Connecticut sues over NCLB

Connecticut today became the first bold state to sue the federal government over the outrageous testing requirements contained in the No Child Left Behind provisions (NCLB) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Authorization Act of 2001 (ESEA). From the AP:

The lawsuit argues the law is illegal because it requires expensive standardized tests and other school programs it doesn't pay for. It asks a federal judge to declare that state and local money can't be used to meet the law's goals.

"Our message today is give up the unfunded mandates, or give us the money," said Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

The legal action is the latest chapter in a heated fight between Connecticut and the federal government over standardized testing.

Connecticut currently tests students in grades four, six and eight. But, under No Child Left Behind, the state is required to start testing children in grades three, five and seven this school year.

State education officials say that they already know that minority and poor children don't perform as well as their wealthy, white peers, and that additional tests aren't going to tell them more.

The federal government cites annual testing is a cornerstone of the law, and U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has repeatedly denied requests from the state for more flexibility.

There are two main thrusts to the testing provisions of NCLB: One, they are used as a yardstick, if you will, to judge the performance of students against each individual state's standards. Each state long before NCLB fell prey to the "standards" movement and developed academic benchmarks for students in all subject areas. As I am not from Connecticut, I cannot speak with much authority about their standards. But I do know Wisconsin's standards pretty well, and they are thorough. A student who scores "proficient" or higher has truly done well.

The second function of the NCLB testing regime is to act as a device for figuring out which schools are failing which students. After a state develops its standards, writes tests to measure them, and administers the tests to students, the data collected are disaggregated for every measurable sub-category of student you can imagine. Each school gets back its test results broken down by sex, economic status, English language fluency, special needs status, and race. Every school must make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in all subject areas and in all measurable subgroups. (What makes a subgroup measurable varies by state; in Wisconsin, for example, in any school, a group with fewer than 40 students is not reported separately.) Schools that do not make AYP are placed on a list of Schools Identified for Improvement (SIFI), and depending on how long a school has been on the list, various punishments are laden on the schools, up to and including reconstitution. By 2014, all measurable sub-categories--including special education students and non-native English speakers--must show 95% proficiency for a school not to be SIFI.

The resoning behind all of this is twofold, and, in a very real way, makes a lot of sense. One, it is important for parents to know both how well their children are doing in terms of meeting state standards. This used to be conveyed through such arcane methods as parent-teacher conferences, report cards, and news that children had been promoted to the next grade. This is no longer enough; test results are the preferred method for distributing this information now. Second, it is important for states, districts, schools, and parents to know in what ways schools are failing which students. These days you hear a lot about the "achievement gap": We have known this gap--high achievement by wealthy and/or white students compared to low achievement for poor and/or minority students--has been highly visible for decades through such things as SAT resuls, graduation rates, and anecdotal evidence provided by pioneering education researchers such as Jonathon Kozol. However, this gap becomes more and more apparent the more we make available disaggregated testing data--and, therefore, the more we test students.

So this testing regime does exist for a reason that is not solely to drive public schools into the ground, though the way the feds have chosen to implement it, you wouldn't know. The regime of testing is so time-consuming that it is crowding out funding for the arts and physical education. The need for impossibly high levels of proficiency are driving the rest of the budget into skill and drill exercises for students. And the testing itself is absurdly expensive, which makes the Fed's claims that "the funds have been provided for testing" surreally idiotic:

The federal government is providing Connecticut with $5.8 million this fiscal year to pay for the testing, [Connecticut Education Commissioner Betty] Sternberg said.

She estimates federal funds will fall $41.6 million short of paying for staffing, program development, standardized tests and other costs associated with implementing the law through 2008.

The question NCLB advocates need to answer is whether or not the significant annual cost of this extensive testing regime is worth it for the data that we collect. I mean, don't we already know there's an achievement gap? Isn't the infusion of states' standards into classrooms a good start, with alternate-year testing a fine measure? Wouldn't it be wiser to use $40 million per state for professional development or to recruit the best and brightest college graduates to teach at the worst-performing schools? Okay, so that's more than one question, and, I know, the answers are not multiple-choice. But how the administration and states all over the country handle the implementation of No Child Left Behind is probably the toughest test we face.