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Real Financial Aid Reform
Posted by: Education Policy Staff (May 05, 2009, 11:37 AM)
Congressional Republicans have been fighting for years to shine a spotlight on the drastic increases in the cost of college and target student financial assistance in manner that ensures the funds are being spent on America’s neediest students. We have issued reports, held multiple hearings, and introduced several bills (see here, here, and here). And in response to these efforts, we were met with stiff resistance each step of the way.
Yet as college costs have continued to rise, policymakers have become more open to real reforms to finally address college affordability head-on. Solving these challenges remained among the top priorities for congressional Republicans in the recent reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, and that's why we worked with Democrats to include key college cost reforms in H.R. 4137, the Higher Education Opportunity Act. For example, the bill allows students to search, sort, and compare key cost indicators for every school in the country. In addition, the bill creates lists to identify the most expensive institutions, the least expensive institutions, and the institutions with the greatest cost increases, by percentage. The schools with the greatest cost increases will be required to disclose additional information about what is driving their cost increases and what can be done to address them.
We are encouraged to learn that the Secretary of Education is willing to step up and engage colleges and universities in this conversation. In an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education, Secretary Duncan indicated he is supportive of these ideas. We are concerned, however, with the implication that the federal government can continue blindly spending merely to keep pace with the spiraling cost of college.
The federal government does have a role to play, but it cannot be the only player. States and families must also do their part, as must individual institutions of higher education. Congress has put mechanisms in place to allow students and families to research college costs and select institutions that are right for them. We have also taken steps to ensure that states continue to do their part to fund this country’s public higher education system.
We need to let these reforms take hold before we make any drastic decisions -- such as the elimination of a long-standing student loan program -- that will have a long-term impact on the fiscal health of the nation. Similarly, changes should not be made to the campus-based aid programs, like the Perkins Loan program, until the flawed distribution formula is addressed. Currently, these limited funds flow to those institutions that have been in the program the longest, and not to those institutions who are actually serving the greatest number of needy students.
The federal government is presented with a unique opportunity at this time. With the pressure of a reauthorization behind us, we should use this opportunity to take a step back and engage in a true examination of the student aid programs. Rather than operating through the fast-tracked, arcane procedure of "budget reconciliation" to eliminate the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program, Congress should engage in a healthy, deliberative debate over true simplification of all federal student financial assistance.
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Budgets Are About Priorities
Posted by: Education Policy Staff (March 25, 2009, 06:19 AM)
This morning, the House Budget Committee will consider the budget resolution for fiscal year 2010, which is a blueprint for determining tax and spending policy for the upcoming fiscal year. While all of the talk in Washington has been on the President’s budget request that was released in February (filled with massive tax increases, mammoth new government programs, and trillions – not billions – of dollars added to the national debt), the budget resolution passed by the House and Senate is of much greater consequence in the real world. That’s because the policies it sets out are binding as Congress sets funding levels for each agency of the federal government. You can see our views on the budget here.
As Congress begins the budget process, we hope that the Democratic Majority will join Republicans in rejecting the President’s budget because it spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much. Instead, Democrats should put forth a budget that reaffirms the responsibility of policymakers to act as good stewards of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars.
Even though many Americans are tightening their belts, the Administration’s budget grows the size of government by almost 10 percent. Under the President’s plan, total government spending would be set at a staggering $3.9 trillion, or 28 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). That’s the highest level since World War II. These facts were confirmed last Friday when the nonpartisan and independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest estimate of the nation’s budget situation. CBO projects that, because of the President’s policies, this year’s federal deficit will hit a post-World War II record of $1.8 trillion, 13.1 percent of GDP. The agency also projects that the President’s new policies would double the federal debt to $14.5 trillion over the next 10 years. With CBO’s new estimate, it has become more imperative than ever that Congress must make sure that the nation’s budget focuses on reducing wasteful government spending, unnecessary new programs, and bureaucratic federal mandates.
One area of great concern is the President’s plan to grow the size of government by nationalizing the student loan program. His budget requires student loans to be made solely by the federal government and eliminates the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program, the public-private partnership that has been in place for more than four decades and has a strong record of making students’ dreams of a college education possible. The federal government’s $4 billion investment in FFEL programs leverages more than $60 billion in student loans, which provides important college opportunities to 6.2 million students attending over 4,400 institutions each year.
