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NCLB & the Three Branches of Government

No Child Left Behind is providing a lot interesting civics lessons lately. Last week the big news in NCLB came to us courtesy of the executive branch. This was in the form of the proposed regulations the feds have issued on a whole variety of NCLB topics. As NSBA said here, there's good, bad, and ugly in that one. This week the big developments are judicial. First, a federal court has thown out the last remaining count in Connecticut's lawsuit challenging the act. Legal details here courtesy of NSBA's Legal Clips. The short version is the court said the feds didn't act "arbitrarily and capriciously" when they denied Connecticut's requests on testing of kids in special ed and English language learners and that, regrettably, there was a procedural reason the state's "unfunded mandates" argument couldn't be ruled on. Meanwhile, in the other big NCLB lawsuit, the full Sixth Circuit U.S. appeals court has agreed to rehear the case organized by the NEA. A three-judge panel of that court had handed the NEA a big victory in January when it found the unfunded mandates argument was legit, but we'll have to see whether entire court has a different take. Details from Ed Week here, and BoardBuzz's past take on the suit here. Meanwhile, the outlook remains bleak from the branch of government that's actually supposed to be the one fixing its own mess. Congress seems unable to act. That doesn't excuse the administration's own culpability. But it's been a big part of the reason all along that we've seen these issues playing out so much in the other two branches.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on May 02, 2008 (boomark / email).