Suing over NCLB Implementation

Hat Tip: Edspresso

Without a doubt, the No Child Left Behind Act has been a seismic shift in the educational landscape. Whether you oppose the law, support the law or think the law is just a good first step, the fact that education and educational accoutibility is being discussed.

Lost among all the hubbub about high stakes testing and "Adequate Yearly Progress" is what happens when schools fail to make AYP over a course of several years. One is options for children who are assigned to failing schools to find alternative schools at the school district's expense, including charter schools, private schools or other public schools. But what happens with school districts fail in that implementation. Well, I don't know, but the Alliance for School Choice and the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education are suing the Los Angeles Unified School District to find out.

The cornerstone of NCLB is that every child is entitled to attend a quality public school and those in failing schools should not be forced to remain in inadequate schools while improvements are being made. Rather, the law makes clear that it is the right of every child to attend an effective school today.

But in school districts across the nation, that promise remains unfulfilled; and to date, the sanctions to noncompliance – a cut-off of federal education funds – have gone unused.

Along with the legal actions, CURE and the Alliance for School Choice asked U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to take action against the school districts and to impose sanctions for noncompliance. These actions, the first of their kind, will in large measure determine whether NCLB will accomplish its mission of providing high-quality educational opportunities to all schoolchildren or is merely another empty promise.

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Regardless of one’s perspective on the specifics of the No Child Left Behind Act, clearly it reflected a good-faith, bipartisan attempt to bring our nation closer to achieving its moral obligations, by holding schools accountable and by providing options for children trapped in failing schools. The two are interconnected: without meaningful parental choice for children in failing schools, there can be no true accountability.

For more than 50 years since Brown v. Board of Education, our nation has struggled to make good on the sacred promise of equal educational opportunities. For many that promise has become a reality; but for millions of others, particularly low-income and disproportionately minority children, that promise remains a cruel illusion.

Under many circumstances, I do not favor the use of the courts to settle issues related to political processes, but in many cases, when the status quo has been entrenched politically, it may be the only avenue left for groups to assert their rights.

The legal process is long, arduous and rarely leads to satisfactory answers in the long haul. One suit inevitably leads to another and the battle is joined for too long. But in the end, when the political process leads to no changes, the legal process is the only thing left.