Daley urges school law change

Federal `No Child' act an unfunded mandate, he says

By Ana Beatriz Cholo • Tribune staff reporter • Published October 24, 2003

The federal No Child Left Behind Act is burdensome and impractical, Mayor Richard Daley said Thursday, urging hundreds of urban school leaders attending a conference in Chicago to push their lawmakers to change it.

"The law is not written into concrete," Daley said. "I firmly believe this law has to be looked at from the eyes of the students and those that are out here in our school system."

As an example of how the law "just doesn't make sense," Daley said that Christopher Elementary School on Chicago's South Side--a school where 52 percent of the students meet state standards in reading and 46.7 percent in math--landed on the state's "choice" list because its test scores didn't improve enough from the previous year.

Schools on the choice list must offer students the opportunity to transfer to better performing schools, but the Chicago district had only a handful of options for the thousands of students affected.

Daley explained to a seemingly receptive audience attending the 47th annual fall conference of the Council of Great City Schools that the media stigmatizes schools like Christopher by describing them as "failing."

Of the 365 Chicago schools that landed on the "failing schools" list, he said 72 percent of the elementary schools actually had improved their test scores from the previous year, although they still were not high enough to meet standards.

Daley, who took over the country's third largest school district with 600 schools in 1995, admitted there is still much work to do in the city's public schools but, in a statement that was followed by hearty applause, he said:

"They are not failing. They're basically improving, and their teachers and students need positive support, not a negative labeling of their school."

He pinned most of the blame squarely on lawmakers as he questioned their reasoning on some of the law's provisions.

Calling the law an "unfunded mandate," Daley wondered aloud why lawmakers did not talk to actual educators when they were drafting it.

"When it comes to Washington, D.C., talking about school reform, they didn't have to talk to anybody in the country with the exception of Washington, D.C," he said.

"They could've walked about eight blocks and went to a local school and asked the principal and asked the administrators, asked the teachers; what about education? How can we improve education?"

Daley said he voiced his concerns to U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige in a letter, outlining why he thinks his chief concern, the law's choice provision, is faulty.

The mayor urged everyone at the conference to write to Paige and their local politicians in the hope the law could be modified.

But Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), chairman of the U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee and a fierce proponent of No Child Left Behind, quickly dashed those hopes in a statement given after Daley's speech:

"No Child Left Behind focuses federal resources on ensuring that disadvantaged students are learning," Boehner said in the written statement. "Congress will not amend the law to leave these students behind. The federal government promised to dramatically increase federal spending for education, and we are meeting that promise."

Paige also weighed in with a written statement, suggesting Chicago can improve its school system by offering tutoring services earlier, creating more charter schools and using technology to expand opportunities for children.

"Unfortunately, he (Daley) chooses to focus on how `tough' this law is for the adults in the system, rather than on how this powerful bipartisan law will help the children who need it most," Paige said.

He noted that 18,000 Chicago parents had requested transfers for their children this year.

"Mayor Daley argues that because only 1,300 students can be accommodated, the law is flawed," he said. "I would say the mayor is misdirected: Instead of focusing on the logistical issues of placing the 1,300 children in other schools, the mayor should hear the voices of the 18,000 children and their families who are crying for help."