CAP Blows Its Top On NCLB Funding

Curently (a little after 7PM on Thursday), the front of the Center for American Progress Web is featuring an article by Scott Lilly titled "No Gimmick Left Behind: Bush's Education Budget Claims Define Disinformation," along with the requisite unflattering picture of the President.

The Bush administration has, to say the least, done plenty to explore the theoretical limits of disinformation over the past six years. But in this case, the criticism is largely semantic and overblown.

Lilly's ire is directed at claims from Secretary of Education Spellings that "the president’s new budget would result in a 41 percent increase in education funding relative to 2001 levels." Lilly goes on to say that "A number of news organizations understandably interpreted that to mean funding had increased by that amount since the No Child Left Behind, or NCLB, law was signed. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Lilly argues that the 41 percent figure, while accurate, is deceptive, apparently because of the order in which the FY 2002 budget and NCLB were passed into law. Throughout 2001, the White House was negotiating with Congress about both NCLB and the FY 2002 federal budget. The two negotiations were tightly related, since many members of Congress, particularly Democrats (who controlled the Senate starting in May 2001 due to the Jeffords defection) wanted increased funding in return for accepting tougher accountability requirements for schools. As a result, the FY 2002 budget, which passed Congress in December 2001, contained $4.7 billion in new money for education. The President signed NCLB into law a few weeks later, on January 8, 2002.

Lilly's argument seems to be that because the FY 2002 budget was passed just prior to the enactment of NCLB, it doesn't count as new money for NCLB. He also implies that because the administration only agreed to the new money as part of the NCLB negotiations, it should get partial (or no) credit for it.

This is, to be frank, a silly and semantic point. If you want to say that most of the 41 percent came in the first few years of NCLB implementation and there's been little new money since, fine, that's true. If you want to argue, as Lilly does, that the numbers look worse when you adjust for inflation and student population growth, that's fine too. If you want to note that Bush administration budget proposals for NCLB have fallen short of the maximum allowable under the law, true once again, although one should also note that Democratic budget proposals haven't reached the authorization targets either, and probably won't this year now that they're back in power.

But the 41 percent number is perfectly valid. It's not as much money as a lot of people, myself included, think is needed. By not providing more funding, the administration has missed a historic chance to help a lot of students and solidify a genuine bipartisan coalition for school reform.

That said, it's still a lot of money, and it's not the definition of disinformation to say so. Let's maintain honesty in claims of Bush administration dishonesty -- it's not like there are a shortage of legitimate examples to choose from.