April 8, 2005 -- Minor Change in ‘No Child Left Behind’ Law May Not Satisfy States

Two days after the state of Connecticut announced that it plans to sue the federal government over President Bush’s education law, the “No Child Left Behind" act, on the grounds that the law requires the states to spend millions of dollars on new tests without giving them federal money to cover the costs, federal Education Secretary Margaret Spelling announced a minor change in the law’s requirements for testing students with disabilities. But Spelling’s change may not be enough to satisfy Connecticut, where the attorney general says he is contacting other states to join him in taking legal action against the law, which Connecticut charges is an illegal and unconstitutional “unfunded mandate” that requires states to take actions without providing them the necessary funds. The federal law requires that students be tested for academic progress every year in grades three through eight. In a letter to Spelling in January, Connecticut state education commissioner Betty Sternberg pointed to Connecticut’s “effective 20-year history of testing in alternate years” and asked to be relieved of the requirement for annual testing, a request that Spelling refused.

The change announced by Spelling April 7 would allow schools to exempt as many as 3 percent, instead of 1 percent, of their students from a federal requirement that students be tested every year in grades three through eight. This would allow schools to use alternative ways of evaluating the progress of 3 percent of students—which might include most students with disabilities--instead of giving them the same test that are administered to all other students. Local school systems have complained that including scores on standardized tests taken by students with disabilities would lower schools’ overall test scores, which will be used to determine if the schools are succeeding or failing in making the academic progress required by the federal law.

Spelling, in a meeting attended by some state school officials, did not address two major objections raised by critics of the federal law—that it imposes an “unfunded mandate” on the states, and that it intrudes the federal government into decisions about education that are left to states and local governments under the Constitution.