BCT Editorial – 12/1/05

This page was last updated on December 1, 2005.

Bad law; Editorial; Beaver County Times; December 1, 2005.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“It’s now official: The No Child Left Behind Act has become another underfunded federal mandate on the states and local school districts.

“A federal judge last week dismissed a challenge to NCLB that had been brought by the National Education Association and school districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont. The New York Times reports they argued NCLB should be blocked because it imposed requirements on states and school districts that were not paid for by the federal government.

“The judge ruled that the federal government had the right to require states to spend their own money to comply with the law. He wrote that if lawmakers had meant to pay for mandates in the law, they would have phrased the legislation ‘to say so clearly and unambiguously.’

“If the ruling stands, states and school districts will have to dig deep to pay for NCLB mandates. NCLB is a bad law, the consequences of which will only get worse with the passing of the years.”

[RWC] I’m not surprised the Times jumped on this ruling since it appears on the surface to support the Times belief that public schools must follow the NCLBA.

Here’s what the editorial failed to mention. The NEA lawsuit said the NCLBA should be blocked because it didn’t pay for 100% of the law’s provisions. The judge ruled the NCLBA never said “clearly and unambiguously” the feds had to pay for everything.

In fact, the NCLBA specifically says the feds can’t force local/state officials to spend funds not provided by the feds. Here’s the text of Section 9257(a): “GENERAL PROHIBITION. Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the Federal Government to mandate, direct, or control a State, local educational agency, or school’s curriculum, program of instruction, or allocation of State or local resources, or mandate a State or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this Act.”

Of course this would be the case even without this clause. Why? The 10^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.” The Constitution delegates no power over education to the feds.

Don’t get me wrong; I oppose the NCLBA because I believe the feds should not be involved in education at all because the Constitution doesn’t specify education as a federal responsibility. The only reason the Times opposes the NCLBA is because the feds don’t pay for everything.