Swift & Change Able

The Obama Administration did pretty well, in dollar terms, on at least two key priorities, e.g., the Teacher Incentive Fund and charter schools, in the House subcommittee bill that was swiftly approved this morning.

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Charters Update

People have been trying to figure out what was going on all day, because intell did not match the numbers (and the Cmte had not released a detailed table). Anyway, charters indeed got a bump, according to Chairman Obey’s updated statement, which we’ve cut and pasted here (you will see all different charters numbers floating around, because there is one big program and some smaller ones; this description hits the highlights)

 REVISED STATEMENT:

 Education Investments 

"Turning to education, this Subcommittee aims to ensure that all Americans have the educational opportunity that is our nation’s most powerful tool to help the poor and middle class climb up the economic ladder. This bill provides $64.7 billion for the Department of Education to help ensure that all Americans have the educational opportunity that is our most powerful tool in helping the poor and middle class climb up the economic ladder. One of the most difficult issues before us was the Administration’s proposal to cut Title I grants to school districts by $1.5 billion. This bill rejects that approach and, instead, maintains base funding for Title I grants at 14.5 billion. As a result, the bill does not include several new and unauthorized initiatives that the Administration proposed to finance by cutting Title I grants to 14,000 school districts.

 

"The bill maintains base funding of $545 million for the School Improvement Fund, which is $1 billion less than the request. Nonetheless, with the funds in this bill and the Recovery Act, States will receive an unprecedented $4 billion for these grants that target assistance to approximately 13,000 low-performing schools.Providing even larger sums in a single year would simply outstrip the ability of States and districts to use the funds effectively and wisely. Second, this bill does not include $500 million requested for Title I early childhood grants because preschool programs can already be supported under existing Title I funding streams,which total $27.5 billion in fiscal years 2009 and 2010.

"This bill does support, however, a number of other education reforms proposed by the Obama Administration. For example, the bill provides: $446 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund, which supports school districts and States that want to reward effective teachers and schools through compensation systems tied to student achievement results. To ensure that we also learn from this investment, the bill requires that a rigorous evaluation be conducted; $316 million for several other reform initiatives, including $256 million for Charter Schools to support the start-up of over 1,300 new charter schools with new accountability measures to ensure that these schools are successful, $50 million for a new high school dropout prevention initiative, and $10 million for a new Promise Neighborhoods initiative to support community-wide approaches to lifting children out of poverty, modeled after the successful Harlem Children’s Zone; and over $400 million for new approaches to improving reading instruction in our schools. 

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School turnarounds (i.e., school improvement grants) were flat-funded, but the subcommittee makes a good point that states and districts have their hands full with the $3 billion from the stimulus which they are trying to implement now. The Committee has also adopted Obama’s "Promise Neighborhoods" plan, based on the Harlen’s Children’s Zone, and although this hasn’t been talked about much, it could turn out to be a very exciting initiative.  

The committee’s old release (here) - at the top of which is the Matthew 25:40 quote "whatever you did for the least of my brothers…"  - which is now outdated re: education but not other Labor and HHS programs and tables (here) which, as far as we know, are still accurate, give the big picture. Keep an eye out for the report language, which will show the policies attached to the monies.