Budget Agreement Protects Title I, IDEA, Head Start, and Impact Aid for Indian Reservation Schools
Budget agreements may seem far away and deep in the policy weeds, but they cut through the rhetoric and posturing to point the direction where things are actually going to go. Last night, January 13, House and Senate agreed on a federal spending compromise for the rest of the fiscal year—through September. Assuming that Congress passes what the negotiators decided, the education spending provisions are a relief for supporters of public schools.
According to Alyson Klein, who covers federal policy for Education Week, the Title I formulaprogram that allocates federal funds to support school districts that serve a large number or high concentration of poor students and funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) will receive increases, almost reaching the level before Sequestration reduced their funding. Title I will get $14.4 billion, slightly under the $14.5 billion it received in FY 2012. Special education grants will be $11.5 billion, just slightly less than the pre-Sequestration, FY 2012 amount of $11.6 billion. Keep in mind that both of these programs have been perennially under-funded. When Congress passed IDEA, for example, the federal government promised to pay scho0l districts 40 percent of the costs of implementation; Congress has never covered more than 19 percent of the cost— and usually less than 19 percent. However, this year it is a relief to see Congress pretty much undoing the damage of Sequestration to these programs that cover essential programming in schools across the