Maine irked by NCLB mandate Officials seek to sue feds to get funding

AUGUSTA – Describing the No Child Left Behind act as an unfunded mandate, state officials are seeking authorization to sue the federal government for the money needed to make it work.

Senate Majority Leader Michael Brennan, D-Portland, submitted the proposal to the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee on Wednesday. The bill asks for the state’s attorney general to bring suit against the federal government demanding either the money needed to implement NCLB or relief from the federal mandate. The committee is expected to take up the measure later this month.

Brennan, other lawmakers, Education Commissioner Susan Gendron and Maine Education Association President Rob Walker outlined their concerns about NCLB during an afternoon press conference at the State House.

“It is the single largest intrusion by the federal government into educational policy in the history of the country,” Brennan said of the law.

Brennan said the law received wide bipartisan support when it passed Congress in 2001, but that the federal government never lived up to its promise to assist the states with adapting their education systems to comply with its many regulations.

He compared NCLB to laws governing special education that were passed in the 1970s. He said the federal government promised at that time to provide 40 percent of the cost of implementing those provisions. The state never received more than 20 percent, he said.

“The promise is not being met,” said Brennan. “This is the time for the state to stop and say we’re not going to go down the same road without funding.”

Brennan noted that a bipartisan task force formed by Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins reached similar conclusions when it released its findings last week after a year-long review of NCLB. The task force found 26 areas that needed to be addressed to make the law work in Maine.

“While the initial goals of the act were good, this program as it is now doesn’t work in rural states like Maine,” he said. “Our state is already way ahead of these goals with the standards we put forward with our Learning Results curriculum.”

He said the Legislature recognized the discrepancies in the law early on and responded last year by ordering a study to determine the long-term financial implications of the measure.

Commissioner Gendron said Maine joined with 13 other states in developing a template that measured the difference between what NCLB required and the amount of money the federal government needed to provide to back it up.

The study revealed that NCLB will cost the state $22.5 million over a six-year period spanning 2003-08. The federal government is expected to chip in just $11.4 million during that same period. Gendron predicted that once the state calculates additional information requested from local school districts, the shortfall would be even greater.

No Child Left Behind requires states to implement standardized testing and performance tracking for most grades. It also asks states to identify and sanction schools that fail to meet an established set of guidelines for schools and teachers.

Maine had adopted its own testing component under its Learning Results program. Gendron said testing needed to be expanded to cover all but grades one and two to meet the guidelines of NCLB.

An Associated Press report out of Washington, D.C., published Wednesday indicated the Bush administration is considering making some changes to the NCLB law to favor states that can prove progress in raising student achievement. But no formal announcements have been made and officials with the U.S. Department of Education declined to comment.

During Wednesday’s public hearing in Augusta, Maine Education Association President Rob Walker referred to No Child Left Behind as “an ill-advised, poorly designed program that most educators feel is not best for kids.”

He said the recent cost study “verified” what educators feared “all along” about the inability of the government to fund the program. In a challenge to President George Bush and Congress, Walker added, “If you want it, pay for it.”

House majority leader Glenn Cummings, D-Portland, said he visited that city’s schools on Tuesday. He said many pupils were from “the plains of Afghanistan and the deserts of the Sudan” and are not proficient in the English language. Those children were required to pass mandated tests they can’t even understand, he said.

“It doesn’t get us where we want to,” Cummings said.