I’m back after a winter respite in Vermont and Rome is still burning.
Last week the Obama administration released its first budget which it clearly regards as transformative. For education there remains a host of unanswered questions mostly related to what happens two years out when the huge increases incorporated in the stimulus package disappear. The education budget contains increases in key areas that would only be transformative when coupled with the stimulus monies. As David Hoff points out on his EdWeek blog, NCLB II, “Title I would rise to $14.5 billion—a 4.3 percent jump. That would leave a steep climb for the program to receive $25 billion in fiscal 2011.”
The US Department of Education budget highlights include the following:
- Creates incentives and supports for States to build comprehensive, coordinated, high-quality early childhood “Zero to Five” systems, building on the early childhood investments in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
- Strengthens and reforms public schools to meet the needs of all students, by helping States to develop high quality, rigorous standards and assessments, vigorously supporting and rewarding effective teaching, and investing in and widely disseminating effective approaches to improving student achievement to help all students make progress toward high standards.
- Expands opportunities for students to go to college and graduate by expanding student aid,
shifting resources from banks and middlemen toward students, creating new incentives for
colleges to focus on student completion, and expanding access to low-cost Federal student
loans.
(emphasis added)
So through the budget proposal we see emphasis on “zero to five” and early childhood education, developing national standards, teacher compensation methods and rewards, replicating programs like Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone through a program called “Promising Neighborhoods” and other non-profit alliances with local districts. We still don’t know a lot more about what direction reauthorization of ESEA might take, but if tone is any indication there is a definitely positive change from the new secretary.
He is reaching out to NEA and AFT. NEA president, Dennis Van Roekel, recently posted this video commenting on NEA’s relationship with the new secretary:
The central question remains … can we hold it together at the local level as the fiscal crisis deepens?
