Bush Administration Rejects Flexibility on School Performance under No Child Left Behind

Bush Administration Rejects Flexibility on School Performance under No Child Left Behind

The following statement was issued by Congressman Dale E. Kildee, a senior Democratic Member of the Education and the Workforce Committee, on Education Secretary Paige's letter denying the ability of schools to retroactively apply recent No Child Left Behind regulations and guidance to last year's test results.

"Today's response by Secretary Paige to our letter defies logic. Our public schools are working hard to implement the challenging provisions of No Child Left Behind. To say the Department's own rules and regulations can't be applied isn't fair to these schools, or their students."

"The Bush Administration took over two years to put in place common sense flexibility under No Child Left Behind. Unfortunately, States did not have the benefit of this flexibility when they calculated which schools made sufficient academic progress last year. Now some of these schools are being unfairly labeled as non-performing because of the U.S. Department of Education tardiness. This lack of leadership comes at the very time the Bush Administration has under funded No Child Left Behind by nearly $27 billion since its enactment."

"The solution to this problem is to allow the retroactive application of these regulations to last year's school results. In Michigan alone, 364 schools which were labeled as non performing last year may not have been had these regulations been in place. Unfortunately, the Secretary of Education stripped schools and their students of the right to a fair judgment of their academic performance."

Last month, Congressman Kildee joined several of his Democratic colleagues in sending a letter to Secretary Paige requesting the retroactive application of these regulations. Many schools would have been considered "performing" had these guidelines and regulations from the Department of Education been in effect for the last school year. Even though the Bush Administration has routinely expanded flexibility on various provisions of NCLB, they have continually refused to allow schools to recalculate their adequate yearly progress from the last school year.

Retroactively applying this flexibility to last year's test results would allow the academic success of schools to be fairly judged.