Opinion ID: 3051186
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Whether Compliance is Still Equitable

Text: The core premise of the Declaratory Judgment is that Arizona is “violating the EEOA because [its] arbitrary and capricious Lau appropriation is not reasonably calculated to effectively implement the Lau educational theory which it approved, and NUSD adopted.” Flores II, 172 F. Supp. 2d at 1239. The central idea, then, is that ELL programs impose costs additional to those generated by ordinary school activities, id. (“The State’s minimum base level for funding Lau programs . . . . bears no relation to the actual funding needed. . . .”), and that, in the absence of such state support, ELL programs would necessarily be inadequate.35 The district court 35 That premise has been repeated and amplified in a host of similarly unappealed post-judgment relief orders. See, e.g., Flores VII, No. CV-92596 at 5 (D.Ariz. January 28, 2005); Flores VI, No. CV-92-596 at 2 (D. Ariz. June 12, 2002); Flores III, 160 F.Supp. 2d at 1044. FLORES v. HORNE 1853 listed six deficiencies generated by inadequate resources in 2000. Because many of these specific problems have been solved by better management in NUSD, and because school funding has generally increased, the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors argue that the judgment has effectively been satisfied.36 We review these arguments; it is not, however, our task to retry the case. The district court should be affirmed unless it has clearly erred on the record before it in its factual findings or otherwise has abused its discretion. NUSD should not be penalized for doing its best to make do, despite Arizona’s failure to comply with the terms of the judgment. Granting relief would absolve the state from providing adequate ELL incremental funding as required by the judgment. The judgment determined that the state has not provided adequate resources to support NUSD’s ELL programming, as required by the EEOA. We cannot now decide anew the unappealed Declaratory Judgment, nor the many postjudgment orders so holding. As we have explained, the provisions of Rule 60(b) may not be applied to “derogate from the purpose and effect of Rule 4(a).” In re Stein, 197 F.3d at 425. The legal determinations made in the Declaratory Judgment were unappealed and are now final. Underlying the Declaratory Judgment and post-judgment orders is the basic determination under the EEOA that, given 36 The Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors also argue that NUSD must have solved its problems because district officials signed a federal grant application that contains a boilerplate assurance that it is in compliance with all state and federal laws and regulations. First, whether NUSD is in compliance is not the issue; NUSD is not a defendant. Arizona is, so the question is whether Arizona is in compliance. It is true that the state also submitted a rote assurance of compliance with federal law (although no party relies upon it), but we cannot say that the district court was obliged to accept such boilerplate, generalized statements as true, or that the unsubstantiated statements make the district court’s considered determination that NUSD still has problems, based on district-specific data, clear error. 1854 FLORES v. HORNE Arizona’s educational funding structure, ELL programs require substantial state funding in addition to that spent on basic educational programming. That conclusion rests, in turn, on the recognition that ELL students require additional attention to bring their language skills to the point where they can fully benefit from instruction in English. To prevail on their argument, then, the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors needed to show either that the basic factual premises of the district court’s central incremental funding determination had been swept away, or that there has been some change in the legal landscape that makes the original ruling now improper. It will not suffice to argue for vacating the judgment because of factual or legal circumstances that have not changed the basic premises of the original rulings.
