stealing from my school district to pump money down a bottomless pit of the more apathetic school districts.

[JoeChalupa]

Well I'm of the belief that every American deserves an equal quality of education and it shouldn't be based on one's income level and I don't consider the Robin Hood plan "stealing". I guess when roads are fixed in richer neighborhoods while streets are left in disaray in poorer neighborhoods is "stealing" also?
Just saying.