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Low
Budgets and Flexibility
Characterize Federal Education
Policy
for the Millennium Year
After a $3.6 billion increase in federal education funding for
the current fiscal year, the budget figures from the Congress and
the Clinton Administration for the millennium fiscal year range from
modest to paltry. Additionally, with the substantive work on
the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA) yet to begin, Congress has spent much of its post-impeachment
attention on an arguably symbolic Education Flexibility bill.
The Administration unfortunately set the initial budget bar
unusually low for fiscal year 2000 by requesting only a $1.2 billion
increase in education funding. The Senate, which had
considered sizable increases in education over the next five years,
barely exceeded the Administration's budget plan for the overall
discretionary education, training and social services
function. The House of Representatives came in below the
Administration's overall budget function by $2 billion.
Although each house of Congress recommended increases in elementary
and secondary education, existing budget rules cannot ensure that
result. In fact, the budget rules are elastic enough, for
example, to allow for spending increases available for education to
be allotted to health or job training.
Many budget watchers believe that another end-of-year budget
stalemate between the Congress and the Administration is on the
horizon. The 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement, established
before the federal budget deficit disappeared, locked-in
unrealistically low spending limits that neither the Administration
nor the congressional leadership are politically willing to
exceed. In order to stay within these spending ``caps,"
federal discretionary spending levels will have to be cut by $10 to
$25 billion, depending upon which figures are used. In short,
the federal government cannot be operated under the Balanced Budget
Agreement while increasing priority functions like defense,
education and health research. The ``Save Social Security
First" mantra also has straitjacketed both the Congress and the
Administration from using the ten year $2.5 trillion federal surplus
for priorities like education.
When funding is tight, either real or imagined, someone always
redirects the debate to ``flexibility." Such flexibility
movements have arisen under the banner of program consolidation,
shared revenue, block grants, and now waivers. At the request
of the nation's governors, both the Administration and the
congressional leadership have embraced the concept of state-based
waivers of federal requirements in education – so called ``Ed
Flex." The bill has lukewarm support and even some opposition
to its operational details among education interest groups.
Ironically, the Ed Flex legislation provides further flexibility in
the most flexible federal education programs, and provides no
flexibility in the most heavily regulated federal education program
– Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
In fact, a controversial amendment relating not to IDEA program
flexibility but to IDEA program funding has stalled the Ed Flex
bill. Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the Senate majority leader,
added a provision to the bill which would allow any school district
to use the new $1.2 billion Class-Size Reduction grants for IDEA
funding instead. Since the operational costs of special
education continue to proliferate, this option to spend the new
Class-Size Reduction funding on special education programs is
arguably attractive. Yet upon further consideration, a federal
funding ``shell game" seems to appear. Rather than funding a
number of high priority national educational needs on their own
merits, such as special education for disabled children, education
for disadvantaged children, class-size reduction, etc., the Lott
option would present school districts with a Hobson's choice of
short-changing additional class-size reduction in order to cover
federally-mandated special education costs.
The Council of the Great City Schools has yet to find
anything to celebrate as the nation prepares to enter the millennium
year. Washington is presenting our schools with
symbolism instead of substance, flexibility instead of funding, and
budgetary excuses instead of financial support – not much different
from most other years--so far.
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