Virginia Officials Decry NCLB Intrustion into Schools

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

 News stories begin to focus on NCLB's fundamental flaws, not just its 
unfunded costs


EDUCATORS DECRY LAW'S INTRUSION, NOT ITS COST
       "NO CHILD" RULES RILE VA. OFFICIALS
               Washington Post -- February 9, 2004
         by Jay Mathews and Rosalind S. Helderman       

Area school officials said the Virginia House of Delegates was 
half-right when it called the federal No Child Left Behind law intrusive 
and expensive and asked that the state be exempt.

Educators said that their objection to the law is over being told how to 
determine whether their students, and their schools, are performing 
well, and that they are less concerned about the expenses involved -- 
mainly the costs of the intricate record-keeping the law requires for 
tracking the test scores of several ethnic and economic groups of students.

"Our big beef has been less about the money and more about intrusive new 
rules," Virginia Department of Education spokesman Charles Pyle said. 
"We want to protect the good job we have been doing for accountability 
in Virginia."

U.S. Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige, in a letter sent Thursday to 
Virginia legislators, said they are entitled to ignore the law as long 
as they also forfeit all federal education funds, most of which support 
programs for disadvantaged students.

"Of course, if any state does not choose to pursue the goals of [No 
Child Left Behind] of raising the academic performance of all children 
and closing the achievement gap [between whites and minorities], the 
state may elect not to take the money," Paige said.

But Virginia, which has been honing its Standards of Learning tests 
since 1998, has argued that it has been pursuing those goals in its own 
way, with excellent results. This month, delegates voted 98 to 1 for a 
resolution asking Congress to exempt states from the No Child Left 
Behind act if the states already have rigorous standards and testing 
programs.

The resolution said that the law "represents one of the most sweeping 
intrusions into state and local control of education in the history of 
the United States" and that it will cost "literally millions of dollars 
that Virginia does not have."

Many Washington area educators agreed with the first statement, but not 
with the second.

Pyle said the department will spend $7.7 million in the next two years 
-- about 4 percent of its total spending -- to modernize computers to 
track the required data. The federal government will pay $4.5 million of 
the computer system costs.

Schools officials in the District and Maryland said they do not know yet 
how much more money they will have to spend -- beyond federal funding -- 
for technology and programs needed to comply with the No Child Left 
Behind act. But a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Education 
said educators there consider the expenditures useful in helping 
children learn, regardless of the federal law.

Some local educators, though, said they are footing more of the bill 
than is apparent.

Kathleen F. Grove, assistant superintendent for instruction in Arlington 
County, said that the county has budgeted $500,000 -- about 0.2 percent 
of its total education spending -- for No Child Left Behind, but that 
hidden costs are involved. Many staff members, she said, "are spending 
large proportions of their time reading and analyzing the regulations to 
ensure that we will implement them correctly."

And some educators said the expense isn't worth it. "There are far 
better ways for many of us to spend our time than trying to meet 
arbitrary standards that are not really standards at all," said Edgar B. 
Hatrick III, school superintendent in Loudoun County, adding that about 
half of 1 percent of his 2004 budget supports No Child Left Behind.

George Towery, principal of Cameron Elementary School in Fairfax County, 
said that "many of the No Child Left Behind requirements are not 
realistic in the first place." He cited the goal of academic proficiency 
for all students by 2014.

One of the resolution's signers, Del. Kristen J. Amundson (D-Fairfax), 
acknowledged that her main concern was not spending, but rather the part 
of the law that requires states to test immigrant children and students 
with severe learning disabilities before they are ready to be tested.

Given those concerns, one of the authors of No Child Left Behind, Rep. 
John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), said Virginia could opt out of the law -- at 
its peril. In an op-ed piece in Thursday's Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 
Boehner said the state has every right to ignore the more stringent 
testing and reporting provisions of the law, "presuming Virginia 
lawmakers are also willing to hand back the massive increase in federal 
aid the state is receiving" under the law.

Boehner said Virginia officials are sitting on $169.9 million in unspent 
federal funds to help pay for programs that will help them achieve the 
goals of No Child Left Behind. Pyle said that Virginia officials weren't 
sitting on the money, but rather that they are using it at a pace 
allowed by the law.

Thomas M. Jackson Jr., president of the Virginia Board of Education, 
said last week that he had not seen Paige's letter, though he made clear 
that all federal funding would be at risk. Jackson said Virginia 
receives too much in federal funds to make turning down the money a 
practical possibility.

Some local educators said they were even less impressed with the House 
resolution than with the federal law. Gregory Croghan, principal of 
Edison High School in Fairfax County, said he thought it was ironic for 
Virginia legislators to complain about the federal government imposing 
more education costs when the same legislature "has never provided 
significant funding" to support Virginia's own Standards of Learning 
testing system.

Eric J. Smith, school superintendent in Anne Arundel County, said that 
"we can argue about the money needed and whose budget is responsible, 
but it is a waste of all of our time to argue about whether or not we 
should achieve the No Child Left Behind goals. It is evident, since the 
No Child Left Behind goals have not been achieved by any state or 
district, that it is not enough for states to simply have good standards 
and testing programs."