[5] We begin with the moving parties’ attempt to make the first, fact-based showing — that the factual circumstances have so shifted as to sweep away the unappealed incremental funding determination. To succeed on this ground, given the original ruling, they were required to demonstrate either that there are no longer incremental costs associated with ELL programs in Arizona or that Arizona’s “base plus incremental costs” educational funding model was so altered that focusing on ELL-specific incremental costs funding has become irrelevant and inequitable. [6] Turning, then, to the first possibility, we cannot find that the district court clearly erred when it found, consistent with the basic premises of this litigation, that in 2007, as in 2000, “ELL students need extra help and that costs extra money.” Flores XI, 480 F. Supp. 2d at 1161. At the evidentiary hearing, all witnesses agreed that ELL students face unique challenges which require school districts to invest substantially in teacher training, materials, monitoring, and FLORES v. HORNE 1855 assessment efforts. If anything, after 2000, when Arizona moved away from bilingual education and required most courses to be taught in English, regardless of students’ language abilities, these challenges have become greater: A tenth grader, for example, who speaks no English but must pass a biology course taught entirely in English will require considerable assistance. The recent statewide program to improve ELL testing, monitoring, and support programs also imposes incremental costs on school districts. [7] Nor did the district court err when it determined that “the per-student incremental cost of providing ELL instruction is greater than either the current Group B weight” of about $340 per student or the roughly $450 per student that would be provided were HB 2064’s provision on Group B weights to be approved. Id. at 1162. As the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors observe, Superintendent Cooper’s management changes did ameliorate many of the specific examples of resource shortages that the district court identified in 2000. They did not, however, result in such success as to call into serious question NUSD’s need for increased incremental funds. NUSD’s own cost study, along with evidence from other districts throughout Arizona, placed estimated incremental costs at well over $1000 per student. The expert panels consulted in the NCSL study similarly recommended spending over $1000 per student, and, in some cases, recommended spending over $2000 per student. The NCSL’s school district survey reported actual per student spending as in the $600 range but cautioned that that figure might be an underestimate. The SjobergEvashnek study reported that actual expenditures in NUSD shortly after the Declaratory Judgment were in the $300 per student range but also noted that its estimate was likely low. Taken together, these studies provide very strong support for the proposition that the incremental costs of a compliant program not only exceed the Group B weights, either as presently set or as provided by HB 2064, as 1856 FLORES v. HORNE the district court concluded, but in fact likely exceed $1,000 per student, both in Nogales and statewide.37 The Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors nonetheless maintain that the improvements in ELL achievement in NUSD demonstrate that additional incremental funding is no longer required. To the contrary, the data from NUSD supports our conclusion that the district court did not abuse its discretion in holding otherwise. As Dr. Zamudio testified, resource constraints remain: NUSD still cannot afford to pay market rate salaries to attract the teachers it needs to reduce class sizes to levels more conducive to ELL education, nor can it hire qualified teacher’s aides for the lower grades. That these constraints matter is apparent from the persistent achievement gaps documented in NUSD’s AIMS test data. As we discussed at length above, ELL students in NUSD continue to fall behind their nativeEnglish-speaking counterparts, both statewide and within the district. These gaps grow in the higher grades, as the district court found, and are disturbingly large. Although, as we have noted, the data is limited, the burden here is on the moving parties to prove the factual changes on which they premise their motion to vacate the judgment. See Asarco, 430 F.3d at 979. We cannot say that the district court clearly erred when it found this burden was not met. A district in which the majority of ELL tenth graders fail to meet state achievement standards while the majority of native English speakers pass is not one whose performance demonstrates that the state is 37 Arizona’s ineffectiveness in ascertaining costs has made the question of costs more difficult to answer than it might have been. Because the state’s efforts to gather cost study data were incomplete — the SjobergEvashnek study was inconclusive and the NCSL study was repudiated by the legislature, see HB 2064 § 13(C) — the precise incremental costs of ELL programming are not known and we and the district court must rely on what evidence is in the record from the various cost studies and from NUSD and other districts. FLORES v. HORNE 1857 adequately funding ELL programs and so warrants relief from judgment.38 The Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors respond, essentially, that even if ELL programming costs do exceed ELL-specific funding, there is ample state funding to cover them. They argue, in other words, that focusing solely on ELL-specific funding, and on the Group B weights in particular, is no longer appropriate given general increases in education funding since 2000.39 Such a focus, they contend, mistakes “the details, even the minutiae, of the intermediate methodologies the court has devised” to reach compliance for compliance itself. Glover v. Johnson, 138 F.3d 229, 233 (6th Cir. 1998).40 With this argument, the Superintendent and Leg38 That reclassified students in the 2005-06 school year do about as well as native English speakers, however, is encouraging, and may suggest some degree of success, as does the increase in reclassification rates in NUSD. But because the reclassification standard has repeatedly changed and because the record indicates that reclassification takes many years, the record does not demonstrate that NUSD is succeeding in rapidly and permanently reclassifying ELL students, nor on the time it takes to reclassify students. On the current record, we certainly cannot say that the encouraging data on the scores of reclassified students and on reclassification rates is sufficient to have rendered the district court’s findings clearly erroneous. 