That Flying Shoe

Cartoon by Nick Anderson in the Courier-Journal.

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.” ...

President Bush on Education

During last night's State of the Union address President Bush sent a contradictory message on America's public schools.

He said,

"Six years ago, we came together to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, and today no one can deny its results. Last year, fourth and eighth graders achieved the highest math scores on record. Reading scores are on the rise. African American and Hispanic students posted all-time highs."

He called on Americans to work together to provide extra help for struggling schools.

About a minute later, he abandoned them. Rather than fixing the non-performers, Bush called for a $300 million initiative that would provide federal tax dollars to encourage students to flee struggling inner-city schools.

And where would these students go?

White House counselor Ed Gillespie told Education Week that President Bush "has some concerns about the declining number of faith-based and parochial schools in inner cities around the country and low-income neighborhoods." Because of this, Gillespie said, Bush was ready to "urge Congress to enact a program he calls 'Pell Grants for Kids.' "

"Thanks to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships you approved, more than 2,600 of the poorest children in our Nation's Capital have found new hope at a faith-based or other non-public school. Sadly, these schools are disappearing at an alarming rate in many of America's inner cities. So I will convene a White House summit aimed at strengthening these lifelines of learning," Bush said.

Is President Bush inferring that the law is incapable of improving such schools? It sounds like it. But if a heavy-handed federal law is incapable of providing progress for all American students - granted, on an inadequate budget - then why is the federal government muscling in on a state's right issue.

And there is little evidence private businesses would do any better. Some charter schools have done well, on hard work. Others, not so much. But it sure sounds like the charter schools have really been struggling in DC.

Whatever Kentucky schools exist, they need to be adequately funded to deliver the services their students need - or they will never reach their goals.

The DC Opportunity Scholarships program Bush referred to is far from universally loved.

The National Association of Secondary School Principals said,

"While NASSP strives to improve education for all students, there is no conclusive evidence that alternative schools do a better job of educating students than traditional public schools.

In fact, a report released by the Department of Education in June 2007 found “no evidence of a statistically significant difference in test scores” between students participating in the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program and students who did not participate in the voucher program.

Choice for choice’s sake is no reason to divert much-needed funds away from America’s public schools – especially when the schools affected are often the ones in greatest need."

Then there was this from the Cincinnati Black Blog:

The president called upon the members of Congress to renew NCLB.

"The No Child Left Behind Act is a bipartisan achievement. It is succeeding. And we owe it to America's children, their parents, and their teachers to strengthen this good law."

His remarks on education were interrupted by applause three times. And indications are that Congress will clap again - when they dismantle No Child Left Behind.

Viewed with suspicion?

US President George W. Bush leans over to talk with a girl after Bush participated in a lesson for young children on the importance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day during a tour of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC, 21 January 2008. By Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty.

This from Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic.

Court Revives Lawsuit Against No Child Left Behind Law

A federal appeals court last week revived a legal challenge to the federal No Child Left Behind education law, saying that school districts have been justified in complaining that the law required them to pay for testing and other programs without providing sufficient federal money.

The 2-to-1 ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, gave new life to a 2005 lawsuit and appeared to be a setback to the Bush administration.
The ruling came on a day when President Bush marked the law’s sixth anniversary with a visit to an elementary school in Chicago, where he said, “I know No Child Left Behind has worked.”

Mr. Bush said he had instructed the federal education secretary, Margaret Spellings, “to move forward on some reforms that she can do through the administrative process” if Congress, which has been stymied by partisan strife over the law’s renewal, does not rewrite it this year. The law was passed in 2001 with strong bipartisan support; an effort to update it collapsed last year.

The president added that if Congress changed the law in ways that he disliked, “I will strongly oppose it and veto it.” ...

This from the New York Times.

President Bush approves $59.2 billion Education Budget

Budget Raises Title I, Cuts Reading First

Yesterday President Bush has signed into a law a $59.2 billion bill that will increase federal education spending by 2.9 percent in fiscal year 2008.

The appropriation for U.S. Department of Education programs during the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 is part of a larger budget drama in which Democrats largely gave in to a hard-line White House stance that earlier measures contained too much in domestic spending increases.

In signing the bill, a $550 billion omnibus measure that includes fiscal 2008 spending for most other Cabinet agencies as well as the Education Department President Bush complained that the bill contains nearly 9,800 earmarks, totaling more than $10 billion.

“These projects are not funded through a merit-based process and provide a vehicle for wasteful government spending,” the president wrote.

Education Week reports:

The measure will provide $13.9 billion to the Title I program for disadvantaged students, an 8.6 percent increase over the $12.8 billion appropriated for the program in fiscal 2007. But the amount is about 2 percent less than what was proposed for the program in a bill vetoed by President Bush in November.

By contrast, the Reading First program was cut significantly under the legislation, dropping from $1 billion last year to $393 million in fiscal 2008. That is slightly more severe than the $400 million proposed for the program in the vetoed spending bill.

Reading First, one of President Bush’s highest priorities under the No Child Left Behind Act, came under fire in a series of highly critical reports over the past 15 months by the Education Department’s inspector general that found favoritism for certain textbook publishers and other management problems in the program’s early years...