Education

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.

No Middle Ground on New Mexico Schools Budget

Oklahoma Amendment Could Mean Tax Hikes

Ohio Slots Ruling Puts Budget Up in the Air

California Community Colleges will Receive Less Stimulus Money than Expected

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.

Virginia Prepares for Cuts to Higher Education Budget

Michigan Budget Deal Would Mean Cuts for Education

Funding Cuts For DC Area Colleges Mean Higher Tuition, Fewer Classes

Massachusetts Lawmakers Seek to Review State Education Funding Formula

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.

Arizona to Face School Funding Lawsuit

West Virginia Schools Turn to Stimulus Money to Fill Funding Gaps

Higher Education Targeted in Colorado Budget Cuts

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.

Pennsylvania Budget Impasses Leaves Grant Recipients in Limbo

Schools Dealing with Oklahoma's 5 Percent Budget Cut

GAO Releases Teacher Quality Report

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.

Mississippi Early Education Program Could Receive Federal Funding

Missouri Districts Grapple with How to Spend Stimulus Money

Governor Richardson Announces Plan to Turn Around New Mexico Dropout Problem

North Carolina Raises Taxes, Cuts Budget for Schools

Earlier this week, Ed Money Watch compared House and Senate versions of the fiscal year 2010 Labor - HHS - Education appropriations bills and showed that there are significant differences among the President's request and House- and Senate-proposed education funding levels. These funding differences might spell the end of the Even Start program when the 2010 appropriation becomes law later this year.

Even Start is a small education program ($66.5 million in fiscal year 2009) that has been under fire since early in the Bush Administration. It is intended to integrate early education, adult education, and parenting education into "family literacy" programs in order to improve educational opportunities for low-income children and parents.

Evaluations of the program's effectiveness have been mixed, which prompted the Bush Administration to recommend year after year that Congress eliminate the program. The often-cited Third National Even Start Evaluation: Program Impacts and Implications for Improvement of 2003 concluded that Even Start participants did not make significantly greater gains than those in a comparison group not receiving services. However, many Even Start supporters and advocates have argued that this evaluation is now outdated, and it relies on too small a sample to represent the entire Even Start program. They also claim that the program's results cannot be adequately measured through quantitative evaluations.

Funding legislation for most federal education programs has been advancing in both the House and Senate in the past weeks. The fiscal year 2010 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill has been approved by the full House and has been cleared by the Appropriations Committee in the Senate. It appears that the full Senate will take up the bill when it returns in September from recess. Then, both Chambers will still need to work out any differences among their respective versions before the appropriations bill can be sent to the President for his signature. Fiscal year 2010 begins October 1^st, 2009, although much of the education funding provided in the bill is intended for the 2010-11 school year. 

The table below compares proposed 2010 funding levels for key federal programs in the President's request and the House and Senate versions of the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill. Note that the Senate has not yet publicly released its version, so only limited information is available for the table below.

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.

State Budget Includes Major Cuts to Ohio Grant Program

Pennsylvania Budget Deadlock Prevents Payment to Schools

Faculty Union in California Accepts Furloughs

New GAO Report: State Implementation of Career and Technical Education

Congressional Democrats missed a golden opportunity this week.

On Monday the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published a letter to Senate Budget Committee ranking member Judd Gregg (R-NH) regarding the estimated savings of eliminating the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program and making all loans through the Direct Loan program. The letter states that savings from shifting all  FFEL schools to direct lending -- the centerpiece of legislation adopted by the House Education and Labor Committee last week -- would be $47 billion over ten years when using market-based estimates, compared to $87 billion when using rules dictated by the Federal Credit Reform Act.

Republican lawmakers immediately went on the attack, accusing Democrats of misrepresenting the savings the legislation would produce. In separate press releases, Senator Gregg and Rep. Jon Kline, the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, trumpeted the new CBO estimate, saying it presented a more accurate picture of how much money would be saved if the legislation was enacted.

The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor last week approved legislation, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009, that would eliminate the Federal Family Education Loan  (FFEL) program and use much of the savings to increase funding for other education programs. The full House may vote on the bill soon, but the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee is not likely to release its companion proposal until the fall. Let's take a look at some of the new spending proposed in the bill.

Congress is using the budget reconciliation process to move the bill to final passage, which allows for expedited consideration and filibuster-proof privilege in the Senate. Under the reconciliation instructions adopted by Congress earlier this year, the student aid bill must result in $1 billion in savings over the coming five years. Because the bill's core proposal—administrative savings in student loan programs—reduces spending by $41.8 billion over the 2009-2014 period, the bill's drafters are able to increase funding in other programs and still meet the $1 billion requirement. In fact, the bill includes $30.3 billion in gross new spending over that time period.