39 They also point to the increased institutional support, such as new training and monitoring programs, now provided by the state. That support is of limited relevance, as the need to establish monitoring and training programs was set out in the Flores consent decree. That Arizona may have satisfied the decree, which dealt with issues not included in the Declaratory Judgment, does not mean that the Judgment has also been satisfied. 40 In Glover, a district court overseeing an original judgment ordering parity in the treatment of prisoners regardless of gender was holding the defendants to finely-tuned compliance plans that specified, with great detail, conditions in the prisons. Id. at 233-36. The Sixth Circuit vacated a round of contempt sanctions arising from violations of these plans, emphasizing that the goals of the underlying judgment were simply to fix the underlying gender discrimination and end judicial involvement and warning against “judicial micromanagement.” Id. at 241, 245. As we develop, infra, such micromanagement is not at issue here. 1858 FLORES v. HORNE islative Intervenors seek to reopen matters made final when the Declaratory Judgment was not appealed. The EEOA provides that states must not “deny equal educational opportunity . . . by . . . the failure by an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation.” 20 U.S.C. § 1703(f) (emphasis added). Diverting base level funds — thereby hurting all students in an attempt to equalize opportunities for ELL students — is not an “appropriate” step. The district court recognized as much by holding that Arizona had not taken “appropriate” action to comply with the EEOA at Castaneda step two by failing to “set a minimum base funding level per [ELL] student” that was rationally related to costs, regardless of the base level funding provided for all students. Flores II, 172 F. Supp. 2d at 1239. For eight years, Arizona has attempted to remedy that deficiency in ELL-specific funding, and for eight years the parties have litigated based upon that premise. Unlike in Glover, which repudiated the district court’s excessive concern with specific compliance steps rather than with the core of its judgment, looking to the adequacy of ELL-specific funding does not miss the forest for the trees. It cuts to the heart of this case, which has been about such funding since 2000, when the parties dealt with the other issues in a consent decree. If the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors believed that the district court erred and should have looked at all funding sources differently in its EEOA inquiry, they should have appealed the Declaratory Judgment. They may not now upend its basic legal conclusions. [8] Nor have the fundamentals of the Arizona school funding system changed in any way that undermines the district court’s original conclusion that incremental ELL funding is what matters for EEOA purposes. Accepting the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors’ argument would be to hold that the funding restrictions and categories used by Arizona are meaningless. As we have explained, Arizona allocates FLORES v. HORNE 1859 ELL funding on top of base level support. HB 2010 and HB 2064 have followed this approach. This statutory scheme is still premised on the idea that ELL programming imposes costs additional to those covered by ordinary base level funding. Base level funds are still provided in block grants, as in 2000, and the grants are, as they were in 2000, unrestricted. And base level funding, although apparently not itself based on a clear cost accounting of educational needs, see Roosevelt I, 877 P.2d at 810, must still support most non-ELL educational costs. It is the base level funds that, if NUSD had no ELL students, would be spent on math, reading, writing, and other basic subjects. That funds for both basic educational support and ELL costs have increased does not indicate that the fundamental pattern has changed. In 2000, as today, ELL incremental costs could be covered by diverting basic educational support, hampering the state’s ability to provide a basic education to all Arizona students. So, by underfunding ELL programs and forcing NUSD to dip into those base level funds, Arizona still forces it to choose between base level needs and ELL programs — which the district court refused to view as an answer to ELL funding in 2000, when the option was as available as it is now. That binding legal determination is not now subject to reconsideration.41 41 Federal funds have also been taken out of the compliance calculus by the Declaratory Judgment. The district court understood EEOA compliance to be a state obligation and so ruled when, despite noting the presence of federal grants (which it doubted would be renewed), it held Arizona to be out of compliance with the EEOA for providing inadequate state funding and required Arizona to fund its ELL programs adequately. Flores II, 172 F. Supp. 2d at 1236, 1239. That unappealed determination still stands. Although federal funds have since increased, we do not find that this increased funding availability undermines the district court’s basic legal determination that the EEOA obligation rests in the first instance with Arizona. Indeed, as we discuss below, federal education funding law is generally designed to layer federal funds on top of state education funding and to ensure that state funds are allocated without regard to federal funds. 1860 FLORES v. HORNE Nor do circumstances in NUSD demonstrate that anything has happened to undermine the district court’s conclusion in the original Declaratory Judgment that adequate levels of ELL-specific funding were critical to EEOA compliance. Ninety percent or more of NUSD students are either still in or have been in ELL programs. It is the same students who will suffer as the district shifts funding away from core educational needs to support ELL programs. When NUSD must choose to fund, say, required structured English immersion endorsements for its staff, rather than expanding its high school math or art offerings, all students will suffer, including ELL students, now as in 2000. In short, the solution posited by the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors— which the amici school districts and school boards in this case call a “Hobson’s choice” — was rejected by the district court as a matter of law in the Declaratory Judgment when it based its holding on ELL-specific funding in general and the Group B weights in particular. Nothing significant has changed to undermine that ruling. Instead, the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors are simply placing their suggested solution — spending less on basic education so as to have sufficient funds for ELL purposes — on the table after it was necessarily rejected in the unappealed judgment, which requires ELL-specific funding. That they may not do. [9] There was no clear error in the district court’s factual findings and no abuse of discretion in its legal conclusion that the landscape was not so radically changed as to justify relief from judgment without compliance.
The Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors also offer a legal change argument as to why the premises of the Declaratory Judgment have been so undermined as to justify relief from judgment despite noncompliance. They maintain that the FLORES v. HORNE 1861 passage of NCLB — and, in particular its Title III, which focuses on ELL students — has in some fashion altered their obligations by making the Castaneda v. Pickard framework “obsolete,” urging two points: First, that state compliance with NCLB benchmarks should be enough to satisfy the EEOA, and hence the judgment and, second, that NCLB obviates any need to do a state-wide cost study of ELL program incremental costs. We are unpersuaded by the first, more important point. The Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors fail to appreciate the distinct purposes of the EEOA and NCLB: The first is an equality-based civil rights statute, while the second is a program for overall, gradual school improvement. Compliance with the latter may well not satisfy the former.42 [10] Title III of NCLB sets out to “help ensure that children who are limited English proficient . . . attain English proficiency . . . and meet the same challenging State academic content and student achievement standards as all children are expected to meet.” 20 U.S.C. § 6812(1). To aid in this goal, it provides grants to states with federal government-approved plans to benefit ELL students. See 20 U.S.C. §§ 6821-26. To retain grant eligibility, grantees must meet “annual measurable achievement objectives . . . includ[ing] . . . making adequate yearly progress for limited English proficient children.” See 20 U.S.C. § 6842. These objectives include “at a minimum, annual increases in the number or percentage of children making progress in learning English,” “at a minimum, annual increases in the 42 We also note that NCLB became law on January 8, 2002, see 115 Stat. 1425, prior to the district court’s compliance rulings on HB 2010, prior to the parties’ previous appearance before this court in 2006, and more than five years prior to this appeal. It is now more than a little late to argue that NCLB effectively repeals the EEOA, and so justifies relief from the district court’s judgment and orders. Any such change occurred well before the most recent orders were entered. 1862 FLORES v. HORNE number or percentage of children attaining English proficiency by the end of each school year,” and “making adequate yearly progress” in such children’s academic achievement. 20 U.S.C. § 6842(a)(3)(A). Arizona defines these goals as “yearly growth in the fraction of students making progress towards English proficiency, those attaining English proficiency, and those students meeting/exceeding the AIMS objectives in order for Arizona to [meet the requirement that 100% of all students pass AIMS by] 2013-14.” ARIZONA’S SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM TECHNICAL MANUAL: VOLUME III: TITLE III ACCOUNTABILITY at 5 (2005). Specifically, school districts are required to increase the fraction of students making progress toward English proficiency or being reclassified as English proficient by a specified percentage each year.43 Additionally, increases in reading and math proficiency are prescribed.44 Id. at 5-11. Importantly, this very gradual improvement plan does not set as an objective immediate equalization of educational opportunities for each such student. [11] NCLB, in other words, packages federal grants with discrete, incremental achievement standards as part of a general plan gradually to improve overall performance. It does not deal in the immediate, rights-based framework inherent in civil rights law, although it is intended to ameliorate over the longer haul the conditions that lead to civil rights violations. Perhaps recognizing as much, Title III of NCLB explicitly provides that “[n]othing in this part shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with any Federal law guaranteeing a civil right.” 20 U.S.C. § 6847. [12] The EEOA is just such a rights-enforcing law. It requires states “to ensure that needs of students with limited English language proficiency are addressed,” Idaho Migrant 43 In academic year 2003-04, a 10% increase was required. This requirement increases by one percentage point each year until 2011. 44 This increase must equal roughly 10% every three years until 2010, at which point it must increase 10% per annum until 2014. FLORES v. HORNE 1863 Council v. Bd. of Educ., 647 F.2d 69, 71 (9th Cir. 1981), by requiring them to remove barriers to equal participation in educational programs now rather than later, and it provides students with a right of action to enable them to enforce their rights, see 20 U.S.C. § 1706; Los Angeles NAACP v. Los Angeles Unified Sch. Dist., 714 F.2d 946, 950-51 (9th Cir. 1983). The EEOA’s concerns, in other words, lie fundamentally with the current rights of individual students, while NCLB seeks gradually to improve their schools. An individual student whose needs are not being met under the EEOA need not wait for help just because, year after year, his school as a whole makes “adequate yearly progress” towards improving academic achievement overall, including for ELL students. The position pressed by the Superintendent and the Legislative Intervenors — that state compliance with NCLB necessarily satisfies the EEOA45 — cannot be squared with this understanding of the two statutes. In their view, NCLB now defines “appropriate action” under the EEOA, such that NCLB compliance is dispositive of EEOA compliance, regardless of whether incremental ELL funding is currently adequate to provide equal educational access to ELL students. But such an interpretation would, first, produce strange results: If a state happened to meet adequate yearly progress under NCLB one year, no suits could proceed under the EEOA, even if fundamental linguistic inequalities persisted in some or all of its schools, even if ELL financial resources were entirely inadequate, and even if the particular students bringing suit had not received adequate ELL assistance nor made any progress towards English language proficiency. Any meaningful ability to use the right of action under the EEOA would thus wink in and out of existence based upon the year-to-year vagaries of overall school test scores. The EEOA does not tolerate such ephemeral compliance. See Cas45 We note that even if the state as a whole complies with NCLB, that does not mean that the individual district is in compliance. 1864 FLORES v. HORNE taneda, 648 F.2d at 1010 (holding that a state violates the EEOA if even an adequately-funded program “fails, after being employed for a period of time sufficient to give the plan a legitimate trial”). The district court so held in the Declaratory Judgment. Flores II, 172 F. Supp. 2d at 1238. [13] Our point, boiled down, is that the Superintendent’s and Legislative Intervenors’ view, if adopted, would effectively repeal the EEOA by replacing its equality-based framework with the gradual remedial framework of NCLB. Such a result is simply not consistent with the text of either the EEOA or NCLB. There is certainly no express repeal provision in NCLB. Quite to the contrary, NCLB contains a savings clause with regard to civil rights statutes. [14] Nor did NCLB repeal the EEOA by implication. “[R]epeals by implication are not favored. . . . In the absence of some affirmative showing of an intention to repeal, the only permissible justification for a repeal by implication is when the earlier and later statutes are irreconcilable.” Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535, 549-50 (1974); see also Nat’l Ass’n of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife, 127 S. Ct. 2518, 2532 (2007) (implied repeals are “not favored” and will only be inferred if “the later statute expressly contradicts the original act or unless such a construction is absolutely necessary in order that the words of the later statute shall have meaning at all”) (internal quotations and alterations omitted). Such is not the case here. The goals of the two statutes are complementary, as the saving provision of NCLB for civil rights statutes indicates. We also cannot agree with the Superintendent and the Legislative Intervenors that this is a case where “a precisely drawn, detailed statute pre-empts more general remedies.” Brown v. Gen. Serv. Admin., 425 U.S. 820, 834 (1976). Such cases concern instances where Congress has provided a narrower remedy for a class of harms otherwise covered by an older and more general statute. See id. (collecting cases). We FLORES v. HORNE 1865 have already discussed the quite different focuses of the two statutes. That Title III of NCLB operates in the same general substantive area as the EEOA is not enough for us to hold that the former was intended to replace the latter, particularly in light of explicit statutory language to the contrary. Our analysis is further bolstered by the Supreme Court’s similar analysis of a purported conflict between a civil rights statute and a general Spending Clause-based statutory grant program, like NCLB, in Blessing v. Freestone, 520 U.S. 329 (1997). In that case, the Court considered whether the remedial scheme of Title IV-D of the Social Security Act displaced a right of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Id. at 339-40. The Court held that a statute like Title IV-D could displace § 1983 actions in only two ways: “[E]xpressly, by forbidding recourse to § 1983 in the statute itself, or impliedly, by creating a comprehensive enforcement scheme that is incompatible with individual enforcement under § 1983.” Id. at 341. There is, as we have noted, no express repeal here. And implied repeals of the remedial displacement kind are very rare, as the Court recognized in Blessing. Id. at 346-47 (noting only two such instances with regard to § 1983); see also Middlesex County Sewerage Auth. v. Nat’l Sea Clammers Ass’n, 453 U.S. 1, 20 (1981) (detailing such an instance where the “quite comprehensive enforcement mechanisms” of two federal pollution statutes rendered it “hard to believe” that Congress intended to preserve § 1983 remedy for problems covered by the statutes). Blessing also explicated an additional reason why NCLB cannot supercede the EEOA: The EEOA provides an express private cause of action, while NCLB does not. In Blessing the Spending Clause statute’s “enforcement scheme” was limited because it had “no private remedy — either judicial or administrative — through which aggrieved persons can seek redress.” 