Once again, education funding is left on the Washington, D.C. chopping block
Education, we’re told, is the best investment you can make.
Courtesy of Flickr user dave_mcmt
As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in the fall of 2007, ”Education—lifelong education for everyone—from toddlers to workers well advanced in their careers—is indeed an excellent investment for individuals and society as a whole.”
If that’s the case, then why is education funding so quick to be dismissed among our political leaders in Washington, D.C.?
By far the most consequential piece of education legislation in the last several decades—the No Child Left Behind Act—failed largely due to woeful underfunding of the law’s implementation. Lawmakers have decried the lack of funding to help schools meet NCLB’s “Adequate Yearly Progress” testing mandates, and several public school districts and teachers’ unions have sued the federal government for more funding.
You’d think the federal government—especially the new Obama administration, given its strong rhetoric regarding public education—would have learned from NCLB that education reform requires education funding. The recent bickering and trimming of the various stimulus packages, however, shows that’s not the case.
What’s been left on the cutting room floor again is education.
Although the Senate version of the stimulus package did keep the proposed increases in the maximum Federal Pell Grant (available to students who demonstrate financial need, Pell Grants do not need to be repaid like loans), other much-needed education funding proposals were cut.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
A group of moderate Democrats and Republicans struck an agreement late Friday to cut back on some of the spending originally included in the Senate bill, which is now estimated to total about $827-billion. If that bill passes, as expected, senators would then have to reconcile their differences with the $820-billion version approved last month by members of the U.S. House of Representatives before they could send a final measure to President Obama, who has urged Congress to act quickly.
The group of moderate senators cut all $3.5-billion the original Senate bill had allocated for higher-education facilities. The House version contains $7-billion for college construction.
The senators also cut $40-billion from a “state fiscal-stabilization fund” that includes money for states to distribute to public colleges and elementary and secondary schools to help buffer them from budget cuts. The measure would still give states $39-billion for that fund. The House bill includes $79-billion.
Among the other reductions senators made over the weekend were: $200-million for research and related activities at the National Science Foundation, leaving $1-billion in the Senate bill (the House version contains $2.5-billion); and $200-million for science at NASA, leaving the Senate bill with $300-million (the House bill contains $400-million).
In the case of Michigan, where I live, losing the $40 billion for state stabilization is a massive blow, as Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm only recently asked state universities to freeze their tuition costs, with the state—hoping for a piece of that $40 billion—making up the difference.
Still, in a broader sense, if education is such a great investment, why is education funding always first to go? It’s an investment in the future of this country, one that will pay off far more handsomely than tax cuts or extending broadband service to areas that don’t already have it.
Whether education funding is restored to the final stimulus package that lands on Obama’s desk will offer a glimpse into whether our current roster of lawmakers in Washington do indeed care about education, or whether it’s more lip service like their predecessors.
Good points, Mr. Kroll, per usual.
And reading through the Stimulus Bill last night it struck me how it is a hodge podge of spending programs with no discernable philosophy other than building on policies that haven’t worked in the past.
When does actual evidence ever win out in Washington, D.C. policy fights? For example, many economists—too many to cite here, though none are typically cited in the mainstream, have pointed out that the stimulus package should contain hundreds of billions more in spending to have any significant impact on the downward spiral.
Many of the spending programs that were cut should be put back in in conference and many of the tax cut proposals should be dropped.
And, of course, none of this is going to happen since the fundametal power structure of this country remains unaltered by the Obama election.