Bush Education budget 2008

From the NASSP:

President Bush Submits Lackluster Education Budget

On February 4, President George W. Bush submitted his education budget for FY 2009 to Congress. The proposal increased funding for some programs while slashing or completely eliminating funding for others.

Programs targeted for elimination include:

 School Leadership

 Smaller Learning Communities

 Comprehensive School Reform

 Elementary and Secondary School Counseling

 Career and Technical Education State Grants (Perkins)

Slashed programs include:

 Teacher Quality State Grants ($2.8 million; $100 million below FY 2008)

 Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities, State Grants ($100 million; $194.8 million below FY 2008) Flat-funded programs include:

 School Improvement Grants ($491.3 billion)

Among those programs that received increases are:

 Title I, Subgrants to LEAs ($14.3 billion; $406 million over FY 2008)

 Striving Readers ($100 million; $64.6 million over FY 2008)

 Special Education, State Grants ($11.3 billion; $337 million over FY 2008)

 Advanced Placement ($70.0 million; $26.5 million over FY 2008)

 Math Now ($95.0 million; this is a newly authorized program and was not funded in FY 2008)

 Teacher Incentive Fund ($200 million; $102.7 million over FY 2008)

Responding to the president’s proposed budget, NASSP Executive Director Gerald N. Tirozzi said “it is disappointing to see that President Bush has once again decided to shortchange public schools and undermine their efforts to improve student achievement.”

“Deputy Secretary of Education Ray Simon said that ‘the budget was built around the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.’ Yet without adequate funding it is hard to imagine how schools that have had difficulty meeting adequate yearly progress will now be able to do so with even fewer resources,” Tirozzi continued.

“If President Bush is really interested in defeating the vicious cycle of low achievement, then he must invest significantly greater resources than are proposed in his FY 2009 education budget.

Preparing our students for the challenges of the 21st century workforce must not be done on the cheap.”

At a Department of Education budget briefing, Secretary Margaret Spellings quipped that when it comes to the budget, “the president proposes, and congress disposes,” intimating that with the Democratically controlled congress, President Bush’s budget is effectively dead on arrival.

While it has been rumored that Congress will pass a continuing resolution (CR) to maintain federal funding at FY 2008 levels until a new president is elected, the president should not be so easily dismissed. Bush still has nearly a year left in his presidency, and despite their ardent efforts, the Democrats were forced to submit to the president’s budget request last year.

The Wall Street Journal's more charitable take on the Bush Education budget:

Budget Seeks Revamp of Washington Schools

In a parting kiss to the nation's capital, President Bush would offer $33 million in new funds to help overhaul the District of Columbia's struggling public-education system...

...The budget offers funding increases for the District of Columbia's public schools in line with Mr. Bush's free-market approach to education. It would fund a new pay-for-performance teacher incentive program, and it would increase the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, increasing scholarships for students who want to attend private high schools to $12,000 from $7,500. It would index future scholarship amounts to inflation to better reflect students' actual costs....

...The Bush budget also includes one-time additions for education reform, totaling $20 million. They include $3.5 million to help hire and train principals and other school leaders, $7 million to intervene in low-performing schools and develop better programs, and $9.5 million toward school data reporting...

WSJ's BUDGET BREAKDOWN
• Chart: Crunching the numbers
• Full contents of the proposal
• Real Time Economics blog
Complete budget coverage

Somewhere in the middle is Education Week.

Bush Budget Proposes Level Funding of Education Dept.

The U.S. Department of Education’s overall budget would remain stagnant at $59.2 billion under a fiscal year 2009 proposal released by President Bush that includes a modest boost for Title I grants to school districts, the main funding vehicle for implementing the No Child Left Behind Act...

...But Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said the proposed $14.3 billion for Title I grants, a 2.9 percent increase over fiscal 2008, was not sufficient to help schools meet the goals of the law.

“The president’s proposed increase for funding for public schools through the No Child Left Behind law is not enough even to keep pace with inflation,” Rep. Miller said in a statement. “The president has made it clear that he intends to end his administration the same way he started it—by breaking his promises to public schools and schoolchildren.” ...