The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, The Business Roundtable, AccountabilityWorks
February 2003
Not long ago, the New Hampshire School Administrators Association issued a report complaining that complying with No Child Left Behind will cost the Granite State more than $100 million in excess of the federal funds that will flow into the state in connection with NCLB. This caused much alarm in frugal New Hampshire and also illustrated again how the public-school establishment is fighting NCLB on many fronts - as well as storing up excuses for failing to meet its challenges. In response, The Business Roundtable contracted with AccountabilityWorks to conduct an independent study. The results of that study were released last week by New Hampshire's Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. The new findings: NCLB will bring into New Hampshire more than enough money to pay for cost increases attributable to complying with its dictates and mandates. Indeed, some $6 million will be left over in school year 2002-3 and almost $3 million in 2003-4. (And that's before counting savings that may arise from the multi-state collaboration on standards and tests described above.) There could turn out to be many reasons why New Hampshire, like other states, will find it hard to meet NCLB's multiple challenges - but a shortage of federal money is not one of them. To see the AccountabilityWorks/Bartlett study, surf to http://www.jbartlett.org/pdf/NCLB_Report.pdf. To see the administrators' study to which it responds, go to http://www.nhsaa.org/pdffiles/ESEAcostimpactan.pdf.
