Ed Money Watch

Last week, we reported that both the House and Senate committee versions of the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill cut all funding for Reading First, a program that supports research-based literacy programs in kindergarten through third grade. Both committees said they based this decision on a recent study, which found no evidence that the program improved reading comprehension scores of students in participating schools. A closer look at the bills, however, reveals that the committees did not apply the same standard to other programs: They continue to fund, and even provide increases for, programs with equally scant evidence of effectiveness.

Last week, the Senate and House of Representatives Appropriations Committees published their respective versions of the fiscal year 2009 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, which sets funding levels for most federal education programs for the upcoming year. The Senate bill is ready for consideration by the full chamber, while the House bill still awaits full committee approval.

In total, the House bill would provide $63.0 billion for all Department of Education programs funded through the appropriations process. That's an increase of $3.8 billion, or about 6 percent, from fiscal year 2008. The Senate bill would provide $61.8 billion, $2.6 billion (or 4 percent) more than in 2008. Both bills would increase funding more than the president's budget request, which proposed a $28.6 million (or 0.05 percent) increase for the Department of Education.

Of course, these aggregate numbers don't tell us much about funding levels for individual programs, or how the two houses differ in their education priorities. The table below should help shed some light on that matter.

It's rare to get a room full of education researchers to agree on any one point. From phonics to small school reform, everyone has a different take and several studies to back up their opinion. However, you would be hard pressed to find a single peer reviewed journal article that doesn't come to the one conclusion that finds unanimous support from researchers across the spectrum: the need for more research and the funding to support it.

Despite the continuous call for more and better education research and development (R&D), the Department of Education's R&D budget remains limited in comparison to that of other agencies and the private sector. For FY 2008, the Department of Education budget allotted $321 million for R&D out of a total budget of $59.2 billion. That means that R&D accounts for just over one half of one percent of total federal education funding today. The FY 2009 budget includes just a three million dollar increase in R&D funding for education for a total of $324 million.

Most free newspapers in Washington, D.C. are full of drab political fare, but the sensationalist cover of last Monday's Examiner caught the attention of Ed Money Watch.

Featuring the image of a golden apple being handed from one person to another, the cover has an all-caps headline that reads: "LOCAL TEACHERS ARE CASHING IN." We were intrigued by the article's content. A scandal involving misappropriated funds? An overly large salary increase won by the teachers unions?

Not even close. It turns out the article, "Cashing in on the Classroom," is about the fewer than 300 teachers in local counties who have earned above $100,000 this year. Such figures are sure to fuel arguments made by conservative publications that teachers aren't underpaid, but in fact earn more than many other skilled professions.

But how are these high-paid teachers raking in such large salaries? As the article notes, "No one on most local salary schedules can make $100,000 without extended schedules." Instead, teachers take on substantial additional responsibilities, such as leading extra classes, mentoring, or administrative tasks. For example, the Examiner highlights the case of Susan Socha, a teacher with 40 years of experience who made over $100,000 this year. How did Socha do it? In addition to her general duties, she "teaches algebra online, leads continuing education classes for teachers and runs an online summer school math program."

Last Friday we reported on the status of the House and Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bills for fiscal year 2009. Committees in both Chambers had agreed to a 302(b) suballocation of $153.1 billion, and sub-committees in both houses adopted approved bills and sent them on to the full Appropriations Committees.

The Senate Committee successfully passed their Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill on July 26th. But the House Committee hit a minor (read: politically challenging) road block. Representative Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, offered an amendment to strip the text from the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill and replace it with the text from the appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of the Interior. Lewis and his Republican colleagues argued that passing the Interior bill would lessen the burden of rising gas prices before the July 4^th holiday weekend, but House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wisc.) derided the move as a "political stunt." Stunt or not, Lewis' amendment effectively stalled the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill in its tracks, postponing action on the legislation until after the July 4^th Congressional recess-and potentially scuttling the Labor-HHS-Education bill's passage for much longer.

