Education

This post also appeared on our sister blog, Early Ed Watch.

The House joined the Senate Thursday morning to approve a continuing resolution (CR) that will fund federal programs through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. The continuing resolution that has funded these programs since October 2012 is set to expire on March 27, which would have triggered a government shutdown if no further funding were in place by then.

The CR, which takes the place of annual appropriations bills, funds most education programs for fiscal year 2013. It sets funding according to the levels provided in the prior fiscal year, but includes the 5.1 percent across-the-board cuts applied to most federal programs earlier this month under sequestration.

The bill, which first passed the Senate in its final form before being sent back to the House, locks in post-sequester spending levels for most education programs, despite the opportunity lawmakers had to reduce indiscriminate spending cuts. Policymakers opted not to reverse the spending cuts and restore funding to key programs like Title I grants for low-income children and IDEA Part B grants for special education. There are, however, a few exceptions.

The exceptions also include funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, which the CR sets at $2.3 billion, about a $50 million increase from 2012 levels. And the Senate bill continues funding without changes for both the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and the Child Care Entitlement to States programs, each of which provides additional funding to states for child care and other subsidies.

Additionally, although the newly passed CR maintains the 5.1 percent funding cut applied to Head Start, the bill back-fills a $33.5 million portion of it. Most of that money will be dedicated to the re-competition process currently underway.

Lawmakers also made some exceptions for a few K-12 programs. The CR directs $3.0 million under the Department of Education’s Safe Schools fund to an emergency response program to address violence in schools. Senators also altered strict maintenance-of-effort requirements for special education funding. On the higher education side, appropriators reserved $4.5 million to continue existing Javits Fellowship awards for graduate-level study. An effort to reinstate military tuition assistance benefits, which were suspended for new applicants last week because of sequestration, was successful at the last minute. The CR also maintains Pell Grant funding at its 2012 level, although Pell Grant funding was never reduced under the sequester.

The continuing resolution bill will now be sent to the White House, where the president is expected to sign it into law. Lawmakers managed to avert a government shutdown and finish their appropriations business before the start of the Easter recess this weekend.

And the CR isn’t the only budget action being debated this week. The 2013 funding process has run on for so long, it is overlapping with the start of the fiscal year 2014 budget process. Both the House and Senate are debating and voting on fiscal year 2014 budget resolutions this week, which will set an overall spending limit for next year’s appropriations and set up other processes that will shape next year’s education funding. The House also voted Thursday to approve Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget resolution.

For more on the budget resolution that has now passed both chambers, check out this post from our sister blog, Ed Money Watch.

This post also appeared on our sister blog, Ed Money Watch.

The House joined the Senate Thursday morning to approve a continuing resolution (CR) that will fund federal programs through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. The continuing resolution that has funded these programs since October 2012 is set to expire on March 27, which would have triggered a government shutdown if no further funding were in place by then.

The CR, which takes the place of annual appropriations bills, funds most education programs for fiscal year 2013. It sets funding according to the levels provided in the prior fiscal year, but includes the 5.1 percent across-the-board cuts applied to most federal programs earlier this month under sequestration.

Building on the momentum of President Obama’s call to expand preschool access, the first months of the 113^th Congress have seen the reintroduction of a number of bills addressing early education.

Education advocates have been lauding the budget resolution wending its way through the U.S. Senate. They praise the Senate budget resolution (aka the “Murray budget,” so named for Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray) for rolling back the increases in origination fees for student loans and for addressing the July 1 expiration of the 3.4 percent interest rate on Subsidized Stafford loans for undergraduates. These advocates have either been duped or are simply giving Senate Democrats a free pass: The Murray budget does not include funding for any changes to student loans – or any education programs on the entitlement side of the budget, for that matter.

Congressional budget resolutions are drafted each year by the House and Senate Budget Committees to set spending and revenue targets for at least the next five years. The budget resolution is broken down into budget functions that help set the limits on future spending for different agencies.

Each budget function has a “baseline funding” level, which refers to current law. If senators intended to leave education programs exactly as they are under current law, senators would set funding at the baseline in the budget resolution.But if the senators drafting the budget resolution want to “make room” for more spending on education programs like student loans – say, to extend the 3.4 percent interest rate on Subsidized Stafford loans – then the budget function for education (function 500) needs more funding in it than the baseline.

So if the Murray budget was serious about making changes to education programs, we could look at the education budget function and we would see an increase in funding above the baseline. For example, a one-year extension of the 3.4 percent interest rate on Subsidized Stafford loans would cost about $6 billion above baseline. But there is no such funding increase in the Murray budget. Education funding is exactly at baseline, and no additional funding is provided for education programs on the mandatory side of the budget, such as student loans (see table below).

