NAACP: Connecticut’s Suit Against NCLB a “threat” to civil rights

         Connecticut’s NAACP has asked to intervene in the state’s lawsuit against No Child Left Behind, saying that the case is a threat to civil rights protections and a waste of time and money that should be used to improve schools for poor and minority children.
            If the court permits the NAACP and a group of African-American and Latino students to join the case, they would join the U.S. Department of Education in seeking to dismiss Connecticut’s lawsuit. The NAACP wants to refute Connecticut’s argument that No Child Left Behind is an “unfunded mandate.” The NAACP argues that such a claim could “threaten the enforcement of many civil rights statutes.”
            “If we view No Child Left Behind in terms of civil rights,” the general counsel of the national NAACP Dennis C. Hayes told Education Week, “then we are concerned about a state begging to be excused from participating or complying with an act intended to help disadvantaged people.”
            "The 1964 Civil Rights Act was an unfunded mandate," said John C. Brittain, a former Connecticut lawyer who is now chief counsel for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C., one of the groups backing the NAACP's intervention.
           Connecticut’s Attorney General Richard Blumenthal filed suit against the U.S. Department of Education last summer, saying that Connecticut should not have to comply with such provisions of No Child Left Behind as annual testing of third- through eighth-graders because it is too expensive. The Department of Education argues that the state took more than $750 million in federal money since 2002 with the understanding that it would comply with the law and cannot now “keep the funds while jettisoning the accompanying obligations." In a hearing on January 31, Judge Mark Kravitz gave the state 30 days to try to remedy deficiencies in its complaint.
            Among the lawyers representing the NAACP are Bill Taylor and Dianne Piche of the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights (one of the founders of The Achievement Alliance).
            Although the state NAACP was careful to say that its action did not represent a full endorsement of all provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, it said in its press release that, “rather than filing a frivolous lawsuit against the federal government, the richest state in the nation should be working to help the poorest children have the maximum capacity to succeed with qualified teachers and other resources.”
            Scot X. Esdaile, president of the Connecticut State Conference of NAACP Branches, said, “The bottom line is, the concerns with No Child Left Behind shouldn’t be used as an excuse to not provide equity in education to these children, and they deserve a seat at the table.”
            Connecticut has the largest gap in performance between poor and non-poor students in the country, according to the latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It spends $239 less per student per year on students in high-poverty districts than in low-poverty districts, according to the latest Funding Gap report from the Education Trust (another founder of The Achievement Alliance).  It spends $450 less per student per year in high-minority school districts than on students in low-minority districts, again according to the Education Trust’s funding gap report. In addition, the state has failed to reduce the racial and ethnic isolation of many students in Connecticut schools as ordered by the Connecticut Supreme Court.
            “The state,” attorney Bill Taylor said, “has failed to prepare a plan required by NCLB to demonstrate how it will help local districts carry out their obligation to strengthen education including recruiting highly qualified teachers to districts and schools that need them.”

To see Education Week’s story on the NAACP’s request, click here; for the Hartford Courant’s story click here.  And to see The Washington Post’s editorial in support of the NAACP’s filing, go here.

Pell Grant Changes Could Help Encourage Greater High
School Rigor

         Low-income high school students who take a “rigorous” high school curriculum will be eligible for substantial increases in their Pell Grants to pay for college tuition if a proposal passed by the U.S. Senate makes its way through the House of Representatives.
           The proposal would add $3.75 billion to the current $13 billion Pell Grant program that provides grants to low-income students attending college. The new money would add $750 to the grant for any college freshman and $1,300 to any sophomore who has taken a “rigorous” high school curriculum. Although there would be no grade requirement for freshmen, sophomores would have had to maintain a 3.0 grade point average (or its equivalent) to retain the new grant money. In addition, $4,000 would be added to the Pell Grant of any low-income junior or senior who studies physical, life or computer sciences, mathematics, technology, engineering or certain foreign languages, and has a 3.0 in the courses required for the major.
             Research from many sources establishes that a rigorous curriculum is the strongest predictor of success in college, especially for low-income students and students of color. Moreover, work by the American Diploma Project and others documents that a rigorous academic curriculum is beneficial for all students, whether they plan to enroll in some form of postsecondary education or not. Young people themselves say in survey after survey that they want a more rigorous academic curriculum. Most recent high school graduates, including those who went right to college and those who went right to work report that if they had understood the expectations they were going to face, they would have taken more challenging courses in high school. So this new Pell program builds on a growing consensus that high school students need to complete a rigorous academic curriculum.
            The proposal was passed by the Senate in December and is widely expected to gain passage in the House and be signed by the president. There will be significant challenges in making this program run smoothly and well. For example, how will states and districts establish that their courses of study are academically rigorous? How will individual students establish that they meet the criteria to access the new grant money? How will the Secretary of Education exercise her discretion around the requirement of a 3.0 or its equivalent, to ensure that students who enroll in challenging coursework don’t lose their eligibility if they maintain good academic standing, even if their GPA slumps a bit? The program starts this fall, so there is little time to get the program up and running.

Many College Graduates Can Barely Calculate a Bill

According to a new study by American Institutes for Research, one in five students finishing up four-year college degrees – and almost one in three students finishing up two-year college degrees – have only “basic” quantitative literacy, meaning they are “unable to estimate if their car has enough gasoline to get to the next gas station or calculate the total cost of ordering office supplies.”
            “The surprisingly weak quantitative literacy ability of many college graduates is troubling,” says Dr. Stéphane Baldi, who directed the AIR study. “A knowledgeable workforce is vital to cope with the increasing demands of the global marketplace.”
            Additional findings from the study include:

• More than 75 percent of students at two-year colleges and more than 50 percent of students at four-year colleges do not score at the proficient level of literacy. This means that they lack the skills to perform complex literacy tasks, such as comparing credit card offers that have different interest rates or summarizing the arguments of newspaper editorials.
• Students in two- and four-year colleges have the greatest difficulty with quantitative literacy: Approximately 30 percent of students in two-year institutions and nearly 20 percent of students in four-year institutions have only basic quantitative literacy. Basic skills – below proficiency – are those necessary to compare ticket prices or calculate the cost of a sandwich and a salad from a menu.
• Students who are about to graduate from college have higher prose and document literacy than previous graduates with similar levels of education; differences between current and former college graduates for quantitative literacy are not significant.
• There are no significant differences in the literacy of students graduating from public and private institutions. Additionally, in assessing literacy levels, there are no differences between part-time and full-time students. No overall relationship exists between literacy and the length of time it takes to earn a degree, or between literacy and an academic major.