Paper on NCLB and funding for it:

Note, I don't delve into whether or not tests work, whether or not teacher qualifications are needed, whether or not school choice is good or not. The focus is scholarly here. I actually somewhat favor the above concepts, and find alot of their manifestations in NCLB lacking.

Shining a light on NCLB and the shadowy paradoxes of political rhetoric

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has boiled in controversy since its inception in 2001. Liberals have lambasted it for imposing an unfunded mandate on our nation’s schools. Conservatives counter that is one of the largest increases in federal education funding ever and often point out that it increased federal education spending more in one year than Bill Clinton did in eight. Yet both sides distort the truth. NCLB was a large percentage increase in federal education funding, but the total of those federal funds is an extremely small fraction of both the federal budget and total national spending on education. Detractors call it a burden to expensive to bear while supporters call it a huge boost, when in truth the funding adjustment from the law-whether too big or too small- was considerably inconsequential. The argument over No Child Left Behind is a synecdochic debate for a larger discussion on the size and effectiveness of federal education spending.
After passing in both the House and the Senate by large margins President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001.1 Formally, NCLB reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), which was subsequently reauthorized every five years since its enactment. In 2007, the NCLB authorization from 2002 end and must be renewed by Congress. The NCLB Act also renamed the ESEA program NCLB, which has led to obfuscation of data. For example, defenders of NCLB often cite increases in the NCLB spending and then increases in Title I grants. Title I grants are a subsection of NCLB nee ESEA. Often politicians and officials cite both increases separately, thereby causing overall education spending increases to sound larger than the reality. These cosmetic changes, whether purposely misleading or not, have only muddied attempts for a clear national dialogue over the program in particular and education spending as a whole.
Unlike the Clinton Era ESEA reauthorization of, the Improving America’s School Act, NCLB tied federal funding for education to compliance with the new act’s provisions. In theory, if a state failed to follow the guidelines of the law, it would forfeit federal education funds. Therefore, unlike Clinton’s largely ignored reform efforts, NCLB sparked a large controversy as state and localities moved to implement the law.
NCLB outlined three major provisions, with goals within each and deadlines to achieve them by. Failure to reach any of the objectives would place an individual school into a “School Improvement” program. This program punished inability to achieve goals annually, escalating with each subsequent failing year and culminating with state takeover of the school. Failure by the state to implement the provisions would theoretically result in a loss of at least all NCLB related federal funding.
The first major objective of NCLB required the states to develop a testing system for students that would require individual schools to demonstrate adequate yearly progress (AYP). Schools failing to reach AYP (or sub-groups within the school, divided into nine subcategories based on factors like race and socioeconomic status) would be marked as ‘failing’. The second provision required schools to publish annual report cards, reporting the school’s performance on the aforementioned tests, and allowing parents of children in failing categories to consider removing the child from the failing school. Finally, the program required that only “highly qualified” teachers could teach. “Highly qualified” is defined as holding a bachelor’s degree, full state teaching certification and demonstration of subject matter in all academic subjects the teacher taught. In order for a state to be in compliance with the law, all three provisions would need to be implemented, and goals within them reached by deadlines set. The most important deadline is the 2014 deadline of 100% proficiency for all students.
In order to pay for the implementation of the new accountability measures, NCLB increased federal education spending authorization. Notably, the largest increases came from Title I grant increases. These grants for low income schools increased from $8.8 billion approximately $1.6, for an increase of about 18% in the first year of NCLB.2 Yet even as it was signed, Senator Ted Kennedy, a major supporter of the bill, criticized the Bush Administration for not allocating enough funds for the law.3 While the law authorized $26 billion dollars for education spending, Bush’s budget requested only $19 billion, and congress eventually passed a budget appropriating $22 billion.4
Regardless, the increase from the FY 2001 appropriations for ESEA funding ($17.4 billion) 2 to the 2006 appropriations ($23.3 billion) represents an increase of approximately 33%. Between 2002 and 2006, funding for NCLB remained steady, increasing only $1.3 billion, or 6%.2 The President’s 2007 budget proposal would appropriate $24.4 billion, which would bring the 2001-2007 increase to 40.4%.2 Yet the claim of NCLB being an ‘unfunded mandate’ continues to be made.
To properly understand the unfunded mandate claim, a broader analysis of federal education spending as a part of the total federal budget and as a part of total education spending nationally is needed. In the 2002-2003 year, federal spending on education was a mere 8.5% of total national spending (federal, state and local).5 In that same year, federal education spending was $53 billion, compared to total federal spending of $2.16 trillion; 2% of the federal budget or .4% of US GDP. 6 Federal funding for education makes up an incredibly small portion of total education spending. Moreover, it is a small fraction of the total federal budget and only 6% of discretionary spending. Broken down further, federal education spending is 13.5% of domestic discretionary spending, which excludes defense and international discretionary spending. Finally, NCLB funding is approximately 44% of total federal education funding in the year2. The bulk of education funding comes from the state (48.7%) and localities (42.8%).6
Still, commentators have described NCLB as “the most sweeping nationalization of school policy in the nation’s history.” 7 Others have described it as the most significant education legislation since the 1960s.8 The program’s opponents have accused it of failing to provide enough funding for its goals of increased accountability in the school, and improved scores on standardized tests. NCLB certainly is a major bureaucratic change, shifting the national focus of educators on measuring objective gains through testing, and with any bureaucratic change it has met resistance. Don Kettl has argued that large changes in bureaucracy should be taken incrementally, and that larger changes must overcome more institutional inertia than smaller ones.9 Moreover, NCLB is a product of legislative bargaining between federal players only: Congress and the President. The lack of input from state and local education officials leads to the claim that NCLB is a mandate from on high. That federal funding is such a minor part of education spending makes it seem unfunded. As aforementioned, NCLB tied federal education funds to proper implementation of its provisions. In theory, should a state fail to implement the major provisions of the law, they would no longer receive federal funding. On May 3, 2005 Utah Governor Jon Huntsman signed into law a measure allowing the state to ignore NCLB provisions. State legislators resented what they perceived as an intrusion of their states rights. At the time, Sec. of Education Margaret Spelling threatened that Utah faced losing upwards of $76 million of the $107 it receives from the federal government. 10 However, Utah has continued to receive a stable level of federal funding, not including funding earmarked for NCLB provisions. 11 The Bush administration has failed to enforce the law’s penal measures, threatening its efficacy on a national level. However, even if Utah were forced to pay the price for this action, the price is rather small. Education spending in Utah was nearly $2.5 billion during the 2005-2006 school year, and federal funds comprised 8.9% of the total education budget.12
While ‘unfunded mandate’ may have a nice ring to NCLB’s opponents, it hardly rings with truth. The act provided more than enough money for the implementation of the testing requirements and other such costs. Moreover, it significantly increased federal grants. Finally, it is not technically a mandate at all: states can opt to eschew federal education funds should they decide to not implement the provisions. Moreover, if Utah is an example, there won’t even sacrifice federal funds for such a move. The real contention here is not that NCLB is an unfunded mandate or a huge increase in education spending, as the two sides claim. It is neither. Rather, the debate over NCLB funding is part of a larger debate on the role of the federal government in supporting education. NCLB is but the latest development in the debate over how much money to spend on education, and where that money should come from.
Sources

