A new report released today says the federal government is not fully funding the education law No Child Left Behind. The report comes from the New Hampshire School Administrators' Association.
New Hampshire Public Radio's Dan Gorenstein reports.
The New Hampshire School Administrators Association warned about the costs of No Child Left Behind a year ago.
But back in 2002, the education law hadn't really taken affect in New Hampshire.
Now, after two years of tracking local and state cost with the law in place, Joyce says the news is not good.
3:16 for every dollar received under NCLB...we estimate there are ten dollars of cost that local school districts and taxpayers will bear. In order to receive the one dollar, ten dollars will have to be raised locally.
The new report details several examples where costs to school districts outstrip federal funding.
Those include the cost of higher qualifications for teachers and teacher aides, and technology and special education requirements.
But Joyce says the single most expensive component of No Child Left Behind is the cost of helping schools that are labeled in need of improvement.
After a school gets that label, individual schools are hit with sanctions.
Joyce says no additional funding has been earmarked to help those struggling schools.
But not everybody agrees with Joyce's assessment.
Most notably, New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg who chairs the Health, Education and Labor Committee, says the funding commitment is there.
Track 6
9:26 ... relative to NH, NH is getting a lot of extra money, more than it needs in some accounts. For example, in setting up the testing regimes it is getting more than 4-5 times the dollars it requires to produce the test...
In defense of No Child Left Behind, and President Bush, Gregg points out that education funding has increased 44% in the last four years.
Despite the increased federal funding Joyce maintains that local communities are forced to pick up the tab.
27:06 the pressure to comply with these laws have displaced other local priorities, changed practices and increased costs. We saw it first at the state level with the NHEAP test.
During the budget debate, the state removed its funding for statewide testing and asked the Department of Education to use NCLB funds instead.
Joyce argues that shift in funding led to a scaled back NHEAP, which compelled some towns to put their own test in place.
That happened, says Joyce, on the Seacoast, where school districts joined together to offer a writing test that had been a part of the state test.
But locals had to pony up the additional money to fund it.
3:!5 there are some things we need to take responsibility for.
State Education Commissioner Nick Donohue.
...And I think decisions we make about state resources and whether we continue student assessment are ours....and while there are plenty of issues related to NCLB, we can't point to this one as the law, this is a public policy decision we made in NH.
Donohue doesn't completely disagree with the School Administrators analysis, but he doesn't completely agree with it, either.
:10 nobody knows the cost of NCLB. But these things are true. We have received a significant increase of federal dollars. We know the Act will reverberate deep into our school system...
Education Week assistant editor David Hoff, has been covering NCLB since '99.
He says the debate over whether NCLB is under funded or adequately funded is widespread.
With a lot riding on the success, or at least popularity of No Child Left Behind in an election year, Hoff says people have to look beyond the political maneuvering.
12:33 the surface of the debate is about NCLB, but underneath that, there are still significant differences about what is the best way to spend the money that is out there.
Hoff says embedded in the various funding projections are assumptions and disagreements over how to best improve education.
And its unlikely that anyone will learn this year whose assumptions are correct.
For NHPR News, I'm DG.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo