Sunday New York Times Page One On NCLB "Tough Sell"

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

The following ran on the front page of this Sunday's New York Times:

BUSH EDUCATION OFFICIALS FIND NEW LAW A TOUGH SELL
New York Times -- Sunday, February 22, 2004
by Sam Dillon

Salt Lake City -- Feb. 20  It was 8 p.m., and Ken Meyer was smiling 
gamely from a gloomy high school stage at an audience of disgruntled 
teachers and parents to whom he had been introduced as "a bigwig from 
Washington," come to Utah to explain President Bush's centerpiece 
education law.

A former math teacher was at a microphone, arguing that it would cost $1 
billion for the state to carry out the law's requirements, while the 
federal government gives Utah only about $100 million.

"That's like sending a child for $10 worth of groceries and giving him 
just $1 to buy them," the former teacher said.

"Let me correct that," Mr. Meyer interrupted wearily, wading in as if 
with a fire extinguisher, spraying official statistics on behalf of the 
Department of Education, where he is a deputy assistant secretary. 
"Believe me, I've traveled to 40 states to talk about this law, and I've 
done the math. It's very well funded."

As he campaigns for re-election, President Bush hopes to capitalize on 
the law, known as No Child Left Behind, as one of the pillars of his 
domestic agenda. But the Democratic presidential candidates have made it 
a frequent target of criticism and ridicule. And things are not going 
that well even in this, one of the most Republican of states.

Not only the law's financing, but provisions that expand standardized 
testing to raise achievement and that label schools as underperforming 
when even small groups of students miss proficiency targets have stirred 
discontent nationwide among educators and local politicians. So Mr. 
Meyer's job is to barnstorm the country, part good-will diplomat, part 
flak-catcher, calming emotions and clarifying misunderstandings.

He is one of many Bush administration officials traveling to explain the 
700-page law. Since Feb. 8, at least 10 other department and White House 
officials have spoken in nine states, although Susan Aspey, a 
spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said the pace of travel had 
been consistent for the last year.

"I've been in some, I don't want to say hostile, but very contentious 
environments" in recent months, Mr. Meyer said. "Places where I wondered 
whether I'd get out of there with my skin intact. This law is largely 
misunderstood by the public because of its enormity, so people get 
emotional about it, and you've got pent-up frustrations."

Mr. Meyer's trip this week was the second Bush administration mission in 
two weeks to Utah. A five-person delegation this month defended the law 
to lawmakers, but the Republican-controlled Utah House nevertheless 
voted 64 to 8 on Feb. 10 not to comply with any provisions not fully 
financed by federal money. That measure now awaits Senate action.

Senator Dave Gladwell, a Republican who is the Utah bill's Senate 
sponsor, said many of his colleagues felt ambivalent about the measure.

"We don't want to embarrass President Bush or his administration, and 
yet we're kind of sensitive to our state sovereignty," he said.

Gov. Olene S. Walker, a Republican, said in an interview that she 
expected "heated discussion" of the bill in the Senate. She declined to 
say whether she would sign it if approved.

The Feb. 10 vote by the Utah House was the strongest action by any state 
legislature to date, but more than a dozen other states have passed or 
introduced laws or resolutions challenging the federal law or 
commissioning studies of the costs of carrying it out.

Last month, the Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates passed 
a resolution, 98 to 1, urging Congress to exempt Virginia from the law. 
That vote came after Rod Paige, the education secretary, and other 
administration officials met with Virginia lawmakers, said James H. 
Dillard II, chairman of the House Education Committee.

"Six of us met with Paige," Mr. Dillard, a Republican, said. "He looked 
us in the eye and said, `It's fully funded.' We looked him back in the 
eye and said, `We don't think so.' "

"We got platitudes and stonewalls, but no corrective action," he said.

Secretary Paige took action on one part of the law on Thursday, 
announcing that test scores of recent immigrants who did not speak 
English would no longer be considered in determining whether a school 
was meeting annual targets for academic progress.

That should mean that fewer schools will be judged as "needing 
improvement," a label that requires schools to carry out costly remedial 
measures and can result in removal of their staffs. Still, experts 
predict that within a few years a majority of the country's 90,000 
schools will receive the label.

Last fall, 245 of Utah's 810 schools were put on a watch list because 
they had failed to make "adequate yearly progress," said Steven O. 
Laing, Utah's state school superintendent. Many had been considered 
excellent schools, but ended up on the list because one small group of 
students  fifth-grade special education students, for instance  had 
failed to reach academic targets.

In a meeting with Mr. Meyer on Tuesday, several Republican senators 
asked questions reflecting concerns about schools put on watch lists in 
their districts. Mr. Meyer described the law as a tool that helps states 
to measure school performance, while giving them the flexibility to set 
their own proficiency benchmarks.

"It's a pretty dynamic business management model," Mr. Meyer said.

After the meeting, Senator Bill Wright, a Republican who is chairman of 
the Senate Education Committee, said Mr. Meyer had done "a great job."

"But we still have a difference of opinion about how N.C.L.B. would 
affect Utah," Senator Wright said.

An hour later, Mr. Meyer met with school superintendents. He heard 
Steven C. Norton, superintendent of a rural district in northern Utah, 
report that parents were upset that two schools had been put on a watch 
list because the law required that 95 percent of students take the 
standardized tests and one student less than that qualifying threshold 
had shown up on testing day.

"These are die-hard conservative Republicans, and they feel that this is 
like crying wolf when they see their school labeled for frivolous 
reasons," Mr. Norton said in an interview that he had told Mr. Meyer.

That evening, addressing 50 educators and parents at Kearns High School 
in a Salt Lake City suburb, Mr. Meyer said that American schools needed 
to improve so that workers could compete for jobs in a globalized 
economy. The law, he said, empowered educators by identifying students 
who needed special help and resources.

Russel Sias, a retired engineer and registered Republican whose daughter 
is a middle school teacher, said to a reporter at the meeting: "I feel 
like we're hearing the best vacuum cleaner salesman in the world. 
They're going to label every school in the country as failing, and they 
call it empowerment?"

Rebecca Christensen, who earns $26,000 a year teaching sixth grade, told 
the crowd of the frustrations of trying to raise test scores at a school 
where student turnover was high and parental involvement low.

"How many of the congressmen who wrote this law have ever been in a 
classroom?" she asked.

Mr. Meyer listened, and then congratulated Ms. Christensen and the other 
teachers in the audience for working in education under difficult 
conditions.

"You're all on the front line, and I applaud you," he said.

Then he added, "I like to quote the president: `There's not a school in 
this country that doesn't need improvement.' "

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/22/national/22CHIL.html