1. Wikipedia Article on NCLB detailing vote count of the Act.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCLB

2. Summary of Discretionary Funds, Fiscal Years 2001-2007
http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget07/07bylevel.pdf

3. Education-world.com news coverage
http://www.education-world.com/a_issues/issues309.shtml

4. NEA graph using GAO data.
http://www.okea.org/ESEA/legislativeactionkit/facts/funding.html

5. Latest year available of Dept. of Ed. data on federal education funding compared to total education funding. Subsequently, the rest of the paragraph uses 2003 data for means of comparison; since 2002, the education budget hasn’t changed significantly (6%) Data appears to be by school year, not Fiscal Year. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/tables/dt05_152.asp

6. Stats calculated using:
For Federal Education Spending: Source #2
For National and Federal education spending:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/tables/dt05_152.asp
For 2003 GDP: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy05/sheets/hist10z1.xls
For Total US Budget: http://www.cbo.gov/budget/historical.pdf

7. Article attacking NCLB
Schrag, Peter, “Bush’s Education Fraud”, The American Prospect, Feb. 2004

8. Paper by Villanova University Professor on NCLB.
Maranto and Coppeto, “The Politics Behind No Child Left Behind: Political Goals, Personal Goals, and Top-down Policies in George W. Bush’s Education Program”, 2004.

