U.S. education provisions: The devil’s in the details
News awaited on NCLB, federal funding
Published: September 1, 2011
Because the devil is in the details and those details have yet to be worked out, it’s too early to say whether the Obama administration’s pending plans to waive some provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act are anything to celebrate, or what the recent federal debt ceiling agreement means for K-12 education.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Aug. 5—coincidentally, just days after administration and congressional leaders narrowly averted a possible federal credit default by raising the nation’s debt ceiling—that he will unveil plans in September to grant conditional waivers from some provisions of NCLB, including the requirement that all public school students reach proficiency in reading and math by 2014.
“We have concerns about what this [waiver] process will look like,” CSBA Principal Legislative Advocate Erika Hoffman said. “Will Secretary Duncan impose a lot of new and unfunded mandates in exchange for flexibility?”
National School Boards Association officials concur with Hoffman’s concerns. CSBA, NSBA and a host of other public education advocacy groups have long argued that Congress needs to eliminate onerous regulations as part of any reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which was originally adopted in 1965 and reauthorized as NCLB in 2002; it’s been due for reauthorization since 2007.
More than 1,200 school board members from all 50 states signed a petition circulated by NSBA and the American Association of School Administrators this summer calling for general relief from NCLB regulatory and reporting requirements—not the conditional waiver plan Duncan is preparing to announce.
Obama administration officials made headlines last week when they granted Montana schools what reporters called an “NCLB do-over,” permitting the state to reset its proficiency targets for K-12 students. And pressure from the states continues: Education officials in the state of Washington have declared they may boycott the waiver application process altogether for fear that they would be “legitimizing” a flawed law.
Many education advocates fear that any federal waivers will come with too many strings attached. Julia Martin, legislative director of the D.C.-based legal firm of Brustein & Manasevit, PLLC, compared the administration’s waiver plans to Race to the Top, the federal competition that required states to enact specific education reforms in order to compete for grant funding—unsuccessfully, in the case of California and many other states.
“Similarities to this competition have rankled many state advocates who said the reforms they had to implement in order to participate were too onerous,” Martin said in an email to NSBA and other clients of her firm. And, she warned, waivers from some of the most costly NCLB requirements, including mandatory after-school tutoring and school choice, “may not take effect until the 2012-13 school year.”
The federal budget and education
If Duncan’s waiver plans are sketchy, prospects for education funding within the overall federal budget are downright murky.
Policy analysts worry that public schools will face another round of federal budget cuts under last month’s debt ceiling agreement, which called for a bipartisan “supercommittee” of 12 senators and representatives to come up with a plan to slash the national deficit by as much as $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Its recommendations are due by Nov. 23, and Congress will then have a month to adopt or reject the package—without any changes. If Congress or Obama balks, deep cuts across a broad swath of programs would be instituted automatically.
Either way, many of those who closely follow education budget and policy developments in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., worry that public schools will face another round of state and federal budget cuts.
“The committee’s plan for the additional target of $1.5 trillion in budget reductions over the next decade could impose significant cuts to domestic programs, including education,” Deborah Rigsby, NSBA’s director of federal legislation, emailed in response to questions from CSBA. “While the law’s immediate action to increase the debt ceiling may help address financing needs for school districts (e.g. tax anticipation notes, capital improvements, etc.), the uncertainty about future budget allocations for non-security programs and the effect on … education exists.”