Verbatim Mac

Squo funding shortfalls

Trump hasn’t proposed cuts to Title I funding, but the future is unclear

Mann, 17, Brown Center on Education Policy [Elizabeth; "3 observations on Trump’s education budget," 6-7-2017, Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/06/07/3-observations-on-trumps-education-budget/; GDI-RJC]

1. Title I funding’s future is unclear Since initial passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the Title I program to provide funds to school districts with high concentrations of students from low-income families has been the bedrock of federal spending on K-12 education. Title I funds are distributed by a formula grant, and Title I is the largest K-12 program administered by the Department of Education. Large cuts here would be felt by school districts—and House members representing those districts—across the country. It is no surprise, then, that the Trump administration did not propose major cuts here. However, determining the budget proposal’s implications for Title I funding is complicated. The proposal adds a new program under Title I, Furthering Options for Children to Unlock Success (FOCUS), with a proposed budget of 1 billion dollars. FOCUS would fund state school choice programs by providing “supplemental awards to school districts that agree to adopt weighted student funding combined with open enrollment systems that allow Federal, State, and local funds to follow students to the public school of their choice.” The federal government would not distribute FOCUS funds using the standard Title I formula, raising the question of whether this proposed budget increase should be considered an increase in Title I funds. Further complicating matters, Congress passed two budget laws in 2017–whether funding for Title I appears to increase or decrease in Trump’s budget depends on whether you compare his proposal to the 2017 annualized Continuing Resolution (CR) signed December 2016, or the 2017 fiscal year appropriation signed May 2017. As the figure below shows, compared to either 2017 budget law, Title I funds would increase in fiscal year 2018 if you include FOCUS funds. Omitting FOCUS funds, Title I funding is level compared to the 2017 CR but decreases compared to the 2017 fiscal year appropriation. Depending on what set of numbers one uses, it is thus possible to claim that proposed Title I funds are the same, higher, or lower than in 2017. This issue led to partisan sparring over how the Trump budget proposal could affect Title I, the central federal funding stream for K-12 education. In the June 6 Senate hearing on the budget, for example, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos disagreed over whether the proposed budget would maintain or decrease Title I spending. In addition to concerns about funding levels, observers note that the FOCUS program, which is not mandated through legislation, requires states to adopt policies favored by DeVos and her department in order to receive federal funds. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) expressed his concern to DeVos that this approach echoes the Obama administration’s strategy under Race to the Top, which ultimately aggravated many state education leaders who found this approach prescriptive.

Trump and DeVos school choice plans devastate funding for low-income students

Ford, Special Assistant, K-12 Education Team, Center for American Progress, et al. 2017

(Chris, “The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers”, Center for American Progress, July 12, 2017, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/reports/2017/07/12/435629/racist-origins-private-school-vouchers/, accessed 7/14/17, GDI-JG)

Fast forward to 2017: President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos have championed a plan to provide federal funding for private school voucher systems nationwide, which would funnel millions of taxpayer dollars out of public schools and into unaccountable private schools—a school reform policy that they say would provide better options for low-income students trapped in failing schools. Their budget proposal would slash the Education Department’s budget by more than 13 percent, or $9 billion, while providing $1.25 billion for school choice, including $250 million for private school vouchers.2∂ When pressed on the risks and unintended consequences of potential exclusionary policies in voucher programs, Secretary DeVos refused to commit to aggressively enforce civil rights protections. In May of 2017 in her testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, Betsy DeVos declined to say whether she would protect students against discriminatory policies in private schools that receive federal funding through vouchers.3

Squo Inequality – general

Educational inequality high now—school segregation and scoring gaps prove

Singer, social studies educator and historian, the Department of Teaching Learning Technology, Hofstra University, 2016

(Alan, “Will Every Student Succeed? Not With This New Law”, Huffington Post, Dec 06, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/will-every-student-succee_b_8730956.html, accessed 7/9/17, GDI-JG)