9. Textbook
Page 227, Fesler, James W. and Donald F. Kettl. The Politics of Administrative Process, Second Edition. (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, Inc. 1996
10. Article reporting on threat to cut funding http://old.heraldextra.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=52995
11. Federal education funding organized by state.
http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/statetables/07stbystate.pdf

12. Utah Dept. Of Ed. Brochure. http://www.usoe.k12.ut.us/default/FngrFacts.pdf#search=%22utah%20education%20budget%22

Alright,

I wasn't going to actually do this, but I feel odd leaving a long response on Katy's blog, so I'm gonna force her to respond to this post here.

A Defense of Capitalism:

First and foremost, we need to look at the issue of freedom, and of slavery. Capitalism is accused of being a system that benefits the wealthy at the expense of the poor. The poor do not have freedom, because they are chained by the bonds of poverty.

Next, I'll have to apologize for being a hard working, intelligent product of a nice middle class family, and for being white and straight and defending the system of capitalism. If I were black, gay, and poor, would I be allowed to argue in favor of radical black nationalism, gay marriage and socialism? Or would I too then be arguing in favor of a system that benefits me, and thus have all comments dismissed?

Regardless, sorry for being lucky.

To return to freedom and slavery: we need to define these terms. The freedom you are concerned primairly about is economic freedom; this isn't some Sartrean concern about chosing to be born. No, this is freedom which translates into ability to action. Freedom to do things. Slavery, however, is used in a far more theoretical manner. One is a slave to what, exactly? To work? Katy, you quote Marx:
"Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery which has given value to the colonies, it is the colonies which have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry. Consequently, prior to the slave trade, the colonies sent very few products to the Old World, and did not noticeably change the face of the world. Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance. Without slavery, North America, the most progressive nation, would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Only wipe North America off the map and you will get anarchy, the complete decay of trade and modern civilization. But do away with slavery would be to wipe America off the map. Being an economic category, slavery has existed in all nations since the beginning of the world."

But Karl was talking about actual, factual slavery there. No compensation for your work, besides enough food to do some more work. Now, if your point is that minimum wages in some developing nations amount to this, then we can have a debate. But if you're willing to say that this is capitalism in, say, America, then we need to clarify what exactly you mean.

I really need to do some homework. So I'll cut this short...

I'll let the most recent edition of the economist make an argument for me about the benefits of globalization and capitalism:

IF ECONOMISTS have a tendency to trust their figures too much, politicians often pay numbers too little attention; and they do so at their peril. Napoleon dismissed Britain as a nation of shopkeepers, but its emerging might as a trading power helped fight him off. In the cold war Western strategists probably spent too much time worrying about the Soviet Union's military clout, and not enough analysing its commercial frailties. Economics does not determine history, but it does provide the backbeat. And something dramatic has been happening to the numbers recently.
As our survey this week points out, the emerging world now accounts for over half of global economic output, measured in purchasing-power parity (which allows for lower prices in poorer countries). Many economists prefer to measure GDP using current exchange rates (which put the emerging world's proportion closer to 30%). But even on this basis the newcomers accounted for well over half of the growth in global output last year. And a barrage of statistics shows economic power shifting away from the “developed” economies (basically North America, western Europe, Japan and Australasia) towards emerging ones, especially in Asia. Developing countries chew up over half of the world's energy and hold most of its foreign-exchange reserves. Their share of exports has jumped from 20% in 1970 to 43% today. And, although Africa still lags behind, the growth is fairly broadly spread: they may be the most talked about, yet Brazil, Russia, India and China account for only two-fifths of emerging-world output.