It's appropriations time on Capitol Hill. This week, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees moved to adopt their respective versions of the fiscal year 2009 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill. This week's committee action begins the annual federal education funding process, but the spending bill still faces a number of procedural steps and political hurdles before it becomes law.

In February, the President released his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, which outlined funding levels for all education programs, and established a recommended total appropriations spending level of $990.7 billion. Congress adopted its own total funding level of $1.012 trillion in May when it passed the fiscal year 2009 congressional budget resolution. (Last year Congress set the spending level at $953.1 billion).

As we explained in our federal budget primer earlier this year, the budget resolution funding ceiling (called a 302(a) allocation) does not specify funding levels for individual programs, only an aggregate total. So, anyone interested in federal education funding has had to wait until now to get a glimpse of the funding levels Congress is likely to adopt. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees took two key actions over the past weeks that gave some shape to education funding for the upcoming fiscal year.

The Department of Education recently released the second year impact evaluation of Washington, D.C.'s Opportunity Scholarship Program. This federally funded program--a fancy name for vouchers--provides randomly selected low-income students living in the District of Columbia a scholarship, or voucher, worth up to $7,500 to attend the private school of their choice. The report has generated response from national and local political figures on both sides of the voucher debate. D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton believes the program should be cut because of school accountability issues, while Council Member Marion Barry supports the program because he believes it increases educational opportunities for D.C.'s children. The fact that the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships Program is up for Congressional reauthorization further intensifies these debates. Beyond the political rigmarole, we at Ed Money Watch believe that the program, and the resulting study, should continue through the full five years to further inform the debate surrounding voucher programs and their impact on academic progress.

Four years ago in Oregon, two foundations invested $25 million in a "small schools" initiative, the largest private investment ever in Oregon's K-12 schools. The initiative sought to improve student performance and retention by transforming large, under-performing high schools into small learning academies. The first results of the Oregon experiment are in, and unfortunately they aren't very positive. Graduation rates remain low, and attendance and test scores haven't improved much since the large high schools split apart.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—the primary funder, along with the Oregon-based Meyer Memorial Trust—has pumped significant money into the creation of small high schools around the country. But improvements in student achievement and graduation rates have been elusive. Evaluations of the Gates initiative generally show that the redesigned small high schools produce similar results to their predecessor schools, and the Oregon findings are more bad news. The Gates Foundation deserves credit for reacting to these failures in the most productive way possible: continuing its investment in high school reforms, while also modifying that investment in response to research findings.

Ed Money Watch is proud to announce the launch of New America’s new Federal Education Budget Project, a non-partisan, authoritative source of information on federal education funding for policymakers, state and local officials, the media, non-profit organizations, and the general public. Ed Money Watch is just one of a host of Federal Education Budget Project resources available to answer your questions regarding, and keep you up-to-date with developments in, the world of education finance, and particularly federal funding for education.

On the FEBP website, you’ll find information on spending, demographics, achievement, and federal program funding for every state and school district in the country—including the earliest available estimates of district Title I allocations under the President’s budget proposal and Congressional appropriations legislation. Easy-to-use web tools enable you to compare states or school districts based on funding, achievement, or demographic characteristics, and you can also download district-level datasets by state to conduct your own research or analyses. The FEBP website is also home to a continually growing body of independent research and analysis by FEBP policy staff on all facets of federal education finance, including the federal budget process, student financial aid, NCLB, IDEA, and the National School Lunch Program.

The Washington Post reports that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is taking steps to end teacher seniority preferences in the District's teachers union contract, as part of ongoing contract negotiations with the Washington Teachers' Union. This is an important, and contentious, teacher pay reform that holds promise for reversing inequitable teacher distribution patterns between low- and high-poverty schools in the district.

Within-District Teacher Disparities

Seniority preferences allow teachers with the most experience to transfer to any open teaching position in a district, which means the most experienced teachers tend to gravitate to the lowest-poverty schools and those with with the most ideal teaching conditions. This leaves the highest poverty schools, with the neediest students, with teaching staffs composed largely of rookie teachers.