Early Ed Watch

A Blog from New America's Early Education Initiative

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Paul Ryan Probably Wouldn’t Defund Head Start (And Other Things Worth Knowing About Romney’s VP Pick)

  • By
  • Maggie Severns
August 15, 2012

As is becoming evident, Mitt Romney choosing Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his running mate in the 2012 presidential election campaign will give a lot of ammunition to the Obama campaign, which immediately took aim, saying that Ryan has engineered budgets that “proposed an additional $250,000 tax cut for millionaires, and deep cuts in education from Head Start to college aid.”

Inevitably, some of the spin coming out of the Obama campaign will be very true and some will be a stretch. But contrary to some of the media's reports, the claim that a Romney-Ryan ticket would devastate education spending, Head Start in particular, is a stretch.

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Republican Vice-Presidential Pick Proposed Spending Cuts in 2013, but Little Mention of Early Learning

  • By
  • Clare McCann
August 14, 2012

As Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) walked across the stage last week for his first introduction as former Governor Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) running mate, child and student advocates were revisiting Ryan’s more-than-13-year career in the House of Representatives for details about his stances on education issues. One of the biggest indicators may be found in his 10-year budget proposal issued in March 2012.

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Ed Dept’s District-Level Competition Keeps Door Open for PreK-3rd Reforms

  • By
  • Lisa Guernsey
August 13, 2012

The spotlight in school reform turns now to school districts instead of states with the U.S. Department of Education’s release Friday of its invitation for a new $383 million Race to the Top competition.  Districts can compete for up to $40 million each, with awards based on their sizes and abilities to personalize learning for students, become transparent in how they are spending money, engage community groups and implement systems for evaluating teachers and leaders based in part on student test scores.

The department, which said it would make 15 to 25 awards, asked districts to let it know by August 30 if they intend to apply. [UPDATE: On September 4, the department announced that 893 districts said they would.] Applications are due October 30 and winners announced in December.

The competition provides openings for school districts that recognize the need to pay more attention to the PreK-3rd grade years.

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For Quality, Low-Cost Child Care, Join the Military

  • By
  • Maggie Severns
August 13, 2012

Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University and now a senior fellow at New America, wrote a thoughtful column for Foreign Policy recently on the pay and benefits structure in the U.S. military. The country spends an estimated $768 billion per year on defense, Brooks estimates, and a portion of that cost goes to decent pay for military personnel (according to the Congressional Budget Office, the average member of the military is paid better than 75 percent of civilian federal workers with comparable experience) and solid benefits. Among these benefits are free health care, low- to no-cost higher education and housing, and retirement with pension after 20 years of service.

As Brooks rightly points out, all these extra benefits reflect the esteem we as a society have for those who serve in the military. Still, there are some lessons that the public could borrow from this so-called “socialist” military workforce. Chief among these lessons is another military perk that Brooks doesn’t mention in her piece: child care.

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In National Journal Blog: Why Not Formula Fund Pre-K?

  • By
  • Maggie Severns
August 8, 2012

This week's National Journal Education Experts Blog drills into two perennial questions: If policymakers and the public have come to understand the importance of early education, why is it never an election issue? And how can advocates make it a bigger priority?

In my response, I note that education is rarely a big election issue, but elections aren't the only way to make early ed a priority. I use an idea which we've discussed on Early Ed Watch before, formula funding pre-K, as an example of one way to make early education a long-term priority. Some states, such as Oklahoma, have already chosen to do so.

Read the post here.

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Does Minecraft Have a Place in Elementary Schools of the Future?

  • By
  • Lisa Guernsey
August 6, 2012

On Thursday this week, the Early Education Initiative and the Future Tense project at Slate magazine will kick off the back-to-school season with an event here in Washington, D.C. designed to shake up typical notions of elementary school. Today's young kids are now using technology to express themselves, make things, and share ideas. What do they have to teach us about the way they learn? 

Getting Schooled by a Third Grader: What Kids’ Gaming, Tweeting, Streaming and Sharing Tells us About the Future of Elementary Education

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Forum Tackles Issues of Complacency in Early Education

  • By
  • Clare McCann
August 2, 2012

Those who have been following the presidential campaigns may have noticed that neither Obama or Romney have given early childhood care and education much attention. According to some panelists at an event on early childhood and the economy hosted by National Journal and sponsored by the First Five Years fund yesterday, that’s because few politicians give it top billing on their priority lists.

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New Reports Analyze Federal and State Investments in Children

  • By
  • Clare McCann
July 30, 2012

The economic recession has thrust more families into poverty and slowed federal, state and local revenue. A new report out this week from First Focus, “Children’s Budget 2012,” examines the amount of federal dollars directed toward children in this challenging climate.

Although total federal funding for children rose over the past five years by about 17.5 percent ($46 billion), the report finds this is primarily due to increased eligibility for entitlement programs such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. The annual discretionary funding Congress appropriates for children’s programs has fallen in each of the past two years, and dropped in inflation-adjusted terms by 1.5 percent between 2008 and 2012.

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Fordham Hosts Debate on GOP Education Policy

  • By
  • Maggie Severns
July 27, 2012

At a discussion Thursday at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, D.C., Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings spoke with moderator and Fordham President Chester Finn, Jr. about the Republican Party’s direction on education policy.

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A First Look at the Department of Education’s Sequestration Plans

  • By
  • Clare McCann
July 26, 2012

This January, across-the-board cuts in federal spending could be applied to most fiscal year 2013 appropriations, a process known as sequestration. According to the Department of Education, school programs will experience significant losses if Congress allows sequestration to move forward.

A Senate subcommittee examined the issue in detail this week. Using a Congressional Budget Office estimate that says agencies’ budgets could be cut by 7.8 percent, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Chairman of the Subcommittee Tom Harkin (D-IA) each issued post-sequester predictions. (Harkin’s report also includes Health & Human Services programs like Head Start.)

Both agreed the cuts would be dramatic. Title I, the federal government’s main funding stream for the education of poor children, would be awarded $1.1 billion less than in the current fiscal year. There would be $900 million less in special education grants to states. Almost 100,000 children would lose access to Head Start, and another 80,000 would be cut from Child Care and Development Block Grant subsidies. Special education preschool grants would lose nearly $30 million.

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