Steve Pearce: “one of the constant comments and questions that I have had regarding our education policy on the Federal level is that…”

“one of the constant comments and questions that I have had regarding our education policy on the Federal level is that local teachers have constantly said, we think that the No Child Left Behind provisions are underfunded; we think that it is an unfunded mandate. Our office has continually researched the problem, and we recognize that in the last 10 years, Federal funding has increased from $23 billion to $56 billion, a 132 percent increase. So, Mr. Speaker, the numbers never quite matched the explanations that were coming from our teachers in the district. Knowing that the teachers were, to their best knowledge, presenting the facts as they were told them, we began to dig even deeper. In July, it began to come to our attention that many times the funds that we have allocated on the Federal level have not been made available from the States to their local school districts. I am not sure exactly why that has occurred, but it still is a fact that, for instance, in New Mexico, we have $78 million in unspent Federal funds. The situation is even so bad that $16.7 million has been allocated so long that now it is going to revert to the Federal Government on September 30.”