Locals should control education

Early on, critics of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind law balked at the heavy handed, top-down nature of the federal education initiative.

Four years later, the National Conference of State Legislatures has declared the law flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional. A new report by the organization says NCLB has usurped state and local control of public schools. Particularly troublesome was a finding that NCLB conflicts with federal special-education requirements.

No surprise, the states have resisted the requirements of the federal act since its inception. Utah is among about a dozen states where lawmakers have introduced legislation and resolutions that are critical of No Child Left Behind. HB135, sponsored by Rep. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, would give Utah's educational goals priority over NCLB. Meanwhile, HJR3, introduced by Rep. Kory Holdaway, R-Taylorsville, who is a public school teacher, says the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students should be the measure of Utah schools and student achievement. NCLB requires multiple tests and public reports. The Senate passed the resolution Friday afternoon. Dayton's bill will be addressed next week.

Both bills represent a more reasoned approach than earlier threats to waive federal funding for schools because of the heavy constraints that come with federal programs. As a state where per pupil funding is the lowest in the nation, Utah can ill-afford to turn its back on federal money, although it comprises only about 8 percent of the overall state budget.

But it can, and should, make a statement about NCLB. NCLB flies in the face of America's proud tradition of local control of its public schools. Its assessment model was so flawed that test participation rates among all students and certain groups, such as ethnic minorities, weighed as heavily as the test outcomes themselves. Special education students were tested on grade level, regardless what their individual education plans indicated. As a result, many schools with strong academic traditions were deemed to be failing under the federal standards. Talk about getting off on the wrong foot.

To the federal government's credit, the Department of Education has worked to refine NCLB. Just this past week, the Department of Education agreed that Utah's teacher licensing rules meet NCLB's highly qualified teacher standards. Earlier, the federal government said less than half of Utah's elementary school students were considered highly qualified.

Other refinements to NCLB have taken place over the past four years, but the early experiences have left a bitter taste in a lot of state lawmakers' mouths. Not only has the Department of Education created higher standards, it promised funding for the federal accountability program that has not fully materialized. States were saddled with yet another unfunded federal mandate.

No small wonder that state lawmakers across the country are critical of NCLB. Judging by the tenor of the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislators' report, further improvements to NCLB are needed. Descriptors such as restrictive, unworkable, impractical and inflexible are hardly the picture of "adequate yearly progress." As NCLB comes up for renewal in 2007, it is hoped that some of the issues raised by state legislatures will have been addressed by the Bush administration and Congress.