US faulted on funding for schools

The No Child Left Behind Act, which President Bush signed in January 2002, was intended to improve student achievement through mandatory testing, with remedial help provided to struggling students and with the threat of closing schools found to be failing.

While lawmakers and education policy specialists generally agree on the goals of the law, many are challenging the feasibility of meeting those goals, especially without additional funding.

The dispute has become an issue in the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, with former Vermont governor Howard Dean accusing some of his rivals of voting for an ''unfunded mandate'' that will force states and localities to raise taxes. Dean's needling has irritated other Democrats, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who crafted the final legislation in negotiations with the Bush administration.

Senate Democrats have warned Dean that ''using education as a wedge issue against fellow Democrats is not helpful to the party or the Democratic prospects for 2004,'' a Senate Democratic aide said.

But Dean has continued his attack on fellow Democrats.

''The No Child Left Behind Act is a big, unfunded mandate, and it's bad education policy,'' Dean said as he left a forum with other Democratic candidates last week. He promised to use the issue against Democrats who voted in favor of the education law because ''it's punitive, it's inefficient, and it's impractical'' and will ''drive up local people's property taxes.''

Kennedy, along with most of the Democratic presidential candidates, blames Bush, who the senator said shortchanged the law by $9 billion this year.

''There's a lot of frustration, which I certainly feel and which Dean feels, as well,'' Kennedy said in an interview. ''Since it's underfunded, it's not achieving all it was meant to be.''

Kennedy and Bush, who appeared to develop a political friendship while working on the bill, are now at odds on what had been a signature issue for both.

''The president made the promise to fund it,'' Kennedy said. ''He's failed to meet that promise.'' The senator said he asks Bush about the funding every time he sees him, which Kennedy said is far less often since the education bill was crafted, and ''he just jokes and says, `It's increasing plenty.'''

Jo Ann Webb, a spokeswoman for the US Education Department, said that federal education funding is $53.1 billion, ''an 11 billion dollar increase since the president took office.''

''Educators can't say that there's no money, because there's more money than there's ever been,'' she said. ''We understand that it's a tough law. It simply means states have to spend wiser and be more creative.''

But the figure Webb cited, $53.1 billion, is Bush's budget request for the entire department for next year, and the figure includes money for higher education, as well as the elementary and secondary schools covered by the No Child Left Behind Act. Funding for the law would be about $23 billion, a $400 million increase over the current level.

Across the country, educators are complaining about the law.

Teachers do not like it, because it places ''unprecedented control'' over local schools, said Kathleen Lyons, spokeswoman for the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union.

Administrators do not like the idea of classifying a school as failing because of the lagging performance of what might be only a subgroup of students, said Bruce Hunter, chief lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators.

And states, many running large budget deficits, are finding they do not have the money to do the mandatory testing and provide the supplemental help to students in sub-par schools.

The testing requirements are rigid and are not necessarily an accurate measure of the quality of a school or its teachers, said Penny Kotterman, president of the Arizona Education Association. ''We think it is just a fundamentally flawed definition and will result in a wholesale failure when failure isn't really what's going on.''

Joseph Burke, school superintendent in Springfield, Mass., supports the No Child Left Behind Act, which he said is ''designed, in my view, to push all of the systems, the educational system, to get high attainment for all kids.''

But some provisions could be complicated for certain districts, Burke said. For example, parents of children at poorly performing schools have the right to send their children to other schools in the district. But in small or rural districts, such a transfer might not be an option, Burke said.

Webb said that students in that situation would be able to get supplemental help or even take their lessons on a home computer.

The National Education Association did not take an official position on the legislation when it was being drafted. In a speech several weeks before Congress passed the bill, Kennedy asked skeptical members of the teachers union not to do so, Kotterman said.

Other educators and lawmakers rallied around the bill, Hunter said, because the goals, increasing student achievement and school accountability, were laudable.

Democratic candidates who voted for the legislation say that they do not regret their votes, but that they want higher funding so schools can meet their achievement targets.

''This is not a problem of what Democrats did; it's a problem of what Republicans failed to do,'' said Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts.

In an interview, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, called the law good, but in need of more funding.

Other candidates on the campaign trail have begun blaming Bush for problems with the law. Representative Richard A. Gephardt, Democrat of Missouri, called the law ''a phony gimmick'' and ''a fraud.''

Senator John Edwards, Democrat of North Carolina, said, that ''it makes me almost nauseous'' to watch Bush boast about the law when ''the president has underfunded his own education plan by $10 billion this year.''