From: "Suzanne Heath" To: "Pam Wright" Subject: Fw: Enforcing NCLB Date: Thursday, March 18, 2004 8:42 AM ----- Original Message ----- From: Suzanne Heath To: Cpmamamia@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 7:35 AM Subject: Re: Enforcing NCLB Dear Carolin, Primarily, the federal government enforces NCLB by financial penalties to the states. The states enforce NCLB within the states. The parent has the rights under NCLB so the parent needs to be the one making the requests. Once the parent requests something that they are entitled to from the Title I school district, such as information about the teacher's major, degree, and certification, they should get an answer within a reasonable time. The parent involvement policy should tell the parents the procedure for obtaining this information. Title I school districts must have a parent involvement policy. If all the parents want is information about the teacher's certification they can get that by contacting the state education department's bureau of credentialing. That is has nothing to do with NCLB. If the policy is not in place or the information is not available to the parent then the parent should contact the NCLB contact person at the state department of education. If a NCLB contact person has not been designated by the state department of education, then the parent should contact the commissioner of education and write a short concise letter explaining the facts and asking for the information. If the is not successful then the parent should contact the Secretary's Regional Representative for that state. There may not be anything to enforce so far. It sounds like the district has been scrambling around to get a copy of the teacher's resume of you. That is a whole separate issue and has nothing at all to do with NCLB. When the parents make their request for information about the teacher's major, degree, and certification they should make it in writing and address it to the person responsible for providing that information. This would be the principal, or if they are past that stage now, it should be to the district superintendent. The first letter asking for enforcement (written as a nice request) would be to the state commissioner of education and then to the federal NCLB contact person, the Secretary's Regional Representative. This law is a reauthorization of a law that is 38 years old. The reauthorization itself is more than 2 years old. Don't let the school district or state department of education tell you this is something new that they should still be struggling with. List of NCLB contact people and commissioners of education http://www.nichcy.org/states.htm List of Secretary's Regional Representatives - choose the state, click on the third item, scroll to the bottom of the page http://www.ed.gov/about/contacts/state/index.html Let me know if you need more. Sue Heath ----- Original Message ----- From: Cpmamamia@aol.com To: sueheath@charter.net Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 12:13 AM Subject: Re: Enforcing NCLB Hi, many thanks for the links to the NCLB Law, you are correct that many mistakes will be made by parents, educators etc. The Desktop Reference is especially helpful to me. However, I still do not feel that my question has been answered and that is who exactly enforces the NCLB law. It is always important to have as much information about regulations and laws, but what worth is it when there is no mechanism in place to enforce it? The school district in this case refuse to give any information about teacher qualifications other than if the teacher is not highly qualified they must notify the parent, hence if the parent receives no information regarding teacher qualifications, then one may assume the teacher' is indeed highly qualified. Again , Please advise what options a parent have when a district may not comply with this new and complex law. Sincerely, Carolin Andrews