About 909 Billion Dollars will be spent on K-12 Education in 2004-2005 school
year. States and local communities put up 90% of this and the Federal goverment
about 10%. These federal dollars consist of about 2.9% of the Federal budget of
2.5 trillion dollars which does not include the off-budget expense of the Afganistan
and Iraq Wars.

Of the 909 Billion dollars going into education only 61.5% reach classrooms.
This is a national average. Only four states (UT, TN, NY, & Maine) spends 65%
of the budget on teachers and classroom activities. Arizona has initiated a referendum requiring at least 65% of the budget be spent in the class room. If
all states did this it would bring 13 billion more dollars into the class room
without raising taxes.

Even though schools get only 10% of their support from the federal goverment
most people still seem to be looking to the Feds to improve education. Other than the lunchroom program which is funded by the Aggricultural Department and funds tarketed for special education, most federal funds are directed at attempts to
improve the system through special projects operated through the Office of
Education's Grants Management Program. This is a very ineffective and inefficient system which has had very limited positive effects in the last 20 years and probably won't in the next 20 years.

So if we really believe that our future as a nation and the preservation of
Democracy depends upon improving education, what are we going to do about it?

Utah Gov. Defies No Child Left Behind Act

Updated 9:07 PM ET May 2, 2005
By PAUL FOY

http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr...89rctso0&src=ap

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Gov. Jon Huntsman signed a measure Monday defying the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act despite a warning from the federal education secretary that it could cost $76 million in federal aid.

The bill represents the strongest stand against the federal law among 15 states considering anti-No Child Left Behind legislation this year. Utah is an overwhelmingly Republican state that strongly supported President Bush.

The legislation, passed during a special session of the Legislature last month, gives Utah's education standards priority over federal requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. It lets education officials ignore provisions of federal law that conflict with the state's program.

Huntsman, a Republican, signed the bill Monday at an elementary school in the legislative district of GOP Rep. Margaret Dayton, who has been leading the fight against what she calls the unfunded mandates of Bush's signature education law.

Huntsman's education deputy said he doubted Utah's stance would cost it any money.

"It empowers decision makers in the state education system, where there is conflict with federal law, to choose to follow the state objective first," Tim Bridgewater said.

Only schools serving low-income populations _ about a third of Utah's _ will have to wrestle over state and federal standards, he said.

Utah plans to obey benchmark No Child requirements, like reporting schools' annual yearly progress toward a goal of having all students excel in reading and math for their grade level, and informing parents when schools fail to measure up.

When schools fail, parents can demand a tutor or send their children to better schools in the same district.

Utah's preferred way of measuring student achievement is called U-PASS, or the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students, which compares achievement as students progress from grade to grade.

No Child Left Behind compares the grade-level test scores of students to the students in the same grade level from previous years.

The office of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings didn't immediately return a call Monday from The Associated Press. In her warning to Huntsman after legislators approved their measure, Spellings said Utah's bill could trigger the loss of funding if state educators strayed from the federal requirements.

One can see from the two posts above that there are attempts at both the state level and the national level to impose management procedures on local school
operations to try to enforce accountability for more favorable outcomes. In
actuality, outcomes are influenced by what individual teachers do and don't from
hour to hour and day by day more than anything else. This process isn't influenced very much by the authority and dirrectives of building Principals,
Superintendents and local Boards of Education. As the authority becomes more removed from the individual Teacher-student interaction one can expect to
see less results. Teaching, being a professional activity, and one that occurs
mostly in isolation, it is not very responsive to external control. It is however,
to varying degrees open to enfluence. Effective leadership of school administrators
and supervisors and empathic and genuine parental involvement can improve
education. Financial support is the next most signifcant factor. This is a political function as is bringing the community together to set goals. Given our present
system, it really doesn't make much sense to either hold presidential candidates
responsible for nor give them much credit for educational outcomes.