Education
Education represents the largest single expenditure in Arizona’s budget.
Public school spending on students in kindergarten through 12th grade now consumes more than 22% of the State’s total budget.
The exorbitant amount of taxpayer dollars currently spent on unfunded mandates and bureaucracy prevents the limited funds we do have from being directed at teaching our children.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), signed into federal law in 2002, is troublesome for Arizona. In principle, this Act violates the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
In practice, however, the federal government provides states a loophole: Any state in the union may opt out of participation in the “No Child Left Behind” program.
But opting out means a staggering loss of federal dollars to help fund education.
For Arizona, that would deprive the State budget of more than a half-billion dollars in federal funding for education. Given the costs outlined above, it’s not hard to understand why Arizona accepted this “golden carrot” - the federal government’s inducement for states’ participation in NCLB.
On its face, NCLB would appear a win-win, but there are inherent problems in the program’s structure. Initially devised to help provide incentives for poorer school districts to raise standards for their children, NCLB has proven flawed.
One unintended consequence: Some school districts have actually had to lower their academic standards.
In its present form, NCLB applies a cookie-cutter approach to its testing standards, as well as to attained benchmarks required of participating states’ schools and their students. NCLB standards appear to have been set with little consideration for “special population” variables - such as gifted students, children with learning disabilities, or immigrant students whose native language is not English.
Karen believes that, as a starting point, the federal government needs to work in close cooperation with states to restructure NCLB. The program’s criteria, unrealistically configured at present, must be fully revisited.
It makes sense that local governments, states, and their own citizens bear the primary responsibility of administering education - not the federal government. And if a state’s educational standards prove to meet or exceed the benchmarks of NCLB - even if that state does not participate in NCLB itself - federal funding should not be withheld.
Local school boards and parents should have more say in how their monies are being used to teach our children. We must find ways to eliminate or reduce spending on unfunded mandates and unnecessary regulations which inhibit direct funding for education. Stopping Arizona’s heavy losses due to illegal immigration, for example, could provide funding to allow us to forgo federal programs like the current, flawed version of No Child Left Behind. With today’s limited resources, Arizonans need a better way to invest in our children’s future.
