Trump’s Proposed Title I Intrusion Plan: FOCUS
According to Reuters, the White House is supposed to release its proposed 2018 budget on May 23, 2017.
On May 17, 2017, the Washington Post purportedly received advance notification of Trump’s proposed 2018 federal education budget.
One of the items in that proposed ed budget is a new program called Furthering Options for Children to Unlock Success (FOCUS). As the Washington Post reports:
The administration would devote $1 billion in Title I dollars meant for poor children to a new grant program (called Furthering Options for Children to Unlock Success, or FOCUS) for school districts that agree to allow students to choose which public school they attend — and take their federal, state and local dollars with them.The goal is to do away with neighborhood attendance zones that the administration says trap needy kids in struggling schools. …But the notion of allowing Title I dollars to follow the student — known as “portability” — is a controversial idea that the Republican-led Senate rejected in 2015. Many Democrats argue that it is a first step toward private-school vouchers and would siphon dollars from schools with high poverty to those in more affluent neighborhoods.
Indeed, a major issue here is the alleged (i.e., not able to be confirmed until official WH release of the 2018 budget) attempt to slip a new program into Title I– a program that not only is not mentioned in the Every Schools Succeeds Act (ESSA), but also one that would make state/local access to a portion of the Title I funding conditional upon meeting a special circumstance plastered onto ESSA by Trump.
As noted in Mother Jones, US ed sec Betsy DeVos is scheduled to appear before the House Committee on Appropriations on May 24, 2017, to defend the proposed Trump’s Proposed Title I Intrusion Plan: FOCUS | deutsch29:
