federal budget – �鶹��Ʒ

Nearly $7 Billion for Schools in Jeopardy as Ed Dept. Holds Up Federal Funds

Linda Jacobson — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:23:28 +0000

English learners, students who depend on afterschool care and the children of migrant workers could lose services after the U.S. Department of Education abruptly announced Monday it wouldn’t disperse nearly $7 billion in education spending that Congress already approved.

The funds, which states normally can access by July 1, pay for staff salaries, teacher training, curriculum materials and other essential expenses. That means states and districts will likely have to cut those functions or find other ways to pay for them. The delay, for example, threatens over $1.3 billion in funding for 21st Century Community Learning Centers, which goes to schools, libraries and nonprofits that provide tutoring and enrichment programs.

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“We will very quickly see more children and youth unsupervised and at risk, more academic failures, more hungry kids, more chronic absenteeism, higher dropout rates, more parents forced out of their jobs,” said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance, an advocacy organization.

The possible cancellation of additional federal funds for schools adds to the upheaval created by the elimination of existing grants and contracts amid Trump’s ongoing efforts to shut down the department. His proposed fiscal 2026 budget would also shrink over $6.5 billion for 18 programs into a $2 billion block grant. Last week, Education Secretary Linda McMahon assured members of the that special education funding and Title I grants for high-poverty schools would be “level funded,” according to a recording of the meeting shared with �鶹��Ʒ. But she never mentioned the fate of the other programs, and state leaders didn’t ask.

Trump officials based Monday’s move on “the change in administrations,” even though the president the budget on March 15. The department, the note said, has not yet made decisions about “awards for this upcoming academic year” and remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the president’s priorities.”

If the administration follows through with clawing back the funds, the move is certain to spark another lawsuit. Federal courts have mitigated the effects of previous cuts. McMahon, for example, tried to rescind over $2 billion in remaining COVID relief funds until 15 states and the District of Columbia .

Last week, in response, she told all states with remaining funds that to avoid “uniformity and fairness problems,” they could once again submit receipts for reimbursement.

A seldomly used law, the , allows the administration to withhold funds that Congress appropriates, but the president has to first seek lawmakers’ approval, which he didn’t do in this case. Last week, Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told senators that officials were to hold on to funds intended for some agencies, but both Democrats and Republicans appeared skeptical.

In a statement Tuesday, Washington Sen. Patty Murray, ranking Democrat on the appropriations committee, said the freeze will impact students in every ZIP code.

“President Trump and Russ Vought need to stop sabotaging our students’ futures and get these resources out the door,” she said. “Local school districts can’t afford to wait out lengthy court proceedings to get the federal funding they’re owed — nor can they make up the shortfall, especially not at the drop of a pin.”

Some advocates called on the Senate to delay final confirmation of Trump’s education department nominees, including Penny Schwinn as deputy education secretary and Kimberly Richey to lead the Office for Civil Rights, until the funds are released.

The organizations, including All4Ed, EdTrust, Educators for Excellence and the National Center for Learning Disabilities, the department’s move as “a potential violation of federal law and a direct threat to the educational opportunities of our nation’s most vulnerable students.”

In addition to the funding for afterschool programs, states are waiting on over $2 billion to recruit and train teachers, especially for high-needs schools; almost $900 million to support English learners; and $376 million for migrant education programs.

Gustavo Balderas, president of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, and superintendent of the Beaverton, Oregon, district, said districts nationwide would feel the pinch.

“Districts are already stretched financially and this will be another unanticipated reduction to America’s public school system,” he said. “With school starting in a few weeks, budgets will have to be restructured and some staff positions will have to be reduced.”

Districts may also lose their chance to spend federal funds on such programs in the future, if they find another way to pick up costs this year. The “supplement, not supplant” rule in the Every Student Succeeds Act holds that if a district used state or local funds for a program, then they don’t need federal dollars to cover it, explained Matt Colwell, who previously oversaw federal programs for the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

“The law severely limits what they can do once they lock into paying for it with state funds,” he said. He also wondered whether staff reductions played a role in holding up the funds. “‘We are looking into it’ could be a way around saying, ‘We fired all the people that actually take care of this.’ ”

Three Districts Took the Long View with Federal Relief Funds. Their Bets Are Paying Off

Kathleen Hayes — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 12:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

When Angela Dominguez took the helm of Donna Independent School District in Texas in 2021, she thought the district’s original decision to use most of its federal Elementary and Secondary School Relief (ESSER) money to pay for existing fourth- and fifth-grade teacher positions was short-sighted.

“I was like, ‘Did you guys think that we were going to just do without fourth and fifth grade after ESSER?’” she recalled.

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Dominguez had a longer term vision for the remaining rounds of pandemic emergency funding: Hire teaching assistants for early elementary classrooms to help the district’s youngest learners, who were struggling with math and reading as a result of uneven exposure to school during remote learning.

“My belief about these types of funds is [they] come around one time, and the investment needed to be in things that were tangible, that would be lasting for our students, our staff and our community,” said Dominguez, who created a committee to ensure ESSER investments aligned with these goals.

