March 21, 2004

"MORE BANG FROM EXISTING BUCKS":

The Contentious 'No Child' Law II: Money Has Not Been Left Behind (Paul E. Peterson & Martin R. West, 3/17/04, Education Week

"An unfunded mandate," cry the critics of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. In the words of Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee: "By neglecting his promise to provide the funding necessary to help each student to reach high standards, George W. Bush has made a mockery of the phrase 'leave no child behind.'" Virginia's Republican-dominated legislature recently struck a similar chord, passing (on a vote of 98-1) a resolution complaining that the law will cost "literally millions of dollars that Virginia does not have."

A damning critique, if true. But consider the following:

The No Child Left Behind law is, intrinsically, an inexpensive school reform, a plan to get more bang from existing bucks, not a high-priced mandate. The costs of setting standards, testing students, and releasing results to the general public are trivial, compared to the cost of public schooling more generally.

Two Massachusetts officials, James Peyser and Robert Costrell, report in the current issue of our publication, Education Next, that accountability costs in their state run about $20 per student tested. Looking at 25 states, the Harvard University economist Caroline Hoxby found that the costs of accountability systems in place in the 2000-01 school year ranged from less than $2 per public school student in South Carolina to $34 per student in Delaware. Costs in the median state were just $15 per public school student. Meanwhile, average per-pupil costs in U.S. public schools now run approximately $10,000 a year.

In short, the true costs of the No Child Left Behind Act are no more than 0.2 percent of the total cost of public schooling. Would that all unfunded mandates were so cheap.

But if the mandate is cheap, the new federal bucks are plentiful. Historically, education has been a matter to be funded by state and local governments. But the federal role has been increasing rapidly under the Bush administration. Between 2000 and 2003, the U.S. Department of Education upped its contribution to elementary and secondary education by approximately $300 per pupil, from $23 billion to $36 billion dollars--15 times the cost of accountability.


NCLB is perhaps the
worst understood piece of major legislation of recent years. Widely misunderstood to be a classic case of throwing money at a problem, it instead imposes accountability on public schools and provides for vouchers when they fail, which the bill makes nearly inevitable. It's a huge win for conservatives which they whine about endlessly.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 21, 2004 5:16 PM
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