No Child Left Behind

George Will has an interesting column on No Child Left Behind, and some states' negative reactions to it:

She (Education Secretary Margaret Spellings) says Utah's, and some other states', lack of serenity stems from the fact that NCLB is doing what it is supposed to do -- reveal embarrassing facts.

He goes on to discuss some of those facts.

The major objection to NCLB, at least here in Wisconsin, seems to be that it costs too much, and that the feds aren't providing the money needed.

Is anyone aware of an actual accounting of how much it costs to administer NCLB? I'm not. There doesn't appear to be one on the DPI website. Nor on the WEAC website. Nor on the WASB website.

Even when I had a group of teachers in my office to discuss the state budget last week, I couldn't get an answer to that.

Maybe I'm just not looking in the right place? Or could it be that Will is right, and the program is proving to be embarrassing to the educational establishment?

Here's an interesting fact, though: according to the Department of Public Instruction, federal education funding in Wisconsin has averaged better than 10% growth per year since 2001, the year NCLB went into effect.