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Block
Grants, Blank Checks and Bad Policy
By Jeff Simering, Director,
Legislative Services
 U.S. Senate Committee action has been
completed on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA), S. 2. In an unusual demonstration of
solidarity, virtually every major national education group — the
parents, the teachers, the principals, the administrators, the
school boards, the states, the advocacy groups, and the Council of
the Great City Schools — oppose this bill.
The work on this bill began with the principle of doing no harm
to the 1994 ESEA legislation. The result, however, abandons
the historic federal role of assisting elementary and secondary
schools with programs for their neediest children and with resolving
educational problems of national significance. The process
degenerated into partisan ``sloganeering" and party line voting on
almost every issue.
Although every national study, including the Council's own Title
I study, shows academic progress among the target populations of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the underlying Senate
reauthorization bill diverts ESEA funding to the States and away
from local school districts. Along with less funding, the
so-called ``base" bill adds new responsibilities, increases federal
requirements, and expands penalties and sanctions for schools.
A new bonus rewards program ostensibly would add the ``carrot" to a
bill with far too many ``sticks" and way too little funding.
Even more troubling is the variety of block grant options
proposed for the States. Two versions of the ``Straight As",
Academic Achievement for All bill, are included in the Senate ESEA
reauthorization. The two versions are nearly identical in
effect by providing every State in one version and fifteen States in
the other version with the authority to consolidate nearly every
major ESEA program into a State block grant. None of the
current ESEA requirements to target children, target schools or
target problems would apply — a proverbial blank check
to the States.
The State, if not solely the governor, then could decide with few
exceptions which school districts could get federal funding,
precisely how much each school district could receive, and how each
school district could use the federal funding.
Waiting in the wings, unfortunately, is another bill with eight
Senate Democratic sponsors that also has problems. This ``Three Rs"
bill, the Public Education Reinvestment, Reinvention and
Responsibility Act, consolidates the very popular technology
program, the safe and drug free schools program, the After School
program and the innovative strategies program into a quasi-block
grant. This bill, however, sends these consolidated funds, as
well as the traditional Title I funds, down to the local school
districts.
But the bill accompanies these funds with pages upon pages of new
federal requirements and performance sanctions that ultimately could
remove funding or local authority to use those funds.
This quasi-block grant consolidates federal appropriations, thus
inhibiting increased funding prospects, and then recategorizes the
quasi-consolidation at the local level with specific percentage
expenditure requirements for each individual program. The
result appears to be burdensome and arguably pointless.
The main reauthorization bill would end ESEA as we know it, and
the alternatives are also far wide of the mark.
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