These students also receive extensive financial literacy counseling, financial aid counseling, and default prevention services that help students repay their student loans. Eliminating this public-private partnership in favor of a one-size-fits-all Washington solution is likely to cost the country more than 30,000 current jobs, and it will surely have a ripple effect on thousands more. It will eliminate any sort of choice in lender for millions of students across the country, and it will jeopardize the ability of institutions of higher education to tailor programs that best fit their students’ needs. We hope that Congress will reject the Administration’s extreme proposal and examine the student loan programs in terms of what is best for students.
If history is any guide, we’re sure that the budget resolution that will be passed by the Democrats on the House Budget Committee will call for greater government involvement fueled by higher taxes and deeper deficits. Republicans will fight this irresponsible budget and propose a better plan that focuses on pro-growth policies that foster innovation and job creation, promote American competitiveness, and ensure accountability, state and local flexibility, parental choice, and funding for what works in education.
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Can't We Agree on Reading?
Posted by: Education Policy Staff (March 12, 2009, 11:05 AM)
Yesterday, President Obama signed into law a massive omnibus spending bill that contains funding for the nine appropriations bills that were not completed last year, including programs at the Department of Education. While the bill includes funding for a whole host of programs that have been singled out for elimination by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), it eliminates funding for the highly successful Reading First program.
To put it plainly, Democrats have eliminated a program to help students, including disadvantaged students and students with disabilities, learn how to read. Everyone knows that a young child’s ability to read is essential to their academic achievement and success in the later grades and other subjects. That’s why elimination of this program is so stunning, and short-sighted.
Reading First provides funding to our nation’s highest need schools to implement scientifically-based reading instruction programs in grades K-3. It serves more than 1.6 million students. And results from the program are clear. Nationally, the percentage of third graders in Reading First schools scoring proficient on state reading assessments has grown nearly eight percent, much faster than overall growth. In addition, state-reported performance data released last year indicates impressive gains in reading comprehension, with improvements seen by nearly every grade and subgroup of students. 28 of 37 states that reported data experienced an increase in the percentage of students proficient in reading comprehension. Recent reports by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Inspector General, and the Center on Education Policy have all found widespread support for the program among the states. In one Center on Education Policy report, 97 percent of Reading First school districts said that the program was an important or very important cause for increases in students’ reading scores.
In eliminating the funding for the program, Democrats point to a series of reports from the Department of Education’s Inspector General in late 2006 and early 2007 documenting management errors by the Department in the early implementation of the program. This, however, ignores the fact that, over two years ago, the Department implemented all of the Inspector General’s recommendations for improving oversight of the program; actions that the Inspector General has stated addressed his concerns.
As this blog is being written, the U.S. Secretary of Education is testifying before the House Budget Committee on the President’s budget blueprint for the upcoming fiscal year. While congressional Democrats have succeeded in ending this vital reading program for now, the Obama Administration could easily restore it by calling for funding in FY 2010. Unfortunately, the budget blueprint released late last month is silent on whether Reading First should be funded. We think this is a glaring omission, and one that deserves follow-up during the Secretary’s testimony this morning.
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Save D.C. Scholarships!
Posted by: Education Policy Staff (February 24, 2009, 07:45 PM)
"There is no such thing as a permanent program. Every program needs to be authorized or re-authorized." So said a top aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) when asked by the Examiner why Congressional Democrats inserted language into the omnibus appropriations bill that would phase out the popular D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
For the unfamiliar, a bit of background: The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program provides scholarships of up to $7,500 annually to low-income children in the nation’s capital. Since 2004, the program has proven a lifeline for struggling parents who want to enroll their children in safer, higher-achieving schools; parents who have no other way to escape the D.C. public school system, which is among the lowest-performing in the country.
Of course, anyone familiar with Washington knows that there IS such a thing as a permanent program. Most federal programs are permanent, even if they are no longer useful. And federal programs tend to live on and on, even if they have not technically been reauthorized, despite the Speaker's aide's comments to the contrary. In fact, there are currently more than 100 programs under the jurisdiction of the House Education and Labor Committee that have not been reauthorized or reformed, some as far back at 1993. Using the Democrats' logic, Congress would stop funding the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities (last passed by Congress in 1993), Americorps and other national service programs (last reauthorized in 1996), child care and development block grants (last examined in 2002), or those education programs that serve disadvantaged students in public schools under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (last reauthorized in 2001).
