NCLB Lawbreakers

Via Eduwonk, a story of what appears to be a widespread conspiracy within the Missouri Department of Education to systematically violate the No Child Left Behind law. According to a U.S. Department of Educaiton investigation, the state illegally failed to identify many low-performing schools and districts as not making "adequate yearly progress" under the law. It also failed to identify schools as "in need of improvement," because that status is assigned to schools that missed AYP two years in a row, and the state never compared the current year's AYP list to the previous year's AYP list.

Why did Missouri do this? Because they don't like NCLB:

In an interview with Thompson Publications, a state official acknowledged that Missouri circumvented the law at least partially due to philosophical objections to aspects of NCLB. Misunderstandings betwen [the U.S. Department of Education] and the state also played a role, said Becky Kemna, Missouri's new director of federal programs.

Another issue is that Dee Beck, Kemna's predecessor and an outspoken critic of many aspects of the law, retired just before [U.S. Department of Education] monitors visited--a fact Kemna tried to address diplomatically.

"I'm in kind of a difficult spot," she said. "I just took this job. I don't want to be seen as being critical of the past director."

Nontheless, she said, the problems outlined in the report were the result of "a combination of not agreeing with aspects of the law and not being clear about what was expected of us in some cases."

Kemna laters complains that Missouri should have been cited for merely"a faulty calculation" on district AYP. Next time I cheat on my taxes, I'm going to run that one by the IRS.

A couple of observations:

One, it's amazing to see the difference between the way NCLB is talked about and the way it's playing out on the ground. Even as we witness the sorry spectacle of the California Teacher's Association denouncing George Miller and Nancy Pelosi for not watering down the law enough (memo to liberal interest groups: if you find yourself denouncing Nancy Pelosi as a tool of the conservative establishment, its time to seriously consider switching medications), there are whole states where the law has already been rendered effectively meaningless.

Second, this kind of behavior is beyond the pale. It's one thing for a state to monkey around with confidence intervals and N-sizes and various other dubious mechanisms for relieving pressure on schools to improve. I've criticized those measures in the past and will again. But they've all been approved by the U.S. Department of Education. Nobody's breaking any laws.

This, on the other hand, is illegal pure and simple. Congress will reauthorize NCLB some day, and when it does various chief state school officers and state officials will wring their hands and complain about burdensome federal intrustion, violations of state's rights, etc. etc. When they do, I hope someone reminds them how Missouri definitively proved that when it comes to education, some states simply can't be trusted to the right--or legal--thing.