Recent congressional debate over the No Child Left Behind law has been largely nonpartisan, but that has not prevented struggles over implementing it from becoming a flashpoint this fall in Connecticut’s hotly contested races.

Footage of Republican and Democratic lawmakers giving the education law high marks for its goals set the stage at yesterday’s Business Roundtable event on the coming reauthorization of the law. There, the House’s senior Republican and Democrat on education issues struck an optimistic note on future changes to No Child Left Behind, which requires states to test students annually and meet accountability standards.

But frustration among many Democrats and education groups about incomplete federal funding and state benchmarks seen as excessively rigid are fuelling campaign rhetoric in Connecticut. The state remains tangled in a lawsuit against the Department of Education (DoE), arguing that the law is an unconstitutional unfunded mandate.

Diane Farrell, the Democratic former town selectwoman mounting a strong challenge to Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), has ranked No Child Left Behind alongside the Iraq war among issues where Shays, an avowed centrist, aligned himself with the Bush White House. Farrell, in an interview, noted the drop in Connecticut’s federal education funding since the Act was signed — the state suffered more than $7 million in cuts this year — and said lawmakers have “got to go in and modify” it.

“We should focus on what really matters: teacher training and class size,” she added.

Joe Courtney, a Democratic former state lawmaker mounting his second challenge in three cycles to Rep. Rob Simmons (R-Conn.), also points to No Child Left Behind as shortchanging the state. His campaign contends that a Democratic House majority, with Courtney a part of it, will be far more inclined than a GOP-controlled chamber to force changes in the law.

Simmons, a former educator whose wife is a teacher, admitted in an interview that No Child Left Behind “did not work well in Connecticut” but attributed the problems to overreaction by state education officials, who feuded with Education Secretary Margaret Spellings over implementation.

“Our accountability plan was not well-negotiated,” Simmons said, referring to the state-written definitions of student progress that must be approved by the federal government. Specific changes to Connecticut’s accountability plan would go a long way, Simmons said, but fighting in court with the Bush administration makes reopening the plan less likely.

Chris Murphy, the Democratic state legislator challenging Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.), labeled No Child Left Behind “a disaster for Connecticut’s students” in his education plan and vowed to “fight to restore state control of education funding.”

At the Roundtable event yesterday, DoE Chief of Staff David Dunn and House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) acknowledged that the law has not hit all its marks.

“I don’t want to be put in a position where I’m defending [the law] as the perfect be-all, end-all. It isn’t,” McKeon said. Echoing Simmons, he said later that lawmakers field the brunt of the criticism for the law’s failings “but the problem really lies with state standards.”

Rep. George Miller (Calif.), the education panel’s ranking Democrat, defended No Child Left Behind, saying, “It is working. There is a lot of angst in this country but … the system is changing.”

The landmark statute has also stoked campaign fires in Connecticut’s Senate race, where Democratic nominee Ned Lamont released an education plan this month that tracked dire predictions from the Business Roundtable and other groups about plummeting student proficiency in math and science. NCLB, Lamont wrote, “has imposed rigidity and ‘teaching to the test’ … along with massive unfunded mandates, without any clear benefit in terms of outcomes.”

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D), running as an independent against Lamont, was part of a state delegation that unanimously backed No Child Left Behind in 2001. He told local reporters this week that he would favor hearings with teachers and school administrators to examine broad changes to the statute, not just a reauthorization.

Miller yesterday dismissed the “teach to the test” criticism, a reference to reliance on test scores alone as a measure of student progress. But he praised “growth models,” alternative and flexible methods of calculating student success that are in a pilot stage in two states.

The National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT), two politically powerful education unions, both support formally adding “growth models” to No Child Left Behind during next year’s reauthorization process. The Connecticut chapters of both unions were the first labor groups to endorse Lamont’s upstart run earlier this year.

Connecticut is far from the only state to wrestle with accountability-plan pitfalls, funding gaps and other setbacks with implementation. Still, the law has yet to emerge as a top-tier campaign issue in other close midterm contests because GOP candidates have tended to share Democratic complaints.

In Maryland, where the lax showing of Baltimore city schools has popped up in gubernatorial campaign ads, GOP Senate hopeful Michael Steele positioned himself early as a critic of the new law’s execution. Steele’s rival, Rep. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), has called for full funding.

Rep. Mark Kennedy (R-Minn.), running behind Democrat Amy Klobuchar in their Minnesota Senate race, touted his vote against No Child Left behind in a recent campaign ad where he narrates, “I want people who know our kids’ names to make education decisions, not bureaucrats in Washington.” Michele Bachmann, the state senator running for Kennedy’s House seat, also opposed the law early in her campaign as an unfair federal mandate.

The NEA’s PAC has steered just 13 percent of its nearly $1 million in contributions to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The union, which drew fire from McKeon and other Republicans for its efforts to point out deficiencies in the law, has given to two GOP incumbents, Reps. Mike Fitzpatrick (N.J.) and Jim Gerlach (Pa.), to the exclusion of their Democratic foes.