Education

The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to approve a stopgap appropriations bill that will fund federal programs for the remainder of fiscal year 2013, once the current continuing resolution (CR) expires on March 27. The big news from the bill, though, is that the House Republicans who wrote the bill missed an opportunity to effectively blunt or cancel the effects of the sequester on education programs.

The House-passed bill provides funding for education programs at the same levels signed into law at the start of fiscal year 2013, minus the March 1 across-the-board cuts that occurred under sequestration, which totaled about 5.1 percent for most education programs. In other words, the proposed bill codifies the $85 billion in spending cuts left in the wake of the sequester.  

It does not need to be that way. House lawmakers could have upheld the post-sequester spending limits trigged by the 2011 budget deal without making across-the-board, universally applied cuts to education programs. Of course, they’d have to make bigger cuts elsewhere to do so – but that is what courageous budgeting is all about.

As we wrote earlier this year, education stakeholders should focus their attention on the March 27 deadline at which appropriations funding for all government agencies expires. That deadline gives Congress a built-in opportunity to rewrite the post-sequester funding levels for every federal program, just as they would through the regular annual appropriations process, while keeping within the overall spending limit that is now in place.

Based on the bill that the House passed yesterday, it looks like lawmakers took a pass on that built-in opportunity. They could have moved funding around between agencies – or even within the appropriation to the U.S. Department of Education – to reduce the impact of the funding cuts on the most critical federal education programs.

There is nothing radical in that proposal. It is what the appropriations process is supposed to be about each year. In fact, the House-passed bill does rearrange the post-sequestration funding levels for the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. Why not U.S. Department of Education and Head Start programs, too?

Fortunately, education stakeholders can ask senators that question before it’s too late. Senate lawmakers have yet to vote on the temporary funding measure, and reports suggest that Democratic leadership plans to introduce a spending bill with more changes to the post-sequester funding levels for more agencies than the House-passed version.

Time is running out, however. Congress has only three weeks – until March 27 – to reach an agreement before they risk a government shutdown. In the interim, all eyes will be on the Senate.

Last night on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the political comedian and Comedy Central “fake news host” took on opponents to the Head Start preschool program. Amidst the ribbing, though, Stewart gets to the heart of the Head Start debate.

Way back on August 1^st, 2011, Ed Money Watch told readers that the debt ceiling agreement Congress and the President had just passed could affect federal student loans. The post explained the changes that the sequestration process set up:

Such across-the-board cuts [sequestration] would also affect student loans. The law [Budget Control Act of 2011 referencing the Deficit Control Act of 1985] requires that the federal government increase origination fees on all student loans to reduce the costs of the programs under a sequester, should Congress and the president fail to enact legislation to reduce federal spending by $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

As everyone knows, Congress and the President did fail, and the sequester was triggered on March 1^st, 2013. But until a few days ago it was unclear how big the origination fee increases would be. A notice posted March 1^st on a Department of Education website that serves financial aid administrators details the following:

For Direct Subsidized and Direct Unsubsidized Loans where the first disbursement of the loan is after the sequester takes effect, the current loan fee of 1 percent of the principal amount of a loan will increase. We presently anticipate that the rate will increase to approximately 1.05 percent. With such an increase, for example, the fee on a loan for $5,500 would increase from $55.00 to $57.75, an increase of $2.75. We will provide the actual increased percentage when it becomes available.

For Direct PLUS Loans for both parent and graduate and professional student borrowers where the first disbursement of the loan is after the sequester takes effect, the current loan fee of 4 percent will increase. We presently anticipate that the rate will increase to approximately 4.20 percent. With such an increase, for example, the fee on a $10,000 Direct PLUS loan would increase from $400.00 to $420.00, an increase of $20.00. We will provide the actual increased percentage when it becomes available.

The fees will affect any loans issued on or after March 1^st, 2013. Since most borrowers have received their loans for the 2012-13 school year already, they will avoid the higher fees. But all loans issued in the future will come with higher fees.

[The Department of Education] plans to send email (and where necessary, paper) notifications to student and parent borrowers who have a Direct Loan where the first disbursement occurs during the period of the sequestration [March 1^st or later]. The notification will advise borrowers of the increased loan fee percentage and advise them that if they wish to cancel or reduce the amount of the loan they should contact the financial aid office at their school.

Therefore the sequester does indeed cut the costs of entitlement programs – federal student loans are entitlements – just not the entitlement programs that actually contribute most to the federal debt and budget deficit. In case you missed the point here, Congress and the president have just reduced the cost of an entitlement program that has relatively few cost problems, to help address the massive cost problems in other entitlement programs (Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid). Nice work.

Last week's National Journal Education Experts blog asks whether the president’s plan to expand all 4-year-olds access to high quality pre-K is a step in the right direction.

I say yes. His plan gives weight to the idea that we should no longer think of education as a K-12 system, but instead as a PreK-12 system.

In January, we held an event called Turnaround 2.0 to draw attention to the challenge of turning around elementary schools without improving the early years – including the early grades of elementary school – when children are building their foundational skills for academic success. Now that we have seen the outlines of President Obama's preschool proposal, these questions are hotter than ever. Depending on how and if Obama's plan moves forward, improvements to elementary schools may come more easily (though, no doubt, much work would still be required to improve instruction across the PreK-3rd grades.)

In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed to expand access to preschool, but offered few details on how much money the federal government would contribute. When the White House eventually releases that figure, everyone will want to know how it stacks up against what the federal government already spends on education each year. The trouble is, that number is tough to pin down. You might try to look it up.

At a Georgia preschool last week, President Obama sat in a tiny wooden chair and played a science game with a group of four-year-olds. He held up a magnifying glass and peered playfully at the little boy next to him. For a second it looked as if he was trying to figure him out. It is an apt metaphor of where our country stands on education these days. Obama's preschool plan builds on a decade's fascination with studies on brain growth.