But in a way, this debate misses the point. The real issue shouldn't be technicalities of federal funding. What's at stake is the future of low-income children in the nation's capital. Low-income children who were trapped in dilapidated, dangerous, and dysfunctional schools. Certainly, the D.C. public school system has an ambitious leader who is committed to change. But in the mean time, do we really want to tear educational opportunity away from these children?
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Suggestions for the Budget
Posted by: Education Policy Staff (February 23, 2009, 09:39 AM)
This week, President Obama is set to release a “budget blueprint,” which will detail how much the federal government is going to spend in the upcoming fiscal year. In recent press reports, the Administration has indicated that the blueprint will put the federal government on a path to fiscal responsibility by, among other things, cutting the deficit in half by 2013.
This commitment to fiscal discipline could not come at a better time, although it may be hard to take it seriously given the recent record of congressional Democrats. Congress just passed a massive government spending bill cloaked in “economic stimulus” that will cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion. And later this week, as we wait for the President’s new budget to be delivered to Capitol Hill, Democrats in Congress are preparing to pass an omnibus spending bill for the current fiscal year that could add another $400 billion or more in spending.
Just to put the government’s books in perspective, here’s an excerpt from an article that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled “Deficit breaks all the records” --
The Treasury Department reported Wednesday that the deficit for October through January totaled $569 billion, more than six times larger than the imbalance during the year-ago period. The deficit for January alone totaled $83.8 billion, worse than the $78 billion economists expected. The government had run a surplus of $17.8 billion in January 2008.
With eight months left in the current budget year, the deficit already has surpassed the deficit for 2008, an imbalance of $454.8 billion that is the full-year record.
The Congressional Budget Office has forecast that the deficit for the current budget year will hit $1.2 trillion, but that estimate does not include the costs of the economic stimulus plan that President Barack Obama is pushing through Congress. Many economists are forecasting the deficit for the current year will hit $1.6 trillion.
During the campaign and since taking office a little more than a month ago, President Obama has pledged that his Administration will embrace fiscal discipline by taking a scalpel to the massive federal budget and going through it line-by-line to “stop wasteful, obsolete federal government programs that make no financial sense.” Republicans have been pursuing this goal for years, and we’re pleased to have the President join us. To help out, we have a suggestion for where he might start to use that scalpel.
The federal government currently operates hundreds of education programs, spread out over multiple agencies. This results in duplication, waste, and inefficiency, and it ties the hands of local school officials who must abide by stringent requirements to qualify for the multitude of federal programs. A number of programs have been recommended for elimination by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) after national evaluations deemed them ineffective. Other programs were pet projects created by members of the Congressional leadership or by past Administrations. Programs like these are often highly restrictive, serving only a limited group of students, or are duplicative of existing, larger federal education programs.
There’s no doubt that the resources that the federal government provides to states and school districts are important to improving student achievement. But in a time of limited resources, we should focus on programs that directly serve students, particularly disadvantaged ones, and serve the interests of the American taxpayer. We urge the Administration to examine all of the programs administered by the U.S. Department of Education and other agencies and eliminate those that do not put students first. We can support programs that serve students today without saddling them with overwhelming debt tomorrow. With a new budget on the way, now is a perfect time to reevaluate how well we’re serving students and taxpayers.
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Parental Choice as Crime?
Posted by: Education Policy Staff (February 20, 2009, 05:03 PM)
We’re not in the business of defending individuals who break state or local law, but something just rubs us the wrong way when parents are imprisoned for wanting the best education for their kids. Last week, Yolanda Hill appeared in the Greece Town Court in New York for a preliminary hearing to answer charges that she illegally enrolled her children in Greece schools. Though she lives in Rochester, she used her children’s grandmother’s address to establish a false residency because the Greece school system could provide a better education for her kids. According to her teenage daughter, Santazcha Hill, "My mom only did what was right because she loved us. She's not a criminal."
We’re not arguing about the merits of state residency programs, whether parents should be required to pay tuition charges to school districts if their kids aren’t residents, or the ability of states such as New York to set their own education laws. But it sure doesn't say much about educational opportunity in this country when parents feel they have no choice but to break the law in order to ensure that their kids are achieving academically.
For years, House Republicans have worked to ensure that parents are able to choose to send their children to higher performing public or private schools if their children’s schools fell short in providing a quality education. From Cleveland and Milwaukee to Florida and Washington, D.C., Congress, states, and local communities have been embracing parental empowerment in education. When Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), it made it possible for students to transfer to better performing public schools – including charter schools – within the school district or receive additional educational services, such as private tutoring. But even with these new options (which some in the education establishment are attempting to weaken, see here), it remains clear that there is more work left to do.
