The question we should ask is whether the states could spend that money more effectively than the federal government. Right now, states are forced to some spend that moeny on programs that the federal government itself has deemed ineffective and/or duplicative. As mentioned above, alot of it goes to basic compliance and administration. Policies like A-PLUS would give states more control over how funds are spent while still requiring states to maintain testing and public reporting.

Whether or not it is a “good deal” isn’t, however, the point. The public school system operates on maximizing revenue- they would take federal funds even if Washington ordered them to dig a giant hole in their playground and fill it back up with dirt, and repeat all year long.

The point is whether it makes any sense to attempt to micromanage public schools from Washington DC with a one size fits all system. It doesn’t. The A-Plus bill would be a modest step towards showing greater deference to states by allowing them to negotiate a single system of testing.

Of course, Arizona’s officials might decide to take the NCLB money in spite of the fact that it’s a bad deal for Arizona, because it happens to be a good deal for certain special interests whom the officials favor. But that’s a problem for Arizonans to take up with their elected representatives.

The Bush crowd forgot their federalist principles and badly overreached with NCLB. If you look at states with actual success to point to in education, like Delaware, Florida and Texas, the success seems to have little to nothing to do with NCLB. If you want to really do education reform, you have to summon the will to do so at the state level.
The idea of some grand federal fix may seem pretty absurd a couple years from now if President Obama has put in portfolio assessments to replace standardized testing.

For example, a 1994 GAO report found that there were 13,400 federally-funded full time employees in state education agencies that worked to implement federal programs — three times the amount of peopel who work at the Dept headquarters in DC. That report found that compliance with federal programs consumed 41 percent of the SEA budget (even though the feds were providing only 7 percent of funding for educaiton at the time).

You are right, though, that state spending to comply with federal education programs isn’t the cause of states’ fiscal troubles. But the question I was trying to raise was whether states would be better off if they had more freedom over federal funding. And whether education might be better if states could pull funding from ineffective programs and spend it on state initaitives.

Perhaps the current fiscal crisis will force governors and other state leaders to consider this question.

It’s simply idiotic. It’s hard enough for parents to make any sense of school ratings without having two seperate ranking systems.

But the reality is that $141 million for administration of NCLB is chump-change. That amount represents less than .03% of all K-12 education spending. It’s almost rounding error and has nothing to do with why the states are in hock up to their eyeballs.