December 2004

Education after the 2004 Election

David Dunn
White House Domestic Policy Council

There should be little question about education policy in a second Bush term since the president has been clear on his intentions, both on the campaign trail and since his reelection. The president will continue to enforce the landmark No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and will call on Congress to extend the law's provisions to include third grade through eleventh. Early results from increased testing under NCLB show positive results, with the primary benefit of new requirements being increased information in the hands of principals, teachers, and parents.

Included in the president's agenda is the extension of accountability requirements into the early childhood education system as well, with a renewed proposal to strengthen the academic components of Head Start programs. The president will pursue increased funding for the Early Intervention Fund, which helps identify academic deficiencies prior to high school graduation; the Reading First Initiative, which supports scientifically based reading instruction programs; and a Teacher Incentive Fund for school districts to reward especially effective teachers furthering accountability standards on an individual level.

Ms. Spellings will carry the President's reform agenda into the department as the new secretary of education. She is an energetic education reformer, and school choice reform will not languish under her leadership.

Nina Rees
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement

We feel strongly that this administration has done more than any other administration to advance the cause of school choice. The No Child Left Behind Act includes bold reforms passed with broad bipartisan support that promote the cause of choice and add competition. In addition to NCLB, we have also been successful in enacting a voucher plan in the District of Columbia. Our job over the next four years is to focus on solidifying these outcomes and to make sure that we are making progress on the implementation end and disseminating our results as broadly as possible.

Public School Choice. Few parents are signing their children up for the public school choice options they are eligible for under NCLB. In 2002-2003, only 45,000 students participated in public school choice. The Department of Education is trying to tackle this through several different means, one of which is to work directly with school districts by offering technical assistance. Recently, we put together a book examining five school districts that have taken the job of promoting public school choice seriously and held seminars for districts or states interested in replicating the success of these models. We have also been working closely with community-based organizations. Grants have been made available to community groups to better educate low-income parents about the choices of NCLB. We feel that if the choices are not made with proper information and if parents do not understand what these choices are, you are not going to be able to advance the cause of education reform. At the state level, we need to do more work. States are in a position to build capacity for public school choice.

The ultimate success is not necessarily in seeing a lot of movement from school to school, but in the district taking the job of reforming the existing schools seriously enough so that every school is a school of choice and that parents are happy with the schools they are currently sending their child to.

Supplemental Education Services. In 2002-2003, 112,000 students participated in supplemental services. Again, we have offered technical assistance to districts by highlighting best-practice models and worked with community organizations to make sure that parents have as much information as possible. We think it is important to get states far more engaged in the supplemental services debate. So far states are doing a great job approving providers--over 2,500 providers have been approved. However, it is unclear how well states are monitoring providers and if states are offering incentives to school districts to open their doors so that providers can serve students at the actual school site.
 
Charter Schools. Recent reports have cast doubt on charter schools. Our funding is targeted at building quality charter schools through grants. We firmly believe that if you manage risk at the front-end, you will be able to build an infrastructure so that the good models of charter schools are growing around the country. Money has been better targeted to districts that need the most help. We have offered funding for charter school facilities totaling $90 million. The Institute for Education Sciences is launching a randomized field test of charter schools that will begin next fall. The department is taking the job of evaluating charter schools seriously, and we feel that we have invested enough resources to answer the critics' questions.

D.C. Choice. The District of Columbia choice program is off to a great start. Over 1,000 students are currently attending a private school of their parent's choice, and many independent schools are in the mix. Many valuable lessons have been learned about how to approach low-income parents. The program is undergoing an evaluation to answer whether participating in school choice is enough to raise student achievement.

If you talk to most activists in the choice movement, most of the activity is at the state and local level, not the federal level. The best thing that we can do at the federal level is to offer a bully pulpit and tout reforms happening at the local level.

Sally Stroup
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education

I offer a different perspective from the common focus on K-12 education and will expand on the president's agenda for the American higher education system. Our office promulgates policies for federal student aid, and since my arrival there in early 2002, we have been charged with updating the system and its operating procedures. Along with simplification of the application process, a perennial issue with which our office grapples, the administration is also making reform of the student loan process a priority to ensure that the neediest students receive necessary financial aid.

The Education Department is eager to see Congress reauthorize the Higher Education Act--a law whose reauthorization should have taken place last year. But the administration's belief in the importance of information in the hands of parents and students applies also to the higher education system; we hope to continue the trend of providing statistical institutional data to prospective students and is establishing methods by which to do that.

Erik Robelen
Education Week

Like it or hate it, NCLB is here to stay. There is a lot of speculation about possibly tinkering with the law this year. If there are changes, they will be modest in scope and will not fundamentally shift the direction of the law. The anticipated arrival of Margaret Spellings at the Department of Education signals a message of stability for NCLB because she was involved in getting the law enacted. The law is up for reauthorization in 2007, and that would be a natural time to look at changing some of the provisions.

The nomination of Margaret Spellings signals that education will remain a top priority for this president. Ms. Spellings has a close relationship with the president and others at the White House--a dynamic that will be interesting to watch.

The budget boom is over for the Department of Education. You are not going to see increases in the coming years. The new budget is the smallest increase in a decade--less than $1 billion, or a 1.6-percent increase. This is going to create a lot of political challenges for the president. David Dunn outlined new initiatives earlier on this panel, and I am not quite sure how many of them Congress is going to pay for. The Adjunct Teacher Corps and the Enhanced Pell Grant Initiatives the president discussed during the campaign received no funds from Congress. One of the president's priorities is the Striving Readers Initiatives. The president requested $100 million this year, but Congress only allocated $25 million for the new program. In tight fiscal times, Congress is not going to latch onto every new initiative the president puts forward because Congress does not like getting rid of programs that already exist. Congress under-funded the president's request for Title I, critical to NCLB, by $500 million. Likewise, with special education, the budget increase was $500 million less than the president requested. Funding actually decreased for the Educational Technology Fund, the Title Five Block Grant for states, and the Teacher Quality Grants. However, Congress did find some money for projects in their own districts. There was more than $400 million dollars of pork in the education piece of the budget.

Finally, it remains to be seen if Congress will go along with the president's call for new assessments in high schools and if the new chairman of the Senate HELP committee, Mike Enzi (R-WY), will create a different dynamic as far as voucher programs and school choice because of his rural perspective.

Roberto Rodriguez
U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee

With changes in congressional leadership and a new dynamic both on Capitol Hill and within the administration, new opportunities exist next year and beyond to address the important education issues at hand. Chief among these is the reauthorization of Head Start, which is a priority for all stakeholders in the education system. I agree with David Dunn on the importance of enhancing the academic components of Head Start to improve early literacy and math standards and hope bipartisan support will be attained on this issue.

Another salient issue for the next four years will be the ongoing implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, which continues to cause frustration for many states and local districts. The teacher qualification component of the law, turning around schools deemed in need of improvement, and defining what assessment methods actually produce quality data remain obstacles to successful implementation. NCLB is also under-funded--by as much as $9 billion according to some estimates--and increasing funding remains a Democratic priority, even in a tight fiscal climate.

Expanding access to low-income students and maintaining affordability in postsecondary education will be Democratic priorities throughout the reauthorization negotiations.

This summary was prepared by staff assistants Morgan Goatley and Emily Kluver.