To follow-up on our October coverage regarding 'failing schools' using their teachers for tutoring needy students, Chicago Public School?s chief Arne Duncan this week threatened to sue the U.S. Department of Education for cutting federal funding for the city's tutoring program. On Wednesday, the feds demanded he shut down the school-based, NCLB-funded tutoring program targeted at 40,000 low performing Chicago students.

Duncan's got the support of Mayor Daley and Congressman Rahm Emanuel, and they're using words like unfair, misguided and egregious to describe the federal requirement that schools labeled failing can't provide in-house tutoring.