City schools chief says NCLB robs citizens of local control

Things are heating up in Connecticut. this is an article from the New Britain paper. The lawsuit that the state's attorney general is bringing against the feds and NCLB apparrently goes to court on Tuesday according to this article about yet another town backing the suit.

NEW BRITAIN -- Doris Kurtz, the city’s schools superintendent says she’s 100 percent behind the recent decision by the school board to support a lawsuit by state attorney general Richard Blumenthal challenging the federal No Child Left Behind law.

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"With mandates, the control is elsewhere and forces you to use the money the way they prioritize it," Kurtz said.

"There is a loss of local control, and ever since the law went into effect in 2002, we’ve had more money cut each year, with more initiatives added.

"Mandates are someone else’s priorities, so that means that it’s less for you to have priority over, because you have to give whatever focus is required first to the resources to the mandates, and what’s left you get to manage,"Kurtz said.

"That may or may not be the same mandates as you, but you don’t have a choice."

Kurtz also criticized the way the NCLB program is designed.

"The focus is so narrow, we don’t have the finances to focus on the whole child. It’s something we need to do, and much more than that," Kurtz said.

"(If) they think it’s important enough to have this law, you have to have the money to meet the demands.

"You can’t calculate all of the money that it costs us in human resource time." She said when her staff spends time on mandated items, it depletes resources for local initiatives.
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Currently, 109 of the 169 school boards have endorsed Blumenthal’s NCLB suit since he filed suit in August. Connecticut is the only state to challenge the law in court.

And now, according to the article mentioned previously, it is currently 117 0ut of 169 school boards that have joined the suit. That is very impressive. This is one to watch. i do not have much hope but we shall just have to wait and see.
anti nclb