Congress rolled out to states between 2020 and 2022 to help school districts address academic and social-emotional hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic on students.

Districts generally had flexibility in how they used the money to support pandemic-related recovery on all fronts, from getting students back to in-person learning to supporting student academic and social-emotional recovery.

Districts used ESSER funds in myriad ways and with varying outcomes. EdSurge talked to three districts — in Donna, Texas, Fulton County, Georgia and Guilford Country, North Carolina — that are seeing gains despite the emergency funds’ expiration. They made educated, data-driven bets on how to best support their students and teachers by investing in educational infrastructure and support systems, from high-dosage tutoring to teacher coaching and professional development on new, streamlined literacy and math curricula.

Their data show their bets are paying off. What’s more, these districts have found ways to sustain these improvements despite .

Sasha Pudelski, who directs advocacy efforts for AASA, the school superintendents association, which did about their pandemic emergency fund spending, said the approach these three districts took resonates with the survey findings and fulfilled what she called the government’s “holistic vision” of funding long-term student needs.

Superintendents saw ESSER “not just as an opportunity to meet the urgent and immediate needs of their students, but also as a chance to invest in systemic, long-term improvements that would make a lasting impact on students and educators,” she said.

Not all districts have been able to maintain their pandemic emergency-funded initiatives and programs.

“There are high-poverty communities that have lower property tax bases and lower commercial property revenues and declining populations and higher student community needs,” Pudelski said, that prevent them from reallocating resources now that ESSER is over. Those districts “disproportionately felt the impact of the expiration of the funds.”

In-Class Assistants

Under Dominguez’ leadership, Donna, Texas, refocused its ESSER spending to support its youngest learners. Pre-pandemic assessment scores showed that more than 90 percent of third graders were not reading at grade level and 95 percent were below grade level in math. So the district used relief funds to recruit, hire and train classroom assistants for concentrated reading and math instruction in pre-kindergarten through grade 2.

That decision paid off: In two years, from 2021 to 2023, tests showed third graders reading at grade level jumped from 9 percent to 31 percent, and those achieving math proficiency went from just 5 percent to 27 percent. Dominguez called the results “remarkable.”

These gains prompted the district to prioritize the program in its annual budget. Dominguez said Donna is using a combination of state and other federal funds to retain the assistants.

“That investment really did get us a lot of traction around students getting to some [level of] recovery,” she added.

Focus on Literacy

Playing the long game also drove Fulton County, Georgia, schools’ ESSER spending strategy. But it was tempting to direct all the emergency funds toward immediate needs, according to Fulton’s chief academic officer Brannon Gaskins.

“There were two schools of thought around using the ESSER funds,” Gaskins recalled. “How do we reopen schools as soon as possible? And what is the long-term plan for those funds?”

Dedicating most of its ESSER funds to supporting students’ literacy development made the most sense to the district’s leaders, Gaskins said. Recognizing the high probability of student learning declines as a result of remote learning, Fulton used the money to accelerate pre-pandemic plans to reorganize literacy instruction around scientific reading principles.

“We knew there was a way to use these funds in an innovative way that would really impact us five, 10 years after the pandemic,” Gaskins said.

As part of a three-year plan to help students recover from pandemic-related learning setbacks, Fulton created Every Child Reads. The initiative included training district leaders, principals, early elementary teachers and staff on the science of reading, installing a dedicated literacy coach in every elementary school, setting up high-dosage tutoring and replacing dozens of disparate reading programs across the district with high-quality instructional materials.

Similar to Donna, Texas, Fulton dedicated a district finance director to oversee ESSER spending, which Gaskins said helped the district spend its funds efficiently.

Later, the district evaluated Every Child Reads and found that — a feat state assessments confirmed. The findings persuaded Fulton to eliminate or scale back programs that weren’t working or no longer needed, such as small-group tutors and high-dosage tutoring, and supplement or expand programs that showed results, such as a dedicated literacy coach in every school.

“Although our budgets are tight, our superintendent said we will deprioritize other things in our budget to make sure we have the literacy coaches that we need,” Gaskins said.

He added that enhancing teachers’ literacy instruction “will have generational effects.”

“When you think about a brand-new teacher or a novice teacher five years in…and they still have 25 more cohorts of students to teach [over their career], that has a huge impact on generations of students,” Gaskins said.

High-Dosage Tutoring

Even before the pandemic, education leaders in Guilford County, North Carolina, were concerned about middle grade math proficiency. That concern, coupled with an outpouring of community support for and research on the power of high-dosage tutoring, drove the district’s ESSER concentration, said chief academic officer Jusmar Maness.

The difference in Guilford’s program compared to other districts’ high-dosage tutoring, she added, is that it was “home grown.” The district established a department to oversee the program and recruited and trained tutors from the local universities it already partnered with for other programs.

“We knew the investment needed to be at the student level,” Maness said. “But we also needed to build capacity within our district to be able to continue this work.”

At its peak, Guilford’s tutoring program supported more than 17,000 students from kindergarten through eighth grade. The district also introduced coaching and professional development aligned to new, high-quality math instructional materials to enhance teachers’ math instruction.

