September 30, 2009 11:30AM 

# Chart of the Day — Federal Ed Spending 

By [Andrew J. Coulson](https://www.cato.org/people/andrew-coulson) 

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The debate over No Child Left Behind re-authorization is upon us.

Except it isn’t.

In his [recent speech](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/no-child-left-behind/transcript-prepared-remarks-fo.html) kicking off the discussion, education secretary Arne Duncan asked not whether the central federal education law *should* be reauthorized, he merely asked *how*.

Let’s step back a bit, and examine why we should end federal intervention in (and spending on) our nation’s schools… in one thousand words or less:

![Fed Spend Ach Pct Chg (Cato -- Andrew Coulson)](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/Fed-Spend-Ach-Pct-Chg-Cato-Andrew-Coulson.jpg?itok=gxZctmmm) 

While the flat trend lines for overall achievement at the end of high school mask slight upticks for minority students (black students’ scores, for instance, rose by 3–5 percent of the 500 point NAEP score scale), even those modest gains aren’t attributable to federal spending. Almost that entire gain happened between 1980 and 1988, when federal spending per pupil *declined*.

And, in the twenty years since, the scores of African American students have drifted downard while federal spending has risen stratospherically.

##### Related Tags 

[Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) 

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