One of the major arguments over the federal No Child Left Behind law is whether it is an "unfunded" federal mandate.

That is, is this something Uncle Sam told us we must do but then did not give us the money to make it happen?

Federal officials have argued for several years that this is, indeed, a funded mandate, and if there is a problem, it is because whiny states do not understand how to spend the money properly.

And it is true that there are dollars available to the program that remain unspent because school districts have not put their act together.

But it is obvious that the federal government is asking the states (or individual school districts) to do more with less or, at best, the same.

If Washington wants to do more than force schools into "failing" their way to vouchers or privatization, it will have to make a much more sincere effort to put dollars behind this high-flying mandate.

The picture became much clearer this week in an article by education writer Beverly Creamer, who reported that the cost of hiring the outside specialists encouraged by No Child could double this year. That means moving from something around $7 million to around $15 million.

So far, the state has managed to meet the demands of No Child out of the federal allotment. But that cannot go on forever. School officials say we are close to the point where local dollars will have to be swapped over to the demands of No Child. That surely was not the intent of the law as originally written.

Here's where the accounting gets tricky. Today, money for No Child comes out of Title I money, federal funds allocated to schools based on the percentage of students below the poverty line as measured by their eligibility for free or reduced school lunches.

So far, so good. But our allocation of Title I money does not specifically grow as the demands of No Child ramp up. That means every dollar shifted to No Child requirements, such as tutoring or hiring of outside consultants, means a dollar less for whatever the Title I money was being spent on before.

Now, it may be argued that some of the Title I money was being wasted, or that it was going for programs similar to those demanded by No Child. That may be so. But unless one believes that the entire Title I pot was sitting around waiting for a useful way to be spent, this adds up to a take-away or an unfunded mandate.

That's no way to build a school system; it is a way to destroy it.