Chapter 8: After Five Years: Revisiting the Cost of the No Child Left Behind Act

Perhaps the most frequently claimed shortcoming of the No Child Left Behind act is that the law’s 588 mandates are underfunded. This study’s purpose is to determine the degree to which this assertion is founded. First, the 17 state and local studies of the new administrative costs are reviewed. Then, the cost of needed programs for all children to reach the legally required standards is inspected. Fifty-five state-level adequacy studies conducted by a wide variety of researchers and agencies, using different methods, are examined. New administrative costs exceed total new federal revenues by a factor between two and three. Added state costs are equivalent to 2.5% of all expenditures and local administrative costs are conservatively estimated at another 2.5%. The NCLB adequacy studies say that between 20 and 40% new money is needed, with a median spending increase of 27.5%. Taken together, the 72 studies suggest a needed overall national funding increase exceeding 32%, or about $158.5 billion in FY05 dollars. Without such investments, children in low-spending, low-performing states and our poor and non-English-speaking children will be left behind.