Education Budget Prioritizes Students, Empowers Parents, Saves Taxpayer Dollars
Today,
the Trump Administration released the Fiscal Year 2018 budget, which lays out
a series of proposals and priorities designed to ensure every student has an
equal opportunity to receive a high quality education. Through this budget, the
President has reaffirmed his commitment to returning decision-making power over
education back where it belongs—in the hands of parents, educators and State
leaders.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos issued the
following statement:
“This budget makes an historic investment in
America’s students. President Trump is committed to ensuring the Department focuses
on returning decision-making power back to the States, where it belongs, and on
giving parents more control over their child’s education. It also ensures
stable funding for critical programs, including Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act (IDEA) and Historically
Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
“The budget also reflects a series of tough choices
we have had to make when assessing the best use of taxpayer money. It ensures
funding for programs with proven results for students while taking a hard look
at programs that sound nice but simply haven’t yielded the desired outcomes.
“By refocusing the Department’s funding priorities
on supporting students, we can usher in a new era of creativity and ingenuity and
lay a new foundation for American greatness.”
Key
initiatives in the President’s 2018 budget are below:
Creating New Education Options through School
Choice
-
$1 billion increase for Title I for
new Furthering Options for Children to Unlock Success (FOCUS) grants. FOCUS
grants would provide
supplemental awards to school districts that adopt student-centered weighted
student funding formulas combined with open enrollment systems.
- $250 million increase for the
Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program for competitive awards for
applicants to provide scholarships for students from low-income families to
attend the private school of their parents’ choice.
- $167 million increase for the
Charter Schools Grants program to strengthen State efforts to start new charter
schools or expand and replicate existing high-performing charter schools while
providing up to $100 million to meet the growing demand for charter school
facilities.
Maintaining Support for the Nation’s
Most Vulnerable Students
- $14.9 billion in level funding for
for the core Title I Grants to local education agencies (LEAs) program to
support State and local efforts to ensure that more than 25 million students in
high-poverty schools have access to rigorous coursework and teaching.
- $12.7
billion to maintain the Federal investment in the IDEA formula grant programs, which help
support services to the 6.8 million children with disabilities nationwide and to
States in their ongoing work to design and implement program improvement
efforts under the Department’s Results Driven Accountability framework.
-
$736 million for the English
Language Acquisition program to implement effective language instruction
educational programs designed to help English learners attain English language
proficiency.
Simplifying Funding for Postsecondary
Education
- Safeguards and strengthens the Pell
Grant program by level funding the discretionary appropriation and supporting
year-round Pell, which will increase aid available to eligible students by
$16.3 billion over 10 years. The budget also proposes the cancellation of $3.9 billion
from unobligated carryover funding; this cancellation will have no effect on
students and will leave the Pell program on sound footing.
- Simplifies loan repayment for students
by replacing five different income driven repayment plans with a single plan
aimed at prioritizing expedited loan repayment for undergraduate borrowers.
- Provides $808.3 million for the
Federal TRIO Programs and $219 million for GEAR UP, resulting in savings of
$193 million from the 2017 annualized CR level. Funding for these programs is
reduced in areas that are either not supported by rigorous evidence of
effectiveness or that can be supported through other resources.
- Provides $492 million for Historically
Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Minority-Serving Institutions, and
Hispanic-Serving Institutions through the Higher Education Act Titles III and V
programs. Titles III and V funding are important vehicles for helping close
gaps among racial and socioeconomic groups in college enrollment and degree
attainment by improving these institutions’ academic programs, institutional
capacity and student support services.
-
Reduces Federal Work-Study while
reforming the poorly-targeted program to ensure funds go to undergraduate
students who would benefit most.
Building Evidence around Educational Innovation
-
$616.8
million for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) for continued support of State
and local-based research, evaluation and statistics that help educators,
policymakers and other stakeholders improve outcomes for all students.
- $370 million for Education
Innovation and Research to expand support for evidence‑based initiatives to
develop, validate and scale up effective education interventions that help
States and LEAs meet Elementary and Secondary Education Act requirements.
- $42 million for Supporting Effective
Educator Development (SEED) to provide evidence-based professional development
activities and prepare teachers and principals from nontraditional preparation
and certification routes to serve in high-need LEAs.
Streamlining Existing Programs
- Eliminates funding for Supporting
Effective Instruction State grants, a reduction of $2.3 billion. The
program is proposed for elimination because evidence shows the program is
poorly structured to support activities that have a measurable impact on
improving student outcomes and it duplicates other ESEA program funds that may
be used for professional development.
- Eliminates funding for the 21st
Century Community Learning Center program, saving $1.2 billion. The
program lacks strong evidence of meeting its objectives, such as improving
student achievement.
-
Eliminates Striving
Readers/Comprehensive Literacy Development Grants, which will save $190 million.
This program has limited impact (only 5-10 State grants are expected in the
final cohort) and duplicates activities that may be supported with other
Federal, State, local and private funds.
Note that
because the President’s budget was completed before final fiscal year 2017
appropriations action, all comparisons are to the 2017 annualized CR level.
More information
on the Department of Education’s budget request can be found at https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget18/index.html.
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