A SHOT HEARD ROUND THE NATION:

Thank you for your involvement!!  You are having a great effect!!  After our alert pointing out DFL hypocrisy in not hearing any bills to withdraw MN from No Child Left Behind  (NCLB) despite previous support, the House K-12 finance committee struck a great blow for educational freedom on Tuesday, March 25^th by adopting an amendment to do just that.  In a rare, but very refreshingly bi-partisan manner, during deliberations on the supplemental education budget bill, HF 2475, the committee adopted the following amendment offered by Rep. Pat Garofalo (R-Farmington) on a voice vote (a requested division yielded a count of 12-7 in favor):

ENDING PARTICIPATION IN NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.
The commissioner of education must nullify and revoke by August 1, 2009, the consolidated state plan that the state of Minnesota submitted to the federal Department of Education on implementing the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and any other Minnesota state contract or agreement entered into under the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

This bill has broad bi-partisan support. It is identical, except for the date, to legislation that has been authored since 2004 by now-Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R), state Senator Jane Ranum (D), Rep. Mark Olson (R), current chairwoman of the K-12 Finance Committee Rep. Mindy Greiling (D), and this term by Rep. Gene Pelowski (D) along with 24 co-sponsors, Rep. John Benson (D), Senators Mike Jungbauer (R), David Hann (R), and Geoff Michel (R)  

In an eloquent presentation, Rep. Garofalo rightly stated that this is not about Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, but rather about freedom and that Minnesota has done a very good job with education already and should manage its own schools.  

Chairwoman Greiling, after supporting withdrawal for several years, last session offered a basically toothless resolution asking Congress to make NCLB more flexible and give it more funding, hoping the Democrat-controlled Congress would grant her wishes. During debate, she accurately stated that Congress has not fixed it and that her position has "evolved back" to supporting withdrawal. 

In fact, the proposed congressional fixes that thankfully have sunk into political quagmire until probably at least after the presidential election, would have extended NCLB mandates to high school, covered more subjects and created new ones like environmental education, created more incentive to label children as needing special education services in order for schools to make adequate yearly progress (AYP), and allowed the giving of assessments in foreign languages to name just a few of the many problems. (Also see comments submitted to Congress here and here.) 

Interestingly, despite this great development, this Minnesota budget bill containing the NCLB withdrawal also contains complicated language to change school report cards to a "growth-based, value added" system to try to give schools some relief from the consequences of the tyrannical and utopian federal mandate of adequate yearly progress (AYP) required by NCLB. This report card language actually talks of complying with "federally mandated expectations." Part of this system requires a subjective survey of students' "self-reported sense of school safety, engagement in school, and the quality of students' relationship with teachers, administrators, and other students."  Besides being costly, invasive, very subjective, and not likely to produce any meaningful information, this survey and the whole new report card system would not be needed if Minnesota withdraws from the costly and complex NCLB mandates. 

Neither the proposed congressional changes nor this value added system in Minnesota will do anything to  solve the fundamental problems with NCLB:

1. Federal bureaucrats are still in charge of education, which is supposed to be a state and local function;
2. In order to close the achievement gap, NCLB equalizes outcomes instead of opportunity, focusing all efforts at the bottom of the scale while creating a "Robin Hood" effect that creates an incentive to take away resources from and hinder the progress of middle and high achievers;
3. Making AYP goals is either impossible to achieve or meaninglessly low. 

In addition, because those on whom students are supposed to comment (teachers and administrators) are actually collecting this survey data, students will be put in a real or perceived situation where they may have to lie about their condition or potentially face some sort of retribution.  It will use precious and limited resources tocomply with a very flawed system.