Education Week - March 8, 2017 - 17

Federal Education Programs Brace for Planned Budget Cuts
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about its spending priorities later
this month, but it's not certain how
the cuts in discretionary spending
would affect each agency.
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., the chairman of the House subcommittee that
appropriates money for the Education
Department, last week referenced the
possibility of $18 billion to $20 billion
in cuts to the portion of the budget
that funds the departments of Labor,
Health and Human Services, and Education. "There's no part of this budget
that can escape unscathed" if the cuts
are on that scale, Cole said in a subcommittee hearing.
But Congress may be unwilling to
go along with Trump's budget plan
and make that deep a cut to domestic
spending to fund defense-related activities. Among other things, passing
Trump's budget would require lawmakers to alter or toss out the Budget
Control Act of 2011, which sets caps
on federal discretionary spending.

is currently operating on a continuing resolution in fiscal 2017, which
expires in late April and essentially
keeps funding equivalent to fiscal
2016 levels, House and Senate education funding bills proposed last
year could still be a significant factor in whatever fiscal 2018 budget
Trump ends up receiving.
For example, the House spending
bill, passed out of the appropriations
committee last summer, would boost
funding for special education state
grants by $500 million, up to $12.4
billion. Indeed, at the subcommittee
hearing last week, Cole said, "It's actually one of the most efficient pro-

grams that we have. Every school
district in America needs it."
However, that same House budget
plan would cut federal spending on
state assessments by $78 million,
down to $300 million; the office for
civil rights by $7 million, down to
$100 million; and instructional grants
by $400 million, down to just under $2
billion, among other reductions.

Other Programs
It's also unclear to what extent the
Trump administration's budget would
push cuts to programs like Head
Start, Preschool Development Grants,

and the National School Lunch Program. The first two are administered
by the Department of Health and
Human Services and the latter is run
by the Department of Agriculture.
Federal magnet school and charter
school grants, currently funded at
$97 million and $333 million, respectively, present an interesting wrinkle. The Trump administration has
stressed school choice as its key K-12
policy argument, but those line items
could be relatively attractive ones for
reductions. The Every Student Succeeds Act, passed in December 2015,
also eliminated many K-12 programs.
On the campaign trail last year,

Trump repeatedly discussed either
eliminating the Education Department or gutting it. Since his administration began, neither the president
nor Secretary of Education Betsy
DeVos have said they want to shut
the department down.
But that doesn't mean big-ticket
items are safe in the era of Trump
budgets, said Michele McLaughlin,
the president of the Knowledge Alliance, a research and advocacy group,
and a former Democratic Senate education staffer.
"If you do have a significant chunk
of change [to cut]," she said, "there
aren't that many places to go."

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'Ratchet Down'
The current discretionary-spending
budget for the Department of Education is $68.1 billion, and the single
biggest budget item included in that
amount are Pell Grants for low-income students attending college, totaling $22.5 billion. The biggest program
by dollar amount at the department
related to K-12 public schools is Title
I, designated for disadvantaged students, at $14.9 billion. A 10 percent
cut would bring the department's discretionary spending down to roughly
$61.3 billion. That would mark its
lowest level since fiscal 2008, when
discretionary spending at the department was set at $59.2 billion.
A spokesman for the Education
Department, Matt Frendewey, said
last week that his department was
still waiting on more details about
how Trump's plan would affect
K-12. But advocates for relatively
limited federal spending on education are encouraged by the early signal from the Trump administration.
"A 10 percent reduction across the
board makes a lot of sense," said Lindsey Burke, the director of education
policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank whose
budget blueprint reportedly served as
a model for Trump's early approach to
federal spending. "When we start to
ratchet down federal intervention, ...
we really do make space for states and
localities to think about what works
for them and where they really want
to prioritize resources."
Burke singled out the 21st Century
Community Learning Centers, which
finance activities like expanded learning time and are funded at nearly $1.2
billion in the current budget, as an example of a program she would like to
see reduced. But it's potential cuts to
Title I that have many education advocates particularly worried.
"We are concerned that this administration will not prioritize the
protection of Title I students," said
Noelle Ellerson Ng, the associate executive director of AASA, the School
Superintendents Association.
Although the federal government

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Education Week - March 8, 2017

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