No social or economic change this big takes place without friction. The most obvious sign is the uproar about jobs being “outsourced” to India and China. The howls will get louder as globalisation affects ever-richer voters. But there are wider ramifications too. In Asia China's rise has helped push Japan and India closer to the United States, and South Korea further away from it. The once-poor world is scouring the earth for mineral rights, trying to buy Californian oil firms, accounting for ever more carbon emissions and making its weight felt in international negotiations on everything from trade to proliferation to the secretary-generalship of the United Nations.
An idea whose time has come, again
There are weaknesses in some of the growth stories. China's population is ageing and India's schools are rotten. Perhaps the emerging world won't continue to motor along at nearly three times the rich world's pace. Maybe it will take a little longer than 2040 to fulfil Goldman Sachs's prediction that the world's ten biggest economies, using market exchange rates, will include Brazil, Russia, Mexico, India and China. But these are arguments about when, not whether, change will happen. And things could speed up: even the rosiest predictions underestimated Asia's ability to recover from its 1997 financial crisis.
This shift is not as extraordinary as it first seems. A historical perspective shows it to be the restoration of the old order. After all, China and India were the world's biggest economies until the mid-19th century, when technology and a spirit of freedom enabled the West to leap ahead. Nor should it be regarded as frightening. The West, as well as hundreds of millions of people in developing countries, has benefited from emerging-world growth. Globalisation is not a zero-sum game: Mexicans, Koreans and Poles are not growing at the expense of Americans, Japanese and Germans. Developing countries already buy half the combined exports of America, Japan and the euro area. As they get richer they will buy more. The world is on course for its fastest-ever decade of growth in GDP per head, which has been powering ahead at an annual rate of 3.2% since 2000—far faster than during the great period of globalisation that ended with the first world war.
Somme where, over the rainbow
If that comparison raises spectres, so it should. A century ago Edwardian globalists were predicting ever more peace and prosperity—only to see those dreams blown apart on the fields of Flanders. The momentum behind globalisation is considerable; but pushing trade barriers lower depends on political will. It is doubtful that any American president would follow the example of the Chinese emperor Qianlong, who announced in 1793 that the then economic superpower had no interest in “foreign manufactures”, setting his country on the road to two centuries of impoverishment. But there are a few worrying omens in the air, notably the collapse of the Doha round of trade talks.
Protectionism and xenophobia should be fought wherever they spring up. But it is also worth acknowledging that these bumptious new economic powers have made the world more complicated for Western policymakers. For instance, although they have helped keep inflation and interest rates down, they have also encouraged asset prices to bubble up. They have allowed America to finance its massive current-account deficit with apparent impunity. Righting these imbalances will be tricky, even if the strength of emerging economies makes the world less dependent on America.
But the two main challenges for the West are long-term political ones. One has to do with accepting that there will be some Western victims of globalisation. Adding 1.5 billion people to the global labour force has boosted the return to capital and richly rewarded rich Westerners; but in Germany, Japan and the United States, real wages for the median worker have barely budged. None of this is an excuse for protectionism—unless you want to make everybody poorer. But there may be fiercer debates, even in America, about using the tax and benefits system to redistribute more of the winnings.
The other challenge has to do with geopolitics. As the balance of economic power in the world changes, mustn't the balance of political power change too?
In time, perhaps. But economic power is not the same as political power. Most developing countries are still military pipsqueaks: China does not yet own a single aircraft-carrier, and its defence budget is less than the annual increase in America's. Nor in political terms is there such a thing as an “emerging block”: no alliance of interests brings all these very different countries together in the way that history and culture have united America and Europe. In Asia, for example, the rise of China is balanced by the rise of India, which America is striving to turn into a strategic partner. But there is also plainly a need to fiddle with some of the global political architecture. The IMF will tinker with the power structure of the fund at its annual meeting next week. Others should follow. The UN Security Council—whose permanent members include Britain and France but exclude Japan, India and Brazil—has long looked outdated and will soon look absurd. Similarly, it does not make much sense for the G7, supposedly the world's main economic club, to discuss currencies when China, which holds the largest official reserves, is not a member.
Making such adjustments will no doubt be awkward. But these are the problems of success. A world in which most people enjoy prosperity and opportunity is surely better than one in which 80% are mired in economic stagnation. Celebrate the riches that globalisation has brought—and be prepared to defend the economic liberalisation that underpins it.

I got this just so I could write comments on other people's blogs that they have on this site.