Well, this is big news:
A federal judge in Michigan on Wednesday dismissed a major challenge to the Bush administration's signature education program, No Child Left Behind, saying the federal government had the right to require states to spend their own money to comply with the law.The action came in the first lawsuit that tried to block the education law on the ground that it imposed requirements on states and school districts that were not paid for by the federal government. A handful of states have complained that the law forces them to spend millions of dollars they do not have, and one, Connecticut, has sued the Department of Education in a separate federal action.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, not surprisingly, is happy with these results. She's also got big plans for NCLB:
U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced Friday that states will be able to apply to switch from the current model that examines successive classes to a newly proposed growth model.Posted by kswygert at November 29, 2005 11:06 AMJack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, an organization that conducts nationwide studies on NCLB, said he favors experimenting with the growth model.
“What we’ve heard consistently is that a value-added system would be a much better way to measure student progress,” he said. Current NCLB guidelines track progress from one year’s class to the next. The growth model will modify this system, allowing states to track the progress of individual students from year to year. “It’s a fairer system. You’re judging what a school adds to a child’s education, not the fluctuation between one third grade class and another third grade class,” Jennings said.