Stories ignored NEA's history on NCLB

WASHINGTON — Last Wednesday's suit by the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, against the federal No Child Left Behind Act received plenty of news media coverage.

In some of the nation's largest newspapers, the suit received front-page billing, as well it should have.

After all, it isn't every day that a legal challenge is launched against a program that has been the centerpiece of President Bush's education agenda for the past four years. And when the challenge is brought by a union that represents 2.7 million elementary and secondary school teachers, it is that much more compelling.

The suit alleges that the law, which requires public schools to show "adequate student progress" in reading and math verified by annual standardized tests, is underfunded and creating a serious financial burden on cash-strapped local school districts.

Nine local districts in three states have joined the NEA suit, which says Congress should more than double current spending on the law from $12.7 billion this year to $28 billion.

"Today, we're standing up for children whose parents are saying 'no more' to costly federal regulations that drain money from classrooms and spend it on paperwork, bureaucracy and big testing companies," NEA President Reg Weaver said in announcing the suit.

But many, if not most of the stories reporting the suit left out one essential ingredient of the story: The NEA has long been an opponent of No Child Left Behind, opposing it almost immediately after it was proposed by Bush in the 2000 presidential campaign and campaigning against it with money and political pressure as it made its way through Congress in 2001.

Aside from what it saw as too much federal involvement in local schools, one of the provisions of the law the teacher union frowned on requires teacher qualifications and quality, as well as student performance, to improve.

And once it was enacted, the union continued its opposition, using the argument that not enough money was put behind the law to allow it to be effectively implemented. It is a charge that has been taken up by Democrats in Congress and one that was used against Bush by Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 campaign.

In the third Bush-Kerry debate last October in Tempe, Ariz., the Democratic candidate said, "The president who talks about No Child Left Behind refused to fully fund — by $28 billion — that particular program so you can make a difference in the lives of those young people. . . . The president reneged on his promise to fund No Child Left Behind."