Growth in Education Funding Slows

While Republicans and Democrats alike boast that more federal aid is on the way to the nation’s schools, the new budget deal ratified by White House and congressional negotiators actually would cut in half the rate of growth of the federal Education Department’s spending.

In each of the past three years, politicians courting school-wise voters had lavished so much new money on the department that its budgetary rate of growth had stretched into double digits.

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, for example, the discretionary budget for education totaled $33.5 billion--a 12% increase over the year before. By comparison, in 1995 the department’s budget was $24 billion.

But the story for fiscal 2000 is one of slower growth. Despite the ballyhooed agreement between President Clinton and Congress to continue a seven-year program to hire 100,000 new teachers nationwide to reduce class size, the new education budget that Congress approved in mid-November and Clinton signed into law Monday amounts to $35.7 billion, or 6% higher than the year before.

“This is not going to be a banner year for education,” said Aaron Forester of the Committee for Education Funding, a Washington-based coalition of 96 education groups. “This is a big opportunity. The economy’s fantastic, education is a high priority [in polls], and we’re getting a minimal increase. That’s a shame.”

To be sure, education has done better than many other parts of the government. And it was only four years ago that the newly elected Republican majority in Congress was talking about abolishing the Education Department altogether.

“We’d all like to see education do even better in the years to come, but compared to virtually every other major domestic priority, education has already had a great run,” said Bruce Reed, a senior aide to Clinton.

Reed said the most important points in the education budget debate dealt with policy rather than money. Democrats and Republicans argued over how much freedom local school districts should have as they spend $1.3 billion earmarked for the teacher hiring program. (In the end, educators got a bit more flexibility to use some of the money to train existing teachers, rather than hire new ones.) They also argued over which criteria should be used to divvy up the money. (Poverty is still the dominant factor). Both decisions seem likely to help many low-performing schools in the Los Angeles area.

Said Rep. William F. Goodling (R-Pa.), the House leader on education policy: “Above all, the most disadvantaged children in the United States won.”

The money allocated for the most important program aimed at helping children from low-income households--known as Title I--inched up a fraction, to $8.7 billion a year from $8.4 billion. Of that total, the White House was able to earmark $134 million to strengthen oversight of low-performing schools.

There were small increases in other programs, including a last-minute boost of $11 million for bilingual teacher training and $53 million for Latino education initiatives. And for low-income college-bound students, the maximum annual Pell grants, which help pay college tuitions, were increased by $175 per student--to $3,300. That will be the highest ever.

The biggest winner in the education budget, by far, was education for disabled students--a pet cause for some Republicans. Special education funding was boosted by $700 million, to $6 billion a year. That will be a boon for local school officials who have long labored under federal requirements for special education while lacking enough money to pay for it.

Under the new formula, Washington will pay 13% of the total per pupil cost of special education--the highest total ever. That, in turn, will free local money to be spent on other priorities.

Despite all of the noise over education in Washington, the federal government remains subordinate to state and local authorities when it comes to running the nation’s schools. Of every dollar spent on public education nationwide, Washington contributes only 7 or 8 cents. What seems like a large education debate here frequently shrinks on closer examination.

On Nov. 4, for instance, the House debated what was said to be an unprecedented measure to put Congress on record as advising schools to use “direct, systematic phonics instruction” to teach reading. The measure, drafted by Rep. David M. McIntosh (R-Ind.) and supported mostly by his fellow Republicans, also criticized the “whole language philosophy” as a “detriment” to students.

These questions have inflamed many people familiar with California’s reading wars in recent years. But the House gave the resolution cursory attention, defeating it on a 224 to 193 vote; that fell short of the two-thirds majority needed. As it turned out, the resolution was viewed as a political stunt that would have carried no force of law even if it had succeeded.