Parents Can Get Info on No Child Left Behind
By Maria Garriga, June 6, 2007, New Haven Register

Parents will get a plain English tutorial on the rights and privileges the federal No Child Left Behind education law gives them at a workshop Thursday in Hamden.

The workshops are run by a group of organizations that consider education a civil rights issue and want parents to understand what the No Child Left Behind law means to them.

On Thursday, one of the workshops will take place 5 to 8 p.m. at the M. L. Keefe Community Center, 11 Pine St.

NCLB’s extensive requirements, which seeks accountability from schools by testing students, has come under heavy criticism by the public school system for its many requirements and sanctions.

There is a lot more to NCLB than testing, according to Marc Porter Magee, research director for the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now. “The law requires schools to give parents information about student achievement at the school and district level. NCLB also requires failing schools to provide supplemental education services, which is basically free tutoring, to students and requires districts to allow students in failing schools to transfer to other schools.” The law also gives parents a voice in the school improvement plans.

Early this year, Connecticut State Conference for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People teamed up with the Connecticut Appleseed, Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law for a statewide parent empowerment initiative to let parents know their rights.

“There’s a lot of stigma and taboo around the law. It’s important that parents understand the law in layman’s terms and not get the legal mumbo jumbo,” said Scot X Esdaile, president of the state NAACP. “We want to let parents make up their own minds. There are some pieces in NCLB that empower parents but parents are not aware of it. At the end of the day, the power is the parents.”

The NAACP is a party in the 2006 Connecticut v. Spellings lawsuit in which the state charges that NCLB is an unfunded mandate and demands waivers from some of its requirements. The NAACP entered the case on the side of the federal government in order to be a voice for minority schoolchildren affected by the lawsuit’s outcome.

Esdaile said many parents are not aware that they may qualify to get free tutoring for their children, or even have the right to transfer a child out of a failing school.