State Agencies Juggle NCLB Work, Staffing Woes

Ed Week
May 11, 2005
By Joetta L. Sack
Indianapolis

It’s a situation often compared to a massive electrical power surge: Three years ago, the federal No Child Left Behind Act hit education agencies here and in other state capitals with a host of new duties just as severe fiscal shortfalls were forcing cuts in budgets and staffing.

Today, some say that the law’s ambitious goals for improving public schools are colliding with the reality that state bureaucracies simply are not designed to handle the myriad NCLB requirements.

Those agencies have realigned duties to comply with the law, sometimes at the expense of other state priorities. And while employees have taken on larger workloads, those increased burdens have driven away some much-needed, well-qualified people who can find better pay and benefits in the private sector.

“This lack of capacity—not a lack of will—on the part of most states is the single most important impediment to achieving the gains of No Child Left Behind,” said Marc S. Tucker, the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, a research group in Washington. “It’s the hidden issue.”

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