NCLB: Who Will Pay the Bill?

By Jon Greenberg on Thursday, January 30, 2003.

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The nation’s new education law, No Child Left Behind, passed with strong bipartisan support a year ago. Senators with ideologies as different as Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy and New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg joined forces to bring more testing, ambitious teaching goals, and more money to the nation’s schools.

But since then, that bipartisan spirit has evaporated and the chief reason is – the money. Democrats say the law is under-funded. Republicans argue that the increases have been more than generous.

Here in New Hampshire, concern over the law’s fiscal consequences has drawn strong reactions from towns, state lawmakers, and educators. It has also drawn a vigorous defense from No Child Left Behind’s chief Republican sponsor, Senator Gregg.

In the last part of our series on the new education law, NHPR’s Jon Greenberg outlines the debate over money and No Child Left Behind.

The new law comes with money. Millions of dollars to teach reading, for after-school programs, for testing, and even to increase parental involvement in schools. And many rules over how local schools can spend that money are relaxed, to maximize local flexibility.

But despite these millions, it did not take long for Republican State Representative John Alger to craft his first bill on No Child Left Behind. The vice-chair of the House Education Committee wants to prohibit the state from spending a penny to comply with the new federal law unless Washington provides the pennies. Alger points to the federal government’s track record with special education. Congress told states to provide services but didn’t give them all the money it promised. With this in mind, Alger says his move is simply prudent.

ALGER 1/8/1:45 I live in the long term, not the short term and in 2,4,8 years, who knows who’s going to be in office? So it seemed to me to stake in down in law, that would be an important thing to do.

Alger has an important statehouse ally – Neal Kurk, chair of the House Finance Committee. Alger’s optimistic his bill will pass. A parallel effort is underway at the local level. Two education groups representing school boards and superintendents have put a warrant article on more than 20 town ballots to block the use of local money to pay for the costs of No Child Left Behind.

Scott Andersen, Superintendent for the Interlakes and Ashland schools, says the additional dollars required by the law could be substantial.

ANDERSON 2/2/:00 I’ve projected Interlakes would see a $770,000 increase, about 5.6 %. Ashland would be about $120,000 which is about the same percentage.

Andersen says the two driving forces behind those increases are salaries for teachers and teacher aides. No Child Left Behind requires that two years from now, all teachers in math and English must be certified. They must prove that they know their subjects and have the skills to teach them. The law also sets higher standards for teacher aides, but only at schools receiving a type of federal money called Title One.

School boards and superintendents say, more qualified teachers and aides will command higher salaries. They predict those costs will outstrip the money from Washington.

This sort of talk irritates New Hampshire senator, Republican Judd Gregg. He calls the teacher salary argument a straw dog.

GREGG app. 6:00 you should want qualified teachers. It’s incongruous, to be kind, for them to say they don’t want qualified teachers.

Gregg and the U-S Department of Education have moved to head off talk of runaway federal mandates. Two months ago, the New Hampshire School Administrator’s Association released a report that claimed No Child Left Behind would cost towns an extra 500 dollars per student. Soon after that, a group of U-S Senate staffers and administration officials came to New Hampshire to brief lawmakers.

Bill Lucea from the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee challenged the assumptions in the school administrators’ report.

LUCEA 2/17/1:29 They’ve said willy nilly that automatically, just because of nclb, that every district is going to concede to a 2% salary increase. We’re out here letting you all know and you can sense the blood pressure, this is serious business. We’re talking about the very people who should be on the front lines, and yet they are right out there trying to undermine the law before it’s implemented.”

Part of the problem in this debate is that the law has not been implemented. No one can say for certain whether state tax payers will be held harmless or not. The teacher quality rules don’t take effect for two years. Other potential cost increases in transportation and special tutoring might not be known for even longer.

However, many states are raising the same alarms as New Hampshire and one national survey warns that the lack of money threatens to derail the new law.

Two weeks ago, Senator Gregg seemed to concede the point that No Child Left Behind requires more money than Congress has appropriated. He successfully argued to add 5 billion dollars to a key senate spending bill. His speech on the senate floor focused almost entirely on No Child Left Behind and the concern over unfunded mandates. But Gregg is clear. He does not believe the law asks states to do anything that Washington won’t pay for, even without his amendment.

GREGG 1 I do think the money is going to in that account as required. But I’ve heard people mention and certainly say it is an unfunded mandate and there’s been a study done that I thought was fundamentally flawed by the school administrators that said that. So yes, that has been discussed, but if we put another 5 billion dollars into general education accounts, whether it is special ed, No Child Left Behind, or teacher training, you certainly couldn’t argue that anything would be unfunded at that point.

That money is far from guaranteed. The house bill has no such provision. But the 5 billion dollars has been dangled out there. If it doesn’t end up in the final version, the School Administrator group and others say they are ready to hold Gregg to that number as better estimate of the actual costs. They say its defeat would make No Child Left Behind a carbon copy of special education. They predict -- a set of costly federal requirements. Complaints from local school districts. Promises of relief from Washington. And never enough money. But even the administrators admit, they don’t know the real numbers.
For NHPR, I’m JG