Bill would authorize assessment of true cost of federal education mandate

Kirsten Searer

Thursday, May 26, 2005 | 11:14 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Nevada could reject at least $112 million in federal funding and thumb its nose at one of President Bush's major initiatives under a bill heard this morning by the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

States around the nation are questioning whether the No Child Left Behind Act fully reimburses them for the costs of complying with new tough standards.

Assembly Bill 562 would hire a consultant to determine how much the act is truly costing the state, and then allow schools to opt out of the program if the consultant finds that funding for the program is inadequate.

The Children's Defense Fund, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group, estimates that the shortfall in funding for Nevada was $38 million in the 2005 fiscal year, said Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, who supports the bill.

Under the bill, schools could also drop out of the program if the federal government cuts funding.

The legislation is modeled after a bill passed recently in Utah, Perkins said.

"It's clearly an overreaching of the federal government," Perkins said. "We have a great plan in place for reaching the goals in our state."

Perkins was referring to the Nevada Education Reform Act, passed by the state Legislature in 1997.

The bill increased academic standards and teacher training and is considered one of the toughest in the country, Perkins said.

But in 2002, President Bush signed the federal No Child Left Behind act, which upped the ante.

"The federal government, in its intent to ensure no child was left behind, superseded states rights and ignored the fact that many states had already moved into strengthening their standards -- rewriting them, putting testing in, putting evaluation in, and dealing with remediation," said Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas. "So it almost became an overlay and a duplication."

She said that schools have not increased the number of school days, even though they add more and more tests for students. Basically, she said, it decreases instruction time while holding schools more accountable.

This year, 212 schools in Nevada are not meeting standards, said Keith Rheault, superintendent of the Nevada Department of Education.

By 2007, Rheault said, he expects at least half of Nevada's 567 schools to fail to meet standards.

Part of the problem is the way No Child Left Behind requires schools to test students, Rheault said.

For example, Douglas High School is labeled as underperforming because one of the school's special education students didn't show up for a test, Rheault said. Under No Child Left Behind, 95 percent of the students in that subgroup must be tested.

But the biggest reason why Nevada schools fail to meet performing standards is the large Hispanic populations that are tested before students have fully grasped the English language, Rheault said.

Newsweek recently ranked seven Nevada high schools among the top 1,000 in the country, but four of those did not meet their adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind bill, Perkins said.

Rheault said he doesn't have a problem with the standards set in No Child Left Behind, but "there's got to be some reasonable thinking."

He said he already got a call from the federal Education Department wondering about the bill. The government has already pressured some states to continue complying with the law, Rheault said.

"That's their threat," he said. "You either follow the law or you don't get federal funding."

Nevada wouldn't lose all of its federal funding for schools, Rheault said. The state gets about $400 million a year including the No Child Left Behind money, special education money, and funds for school lunches.

But it would lose that $112 million, which is about 6 percent of total expenditures made for Nevada schools, he said.

"Even if it's federal money with red tape, we're using this now," Rheault said.