Hard-to-grasp dollar amounts are forcing real cuts in K-12 education at a time when the cost of fueling buses and providing school lunches is increasing and the demands of the federal No Child Left Behind Act still loom larger over states and districts. "One of the real challenges is to continue progress in light of the economy," said Gale Gaines, the vice president for state services for the Atlanta-based Southern Regional Education Board, a nonpartisan consortium with 16 member states. That may be a difficult task in the dozen states--including Alabama, Kentucky, Rhode Island, and Nevada--that have made targeted cuts to certain education programs, according to a June report by the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures. The NCSL found that 31 states reported budget gaps, ranging from $10 million in Hawaii to $2 billion in Arizona--nearly 20 percent of that state's general-fund budget. The report also predicted that state budget situations would get worse, and those predictions are proving to be correct.