“Expanded teacher capacity has been critical,” Maness said. “These efforts were designed to ensure that every single one of our teachers had the support and tools they needed to engage students in that grade-level content and accelerate learning.”

By scaling the program quickly and broadly and building teachers’ instructional capacity in math, Guilford helped its fourth-grade studentsby the 2023 school year. These students also recovered much faster .

Maness said the addition of tutors during the school day also deepened students’ feelings of connectedness in school.

“They don’t only have the teacher, but they also have a tutor [who] is another trusted adult that they have a relationship with,” she said.

Maness added that the tutoring program and teacher development were unequivocally the right investments for their pandemic emergency funds, which the district exhausted.

“I don’t know that there’s something we would have changed,” she said. “We were able to really reach so many students and provide them what they needed.”

Focusing its ESSER funds on a program fueled by community support has meant that, with some modifications, Guilford has been able to sustain its tutoring program through local philanthropy after ESSER dried up. The district now provides high-dosage tutoring in literacy for kindergarten to grade 3 and math for grades 6 to 8, and supports high school students through out-of-school learning hubs.

“We had support from universities. We have support from the community. It’s thanks to those relationship and philanthropic partners we’ve been able to continue the work beyond ESSER,” Maness said, adding that the district continues to advocate for state and federal funding.

Uncertain Future

But districts across the country are also bracing for other federal cuts after President Donald Trump’s .

“We would just not even be able to function if we lost federal funding,” Dominguez in Donna, Texas, said. “We would have to lay off staff across the board.”

She added that state-level priorities in Texas have shifted, making budgets tighter. Her district is rounding out this school year $8 million short.

“The state is not any better right now than the federal [funding]. School vouchers just passed, and money for public ed has been kind of held hostage,” Dominguez said. “We’re fortunate to have a very healthy fund balance, but we can’t keep dipping into savings forever and expect it to stay that way.”

Maness in Guilford hopes policymakers keep in mind the need for continued investment in public schools.

“We want the people that are making the decisions on funding to understand how critical investments like these are for our students,” she said.

‘I’m Just So Worried’: Newark Educators Fear Federal Funding Cuts Will Have Devastating Consequences

Jessie Gómez — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 18:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

Jennie Demizio, a special education teacher at Park Elementary School in Newark, stood in a crowd full of dozens of educators and union members and listened to speakers talk about the Trump administration’s threats to cut funding for education.

One by one, speakers listed the potential impacts of federal cuts on programs at New Jersey’s universities and colleges, health care, and research. Protesters yelled “shame” and “boo” after speakers detailed the effects of funding cuts on schools.

After the rally on Tuesday, Demizio held back tears and her voice cracked as she told Chalkbeat Newark how her students with disabilities rely on federal funding to get to school and for services such as speech therapy and classroom aides.

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“Half of my students arrive in ambulances. They’re on oxygen, they have seizure disorders, and just their transportation alone to get to school costs thousands of dollars a year,” said Demizio as her voice cracked while holding back tears. “I’m just so worried we’re going to lose this funding.”

Demizio’s fears echo those of many educators in Newark and across the state who feel that students will lose essential resources because of the administration’s threats to education. The protesters hope school districts, higher education institutions, and local leaders will band together to fight looming cuts and protect students and staff.

The protest in Newark was part of the “” demonstration, a national day of action with protests in over 30 cities across the country. About 50 city educators and labor unions gathered in front of a bust of John F. Kennedy at Military Park on the windy Tuesday afternoon, where they held signs that read “hands off my students” and chanted “stand up, fight back.”

The protest in Newark centered on threats to health care, immigrants, research, and the Trump administration’s threat to withhold federal funding from school districts and universities that don’t eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs deemed unlawful by the administration.

Last week, federal officials gave the elimination of DEI efforts in schools or risk losing federal funding. That directive threatens for New Jersey schools, including $77 million for Newark Public Schools, the state’s largest district. That funding makes up around 5% of the district’s for the upcoming school year.

“There’s no way that municipalities can totally foot that bill,” said Demizio.“I’m in a classroom where there are nurses, aides, and, you know, I think I feel like special education teachers, especially, are vulnerable at this moment.”

Last week’s attack on DEI programs in schools comes days after federal education officials also announced they would revoke deadline extensions to spend federal COVID aid that had been approved by the Biden administration.

As a result, 20 school districts across New Jersey could lose an additional $85 million in federal funding for infrastructure projects already in progress. That includes Newark Public Schools, which was to finish installing artificial intelligence cameras last fall. Paul Brubaker, the district’s director of communications, did not respond to questions about the status of the district’s AI cameras project or budget plans if federal funds are cut.

For Shelby Wardlaw, a professor and vice president of non-tenure track faculty at Rutgers University, the attacks feel personal. International students are worried about getting their visas revoked, and immigrant students fear they might be targeted due to their legal status, Wardlaw said.

In recent days, roughly a dozen Rutgers students “in good academic standing” learned their visas were revoked “without explanation,” according to from Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway. Across the country, international students and recent graduates have had their legal status changed by the federal government.

