Howard blames education board for fine

BOISE – Idaho’s top elected education official is blaming the state Board of Education for a federal fine that will cut the state Education Department’s administrative budget by 25 percent for a year.

The U.S. Department of Education told the state board last week that it would withhold about $104,000 of Idaho’s $42 million Title I education funds because Idaho hasn’t conformed with all of the federal standardized testing requirements. The fine will come out of the $416,000 budget that the department uses to run its office in Boise.

Marilyn Howard, state superintendent of public instruction, said federal education officials formally notified her department Friday about the plan.

She blamed the state board.

“The funds are being withheld because of significant faults found in the state’s assessment program, which has been developed and managed by the Office of the State Board of Education for nearly four years,” she said. “However, it appears the penalty for these failures will be paid by school districts as the capacity of the department to provide them services and technical assistance could be diminished.”

Dwight Johnson, interim director of the state board, characterized the problem as a matter of timing, saying Friday that Idaho will be fully in compliance with the complex rules of the testing standards by next spring. The state has worked hard to comply with the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, he said. The federal fine is connected to work that Idaho was doing as part of a compliance agreement with the federal government related to the 1994 law.

“Despite the extra time provided by the compliance agreement, Idaho has not satisfied the fundamental IASA requirements for a standards-based assessment system in several areas,” wrote Henry L. Johnson, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the U.S. Department of Education, in a letter to Howard and Dwight Johnson.

“We ran out of time, basically,” Dwight Johnson said.

Henry Johnson’s letter praised many of the state board’s efforts, noting that Idaho is taking steps to strengthen its education system, and detailing ways that Idaho has worked to conform to federal testing regulations.

“The State Board and the state Department of Education are working together well to get the tests and the standards aligned so that these issues are addressed,” said Eric Earling, a spokesman for the federal Education Department in Seattle.

Allison Westfall, a spokeswoman for Howard, said her department hasn’t yet received all the details about the fine, and declined to speculate on the precise impact on the department’s one office in Boise. But she said it will be felt indirectly by school districts.

“We are a service agency, so that means much of our costs are the employees who provide direct technical assistance and service to districts,” she said.

Dwight Johnson said the state board can’t appeal the decision.

“They don’t have a choice based on the law to issue the fine,” he said.

But Howard said Friday she would be calling the U.S. Department of Education directly to “work toward a more favorable outcome.”