NYTimes on Growing State Opposition to NCLB

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

                   PRESIDENT'S INITIATIVE TO SHAKE UP EDUCATION IS 
FACING PROTESTS
                                                      New York Times -- 
March 8, 2004
                                                                    by 
Sam Dillon

Democratic legislators in Oklahoma were so unhappy with President Bush's 
No Child Left Behind school improvement law that they drafted a 
resolution calling on Congress to overhaul it. But at the last minute 
one of the state's most conservative Republicans, State Representative 
Bill Graves, stepped up with his own suggestion: Tell Congress to repeal 
it entirely.

The resolution passed, and Mr. Graves got a standing ovation.

"Some of my Republican colleagues grumbled because they don't like to 
see the Democrats jumping on President Bush," Mr. Graves said. "But I've 
always thought Bush was wrong to push that law."

There is little chance that Congress will amend, much less repeal, the 
law in an election year, experts said, but the unusual alliance in the 
Oklahoma Legislature reflected the widespread outcry that the 
president's signature education initiative has provoked. Like similar 
measures being debated in legislatures across the country, the Oklahoma 
resolution brought together liberal Democrats and states' rights 
Republicans, angry over what they see as a cumbersome federal intrusion 
on local schools.

Legislation or resolutions that call on Congress to amend or repeal the 
law, prohibit spending state money to carry it out, or otherwise 
criticize the law have been passed by one or both legislative chambers 
in at least 12 states. And the actions reflect broader public discontent.

"The pot is definitely boiling on this law," Senator Arlen Specter, the 
powerful Republican chairman of an education subcommittee of the Senate 
Appropriations Committee, said on Friday, noting that 138 Pennsylvania 
superintendents protested provisions of the law in a meeting Monday. 
"The law is good on standards and accountability, but it clearly needs 
some modifications, because it's going through growing pains."

Mr. Specter invited several of the superintendents to the Senate, where 
they and Education Secretary Rod Paige testified on Thursday. Mr. 
Specter said he wanted Mr. Paige to hear the superintendents' criticisms.

Susan Aspey, a Department of Education spokeswoman, said that the 
responses of the legislatures and protests by some superintendents were 
to be expected as provisions of the 2002 law, which seeks to shake up 
public education, are put into place.

"One hundred or so superintendents and a handful of state resolutions, 
only a few of which have actually passed both houses, hardly qualify as 
a widespread rebellion," Ms. Aspey said. "No one should be surprised, 
and we certainly aren't, that there is some anxiety about change. It's a 
sign the law is working."

Mr. Bush is portraying the law as one of his major domestic 
achievements. At a fund-raiser on Thursday in Santa Clara, Calif., he 
called it "a really good piece of legislation."

Yet the outpouring of objections from state legislatures has forced the 
White House and Department of Education officials to travel the country, 
putting out brush fires.

In Utah, the White House won a hard-fought victory. Last month the 
Republican-controlled Utah House embarrassed the administration by 
passing a bill to prohibit Utah authorities from spending state money to 
carry out the federal law. But after three visits to the state by Bush 
administration officials, the Utah Senate consigned the bill to a 
committee, where Senator David L. Gladwell, a Republican sponsor of the 
bill, said it would be studied for the foreseeable future.

But criticism of the federal law appears to be continuing elsewhere. The 
Idaho Legislature last week approved a resolution praising the law's 
objective of raising student achievement, but urging major changes. On 
Wednesday, the Connecticut Senate unanimously approved a resolution 
asking Congress to grant waivers from the law's provisions to states 
like Connecticut that have high education standards.

In Oklahoma, a resolution introduced by a Democratic legislator 
criticized as "inappropriate" provisions in the federal law that require 
special education students to achieve at the same rate as other 
students, and used the same adjective for a passage that would classify 
thousands of veteran teachers across the nation as "not highly qualified."

Mr. Graves offered, and Democrats in the state House quickly accepted, 
an amendment saying Congress should repeal the law because it lacked 
constitutional authority over education and had not provided financing 
for the law's mandates.

On Feb. 24 the Oklahoma House approved the resolution.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/08/education/08CHIL.html