Additionally, some Rutgers faculty members are concerned about cuts to DEI initiatives and the impact that could have on teaching and learning.

Melissa Rodgers, a professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, spoke to the crowd on Tuesday about the devastating effects funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health and anti-DEI initiatives will have on medical and scientific research. Rodgers, a biomedical professor, has been investigating the impacts of sex on kidney disease, research that’s now at risk under proposed cuts, Rodgers said.

Wardlaw and her colleagues want Rutgers and other universities in the Big Ten Academic Alliance Conference to band together to share legal resources and funds to combat federal funding threats to higher education. Last month, the Rutgers University Senate passed a resolution calling on those universities to form a “Mutual Defense Compact” to protect and defend “academic freedom, institutional integrity and the research enterprise,” according to , Rutgers student-run newspaper.

“Universities are bastions of knowledge and resistance that would oppose an authoritarian overreach, and they’re going to come after us first,” Wardlaw told Chalkbeat on Tuesday. “They’re trying to break us as a potential site of resistance.”

Protesters at the Newark rally also heard from union leaders, civil rights activist Larry Hamm, and gubernatorial candidates Sean Spiller and Mayor Ras Baraka, who urged educators, laborers, and immigrant rights activists to band together to fight federal threats.

“We must resist,” all three speakers urged the crowd on Tuesday.

“The same people that were trying to stop [workers] from having fair working conditions and a rise in their wages were the same people who were opposed to ending Jim Crow Laws, opposed to civil rights, and opposed to democracy and justice,” Baraka told protesters.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, also spoke on Tuesday and called the Trump administration’s move to cancel funding for and $400 million in grants to an assault on education. The AFT is a party to eight lawsuits against the Trump administration’s attacks on education, access to records, and public health, according to the group.

“We have young people engage in critical thinking and problem solving so they can discern fact from fiction, so they can stand up for themselves, so they know how to think,” Weingarten said. “That is what we do and what this administration is so fearful about.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Opinion: How Arts Education Engages Students More Deeply in Other Subjects

Teisha Holloway — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 16:30:00 +0000

“Who knew that art involved so much math!” said Max. That day, we ran out of the liquid developer we use in my darkroom photography class. Gabrielle, an 11th grader, stepped up to teach our class how to calculate the grams of powder and ounces of water we needed to create our own. A strong math student, Gabrielle helped Max, who struggles in math but loves photography, find the correct ratio. Max photographed his math formula and brought it to his math teacher, exclaiming, “Look at what I learned in the darkroom!”

As an arts educator and a mother of a K-12 student, I see firsthand how arts integration provides students with a space to express themselves, collaborate with peers, and engage more deeply in other subjects. The arts deepen my students’ learning, helping them apply skills within new contexts.

A student mixes photo developer from scratch in the school dark room (Teisha Holloway)

that being involved in the arts helps students perform better academically and develop critical life skills like problem-solving, collaboration, and adaptability. Students with four years of arts or music education have a graduation rate of 90%, compared to 73% for those without. I teach grades 7 through 12; like Max, many of my students apply their math and literacy skills in the arts in meaningful ways.

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As debates fiscal priorities, an proposes significant cuts to key school-related programs, including eliminating federal funding for Arts in Education grants that provide access to art for students in low-income communities. If these proposed reductions come to fruition, Gabrielle and Max would lose programs like my photography class. This wouldn’t just impact art instruction, but also math outcomes and the ability of my students to develop critical thinking skills.

It’s time to explore viable and creative paths to support arts education locally to re-engage students like Gabrielle and Max in their learning. Here are three things to consider:

Low-income schools need access to arts and arts integration. My child lost his access in 5th grade at his school because the arts instructors rotated between schools. In contrast, I worked with a school in a high-income area where elementary students had access to robust arts programs. Correcting this disparity would ensure students in underfunded schools have as much access to arts as affluent students in our state.

Arts education can be strengthened by supporting alternative pathways into education and teacher preparation programs. My master’s degree in art is invaluable in giving my students real-world insights into post-secondary education and what a viable career in art might look like. The teacher preparation program I attended has helped me to understand the diverse needs of my students and effective classroom management. We must continue to invest in teacher preparation programs and in teachers’ ongoing professional learning, ensuring we stay up to date with the latest artistic trends, educational research, and teaching techniques.

Enhanced funding for arts across schools and districts allows students to engage in creativity and innovation, which can motivate them to stay in school. My charter school offers a robust career and technical education program that includes arts-related careers and arts-integrated curriculum, such as using arts learning to deepen their understanding of anatomy.

My students tell me that this is what keeps them feeling engaged, supported, and excited to come to school to learn. In addition to photography, students at my school can take 3D modeling, film, animation, graphic design, electronic integrated arts, computer repair, comic book and storyboarding, among other courses. Many of our students leave the school with a career-ready portfolio that allows them to move directly into a professional career in the arts or a related field.

