Thanks, but no thanks

Cheshire is not a lone dissenter. Nearby Somers and Marlborough also turned down Title I funding. And murmurs of unrest have surfaced in Virginia and Utah - where a lawmaker proposed rejecting all of the state's $100 million in Title I awards. Last year, Vermont, too, considered refusing its share. While it accepted the money this year, a cluster of rural districts found a way to shuffle their dollars to avoid penalties.

The most piercing criticism of NCLB has been aimed at the tangle of sanctions that await schools that don't measure up.

Penalties include requiring under- performing schools to pay for students to attend higher-performing schools, or provide them with extra services, like private tutoring. After three years of inadequate progress, a school's staff may be replaced. And after five years, the school can be taken over by the state.

Even without Title I status, each of Cheshire's eight schools must comply with federal testing requirements. This year, 149 of Connecticut's 1,100 elementary and middle schools missed the mark for "adequate yearly progress." But Cheshire's schools are all on target, which means that even had the district taken the money, it wouldn't have faced federal penalties.

The US Department of Education has yet to make a final decision on the fate of schools that opt out of Title I, according to a government spokesman. Until it does, Connecticut has assumed that these schools are exempt from federal consequences - although they still face the state's less stringent penalties.

Superintendent Cressy is - literally - in the December of his career. Come Dec. 31, after a career spanning 22 years, with six of those spent at Cheshire, he will retire as superintendent.

The law that has inspired Cressy's last stand makes him crazy, he says, particularly because of the punitive measures for schools described as "failing."

School Board Chairman Richard Lau says Cheshire's decision to reject federal funds was actually an easy one.

The district last qualified for Title I dollars over a decade ago. Cressy and the Connecticut Department of Education speculate that a statistical aberration - a 3,000-person prison - made Cheshire eligible again this year.

Set back from the road, facing Chapman Elementary School, is the Cheshire Correctional Institution. Except for the razor wire encircling its brick walls, the prison looks like a college campus.

Cressy suspects the census bureau included inmates as part of the data used to identify Title I schools.

But according to a representative for the US Department of Education, new pockets of poverty in Cheshire could also explain the award.

This raises concern that children who qualify for Title I in districts that shun the aid may miss out on special services.

"I think it's shortsighted," says Ross Wiener, policy director at the nonprofit Washington-based Education Trust.

Despite the swirl of rebel talk in other states, experts believe the Connecticut districts will remain the lone resisters.

Many of the schools most troubled by NCLB penalties have greater numbers of low-income students. They can't afford to turn away a single federal penny, says Mary Fulton, policy analyst at the Education Commission of the States in Denver.

When asked how NCLB could be reformed, Superintendent Cressy doesn't have an easy solution, except to say that there needs to be far more discussion about the shortcomings of the law.

"And it bothers me," he says, "that the authors of the legislation aren't talking about it yet."

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