If Democrats in Congress and the new Administration are truly serious about education reform, they must get truly serious about giving parents the tools they need for their children to thrive. That starts by empowering parents with more choice.
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Dept. of Education Faces an Important Choice
Posted by: Education Policy Staff (February 10, 2009, 12:29 PM)
Yesterday Congressman Buck McKeon, the Senior Republican Member on the Committee, sent a letter to newly-installed U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan congratulating him on his appointment and confirmation as the new Secretary of Education. The letter discusses Secretary Duncan’s long commitment to improving educational opportunity, particularly for disadvantaged students, during his tenure as Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools.
More importantly, and building on Secretary Duncan’s reputation as a “reformer”, the letter also calls on the Secretary to ensure that the public school choice and Supplemental Educational Services (SES) or free tutoring provisions that were included in the final Title I regulation and guaranteed under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) are not weakened so that parents have access to and knowledge of the parental choice options guaranteed under the law. The letter states:
"Because of what I believe is our shared commitment to improving educational opportunity for disadvantaged students, I am writing to express my strong concerns over recent press reports that the Department is planning to weaken the public school choice and Supplemental Educational Services (SES) provisions that were included in the final regulation implementing Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). This regulation is critically important to ensuring that parents have access to and knowledge of the parental choice options guaranteed under the law.
"President Obama spoke compellingly about the importance of parental empowerment in education during the campaign, saying that he believes we should “…foster competition within the public school system. Let's make sure that charter schools are up and running. Let's make sure that kids who are in failing schools, in local school districts, have an option to go to schools that are doing well.
"I could not agree with that sentiment more, which is why I am so troubled by reports that parental options may be in jeopardy. I firmly believe that any attempt to weaken or failure to enforce the public school choice and SES provisions of ESEA would undermine both congressional intent and the spirit of reform championed by our new President."
Prompted by the education establishment--long resistant to the parental options requirements included under the law--various news reports have quoted senior Administration officials who have stated that they were reviewing the new Title I regulations and may consider possible changes that would weaken public school choice and free tutoring options. Some have even suggested that weakening parental options is in the best interest of children, although we would argue that the opposite is clearly the case. The letter, which calls on Secretary Duncan to reject these arguments, continues Congressman McKeon’s long-held belief that federal, state, and local policies must put the interests of students and parents first. Parents must be made fully aware of the choices available for their children. We hope that the new Secretary agrees.
To learn more about the Title I regulations and the letter to Secretary Duncan to support strengthening parental options, check out the letter, our press release, and information from last year regarding the regulations.
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The True Cost of the so-called Economic Stimulus Package
Posted by: Education Policy Staff (February 02, 2009, 12:38 PM)
This week, the U.S. Senate is expected to consider and pass its version of the so-called economic stimulus package. If you're a regular follower of this blog, you know that this action follows House passage of a similar package that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and other experts say will not immediately stimulate the economy since the bulk of the spending in the bill will not occur until next year and beyond – with some of it not being spent until 2018. Moreover, the bill devotes hundreds of billions of dollars to government spending programs rather than the job creation and economic stimulus our country truly needs.
Regarding the roughly $145 billion in education funding proposed under the bill, what has been lost is the fact this money is supposed to be temporary: it vanishes in 2 two years. College freshmen who are slated to receive $500 more in Pell Grants to combat rising tuition rates will have to work longer in their junior and senior years to cover the shortfall. Schools that have instituted new afterschool programs with the millions in new Title I funding will have to send those students home after two short years. States that have enhanced their special education services for infants and toddlers with the new special education funding will have to pay for those services themselves.
With such dramatic consequences occurring all over the country, we know what will happen. We've been through this before. Over the last three decades, Washington has created hundreds of “temporary” education programs, with the promise that it would be for one or two years, to provide seed money for "demonstration programs" until some fashion or fad can finally can get off the ground or to help states and school districts brave bad economic times. Those federal programs, and the spending to go with them, are still with us today.
So regardless of the promises that have been made by the Congressional leadership, we know that this new "temporary" funding will be around long after the economic stimulus package has passed, long after our economy has rebounded. This case is already being made by some in the education establishment who are arguing that we need to add the new temporary funding into the federal budget's "baseline" – a mechanism in federal budget law that assumes that all of the new funding will be provided by Congress each and every year. While the “baseline” is arcane and not easily understood, it’s incredibly important in detailing what Congress has provided for all of its programs for the last fiscal year and what it is projected to provide for each program going forward.
