The Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants—better known as Title IV of the Every Student Succeeds Act—is one of the most flexible federal programs around. And it just got a huge increase, from $400 million in the 2017-18 school year to $1.1 billion for the 2018-19 school year. The program is closely watched by advocates and district officials alike, in part because the dollars can cover such a wide array of needs—from school safety training to drama clubs to science programs to suicide prevention.
Here’s a look at how the program works and how districts might spend that considerable increase:
What is Title IV of ESSA and why did Congress create it?
Title IV, Part A of ESSA, or the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants, was intended to give district leaders more flexibility when it comes to federal funding. The program was created by collapsing a bunch of smaller programs aimed at physical education, arts education, math and science instruction, counseling, Advance Placement course fees, and school safety. Congress authorized up to $1.6 billion for the program in its first year. That would have made it the third-largest program in ESSA. But lawmakers only provided $400 million for federal fiscal year 2017, which generally covers the 2017-18 school year. This spring, in the fiscal year 2018 spending bill, Title IV got a boost of $700 million, bringing it to $1.1 billion.
What can the money be used for?
The money flows to districts from state education officials through a formula. Districts have broad discretion to use the aid for a wide range of programs aimed at making students safer and healthier, more well-rounded, or to enhance the role of technology in learning. Activities aimed at improving student health and safety include things like promoting parent and community involvement, establishing or improving dropout prevention programs, and putting in place or bolstering health and nutrition programs, or programs to combat the opioid crisis. Well-rounded activities can include initiatives to bolster foreign-language courses, college counseling, dual enrollment, musical theater, and computer science. Districts can also use the money for technology, including blended learning and building technological capacity…
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U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who has had difficulty selling her school choice agenda in Washington, railed against state constitutional prohibitions on public funds going to faith-based institutions, in a recent speech to a Roman Catholic organization.
The target of DeVos’ wrath: so-called “Blaine” amendments to state constitutions that prohibit public funds from being used for religious purposes. DeVos said those amendments, many of which originated in the late 1800s, began as “bigoted” against Catholics.
“These Blaine provisions prohibit taxpayer funding of ‘sectarian’—a euphemism at that time for ‘Catholic’—activities, even when they serve the public good,” DeVos said, according to prepared remarks of the speech to the Alfred E. Smith Foundation, which is affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York. “Activities like addiction recovery, hospice care, or—the amendments’ primary target—parochial education.”
Nearly three months—and six school shootings—since President Donald Trump created a commission to seek solutions to school violence, the Cabinet-level panel is being slammed for what critics see as its slack pace, lack of transparency, and limited representation.
Advocates, parents, and educators note that the commission, which is led by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, has met only once since it was set up in the wake of February’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. They say there’s been very little outreach to the education community. And they worry that the commission seems to have already made up its mind about where to go on school safety.
“It really begs the question of how seriously they are taking this situation,” said Myrna Mandalowitz, the director of government relations at the School Social Work Association of America. “It’s past time for this commission to meet and get the ball rolling.”
Besides DeVos, the commission includes Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. It has had one organizational meeting, on March 28. Since the commission was first announced on March 11, there have been six school shootings resulting in death or injury, according to Education Week tracking of such incidents…
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President Donald Trump has pledged in the past to either eliminate or dramatically scale back the U.S. Department of Education—but he’s ended up signing a spending bill that increases the department’s budget to the largest number in its history.
The new spending level approved by Congress, after months of delay, amounts to a broad rejection of the more-austere budget proposal released last year by Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The president and the secretary sought to eliminate some department programs and cut back others, and create two new major school choice initiatives.
The fiscal 2018 spending bill Trump signed into law last month includes a $2.6 billion increase for the Education Department over fiscal 2017 levels. Included in the new budget for the department is a $300 million increase for Title I, the federal program earmarked for students from low-income backgrounds, up to $15.8 billion, as well as increases for programs dealing with students with disabilities and for career and technical education.
In addition, the budget preserves a $2.1 billion program for educator development, which the Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget request had proposed eliminating. Funding for after-school and a Title IV block grant that the Trump budget also sought to eliminate was increased as well…
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The Trump administration may shift the focus of its school-choice agenda to a group of students that the federal government has a special responsibility for: children connected to the military.
Creating education savings accounts for the children of military personnel has support among some conservatives. But some advocates for military families have been cautious about embracing the idea.
Still, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said in a recent interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington that there’s clearly an appetite among military families for more choice.
“I know for a fact that for more than a third of active-duty military families that have school-age children, their decisions where they go, or where they don’t go, or whether they continue to serve, hinge very heavily on the opportunities they have for their children’s education,” DeVos said. In a 2017 survey by the Military Times, 35 percent of service members with children said dissatisfaction with their children’s education was a “significant” factor in deciding whether or not to continue with their service. “So I think we have an opportunity in that regard to empower them with some more of those choices.”
