Two senators challenge No Child Left Behind

BOISE – Two state senators’ joint memorial to Congress condemning the No Child Left Behind Act is too brazen to do any good, a Senate committee chairman said Wednesday.

“We’re poking them in the eye and still asking for funding,” said Sen. John Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene, chairman of the Senate Education Committee. “Can’t we be a little less offensive?”

The memorial written by Sens. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, and Monty Pearce, R-New Plymouth, called No Child Left Behind a “de facto federal takeover of Idaho public education,” and the “largest unfunded mandate in the history of the country.”

Schroeder and Pearce, despite being from near-opposite ends of the political spectrum, joined together to ask that Idaho and other states with no city of a million or more people be exempted from the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act – but still get the act’s federal funding. Last year, Idaho got $92 million.

Goedde and others on the Education Committee said it’s unrealistic to expect that outcome to result from harsh condemnations.

“I said what I felt in the memorial,” Schroeder said, adding that everyone he talks to abhors the federal act.

Schroeder and Pearce ultimately agreed to work with Goedde on rewriting the memorial “in a more gentle fashion.” The decision came on the heels of two hours of discussion and testimony from four public school officials who agreed with the memorial.

The No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law in 2002 by President Bush as the central part of his education platform. By making states set academic standards and state testing systems in reading and math, the Bush administration hoped to increase the performance of students and schools across the nation.

The schools that don’t meet yearly requirements must offer additional tutoring, and could be subject to major overhauls if they are still struggling after five years.

But John Eikum, executive director of the Idaho Rural Schools Association, said half of the 34 schools he represents will struggle to meet those demands in the next few years.

“It’s unrealistic for rural schools,” he said. “Most of them don’t have any other alternative.”

Schroeder and others pointed to the Idaho Standards Achievement Test and the Idaho Reading Initiative as examples of the state doing fine on its own.

“Our children’s education should be sacred to us,” Pearce said. “It’s too important to have the federal government mess up.”