Recently, the Committee’s Republican staff put together three charts demonstrating the impact that a new budget baseline, including the spending in the economic stimulus package, will have on the federal budget for the Pell Grant, Title I, and IDEA programs. The funding increases for three programs alone would result in a doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling of the U.S. Department of Education’s budget in a few short years.
While no one is disputing that states and school districts rely on federal dollars, it’s important to remember that the federal government has a responsibility to balance its budget and to start paying down the more than $10 trillion debt (already more than $30,000 for each person in the country). The funding included in the so-called economic stimulus package isn't "free" money; our children and grandchildren are going to be the ones who are going to have pay for these massive increases in new federal spending. It’s time for those in charge to restore fiscal discipline to Washington.
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Washington Post: Propping up Education Status Quo Wastes More Than Money
Posted by: Education Policy Staff (January 29, 2009, 05:43 PM)
If you’re like us, when you opened up the Washington Post editorial page this morning, you did a double-take. After all, it’s not every day that one of the nation’s premier newspapers states so clearly what we’ve been saying for years: it’s not how much money you spend on education, it’s what you spend it on. To sum it up even better: results matter. Consider, a few of the Washington Post’s editorial points from An Education Stimulus? –
“Education is poised to win big under the economic stimulus plan hurtling through Congress. But it remains to be seen whether America's schoolchildren really will be helped by the huge investment of public funds that is being planned. After all, it seems that much of the billions of dollars of new federal spending is aimed at continuing programs and policies that largely have failed to improve student achievement. For the amount of money being spent, Congress should insist on real change, not simply more of the same.”
“The plan shaped by President Obama and congressional Democrats proposes to more than double the current budget of the Education Department, with $150 billion of new federal spending over two years.”
“…Congress will not be getting its money's worth unless it insists on real reforms in what students are expected to learn and how teachers are compensated.”
“We understand the urgency of the need for spending that will jump-start the economy, but if Congress merely props up the educational status quo, it will be wasting more than money.”
The bloated, so-called “economic stimulus package” the U.S. House passed last night and the Senate is poised to pass next week is just more of the same argument that we’ve heard for years – that money will solve the problems in America’s schools. We’re not saying money isn’t important, because it is. But if more federal spending was the solution, those problems would have been solved long ago with the more than $500 billion federal dollars that have gone to elementary and secondary education since 1965. The real solution is to hold states, schools, and school districts accountable for getting academic results for all children and fostering innovative reforms, such as replicating successful charter schools. With this deceptively named economic stimulus package, Congressional Democrats are bankrupting future generations while failing in the effort to improve student achievement. Here’s hoping that saner voices prevail.
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Gates Foundation Calls for Lifting State Charter School Caps
Posted by: Education Policy Staff (January 29, 2009, 10:52 AM)
With all the talk of massive federal spending increases Democrats have included in the so-called economic “stimulus” package (side note: what are States and school districts going to do when this money vanishes in two years?), we’ve been reading and re-reading a letter Bill Gates recently released on his foundation’s effort to improve America’s education system. While the letter is definitely a good read for all of those stakeholders interested in improving student achievement, Mr. Gates’ call for lifting the artificial caps that many States have imposed on the creation of new charter schools, which is being led by many in the education establishment, is great news and one that we hope will be seriously considered by those offending States.
“…a few of the schools that we funded achieved something amazing. They replaced schools with low expectations and low results with ones that have high expectations and high results. These schools are not selective in whom they admit, and they are overwhelmingly serving kids in poor areas, most of whose parents did not go to college. Almost all of these schools are charter schools that have significantly longer school days than other schools…
"Based on what the foundation has learned so far, we have refined our strategy. We will continue to invest in replicating the school models that worked the best. Almost all of these schools are charter schools. Many states have limits on charter schools, including giving them less funding than other schools. Educational innovation and overall improvement will go a lot faster if the charter school limits and funding rules are changed.”
According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, 26 States have some type of limit on charter school growth with some States imposing more than one kind of restriction. This artificial cap has and is stifling school reform movements all across the country. Iowa, for example, imposes a limit of 20 charter schools in the entire state with not more than one per district. In North Carolina, the state imposes a cap of 100 charters with five charters per district per year. It’s no surprise, we guess, that when we see news articles and read reports about school districts making significant gains in raising reading and math achievement, they’re not from these States.
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