Why did Senate Democrats opt not to include the additional funding in the budget resolution? Because that would have showed up as additional spending. Instead, the Senate Democrats included a “deficit-neutral reserve fund” for higher education programs that includes no spending numbers whatsoever. Why? Because that approach includes no spending numbers whatsoever. That way the budget resolution can have its cake and eat it too. Its supporters can boast about new spending for student loans but exclude that spending from any actual spending number in the budget resolution.

That is a convenient trick if you can get away with it. Education advocates seem willing to play along with a wink and nod – or maybe they have been duped. Perhaps they should ask Senate Democrats to show them where the money is for more spending on student loans. And remember, spending is measured in numbers, not words. Do not fall for the “reserve fund” trick.

The post originally appeared on our sister blog Early Ed Watch.

During the media frenzy that followed President Obama’s unprecedented call for expanding pre-K to all four-year-olds in the United States, we estimated that the additional cost to states and the federal government, combined, to be somewhere between $10-15 billion per year. We estimate that the feds and the states currently spend about $9 billion on pre-K for four-year-olds.

We wanted to explain exactly how we came to that conclusion.

According to the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), there were approximately 4.1 million four-year olds in the U.S. as of July 2011.  But we shouldn’t assume that 100 percent of those 4.1 million children would participate. Even in states that provide pre-K to any family that wants it, such as Oklahoma and Florida, not all families choose to send their children, and currently about 75 percent are enrolled. Therefore, we predict approximately 75 percent of four-year olds would be enrolled nationally if pre-K were truly universal in all states. That means we are talking about funding pre-K for a little under 3.1 million four-year-olds around the country.

Next we determined a reasonable cost per child.  This, of course, varies by state. (Teacher pay will vary depending on supply and demand, not to mention cost-of-living in a particular area, for example.)  But we do know that the average per-pupil expenditure for children enrolled in Head Start in 2012 was $7,581 (excluding Early Head Start, which is for children under 3 and their mothers).  We also know that the Obama Administration appears to be aiming for a full-day (not a half-day) pre-K program, and that the average spending on a full day of instruction for K-12 students nationally is $12,442 per pupil, according to NIEER.  State-funded pre-K programs of decent quality cost $2,640 to $11,699, with the average at $6,408.* So we round up to $8,000.

By using this formula, we conclude that it would cost $24.6 billion per year to fund a “universal” public pre-K program for all four-year-olds. However, we estimate that states and the federal government already spend about $9.24 billion on pre-K for four-years olds.

Here’s how we got to that number, which we came to through a lot of deduction, so we want to be clear that it’s only an estimate.

States spent about $5.49 billion on state-funded pre-K programs in 2011. (Some of that includes federal funding from  TANF, according to NIEER data, so it is not purely state funding).  In 2011, The federal government spent $7 billion on Head Start (excluding Early Head Start), special-education preschool services (known as IDEA Preschool within the the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), and other sources.** Add 5.49 and 7, which is 12.49. Using NIEER data, we know that 74 percent of children enrolled in these publicly funded programs are four year olds. So we multiply .74*12.49 to get to the $9.24 billion number.

So given how much is already spent on pre-K, total new costs would be closer to $15 billion.

There are many caveats to these numbers. Three and five-year olds tend to sneak into some of these numbers on the margins. There are also other forms of funding that we may not be capturing. Lastly, simply taking the full cost of programs and multiplying them by the percentage that is four-year olds is “back-of-the-envelope.” It could cost more because there are certain fixed costs that can’t be multiplied by a percentage, or it could be less because it doesn’t account for efficiencies that are only achieved at a very large scale.

Furthermore, the numbers we are using are also closer to an ideal world of full, universal, high-quality pre-K, so we think that our estimate is on the high end. Therefore we feel comfortable estimating the additional cost to be somewhere between $10-15 billion.

What do you think about our number? Too high? Too low? Let us know.

*We define a program as “high quality” when it meets at least seven of NIEER’s ten benchmarks.

** In 2011 the federal government spent $6.3 billion on Head Start (excluding Early Head Start) and $373.4 million on IDEA 619 (preschool). We round up because some IDEA part B money probably helps fund preschool IDEA programs and there are other federal structures, such as Title I, where some of the money may go to preschool but the numbers are not broken down for us.

Debates on preschool can sometimes devolve into misinformed squabbles over whether children can benefit and by how much. But a debate hosted last Thursday at the Fordham Institute was a refreshing exception. For 90 minutes, speakers and the audience reckoned with several important policy questions, especially on the extent to which the federal government should get involved to improve quality and access for families. The one thing missing was a serious conversation about how to build a strong, professional workforce of pre-K teachers.

During the media frenzy that followed President Obama’s unprecedented call for expanding pre-K to all four-year-olds in the United States, we estimated that the additional cost to states and the federal government, combined, to be somewhere between $10-15 billion per year. We estimate that the feds and the states currently spend about $9 billion on pre-K for four-year-olds.

We wanted to explain exactly how we came to that conclusion.