Federal education act worries state officials

? Education officials across Kansas and the nation are jittery about enactment of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act.

The biggest overhaul of federal education law in nearly 40 years was signed into law earlier this year by Bush, and parts of the act already have taken effect.

“States definitely need to be concerned,” Scott Young, a specialist on the act for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said Monday. “The intent of the bill is good, but the way it is structured, it will be difficult financially for the states, and the deadlines are so quick some states will be out of compliance.”

Young said the mammoth act sped through Congress with overwhelming support but too little scrutiny.

“No one really looked at it as good as they should have,” he said.

State officials across the nation are worried about how much it will cost to comply with the legislation’s requirements, the increased amount of student testing and how to resolve conflicts between federal mandates and local laws, he said.

In Kansas, education officials and state lawmakers will meet Wednesday to discuss the act and what its impact will be.

The act increases testing and requires that schools help low-performing students improve in relation to state standards.

Under the new law, by 2005-06, all Kansas students will be tested annually in reading and math in each of grades three through eight and one grade in high school. Currently, Kansas students take reading and math tests in three grades.

But the increased testing and gathering and formulating of data from the test results will not be that difficult because Kansas already has a program of testing and reporting test scores, according to Alexa Powchoski, an assistant Kansas education commissioner.

She said the problem would be in improving test scores of all students. Because of the state’s high test standards, many schools will eventually fall into categories that require improvement under the act.

“The intent behind the act is right on target. It’s the uniform bar that we have to set up for adequate yearly progress that won’t work,” Powchoski said.

She said that will require much more work between state education officials and the more than 1,600 schools in Kansas. Asked how much that will cost, Powchoski cited the proposed $1.2 billion increase in three years that was adopted by the State Board of Education last year. That proposal, so far, has been ignored by the Legislature.

State Rep. Ralph Tanner, R-Baldwin and chairman of the House Education Committee, said passage of the act “couldn’t have come at a worse time as far as money is concerned.”

The state budget is reeling from dwindling tax revenue. But, he said, he supports the act because “it is going to give us a little better handle on what is happening in schools.”

The joint meeting of the State Board of Education and Legislative Educational Planning Committee on “No Child Left Behind Act,” will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday in the State Department of Education boardroom, 120 E. 10th St., in Topeka.