NAACP Law Suit and NCLB

["Peter Majoy" <pwmjoy@earthlink.net>]

The  Connecticut NAACP intervened on the side of the federal government  in the Ct. Attorney General's suit against NCLB as an unfunded mandate. One member of this list always circles back to the assertion that  the Ct. NAACP intervention calls for the implementation of the  "spirit and letter" of NCLB. 

I contacted the Hartford Ct. branch of the NAACP whose president is Scot X. Eisdale and made an enquiry. Their first response was to send me "Fact Sheet on Connecticut  v. Spellings" produced by the Connecticut State Conference of NAACP Branches. Here are a few excerpts from the document: (1) "For certain procedural reasons the NAACP is put on the same side as the United States in the case, but that does not mean the two agree on everything in NCLB." (2) Referring to the the civil rights lawyers representing them, the document states that "The participation of these organizations is not intended as a blanket endorsement of the No Child Left Behind Act."

On the other hand, it is clear from the document that the position of the NAACP opposes the notion that NCLB is an "unfunded mandate". Expression of this position can be seen in the following quotes from the document: (1) "NCLB and predecessor laws were designed to ensure that the federal government would assist states and localities in meeting the needs of disadvantaged children. The laws were not designed to take over state responsibilities to provide an adequate education for the state's children." (2) "Connecticut sanctions an education finance system which provides much greater resources to wealthy school districts with wealthy students than to poorer school districts with disadvantaged students. This year Education Week,  the respected publication serving the education community gave Connecticut, a very wealthy state, an overall grade of only a "C" for equity in the distribution of educational resources."

Because the fact sheet provided proof, in my opinion, that the Ct. NAACP could not be calling for the implementation of the "spirit and letter" of NCLB based on the first two quotes presented above, I wrote back to Mr. Eisdale. He responded by recommending I contact the lawyers in the case. I have not had time to do that. 

It is clear to me that the NAACP is caught between a rock and a hard place. The document refers to Brown  v.  Board of Education  as an "unfunded mandate"  requiring "states spend money to remedy the racially segregated conditions they created in public schools." If the 
NAACP does not argue on the side of the federal government, however awkward that alignment is, its passivity would call into question one of the most important civil rights decisions of the Supreme Court. Furthermore, the Connecticut handling of educational finances has been a travesty vis a vis poor school systems in the state. Since NCLB is a continuation of ESEA, not to support NCLB is equivalent to not supporting the legal mandate that states fund the educational needs of all students. For sure, the Ct. NAACP had to risk appearing to support the "spirit and letter" of NCLB in order to secure its historical support for equitable funding across economic boundary lines separating poor school districts from wealthy ones. In fact, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a co-sponsor  of the "Joint Organizational Statement on No Child Left Behind (NCLB)", calls for substantial changes to NCLB. 

In summary, the Ct. NAACP "Fact Sheet on Connecticut  v. Spellings" and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's "Joint Organizational Statement on No Child Left Behind (NCLB)", cannot be used to support implementation of both the "spirit and letter" of NCLB. What they do support is the duty of states to adequately and equitably fund education making sure that disadvantaged children are taken cared of. What we have here is an example of the old idiom that "politics makes strange bed fellows." There is no doubt, then, that (1) NCLB must be overhauled and that it is  deeply flawed and, in many ways, a cynical law using a general goal of achievement for all students as a mask for supporting the forces of privatization, corporate greed, and, ironically, an insidious form of racism and the scapegoating of all classes of challenged students; (2) states have a legal obligation to fairly fund education which they have not done thereby sharing the guilt of continuing to structure an educational system that is unfair to large numbers of students; (3) federal funding of education involves two steps, authorization and appropriation. The second step needs to reflect dollar for dollar the first step; (4) Title I funding must not be linked to NCLB as NCLB currently exists. 



Peter Majoy
pwmjoy@earthlink.net
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