Court Revives Lawsuit Against No Child Left Behind Law

A federal appeals court last week revived a legal challenge to the federal No Child Left Behind education law, saying that school districts have been justified in complaining that the law required them to pay for testing and other programs without providing sufficient federal money.

The 2-to-1 ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, gave new life to a 2005 lawsuit and appeared to be a setback to the Bush administration.
The ruling came on a day when President Bush marked the law’s sixth anniversary with a visit to an elementary school in Chicago, where he said, “I know No Child Left Behind has worked.”

Mr. Bush said he had instructed the federal education secretary, Margaret Spellings, “to move forward on some reforms that she can do through the administrative process” if Congress, which has been stymied by partisan strife over the law’s renewal, does not rewrite it this year. The law was passed in 2001 with strong bipartisan support; an effort to update it collapsed last year.

The president added that if Congress changed the law in ways that he disliked, “I will strongly oppose it and veto it.” ...

This from the New York Times.