Two Very Different No Child Left Behind Pricetags

By Dan Gorenstein on Friday, February 21, 2003.

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Advocates of the No Child Left Behind education act got some good news this week.

A study from the Josiah Bartlett Center found that Washington will more than cover the cost of the new law. In fact, the study estimates that the state will get even see a surplus.

This directly contradicts a earlier study from the New Hampshire School Administrator’s Association. That report estimated that the federal funds would fall short by tens of millions of dollars.

NHPR’s Dan Gorenstein reports.

Depending on which report you believe, New Hampshire’s annual price tag is either an eye-popping 100 million dollars, or a much more digestible 7 million.

The conflicting estimates come as no surprise to Mary Fulton at the non-partisan Education Commission of the States.

Fulton says, disagreements over cost are part of every major policy debate. And she says, often the early estimates are premature.

:48 we don’t have a handle on what NCLB will cost the states, and I don’t know anybody who does. I think very few states or orgs have conducted a thorough study of what NCLB will cost, and there are a lot of variables. For example, what assumptions you make about which costs should be folded into the analysis…It depends how you interpret the law, and which requirements that you fold into that cost analysis.

The latest study considered four factors

salaries, technology upgrades, special education and testing.

Ted Rebarber, who conducted the study for the Josiah Bartlett Center , estimates the cost will fall well below the 17 million in federal funding the state will get from Washington.

7:59 we found the cost of these areas are significantly below that. Leaving 5.9 million that NH schools can set their own priorities, and three million next year.

Rebarber dismisses NCLB critics who say the education act is just another unfunded mandate.

that’s the conclusion the New Hampshire School Administrators came to.

The Administrators report weighed the same four factors. and in each, came up with significantly higher figures.

But Bartlett accuses school administrators of taking the most expensive options.

Like paying teacher aides 20% more to meet new skill requirements in the law.

But the Director of the New Hampshire School Administrators Mark Joyce says it’s going to cost more money to hire people with higher levels of education.

Joyce also says the latest report missed the greatest expense under No Child Left Behind…failing schools.

2:47 another concern I have about the Bartlett report is there is no estimate at all what the obligation would be for taxpayers or state of NH to help a failing school improve.

New Hampshire Education Commissioner Nick Donohue isn’t primarily concerned about the cost differential between the two reports.

1:10 the costs are important. I don’t have a clear answer to who is right. It’s more ambiguous than that. Time will tell what the impacts are. There is additional money and where we really need to focus on is the educational issues of what this means for our students in NH, and there success.

For NHPR News, I’m DG.