520 U.S. at 348. The Court held that the substantive statute could not “close the door” on § 1983, because a “plain1866 FLORES v. HORNE tiff’s ability to invoke § 1983 cannot be defeated simply by the availability of administrative mechanisms to protect the plaintiff’s interests.” Id. at 347-48 (internal quotation and alteration omitted); see also City of Rancho Palos Verdes v. Abrams, 544 U.S. 113, 121 (2005) (“[I]n all of the cases in which [the Court has held that a general program did not preempt a § 1983 cause of action] . . .the statute at issue . . . did not provide a private judicial remedy (or, in most of the cases, even a private administrative remedy) for the rights violated.”) (emphases in original); Wilder v. Virginia Hosp. Ass’n, 496 U.S. 498, 521 (1990) (no repeal where the programmatic statute “contain[ed] no comparable provision [compared to statutes in Sea Clammers and similar cases] for private judicial or administrative enforcement”); Smith v. Barton, 914 F.2d 1330, 1334 (9th Cir. 1990) (“[T]he doctrine of [Sea Clammers] only bars section 1983 claims that could have been brought under a separate federal statute which provides remedial devices sufficiently comprehensive to demonstrate a congressional intent to preclude section 1983 claims.”); cf. ASW v. Oregon, 424 F.3d 970, 977 (9th Cir. 2005) (holding that even some statutes with administrative mechanisms to protect plaintiffs’ rights cannot preclude § 1983); Price v. City of Stockton, 390 F.3d 1105, 1115 (9th Cir. 2004) (same).46 Like the statute in Blessing, NCLB does not provide an explicit private enforcement scheme.47 Applying the holding 46 The Superintendent also argues that the NCLB should be used to “assist in the interpretation” of the requirements of the EEOA. If he meant only that NCLB compliance is somewhat probative of EEOA compliance, we would agree. He argues, however, that NCLB’s statutory scheme “supplemented and defined” the EEOA’s “appropriate action” requirement such that compliance with the former is also compliance with the latter. We have just explained why that proposition is not so, and casting it as an argument for modification rather than repeal makes no difference. Defenders of Wildlife, 127 S. Ct. at 2533 n.8 (“It does not matter whether this alteration is characterized as an amendment or a partial repeal.”). 47 Because we find the complementary nature of the EEOA and NCLB clear, and because we do not wish to rule on a matter not squarely before us, we do not decide whether NCLB affords an implied right of action, although we note that some courts have concluded that it does not. See Alliance for Children, Inc. v. City of Detroit Public Sch., 475 F. Supp. 2d 655, 658 (E.D. Mich 2007) (collecting such cases). FLORES v. HORNE 1867 of Blessing and similar cases, the existence of an explicit private enforcement mechanism in one statute but not the other strengthens our conclusion that NCLB did not “close the door,” Blessing, 520 U.S. at 348, on suits such as this one. The second argument in this vein made by the Superintendent and the Legislative Intervenors has more merit. That argument is that, after NCLB, an order to perform a statewide cost study of ELL program incremental costs, and fund accordingly, may not be entirely sensible. While such an order would not be an abuse of discretion, it is true that NCLB’s monitoring protocols have encouraged the development of substantial district-by-district data. This data may make it easier, and more sensible, for a state like Arizona to tailor some amount of funding to the particular incremental costs associated with the ELL program in each district, rather than to provide a uniform ELL increment to all districts regardless of the distinct conditions in each district. It appears that the Arizona Constitution would permit some degree of such tailoring. See Roosevelt I, 877 P.2d at 814 (“[U]nits in ‘general and uniform’ state systems need not be exactly the same, identical, or equal.”). That point, however, does not avail the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors, as they did not move for such a limited modification of the judgment. Instead, they argued that the district court should simply grant complete relief from judgment. [15] In sum, just as no changes in fact have eliminated the premises of the Declaratory Judgment, no changes in law have done so either. The motion for relief from judgment, then, depends on showing that Arizona is, in fact, in compliance. And that question, in turn, depends on HB 2064.