Education and political circles are buzzing with talk of the unfair burdens that Congress has allegedly heaped upon states and districts via the No Child Left Behind Act. Such burdens are generally depicted in two categories: hassles and dollar costs.
Under the former heading, states grumble that NCLB is forcing them to do things differently than they were accustomed to doing, or planned to do, on their own: different tests, different ways of reporting on school and student success and failure, different teacher qualifications, different accountability interventions, new choice programs, and so on. These boil down to policy differences: the state had a policy that said "A," the feds now say to do "B." The result is conflict and confusion.
Some of these complaints have legs. NCLB is undeniably rigid in some respects (and lax in others). It does not, for example, allow a state with a well-developed testing-and-accountability system (e.g. Florida, Virginia) to continue using its own system instead of the NCLB schema. Likewise with school-choice policies. Uncle Sam should allow states that have made great headway on these fronts to show that their homegrown systems are substantially equivalent and then use their own, perhaps with some tweaking. Another way to say this: the NCLB system should be the "default" for states that don't have a satisfactory version of their own.
Dream on, you say. Yet there wouldn't be such a backlash if that were possible.
Which brings us to NCLB's alleged costs. Here one finds gallons of snake oil and plenty of politics. In case you hadn't noticed, it's an election year, and numerous Democrats have decided that one way to blunt the GOP's education edge - and take some wind out of President Bush's NCLB sails - is to say that the Republican Congress and White House aren't spending nearly enough to meet the costs of NCLB.
Considering that several of Bush's would-be challengers voted for NCLB in the Senate, they find it awkward to say the statute is wrongheaded (though Senator John Edwards has said so). So they fault Mr. Bush for not adequately funding it. Note, though, that NCLB-related increases in the President's 2005 budget total a couple of billion dollars, partly offset by the proposed scrapping of some lower-priority programs (a couple of which are dear to Senator Kennedy's heart). For more budget details, see the first item below.
But it's not just Democrats who are grumbling about spending levels. GOP legislators in Virginia, Ohio, and Utah are doing the same. And one state after another is hiring consultants to estimate for them the costs of complying with NCLB.
That's where the snake oil comes in. The slipperiest example I've seen is a recent "study" done for the Ohio Department of Education at the direction of the state legislature. Written by analysts at a state-level "Beltway bandit" firm in Columbus, it purports to estimate Ohio's marginal costs of NCLB "compliance" at about $1.5 billion per year. Of which, they say, Washington can be expected to supply about $44 million. The upshot, if you follow their reasoning, accept their assumptions, and believe their numbers: a ten percent increase in the Buckeye State's present K-12 education spending, at a time when state coffers are said to be empty despite recent tax hikes.
This sort of thing is catnip to politicians and they haven't been shy about mewing loudly. Which gets amplified by press reports of a "growing backlash" against NCLB. I'm reminded of the old parlor game called "telephone" in which misstatements get exaggerated and errors compounded as a statement circulates.
Though the Ohio study has drawn much attention, few have noticed the rare and commendable thing that the state education department did: solicit peer reviews of the study results by other experts, including national heavy hitters, and transmit their comments, together with the study itself, to legislators along with a perceptive cover memo from state superintendent Susan Tave Zelman. (All of this can be found at http://www.ode.state.oh.us/legislator/COST_OF_NCLB/COST%20OF%20IMPLEMENTING%20NCLB-012104.pdf)
Bottom line: most of the outside experts eviscerate the state-hired experts who generated the numbers now appearing in all the newspapers! Here is Zelman's own summary of the reviewers' conclusions: "Two believe that the analysis and costs are basically accurate. Two believe that the analysis substantially understates the cost of implementing NCLB. Three believe that the analysis substantially overstates the cost. . . . Three believe that the assumptions and degree of speculation on which the report is based substantially undermine the accuracy of the cost estimates. . . . Eight of the ten experts believe that the analysis was hampered by the assumption that current revenue (state and federal) will continue to be used as it has been used in the past. . . . The estimated cost of providing individual student intervention represents 93 percent of the total identified. . . . Eight of the ten experts raised concerns about the appropriateness of this cost in light of the lack of research to support the efficacy of the identified intervention strategies. . . ."
Putting it more simply: more than nine-tenths of the cost of "compliance" is a guesstimate of what it would take to bring up to "proficiency" the quarter of Ohio youngsters who apparently wouldn't be expected to get there under the state's pre-existing accountability system. (Ohio was aiming for 75 percent proficiency; today, its performance is in the 55-65 percent range.) In making that calculation, however, analysts assumed that all current state (and federal and local) dollars would continue to be spent exactly as they've always been spent, neither re-directed nor made more efficient, i.e. nothing really changing in the schools. That all costs of boosting proficiency would thus be add-on costs. And that the way to do this is via summer school, after-school programs, and suchlike for the lowest achieving students in the earliest grades. Then they devised a budget for these extra programs for a quarter of the children in the state.
To be sure, one must assume SOMETHING when doing an analysis. But what a ridiculous and unfounded string of assumptions this is!
Moreover, it's wrong to term this the "cost of compliance" with NCLB. The peer review of the Ohio study by the Education Trust usefully reminds us that NCLB does not "mandate" 100 percent proficiency in the sense that Uncle Sam will penalize states that fail to achieve this. As EdTrust says: "So long as Ohio measures the achievement of all students against state standards, publicly reports disaggregated results, and commits to undertake improvement efforts in schools not making AYP, Ohio will be in compliance with the student achievement provisions of the law" and won't be at risk of losing federal dollars, even if the students themselves are not achieving at the "proficient" level.
In fact, the true "mandate" parts of NCLB are relatively inexpensive. They involve such things as giving tests, analyzing and reporting data, and undertaking certain interventions (chosen from an extensive menu) in failing schools. Many, if not all of those expenses are covered by additional ESEA money appropriated in the aftermath of NCLB and boosted in the President's new budget. Yet student achievement per se is not "mandated." It's highly desirable, all would agree. But it's not required by federal law and nothing (except embarrassment) befalls a state whose children fail to learn what they ought. Hence boosting pupil achievement cannot legitimately be termed an unfunded mandate. Merely a moral imperative.
NCLB Under a Microscope: A Cost Analysis of the Fiscal Impact of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 on States and Local Education Agencies, AccountabilityWorks and the Education Leaders Council, February 2004
"Exploring the cost of Accountability," by James Peyser and Robert Costrell, Education Next, Spring 2004
"No politician left behind," Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2004 (subscription required)
