Thursday, February 24, 2005

NCLB Unconstitutional? 

Today Sam Dillon of the New York Times summarizes a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, a group composed of both Democratic and Republican state legislators, which slammed the No Child Left Behind Act as an unconstitutional intrusion of the federal government into the field of public education:

This assertion of federal authority into an area historically reserved to the states has had the effect of curtailing additional state innovations and undermining many that had occurred during the past three decades," the report said. The task force does not believe that N.C.L.B. is constitutional.
Sounds like I wrote it. According to Mr. Dillon here are the details behind the report's origin:

The National Conference, which has criticized the federal law in the past, represents the nation's 50 state legislatures, with a membership that includes 3,657 Republicans and 3,656 Democrats, as well as a few dozen elected from smaller parties, as independents or without any party affiliation. The task force worked for 10 months and held public hearings in Washington; Chicago; Salt Lake City; New York; Santa Fe, N.M.; and Portland, Ore. It also held deliberations in Savannah, Ga.

Some states are not just sitting back and taking it from Washington:
Nine state legislatures are considering various challenges to the law, and the Utah Senate is about to vote on a bill, already approved by the House, that would require state education officials to give priority to Utah's education laws rather than to the federal law. An Illinois school district filed a lawsuit against the Education Department this month in federal court, arguing that No Child Left Behind contradicted provisions of the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, known as IDEA.

It could get extremely interesting out there as we see how far states will go in challenging this legislation. All the way to the Supreme Court?

PermaLink | 2:43 AM | |

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?