I appreciate the opportunity to respond to your April 22 editorial.

Our schools, but more importantly our children, deserve our support. I have had the opportunity to visit with students and teachers in over 60 schools in the 2nd District. I have seen firsthand how well our schools are doing.

I believe we should always hold schools accountable to students and parents for the education they are providing. No Child Left Behind sought to ensure a higher level of accountability in education. I support that goal 100 percent. However, I voted against No Child Left Behind because it did not give state and local school administrators enough flexibility in meeting that goal.

Since No Child Left Behind has been implemented, Kansas school officials have contacted me with increasing frequency about how best to work with the new law. That is why I asked U.S. Department of Education officials to answer their questions at the April 19 forum in Topeka. Those officials are going to take Kansas schools’ suggestions directly back to Education Secretary Rod Paige.

I believe that Kansas parents, students and teachers deserve a representative who will ask the tough questions, particularly about how their tax dollars are being spent. The fact that Kansas had $16 million in unspent federal education funds from fiscal year 2002, and the 50 states combined had a total of $5.75 billion in unspent education funds from 2000 to 2002, left me extremely concerned. I was pleased to learn that Kansas would spend the money before the Sept. 30, 2004, deadline, and I have pledged to work with Commissioner Andy Tompkins as we move forward. However, that was not the main point I was making in my February statement.

My statement was primarily an answer to the constant questions raised regarding the level of federal funding for education. Democrats in Washington would have us believe that the federal government is drastically underfunding its share of education. It is in this context that my statement should be understood.

The fact that federal dollars from 2002 were not drawn down in Kansas before 2004 speaks directly to the heart of the funding issue. If the federal government had so woefully underfunded its share of education and caused constant shortfalls in federally funded programs, these 2-year-old funds would already have been spent.

To underscore this point, I also want to share a few facts about how the federal share of education is being funded. Since Republicans took control of Congress nine years ago, federal education spending has increased by 143 percent, from $23 billion per year in 1996 to $56 billion per year in 2004. Funding for major elementary and secondary education programs has increased by 34 percent since NCLB was passed two years ago. Since 2001, Kansas has received a 31.5 percent increase in Title I funding for disadvantaged students — from $62.3 million in 2001 to $82.7 million in 2004. The federal share of spending for special education has increased 250 percent since 1998, from approximately $4 billion to nearly $10 billion in 2004, following years of neglect by a Democrat-controlled Congress.

Despite these substantial increases in federal spending on education, the education system is and should remain a state-funded and controlled system. The best way to ensure that schools are accountable to students and parents is to ensure that as many decisions as possible are made closest to home. That is why I have consistently supported legislation to require that 95 percent of all federal dollars are spent in classrooms, not lost in bureaucracy.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my views on federal education spending with your readers.