My photography class helped Max to expand his math skills and empowered Gabrielle to support a classmate’s growth. My students learned that arts are connected to math—and beyond. Arts education isn’t just an extracurricular activity; it’s essential in developing well-rounded citizens. If we truly value education, we must protect and expand access to the arts, which will help ensure improved student outcomes and alignment to higher-wage careers. For Max, the arts helped him to feel more empowered to try in math; it gave him the idea that he can overcome any obstacle in his life. I am hopeful he will carry that forever.

Biden Budget Plan Includes $8B to Put Learning Recovery on a ‘Faster Track’

Linda Jacobson — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 16:15:03 +0000

With districts bracing for the expiration of federal relief funds this year, the Biden administration on Monday proposed a new $8 billion grant program to sustain successful programs helping students recover from pandemic learning loss.

The proposed Academic Acceleration and Achievement Grants, part of the administration’s for fiscal year 2025, would target three strategies Education Secretary Miguel Cardona highlighted in January — addressing chronic absenteeism, offering high-impact tutoring and extending learning afterschool and during the summer.

In a call with reporters, an education department official said the competitive grant program would help put the recovery efforts districts launched with relief dollars “on an even faster track and sustain the improvements that states have put into place.” But to make space for the administration’s priorities, leaders are recommending a few cuts, including a $40 million reduction to a program that provides start-up funds for charter schools.

The announcement of the grant program follows the showing most students still haven’t caught up to pre-pandemic performance levels. But with the current fiscal year budget still delayed by partisan over spending for defense and the IRS, advocates acknowledged that passing a substantial new program will be tough.

The proposal will face “the political realities of heading into an election year and the limitations of the budget,” said Nakia Towns, chief operating officer of Accelerate, a national initiative funding tutoring research and programs. The organization’s leaders began discussing how to provide new funds for tutoring efforts with department officials and the White House last fall, Towns said. But she added that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed concerns about students struggling to catch up.

“Everybody has been in agreement that kids still need more support, schools still need more support for learning recovery,” she said. “Now it’s about what actually gets over the goal posts in the budget process.”

Overall, the Education Department is asking for $82 billion for next fiscal year — a $3.1 billion increase. The proposal keeps spending in line with the caps enacted last year in a to avoid the federal government defaulting on its financial obligations. In his comments, Cardona contrasted the Biden administration’s track record on education with that of his presidential challenger Donald Trump and his Republican colleagues in Congress.

“This is a budget request that comes on top of three years of historic investments proposed by President Biden and delivered with support from many in Congress,” he said. “It blows the Trump budgets out of the water.”

It includes $18.6 billion for Title I, a $200 million increase over the current 2023 level; a $25 million preschool grant program; and $14.4 billion for special education, also a $200 million increase.

But to keep spending within the federal spending limit, the department targeted the Charter Schools Program, recommending a $40 million cut to the $440 million program. In response, Eric Paisner, acting president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said the budget proposal “falls disappointingly short of prioritizing public charter schools and public educational options for parents who are looking for something better.”

The National Parents Union also criticized the move, saying the program “has played a vital role in empowering communities to establish public, accountable schools tailored to the unique needs of students.”

But the advocacy group welcomed the new competitive grant program, calling it part of the administration’s “deep-seated commitment to not only recovering from the setbacks of recent years, but also to advancing our educational system to new heights.”

The proposal is unlikely to receive a friendly reception in the House, where the Republican majority has frequently reminded the public of the harmful impact of long school closures, particularly in blue states and cities with strong teachers unions. During a , some members suggested districts had either or have little to show for the historic investment.

“I think it unlikely that congressional Republicans would want to shower another $8 billion on school systems,” said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “Schools took far too long to open, express any urgency about absenteeism or learning loss, or start trying to convince the public and policymakers that the dollars were being spent effectively.”

In a statement, North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, who chairs the House education committee, said the budget plan “would gobble up more taxpayer dollars without any shred of accountability.”

Charting ‘a path forward’

Towns, former deputy superintendent for the Gwinnett County Public Schools, near Atlanta, noted that the American Rescue Plan, which required districts to spend 20% of their funds to address learning loss, lacked requirements to ensure the dollars were spent on effective programs.

Accelerate, however, has urged the administration to ask for more data from districts so they can demonstrate that “kids are getting the intensity and consistency of tutoring that we know is needed in order for it to actually make a difference,” she said.

Many districts used relief funds to implement strong tutoring programs, added Liz Cohen, policy director at FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University. In January, FutureEd released her report highlighting some of those efforts, including Teach for America’s Ignite program, which this year has over 1,500 college students tutoring 3,500 elementary and middle school students in 21 states.

She also noted Texas’s Ector County Independent School District, which implemented a contract that rewards tutoring providers with higher pay if students make significant progress.

“There is so much great tutoring happening already and I would love to see us learn from what’s working right now as we chart a path forward,” Cohen said.

One sign that districts are more focused on results for students is the growth of , a technology company that offers an online platform for districts to store tutoring data, such as the number of sessions scheduled and whether students attend. The business received a from Accelerate in 2022.

