Volume 4, Number 11 November 2002

INSIDE THIS ISSUE Tennessee Supreme Court Strikes Down Rural School Funding Plan Rural Perspective Featured at National School Funding Conference Leave the Money on the Table: Vermont Better Off Going It Alone Michigan Looks at Declining Enrollment in Rural Schools Arkansas Schools Needing Improvement Listed If You Resist, They Will Audit Public Likes Small Schools, Fair Funding, More Money for Low Performing Schools Declining Enrollment: Widespread, But Especially in the West About RPM RPM Archives

Leave the Money on the Table:
Vermont Better Off Going It Alone


Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools must show adequate yearly progress toward academic proficiency for every child. If they fail, there are consequences such as forced school choice, obligations to provide private tutoring, and state takeover of a district. If a state fails to put such policies in place, it risks losing federal funding under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Funding under the act was increased so the states would have an incentive to meet its ambitious goals.

The ringer is that the states get to decide what is proficient. Some states with very high standards decided that what might have been proficient before the federal law was passed is more than proficient now, and have lowered their standards.

But what if a state decides that it wants rigorous standards and that the cost of meeting the unrealistic federal goal far exceeds the federal funding available? It could just leave the money on the table.

William J. Mathis, education finance professor at the University of Vermont and a Vermont school superintendent, analyzed that prospect for his state. Vermont students consistently score between 22 and 32 percentile points higher than the average on national tests, but because its own academic standards are so high, it rates about 46.5% of its own students as below standard on at least one of its own tests. Using conservative assumptions based on research literature, Mathis calculated that it would cost the state $158.2 million to provide the testing, remediation, and instructional and administrative services necessary to meet the federal goal, using the state's current rigorous standards. This represents an increase in spending of about 15.5%.

Total federal funding for K-12 education in Vermont will be $51.6 million this year, an increase of $4.3 million. Why accept the federal money when the cost of doing so exceeds the revenue provided by threefold, asks Mathis. The Mathis study is available online.