Education Budget

At Ed Money Watch, we discuss and analyze major issues affecting education funding. In our Friday News Roundup, we try to highlight interesting stories that might otherwise get overlooked. These stories emphasize how federal and state policy changes can affect local schools and districts.

Alabama Considers Charter Schools in Pursuit of Federal Race to the Top Funds

New York Plans to Reform Teacher Preparation Efforts

Missouri Freezes Higher Education Tuition

Florida Will Request $1 Billion in Federal Race to the Top Funds

The dismal state of America's high school graduation rates - less than 75 percent nationally and below 50 percent in some areas - has become a key federal public policy issue in the last decade. Existing federal programs, including TRIO and GEAR UP, already seek to improve high school graduation and college going rates in underserved populations. But recent developments, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, and President Obama's 2010 Budget Request, have brought new high school intervention programs to the table. Are these programs really all that different? And what resources could the federal government commit to these efforts?

TRIO/GEAR UP
TRIO Talent Search, TRIO Upward Bound, and the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) are three existing federal programs that attempt to increase high school graduation and college going rates in low-income students through small programs aimed at individual students or groups of students. These programs include out-of-school programs or pull-out sessions during the regular school day, after-school and weekend instruction, tutoring support for core academic subjects and college and financial aid applications, and counseling, mentoring, academic support, and college outreach services.

In July we analyzed funding for K-12 school facilities in the student loan reform bill, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, as passed by the House Education and Labor Committee. The full House passed the bill in September and preserved the $2.0 billion per year school repair program. Although the Senate has not yet acted on a similar student loan reform bill, a version drafted by the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee was leaked a couple of months ago. The leaked bill suggests the Senate is headed in a different direction than the House when it comes to funding school facilities construction.

Both of these pieces of legislation provide a glimpse into the federal government's first major foray into directly funding K-12 school facilities and neither propose an insignificant amount of money. The most striking difference between the two versions is that the House includes a two-year, formula-based investment in K-12 school facilities, and the Senate bill creates a five year competitive program for K-12 school repair, renovation, and construction.

At Ed Money Watch, we discuss and analyze major issues affecting education funding. In our Friday News Roundup, we try to highlight interesting stories that might otherwise get overlooked. These stories emphasize how federal and state policy changes can affect local schools and districts.

New Mexico Lawmaker Proposes Budget Fix Using Endowment Fund

Colorado Cuts to Education Bigger than Expected

More Cuts for South Carolina Schools

Yesterday the Department of Education released the finalized applications for Phase 2 of the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF). The SFSF, a major component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), provides $48.6 billion in federal funds to states so that they can fill gaps in their education budgets. States that successfully complete the Phase 2 application process will receive the remaining 33 percent of their SFSF monies (unless the state was eligible to receive more than 67 percent during Phase 1). Much like the Phase 1 applications, the Phase 2 applications require state governors to sign off on a series of promises surrounding four areas of reform outlined in the ARRA. The Phase 2 promises center on the collection and public availability of data and information on each state's progress towards the reform areas.

Last week, Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) introduced the Literacy Education for All, Results for the Nation (LEARN) Act, a comprehensive literacy bill designed to overhaul the federal role in supporting literacy from preschool through high school. Companion legislation is being introduced in the House of Representatives by Representatives Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and John Yarmuth  (D-Ky.)

This bill addresses the important need to reestablish a federal role in supporting early literacy, following the elimination of funding for the Reading First program. It also takes important steps to support adolescent literacy. But we worry that it shifts the focus of federal literacy efforts too much towards the middle and high school years, at the expense of critical PreK-3^rd years, which build a foundation for all of children’s later literacy learning.

At Ed Money Watch, we discuss and analyze major issues affecting education funding. In our Friday News Roundup, we try to highlight interesting stories that might otherwise get overlooked. These stories emphasize how federal and state policy changes can affect local schools and districts.

As Enrollment Grows in Utah, Budget Shrinks

Arizona Budget Shortfall Forces Cuts

Pennsylvania Universities Anxiously Await Decision on Gambling Taxes

Nebraska Legislators Propose Cuts to School Aid

Kentucky Higher Education Council to Vote on Budget Plan

When Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), they included extensive data reporting requirements so that the public could closely track expenditures. Now that the recipient reported data on expenditures is publically available, tracking education funds should be easy. But as we discussed earlier this week, data reported by school districts and institutions of higher education is lacking in comprehensive information and is difficult to decipher. Unfortunately, state-level recipient reported data does not match previously available Department of Education (ED) reported data for many states, further undermining the value of the data. If the point of the data collection process was to provide accessible data on the progress of the stimulus, this data falls short of that goal.

ARRA recipients reported the total amount of federal stimulus funds they had received as of September 30^th, 2009 for all stimulus programs (except Pell Grants). This data can be compared to data ED reported on the amount of funds disbursed for the same programs. To do this comparison, we aggregated the recipient reported data on total ARRA funds received by state and compared it to ED's reports on funds it disbursed after subtracting any disbursements related to Pell Grants. We found a fair number of discrepancies between the recipient and agency reported data.

Last Friday, the first round of recipient reported Recovery Act grant and loan data was made available on the Recovery.gov website. Much like the previously released federal contract data, this wave of data lacks the comprehensive information needed to truly determine how the funds are being spent and from what source. The data are both difficult to decipher and include several instances of human error.

While working with the data we discovered several issues that make the data difficult to understand.  For example, less than half of all education-related data are tagged with the funding agency name "Department of Education." Other possible funding agencies include "Federal Student Aid," "Impact Aid Programs," "Office of Elementary and Secondary Education," "Office of Higher Education Programs," "Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services," "Office of Postsecondary Education," and "Office of Vocational and Adult Education."

Earlier this month the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released a preliminary report on graduation rates in the 50 states and the District of Columbia for the high school class of 2006-07. The report shows that graduation rates vary widely by state - from as high as 88.6 percent to as low as 52.0 percent - and by student race or ethnicity. Interestingly, the NCES figures differ from the graduation rates most states report under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. In fact, 14 states claim to have graduation rates at least 10 percentage points higher than what the national standard shows. (Data for both nationally and state defined graduation rates can be accessed on the Federal Education Budget Project website at www.edbudgetproject.org.)