Some states and districts initially signed contracts with online, on-demand tutoring providers, but research later showed that students often didn’t use the services. Pearl founder John Failla said he’s noticed greater interest in districts using models that experts recommend.

“All of our data is pointing towards states and districts wanting to run their own programs with their own tutors … versus working with online vendors,” he said.

Almost 450 districts now use the system, with the number of sessions growing from about 13,600 in February 2023 to almost 80,000 a year later.

Cohen added that GOP-led states are among those that have made tutoring and summer learning programs a high priority. Tennessee launched its tutoring program in 2020, which is expected to reach 200,000 students by this summer. And Alabama has concentrated recovery efforts during the summer, with .

As they weigh the president’s budget request, Cohen said she hopes “Republicans choose to consider the success we’ve seen in many red states.”

Bipartisan Deal to Expand Child Tax Credit Advances in Congress

Ashley Murray — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 14:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

WASHINGTON — A plan to temporarily expand the child tax credit and revive tax breaks for businesses received overwhelming bipartisan support in a committee vote Friday, a rare moment of compromise in a divided Congress that’s headed into a heated election year.

The tax policymakers of the GOP-led U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means to send the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act, or , to the House for a full floor vote.

The Biden administration is “encouraged” and “pleased” with the committee’s vote, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday.

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The framework, co-led by House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith of Missouri and Senate Committee on Finance Chair Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, includes both parties’ priorities to address child poverty and expired Trump-era tax breaks.

After four-and-a-half hours of debate and several attempts by Democrats to revive, at least in part, more generous pandemic-era child tax credit benefits, the panel placed its near-unanimous stamp of approval on the major tax deal.

After casting her vote, Washington state Democrat Suzan DelBene said the legislation “is an imperfect bill in many ways but that is the reality of divided government.”

“It nevertheless includes several provisions that I have long advocated for that would help support workers and families and grow our economy. That is why I voted to advance the package, but there is still more we can do,” she said in a statement.

Details on child tax credit changes

The bill, if eventually enacted into law, would increase the child tax credit incrementally for the taxable years 2023 through 2025, and adjust the credit for inflation.

The amounts would increase from $1,800 in 2023, to $1,900 in 2024 and $2,000 in 2025.

Under current tax law, parents can only receive up to $1,600 back per child.

The bill also aims to restore tax credits for low-income housing construction.

As for reviving expired business tax incentives, the bill would reinstate full expensing for domestic research and development costs and 100% bonus depreciation for equipment purchases, and speed up the timeframe during which companies can deduct certain costs.

Other incentives include tax relief for victims of qualifying wildfires after 2014, and for those who suffered losses as a result of the February 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

The legislation also aims to establish tax incentives that encourage more business between the U.S. and Taiwan.

Smith said Friday the bill is a product of more than a decade of discussion on how “to reform the tax code in a way that supports workers, families, and small businesses.”

“The bill before us today represents bipartisan policies that are proven and effective, common sense fixes to the tax code that will rebuild our communities, support better jobs and wages, and grow our economy. Many members on both sides of this committee are cosponsors of the different policies in this legislation,” Smith said in his opening remarks.

Paid for by ending another tax break

The three-year deal is expected to be entirely paid for by cutting off a COVID-19 tax break for businesses who retained employees during the pandemic.

While businesses originally had until April 15, 2025 to claim the tax credit, the new legislation would end the program on Jan. 31 of this year, essentially stopping the flow of claims that have recently gained extra popularity.

Smith said in his remarks that the program “has become overrun with fraud and ballooned in cost six times larger than (Congressional Budget Office’s) original estimate.”

That change is expected to save the government an estimated $79 billion, according to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The Business Roundtable, an organization representing American CEOs, has been lobbying for the bill and praised the “strong bipartisan vote” as an “important step toward restoring three pro-growth tax policies essential to America’s competitiveness.”

Florida’s Rep. Vern Buchanan, a business owner, said restoring a business’ ability to fully expense as well as loosening interest deductibility rules is “huge.”

“I can tell you for small businesses, that deduction makes a big difference and (owners) can hang on (to) a little bit more of what they earn, and use that to expand and grow their business,” the Florida Republican said.

Fellow Floridian Greg Steube said he’s been “working tirelessly” for tax relief on disaster payments, with a particular focus on Hurricane Ian, which brought massive and expensive damage to the Sunshine State in 2022.

“Today we can move one step closer to providing real relief,” said Steube, a Republican.

Warnings and opposition

Although the organization praised the bipartisan, bicameral bill structured to offset its own cost, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that the policies “would add significantly to the already massive federal debt” if extended beyond their 2025 expiration dates.

If extended, the child tax credit would cost $180 billion, and the business tax incentives $525 billion, through 2033, according to the analysis by the CRFB.

And while most of the panel’s minority members supported the legislation, more than a dozen expressed concern during the bill’s markup that the child tax credit expansion still does not meet the needs of low-income families.

DelBene’s amendment to return the tax credit to full refundability, as it was under temporary COVID-19 changes, was unsuccessful.

Full refundability means the earned income threshold, $2,500, would drop to $0, giving access to the poorest families.

