We should be getting a definitive answer before long to a question that from the start has dogged the Bush administration’s sweeping education law, the No Child Left Behind Act. The much-debated question is whether the federal funds distributed under the law are enough to cover the state and local costs of complying with its requirements. In short, does the law impose unfunded mandates?

If it does, a bill pending in the Maine Legislature, LD 676, would direct the state attorney general to sue the federal government, adding that he may either seek the necessary funding or seek relief from the federal requirements that are inadequately funded.

Suits have already been filed against the U.S. Department of Education by the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, the Utah Education Association and eight school districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont. Connecticut’s attorney general said that he planned to sue the department. And Utah’s state legislature passed a measure giving its state education standards priority over the federal standards imposed by the NCLB law.

This widespread rebellion has nothing to do with the substance of NCLB, which requires regular testing aimed at measurable educational progress to be achieved by 2014, although many school organizations would prefer to do away with the whole federal program. The current protest is aimed directly at the question of unfunded mandates.

Are the federal payments being received in Maine sufficient to cover the costs? State education officials are surveying Maine school districts and hope to present their findings to the Education Committee within two or three weeks. Other members of a 14-state consortium are conducting similar surveys.

Some school officials in Maine think they already know the answer. The superintendent of the Portland public schools, Mary Jo O’Connor, says flatly that the federal payments are “not enough” to cover additional expenses including additional teachers and

summer classes.

In Bangor, Superintendent Robert Ervin says, “At the moment, we’re comfortable with the funds we have.” But he goes on to point out that Maine, like other states, has adopted a “hockey stick approach,” relatively low and flat or the first to or three years but then rising sharply in effort and expense to try to meet the 2014 goal. Government funds will no longer meet the need.

Mr. Ervin says the cost burden will hit smaller schools far harder, since they face the same requirements with less in the way of resources. He predicts “real pain” in two or three years: “There’s going to be blood all over the place.”

A recent study by the Maine Department of Education concluded that the NCLB program will cost Maine $22.5 million over a six-year period, not counting local costs, while the federal government will contribute only $11 million.

Teachers, students, parents and other citizens can and do differ over whether the NCLB law is a good idea, with its annual standardized tests and its requirement that every racial and demographic group in every school score higher every year. But they are likely to agree that the Bush administration and Congress should pay the full costs of what the law requires, especially when the law itself promises that that’s what will happen.