Inside the Revolt Over Bush's School Rules

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Utah's children get average scores on national tests, but an embarrassing gap separates white and minority children (as is also the case in Connecticut, another leader of the rebellion). Utah spends less money per student ($4,900 a year) than any other state. New York and New Jersey spend twice as much, even after adjusting for regional cost differences, according to Education Week. This year Education Week gave Utah a D+ for its efforts to improve teacher quality.

It's true that the No Child law has problems. It prescribes one treatment for schools with wildly different ailments. And it does not reward improvement. While Margaret Spellings, the new Secretary of Education, said last month that she will allow more flexibility, she has yet to clarify what she means. But whatever happens, states still seem to have significant autonomy. Each can choose its own test--and set its own passing score.

The agitation over No Child is not just about money, most experts agree. The Federal Government pays only about 8% of schooling costs. So changing the federal contibution has only so much impact. In fact, money--from any source--is not a panacea. Over the past 50 years, the U.S. has tripled per-pupil spending in constant dollars, to roughly $10,800 a child, more than almost any other nation. And yet it gets average or below-average results compared with other First World countries.

The uproar is also, partly, about pride. No one likes to be labeled failing. Teachers "are focused on making sure that their school doesn't make the watch list ... so that their communities aren't shamed," says Linda Nelson, president of the Iowa State Education Association.

In Utah, one catalyst for the rebellion was the shaming of Amelia Earhart Elementary School in Provo. Last year the school failed to meet No Child benchmarks because of low scores by just three students with disabilities. Principal Rosemarie Smith remembers the day she got the news. "When principals get the results, they automatically look at the upper-righthand corner to see whether their school made adequate yearly progress. I looked at that space and about died." There were no significant financial consequences, but the failure cut deeply. "We're in an upper-middle-class area. We have 95% attendance at parent-teacher conferences," Smith says. "Parents were flabbergasted." She took her story to a state representative, who ultimately introduced Utah's protest bill.

For now, states are daring Spellings to make the next move. It could come any day, with new, looser guidelines. (Educators would be thrilled if Spellings started rewarding schools that showed progress over time among the same children instead of the same grade levels.)

But the federal rebuttal could also come in the form of hefty fines. Texas, for example, could be slapped with far larger penalties. It is currently exempting 9% of students from taking grade-level tests, claiming they are special ed. The Education Department allows only 3%. "Texas is an outlier," warned Spellings, who is from Texas, in April. "I intend to take a very strong approach." As for Utah, the state risks losing up to $76 million in federal funds if it defies No Child, which it looks likely to do under its new law.