DelBene also proposed returning the tax credit payments to monthly installments, as it was during the pandemic, and raising the amount per child to $3,000, and $3,600 for each kid under age 6.

The amendment was voted down 18-25, among the amendments of several of her colleagues.

After the pandemic-era temporary increase significant reductions in child poverty, Democrats have been pushing to expand, and specifically .

Several Republicans disagreed with DelBene’s amendment, wanting instead “to stick to the deal that has been struck,” said Rep. Adrian Smith of Nebraska.

“The amendment would chip away at or destroy what has been a hard-won compromise,” he said.

Rep. Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat, said the markup was a “missed opportunity” to make changes to the child tax credit. The panel defeated her amendment to increase the percentage at which the credit is earned, to 40%.

The child tax credit phases in at 15% of a household’s income, meaning that lower earners might not achieve the maximum credit amount in one year, depending on wage and hours.

“This is not supposed to be a work program, it’s supposed to recognize the expensive cost of raising kids and wanting them to have the proper development, health, and education,” Moore said.

Moore was one of three no votes, along with Reps. Lloyd Doggett of Texas and Linda Sanchez of California.

The House returns Jan. 29.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

Opinion: As Feds Invest in New Bilingual Teachers, State Licensing Hurdles Must Go

Conor P. Williams and Shantel Meek — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 16:01:00 +0000

For much of the past few years, most of the oxygen in public education has been consumed by fiery culture wars: erasing Black , and even threats to that required public school systems to educate all children regardless of immigration status.

This wave of backlash, forced by America’s culturally anxious fretting over whether “their” country is too fast for their liking, is nothing new. In fact, the anti-immigrant, anti-Black pendulum swing in the United States, usually after periods of progress, is about as predictable as it gets.

Fortunately, there’s ample evidence that this — the ugly, illiberal drama — too may pass. The United States continues to grow more racially, ethnically, linguistically and culturally , and this panoply of human riches is showing up in our schools. This is particularly clear when it comes to languages on campus — there are over in U.S. schools than there were in 2000, and their .

Dual language classrooms offering academic instruction in two languages (and often English learners and English-dominant children) . This is of American public schools today — plural, polyglot campuses adjusting their pedagogies to meet the needs of a wide range of learners.

And yet, it’s no simple matter to make those adjustments. While talk of national teacher shortages appears to be premature, demand for has long outstripped supply. American teachers are disproportionately and monolingual — a major stumbling block for schools hoping to offer more bilingual learning opportunities. The country can’t have more bilingual schools, let alone dual language programs, unless it trains, hires and retains more teachers who can work proficiently in languages other than English.

Policymakers are working on the problem. The U.S. Department of Educationin Augustus F. Hawkins Centers of Excellence Program grants to support the training of more racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse teachers. The dozen grantees chosen in this round of the competition encompass a large number of institutions prioritizing teacher diversity that includes language considerations. is using its $1.5 million grant to train, certify and place more than 100 bilingual teachers. Importantly, its program will include cohorts of Spanish-English bilingual teacher candidates and Haitian Creole-English bilingual teacher candidates. is using its grant to recruit Latino teachers to work in bilingual settings.

These investments will help expand access to bilingual education around the country, a goal with myriad benefits drawn from multiple fields of research. First, a raft of studies show that English learners do best in schools that support their emerging bilingualism. Dual language is the for helping English learners maintain their bilingualism, , and . It also appears to support .

Further, studies that students gain academically from having teachers who match their racial or ethnic identities. Dual language programs may produce unique benefits in this regard if members of their linguistically and culturally diverse teaching staff resemble the identities of their students. And indeed, a large majority of dual language schools offer instruction in — and regularly rely upon large numbers of Spanish-dominant Latino teachers. Most English learners are .

Finally, that often , like an improved ability to . And that’s to say nothing of the and advantages the country gains from fostering a polyglot society.

But all of this research — and correspondingly high family demand for bilingual instruction in communities around the country — won’t lead to expansions of bilingual and dual-language schooling on their own. As one of us outlined in , many state training and licensure systems remain largely hostile to multilingual teacher candidates, existing dual language schools are sometimes established to provide bilingual instruction to English-dominant children — even as English learners are consigned to English-only instruction, and so forth.

So there’s more for policymakers to do. Federal and state leaders should consider prioritizing investments in teacher training programs with a track record of producing high-quality bilingual teachers. This must include alternative teacher training programs, which tend to be than traditional programs. Indeed, in March, the Biden administration the country’s investment in the Augustus F. Hawkins grants from $15 million to $30 million.

And state policymakers should consider updating their teacher licensure systems to remove chokepoints — like English-only licensure exams — that prevent linguistically diverse teacher candidates from reaching the classroom. States should also optimize the linguistically diverse staff already serving in their classrooms — many of whom are aides or paraprofessionals — and fund pathways to help them become lead teachers.

Or, you know, they could ignore the challenge of growing our bilingual teacher corps — an opportunity sparked by genuine progress and improvement in American schools — and focus their energies on demagoguing over the book selection in elementary school libraries. This really shouldn’t be a tough choice.

