Over the last few days there’s been a rash of stories about state legislators pushing to get out from under the No Child Left Behind Act.

In Arizona, the state’s House of Representatives yesterday approved by a voice vote a measure that would take the state out of NCLB’s standards-and-testing regime. A formal vote is expected as early as next week.

In Minnesota a day earlier, the state’s House K‑12 Finance Committee passed an amendment to a supplemental budget bill that would pull the North Star State out of NCLB.

Finally, at the beginning of the month, the Virginia legislature passed a bill requiring the State Board of Education to recommend whether Virginia should withdraw from NCLB. It was a loud enough signal of revolt that yesterday U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings paid the Old Dominion State a visit and warned it not to drop out of her favorite law.

Unfortunately, though it might be uncomfortable to watch efforts to get states out of NCLB repeatedly percolating, the Secretary needn’t worry that too many states will actually break away. They just can’t seem to turn down the federal (read: taxpayer) money.

Few people in Virginia expect the State Board of Education to recommend turning down the roughly $364 million in federal education funds that the legislature itself didn’t have the courage to reject. In Minnesota, there’s good reason to believe the get-out-of-NCLB amendment won’t make it into law, lest roughly $200 million be sacrificed. Finally in Arizona, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne warned that “the problem is, we would lose over a half-billion dollars a year. And it would go to the schools that need it the most: the low-income schools.” Considering that Arizona’s amendment would only pull the state out if it reimbursed local districts for lost federal dollars, Horne is probably right.

There’s little question that many, if not most, states want to get free of the No Child Left Behind Act. Regrettably, there’s also little question that they’re unwilling to sacrifice hundreds of millions of dollars to do so.