2/22/05 -- President Bush’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2006 severely underfunds the major K-12 education programs -- Title I and special education -- and would eliminate 48 education programs totaling $4.3 billion, including the $1.2 billion vocational education program.
The President proposes a major $1.5 billion expansion of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) targeted to high schools. That expansion would be offset by the elimination, consolidation, or reduction of many programs that Education Secretary Margaret Spellings calls “ineffective.” Several of those programs are aimed at helping struggling students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant says the President’s budget “fails to meet the growing needs of our students, local schools, and school districts.”
The number of students speaking a language other than English at home has more than doubled, and the percentage of disabled students in public schools has grown by more than 35 percent since 1990.
“It is also troubling that while one-third of the President’s total budget cuts involve education,” Bryant says, “the President has proposed a $50 million increase in private school vouchers.”
The President calls for a 4.7 percent increase ($603 million) for Title I, the largest source of funding for implementing NCLB. That would result in a total of $13.3 billion for FY 2006, compared to $12.7 billion for the current year.
Under the proposed budget, the Title I shortfall would increase by more than $9 billion in comparison to the amount of funding that Congress authorized for FY 2006 when it enacted NCLB.
“Over a five-year period, the cumulative funding shortfall for Title I since enactment of NCLB would rise to $30.8 billion,” Bryant says. “That is simply not acceptable.”
Funding for special education grants to states under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) would increase by $508 million (4.8 percent) over the current level -- for a total of $11.1 billion in FY 2006.
That amount would be less than half of the amount promised by Congress. When the special education law was passed in 1975, Congress agreed to contribute 40 percent of the per-student cost. Under the proposed budget, the federal commitment would be about 19 percent.
Furthermore, the $11.1 billion proposed is $3.5 billion less than the amount authorized ($14.6 billion for 2006) in the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act passed by Congress in November.
High school reform
The proposed $1.5 billion for high school reforms includes $1.2 billion for a “High School Intervention Initiative,” $250 million to measure student performance in reading/language arts and math, and $200 million for the Striving Readers program to improve the reading skills of teenage students.
NSBA is one of more than 40 national education and civil rights organizations that signed on to a letter urging Congress to make “substantial corrections” in the NCLB law and to reject the proposal to extend the NCLB-mandated annual tests to two additional high school grades.
“While we welcome the President’s focus on improving student achievement in high schools,” the letter states, “two more years of testing will not accomplish this important goal” but could instead lead to a narrower curriculum and more dropouts.
Innovative programs
The proposed budget would cut funding for Title V state grants for innovative programs by $98.4 million. The budget calls for $100 million for this program in FY 2006, compared to this year’s funding level of $198.4 million.
NSBA fought hard in recent months against attempts to eliminate funding for Title V and opposes reducing this flexible source of funding to school districts for FY 2006.
NSBA believes Title V funding is beneficial to school districts because it provides flexible funding for locally driven initiatives, such as class-size reduction, supplemental education services, and professional development.
Teacher quality
The budget proposes a new $500 million Teacher Incentive Fund of $500 million “to stimulate close alignment of teacher compensation systems with better teaching, higher student achievement, and high-need schools.”
The fund would provide $450 million in state formula grants “to reward effective teachers and to offer incentives for highly qualified teachers to teach in high-poverty schools.”
The remaining $50 million would fund grants to state education agencies, school districts, and non-profit organizations “for the design and implementation of performance- based compensation systems.”
The budget also proposes $2.9 billion for teacher quality state grants, the same amount appropriated for 2005.
However, the budget would eliminate the $68.3 million Teacher Quality Enhancement program, which funds teacher recruitment, preparation, licensure, and support.
School choice
The budget requests $50 million for a “Choice Incentive Fund” that would provide competitive grants to states, school districts, and nonprofit organizations that offer parents opportunities to transfer their children to “higher-performing” public, private, or charter schools.
President Bush has proposed a choice incentive fund every year he’s been in office, but Congress has never approved it. NSBA opposes federal funding for private school vouchers.
Programs terminated
The budget would eliminate education technology state grants, which are currently funded at $496 million. According to the Administration, “There is no longer a significant need for a state formula grant program targeted specifically on (and limited to) the effective integration of technology into schools and classrooms.”
The budget also would terminate these programs:
• Even Start -- $225 million
• Safe and Drug-Free Schools state grants -- $437.4 million
• Comprehensive School Reform -- $205.3 million
• School Dropout Prevention -- $4.9 million
• Smaller Learning Communities -- $94.5 million
• GEAR UP -- $306.5 million (This program, which stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, provides low-income secondary school students academic help to prepare them for success in high school and college.)
• Tech-Prep Education state grants (promoting links between high schools and postsecondary institutions) -- $105.8 million
• TRIO Talent Search -- $145 million
• TRIO Upward Bound -- $313 million (The TRIO programs provide grants to colleges to help disadvantaged high school students.)
• Arts in Education grants -- $35.6 million
• Elementary school counseling -- $34.7 million
• Parental Information and Resource Centers -- $41.9 million.
“The President’s proposed cuts will make it more difficult for schools to maintain a safe and drug-free environment, make it more difficult to teach reading to children and their parents, and make it more difficult to offer first-class vocational education programs,” Bryant says. “The elimination of technology grants will push us back into the 20th century.”
Resistance in Congress
Predictably, most Republicans in key leadership roles expressed support for the Bush budget. The proposal to expand NCLB to more high school grades is expected to face some resistance among both parties, however, including Republicans who see NCLB as an intrusion into local control.
Rep. Michael Castle (R-Del.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Education Reform and a strong proponent of technical education, expressed doubt that Congress would go along with the President’s request to eliminate vocational education.
Rep. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, says, “The Bush budget will mean another year of broken promises when it comes to funding for NCLB.”
According to Harkin, the President “seems to think it’s more important to cut initiatives like career and technical education and school counseling for Iowa kids than it is to roll back his tax giveaway bonanza for the wealthiest Americans.”
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, called the Bush budget “the most anti-student, anti-education budget since the Republicans tried to abolish the Department of Education.”