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Now just over a year in office, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos continues to be a lightning rod in the field of American education. The debate over her K-12 philosophy and policy ideas remains vigorous in many quarters. Education Week’s opinion editors were interested in hearing from people in the field about what they believe matters most when it comes to schooling children. To that end, we asked a handful of participants to briefly consider if they were given the chance to sit down with the secretary, what issue or course of action would they urge her to prioritize, and how would they make their case. This is what they had to say. —The Editors
Higher Education
It’s no secret that change is underway in education and beyond. Industries are morphing, jobs are shifting, and new careers are emerging because of technology. A century-long trend toward a highly skilled workforce is accelerating, and our economy will demand greater levels of education.
More Americans, both young and old, will need education beyond high school. And our institutions will have to evolve in profound ways to meet their needs.
That’s why we must seize this moment as Congress debates the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which governs colleges and universities and provides them with federal financial support. Our national legislative framework must enable and encourage the changes we will need over the next decades to build a stronger system for higher education. Our country has changed significantly since the act was last reauthorized in 2008…
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The Trump administration’s budget, due out later this month, is likely to combine three significant research programs—the State Longitudinal Data System grants, the Regional Educational Laboratories, and the Comprehensive Centers—advocates with knowledge of the proposal say.
Money for all three programs—nearly $140 million all told—would instead be rolled out to states through formula grants, said Michele McLaughlin, a senior adviser at Penn Hill Group, a government-relations organization.
McLaughlin is also the president of the Knowledge Alliance, a lobbying coalition for the education research community, who learned of the proposal ahead of the budget’s release. Another advocate in the research community with knowledge of the details also confirmed the proposed changes.
“This proposal is nonsensical and does not reflect congressional intent,” said McLaughlin. She noted that the Education Sciences Reform Act, or ESRA, which was last renewed in 2002, keeps all three programs separate. So does a bipartisan bill to reauthorize ESRA—the Strengthening Education Through Research Act—which passed the House in 2014 and the Senate in 2015 but still hasn’t made it over the finish line.
The budget change the Trump administration intends to propose would require a legislative change, she said.
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Since taking office last February, the U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has eliminated dozens of education directives to school officials. Now the Education Department is reconsidering a rule intended to hold states to a higher standard when determining if districts have overenrolled minority students in special education. It has also signaled an intention to pull back on considering “systemic” causes of discrimination during civil rights investigations at schools.
The unprecedented cleansing and revisions of Department of Education guidance to states, school districts, and private schools is passed off largely as a response to President Donald Trump’s simplistic Jan. 30 executive order that agencies remove two regulatory documents for every one issued. Even if, as has been reported, large swaths of the documents the department has eliminated so far have been out-of-date or superfluous, other guidance revisions have grave implications for marginalized students. The department’s headline-making withdrawal of Obama-era policy guidance permitting transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identities is just one such example.LLL
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David C. Bloomfield is a professor of educational leadership, law, and policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. He is the author of American Public Education Law, 3rd Edition. Alan A. Aja is an associate professor in the department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College.
When it comes time to do their taxes, millions of educators have had the satisfaction of checking a box that saves them some money, and isn’t available to people in other professions. The tax bill proposed by House Republicans would eliminate the $250 deduction teachers can claim for classroom supplies—and educators aren’t taking to it kindly.
We spoke with Internal Revenue Service officials to try to get a handle on what exactly the tax law says and what it means for teachers. Here’s some of what you need to know about the “educator expense deduction.”
1. Who can take the tax deduction? And what can they take it for?
K-12 teachers, principals, counselors, and aides who worked in schools for at least 900 hours a year (or an average of about five hours a school day) can currently take the tax deduction.
They can deduct up to $250 annually for books, supplies, computer hardware and software, and “other supplementary materials” that they purchased for their classrooms and were not reimbursed for by their district. They can also deduct for any out-of-pocket professional-development expenses. Health and physical education teachers can also use the deduction for athletic supplies.
Two educators who are married and filing jointly can deduct up to $500 a year (though no more than $250 a person).
The deduction is somewhat unusual in that it’s “above the line,” meaning teachers don’t have to itemize to get it. It comes directly off of their taxable income…
Librarian Holly Peele contributed to this report.
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Republican lawmakers’ proposed changes to the federal tax code are causing a stir in the education community. Teachers and others are zeroing in on the bill’s repeal of the $250 tax deduction teachers and principals can take for spending their own money on classroom supplies. But, aside from that, how could the bill impact an individual teacher’s tax bill?
Let’s examine how a couple of hypothetical teachers would fare under the legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives last week and try to tease out an answer.
The following scenarios are in a world where the GOP tax bill is approved as released. Will it pass? Will lawmakers amend it? If so, how? Nobody knows the answers to those questions. Right now, House lawmakers are vigorously debating it. But let’s figure things out based on what we know is in the bill. For this analysis, we’re leaving out a lot of factors that could affect these hypothetical teachers’ taxes. We’ve also tried to keep it relatively simple, in order to get a basic idea of how the proposed tax changes could work for many teachers.
June 5, 2018
Republican lawmakers’ proposed changes to the federal tax code are causing a stir in the education community. Teachers and others are zeroing in on the bill’s repeal of the $250 tax deduction teachers and principals can take for spending their own money on classroom supplies. But, aside from that, how could the bill impact an individual teacher’s tax bill?