The White House on Friday sharply criticized a House Republicans’ work so far to update the K-12 education law, saying the plan would lock in spending cuts through 2021 in spite of growing enrollment and inflation, and would make big cuts in grants for disadvantaged students, known as Title I, to high-poverty schools.
Both the House and Senate Education panels are working on updates of the law, last known as the No Child Left Behind Act. There’s wide agreement that the law needs to be revised, but strong disagreement between Democrats and Republicans on its funding provisions.
The House Education and the Workforce Committee approved a Republican revision to the law, called the Student Success Act (H.R. 5) on Wednesday. Committee Republicans vote yes, and Democrats vote no. It now goes to the full House. Republicans said it would reduce the federal footprint in education and give more control to states.
The White House issued a report on Friday that lays out its criticism to the House Republicans’ plan.
“This approach is backward and our teachers and kids deserve much much better,” Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said in a conference call with reporters.
A big disagreement is Title I, the main portion of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Currently Title I funds are concentrated in schools with large numbers of poor students. The House bill would allow this grant money to follow each low-income child to the traditional or charter public school of the parent’s choice.
The White House report said that this proposal would allow states to “spread Title I funds thinly across the wealthiest districts, doing less good, while sending less funding to many districts that need it most.”
Detroit, for example, with a poverty rate of 53.5 percent, would lose 34.4 percent of its Title I money. Other districts listed by the White House included Wichita, Kan., with a poverty rate of 28 percent, losing nearly 21 percent of its Title I funds; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, with a poverty rate of 20.8 percent, losing 10.1 percent; and Fort Worth, with 34.2 percent in poverty, losing 7.5 percent. (See other districts in the report’s Appendix 2.)
The White House also said that the bill would lock in federal spending cuts to education that resulted from the recession. The president’s proposed budget this year calls for reversing the cuts and spending $2.7 billion more on K-12 education.
The White House report estimated spending differences state by state under the president’s budget proposal and the House bill.
Muñoz said it’s still early in the process of revising the education bill in a way that would provide schools with the resources they need, hold them to high standards and make sure that all students graduate from high school ready for college and jobs.
“Ultimately we believe those are shared goals and we are hopeful there will be a bipartisan process that allows us to achieve those goals,” she said.
Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman of the House Education and the Workforce committee, said his bill would maintain current K-12 education spending and increase overall Title I spending by $500 million. He said the bill would give states the option to change how Title I money is distributed.
“The Student Success Act also offers states and families new opportunities to rescue children from failing schools. Encouraging good schools to serve more low-income students is the right thing to do. Ensuring low-income children receive the best possible education and their fair share of federal assistance is the right thing to do. It is disappointing the White House and powerful special interests are rallying against these commonsense reforms,” Kline said in a statement on Friday.
Kline argued that the Obama administration had “dictated national education policy” through the Department of Education and wanted to “kill K-12 education reform” because it would reduce federal control.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the ranking Democrat on the committee, recently announced that they were working together on a draft Senate bill.
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