Last week the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to jettison penalties for schools, districted and states mandated by the Bush era No Child Left Behind law. NCLB was signed into law by George Bush in 2002 and was supposedly designed to expose and solve “achievement gaps” in American education. It did this by mandating the continuous testing of students and required that all gaps be eliminated by 2014. While the testing industry has overwhelmed American schools, achievement gaps have not disappeared. The Senate is expected to pass the new bill, known as the Every Student Succeeds Act or ESSA, this week, maybe as early as Tuesday.∂ In the last fifteen years a lot of children have been left behind. A recent study published by the National Center for Education Statistics based on 2011 middle school math tests found that Black student performance was significantly lower than the performance by White students and the gap increased for Black students who attended racially segregated schools with large numbers of children from poor families. The scoring gap between Hispanic and White non-Hispanic students was not as high, but it continued to be large. NCLB forced almost every state to apply for a series of waivers from requirements because they could not possibly ensure that no child was left behind.∂ In 2009, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that established his signature educational program, Race to the Top. Obama-ED promised states educational grants if they imposed Common Core-aligned skill-based tests on public schools and used student scores to evaluate students, teachers, schools, and school districts. To get the competitive federal grants states made impossible promises that stirred up deep resentment from teachers and led to open rebellion by parents opposed to the high-stakes testing regime. It also became an excuse not to address the fundamental problems causing poor academic performance by Black and Latino youth, racial and ethnic segregation, persistent poverty and unemployment in their communities, and inadequate school funding. Even the federal Department of Education had to concede that RTTP was not working. In 2015, student performance declined on math tests for the first time since 1990.

Concentration of economic disadvantage impacts school

Boser, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, and Baffour, research associate, K-12 Education Policy, Center for American Progress, 2017

(Ulrich and Perpetual, “Isolated and Segregated”, Center for American Progress, May 31, 2017, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/reports/2017/05/31/433014/isolated-and-segregated/, accessed 7/5/17, GDI-JG)

EdBuild conducted a quantitative analysis of over 1,700 school districts to measure economic segregation within each district, or intradistrict segregation. Among the researchers’ sample, 40 percent—or 688 districts—would be considered “hypersegregated” or “hyperisolated” by income. The authors call this group of districts the “Diversity Watch List.”∂ In these 688 districts, most of their low-income students attend schools where at least 75 percent of their peers are also low-income, most of their higher-income students attend schools where at least 75 percent of their peers are also higher-income, and/or most of their schools have poverty rates that are at least 20 percentage points above or below the district average.∂ These districts enroll approximately 15 million students and 50 percent of students in the CAP sample. The authors also find that these districts tend to be larger—both geographically and in terms of student population—than other districts in the sample.∂ Although the sample is not well suited for estimating national trends, the sheer number of districts in the sample identified as segregated suggests that many districts experience intense economic segregation and isolation.∂ It is also important to note that these districts cover 49 out of 51 states and encompass regions stretching from the Deep South to the Midwest and Northeast. The urban nature of these districts also varies. Some districts are located in densely populated, urban areas—such as Baltimore City Public Schools in Maryland—while others are small, rural districts such as Knox County Public Schools in Kentucky. From this the authors conclude that school segregation in the 21st century is not a South, North, urban, suburban, or rural issue. It is a national issue.

Housing segregation and attendance zones increase education inequality

Boser, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, and Baffour, research associate, K-12 Education Policy, Center for American Progress, 2017

(Ulrich and Perpetual, “Isolated and Segregated”, Center for American Progress, May 31, 2017, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/reports/2017/05/31/433014/isolated-and-segregated/, accessed 7/5/17, GDI-JG)

Most students attend schools based on their neighborhood location, or their attendance zones. While this is the nature of traditional student assignment systems, the attendance zones often reinforce structures of residential segregation. Most often, more affluent students are zoned to schools filled with the affluent peers in their neighborhood, and lower-income students are zoned to schools with students of similar backgrounds.∂ In extreme cases, however, attendance zones are deliberately drawn to exclude poor students from affluent schools.60 However, gerrymandering attendance zones is far less common than drawing zones that merely reflect the characteristics of the local area.61 Most school assignment systems sort students based on their place of residence, mimicking patterns of housing segregation.∂ School district boundaries also add to the problem. Many high-poverty districts are unable to meaningfully integrate their schools because the students they serve are either entirely low-income or entirely high-income. To illustrate this point, consider the fact that nearly half of all low-income public students attend school in a district where 75 percent of their peers are also low-income.62∂ High-poverty districts also often border significantly wealthier districts. The neighboring districts of Detroit Public Schools and Grosse Pointe Public School System in Michigan offer a stark example of this trend. In Detroit, the median household income is $54,000,63 but in Grosse Pointe, the median household income is $101,000.64 Such stories highlight the saddening reality that, increasingly, wealth separates students at the classroom, school, and district levels.