Equity Plan Would Create ‘Powerful Incentive’ for States to Close Funding Gaps

Linda Jacobson — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 14:07:14 +0000

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Educators welcome President Joe Biden’s plan to spend $20 billion — on top of the federal government’s current funding for high-poverty districts — to address the needs of schools with the greatest concentrations of disadvantaged students.

But with the new administration already getting a late start on the budget process and Republicans cringing at the size of Biden’s infrastructure and family policy proposals, it’s unclear where the additional funding will come from.

The president’s for fiscal year 2022 would reverse “years of underinvestment in federal education programs,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters last week. But some Republicans are calling it , considering the other relief bills Congress has passed to address the pandemic.

The current federal budget runs through the end of September. If Congress doesn’t agree on a new budget by then, lawmakers would likely pass a continuing resolution to keep funding the government, leaving open the possibility they won’t act on Biden’s new proposals this year. Meanwhile, the administration continues to in an effort to find a compromise over Biden’s infrastructure plan, but it’s possible Democrats would plow ahead and pass much of the president’s agenda on their own.

“Democrats hold control and they want to help the president fulfill his priorities,” said Danny Carlson, associate executive director for policy and advocacy at the National Association of Elementary School Principals. “He obviously campaigned on tripling Title I.”

As they did with the March relief bill, Democrats could use the reconciliation process, which allows them to pass spending bills without a single Republican vote. With the Senate split 50-50, Sen. Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, could once again end up casting the deciding vote. If the administration aims for a bipartisan deal, Biden will need the support of at least 10 Republicans.

, released May 28, would keep funding for the existing Title I program at the current level of $16.5 billion but would create a new formula for distributing $20 billion in “equity grants” to states that work to close gaps between rich and poor districts and between those serving primarily white students and those that enroll more students of color.

, an advocacy organization that ceased operating last year, showed that despite decades of school finance lawsuits, there was still a $23 billion gap between white and nonwhite school districts as of 2016.

Under the administration’s plan districts would need to spend the additional funds on priorities Biden promoted during his campaign — increasing teacher compensation, expanding students’ access to advanced courses and providing preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds.

But many questions about the proposal remain, particularly how the federal government would hold states and districts accountable for the money, said Khalilah Harris, managing director of K-12 education policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Some of those answers would come if the plan is approved when the Department of Education creates rules for the program, according to the proposal.

“It will be important not to just have surface-level conversations about equity and access,” Harris said, adding that she expects Republicans to keep a close eye on how districts spend any increase in funding and that education is likely to be a “huge issue” in next year’s midterm elections.

She said the Title I equity proposal complements Biden’s plan to increase funding for community schools to $443 million — almost 15 times the current level — and would help students with the greatest needs, including homeless students, children in foster care and those with disabilities.

The additional dollars, however, wouldn’t change the fact that most funding for schools still comes from the state and local level. Zahava Stadler, a special assistant for state funding and policy at The Education Trust, an advocacy organization, said the new equity grants can serve as a “powerful incentive” for states to address long-standing funding disparities.

‘Think about sustainability’

Another challenge is that the appropriations bill covers not just education, but also the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. Republican members of the House appropriations committee expressed shock that Biden is asking for almost $103 billion for the education department — a 41 percent increase.

“Apparently math was not his strong suit when it came to his education because this budget he has put forward is so far out of whack,” Congressman Ben Cline (R-Va.) said last month during an appropriations hearing. “This level of an increase in spending in the same year that Congress has allocated extensive funds to mitigate the effects of COVID is highly irresponsible.”

If the new program becomes a reality, district leaders say it could allow them to continue the programs they’re launching with relief funds to address students’ learning and social-emotional needs brought on by the pandemic.

“One of the challenges of hiring staff is you have to be able to think about sustainability,” said Robert Tagorda, the executive director of equity, access, and college and career readiness in the Long Beach Unified School District, the fourth largest in California. “That makes it hard for us to think about long-term investments.”

And John Sasaki, spokesman for the Oakland Unified School District, said even though the funds would come with restrictions, “they are intended to help low-income students overcome obstacles that their peers do not face.”

Michael Magee, CEO of Chiefs for Change (Chiefs for Change)

Michael Magee, CEO of Chiefs for Change, said district leaders have talked about using federal relief funds either for one-time expenses, such as facility improvements, or innovative programs that they “hope attract state and local dollars over time.” With the equity grants, they could do both, he said.

The budget also includes a new $100 million competitive grant program for middle and high school career-and-technical education programs, separate from the Title I proposal. Biden, however, isn’t asking for any funding increases for the national Charter Schools Program — a mistake, Magee said, since charter schools have been reporting enrollment growth in many states since the beginning of the pandemic.

And Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said charter schools should have been included in the president’s equity agenda, considering they predominantly serve children of color. The alliance is pushing for an increase in funding to $500 million in next year’s budget.

In a statement, Rees said, “The administration’s pledge to lift all forms of excellence in education cannot be fully achieved without explicit support for all public schools — both charter and district.”