Ensuring that all children have highly qualified teachers and that struggling schools have the tools to make improvements can't be done on the cheap. Research indicates that recruiting highly qualified teachers for hard-to-staff schools requires improving the physical plant, providing up-to-date textbooks and other learning resources, implementing proven curricula, attracting and retaining exemplary administrative staff and providing professional development and financial resources for teachers.

Congress knew that the goals of NCLB could not be achieved without accountability and additional resources and it set a funding authorization for NCLB for each year. While President Bush's FY 2008 budget would increase NCLB funding by $1 billion, the President's budget still shortchanges NCLB by a total of $70.9 billion since the law's enactment. It is clear that the proposed increase in funding is far short of what is necessary to get the job done, and what the Congress anticipated would be required.

These funds are crucial. For example, AFT research estimates that adding the $70.9 billion shortchanged since enactment to fund NCLB would provide enough money to:

Improve the more than 1,700 secondary schools that are struggling the most to meet standards by:

1. creating smaller school settings and
2. providing after school tutoring programs

And

Improve more than 7,000 of the elementary schools that are struggling the most to meet high standards by:

1. Lowering class size
2. Hiring specialists in reading and math instruction to provide model lessons and in-class training to teachers in research based instructional techniques
3. Creating a faculty workroom with high-speed Internet connections so that teachers can make use of the broadest array of resources when planning lessons.