The President's FY2011 budget is out, and we've now had a day to digest the toplines and find out if our pet programs are on the chopping block or slotted for additional support. Not surprisingly, ED is reorganizing its budget around priorities similar to Race to the Top, leaving some clear winners and losers. (The full breakdown of the budget reccs can be found here.)
As a former Capitol Hill rat and appropriations staffer, I find it important to note that yesterday's document is a starting point, and not the final deal. Programs that have been eliminated or consolidated are bound to be reinstated once their constituency speaks up. Additional money is likely to be found to fund those reinstatements. (And as a former Byrd scholar, Eduflack, for one, is hoping that funding for the Robert C. Byrd Scholarship is reinstated immediately). But the new parameters and programmatic headers offered in the President's budget is likely to hold, standing as our new organizational strands for future spending and ESEA reauthorization.
So who are the winners? Who are the losers? Let's take a quick look, shall we.
Winners
* Arne Duncan — The EdSec has put his personal brand on both discretionary and non-discretionary spending, while imposing his own "brand" on the future of federal education dollars. The current budget demonstrates that Duncan's four pillars are not a one-time RttT deal, and instead are the buckets by which federal education policy will be governed for years to come.
* Reforming School Districts — The new budget likely provides another $700 million to LEAs under an expanded RttT and another $500 million for i3 (more than doubling our current i3 investment). For those districts that are focusing on teacher/principal quality and school turnaround and research-proven innovation, the coming years may be profitable ones (as long as there aren't too many good districts who can walk the walk).
* Teach for America — At first glance,