Seeing Red (and Blue)

NEA Today, Oct 2005

Is common sense coming back? After three years and much agony, a national consensus is emerging that the so-called No Child Left Behind law needs major changes, not just small adjustments. That and some serious funding.

WHILE NEA takes the lead with its "fix and fund" campaign, we're joined by states from across the spectrum-from Utah, the most Republican state in the union, to mostly blue Connecticut.

In Utah, despite Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings' threat to yank the state's federal funding, legislators passed a law that puts their own accountability system ahead of the federal rules. Likewise, in staunchly Republican Texas, officials were defying her inflexible standards for students with learning disabilities. And, in Connecticut, state education leaders snubbed Spellings' suggestion that they find the cash to water down their testing program with new multiple-choice-only questions.

But Spellings' financial pressure could be prevented if NEA's lawsuit, filed last spring with school districts from across the country, succeeds. The basis of the suit is a clause in the law that, as NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin pointed out, you don't need a law degree to understand: "Nothing in this act shall be construed to... mandate a State or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this Act."

GOING ONLINE

Ten years ago, your students might have goggled-especially on test days-but probably not Googled. Now, 93 percent of American classrooms are wired for Internet access, according to Education Week's Technology Counts 2005.