Capitol Hill’s budget arm says that among the many options federal lawmakers have for cutting the budget deficit, they could consider eliminating Head Start and federally supported school meal programs.
The Congressional Budget Office’s “Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2019 to 2028” is the latest in a series of reports the office releases to help lawmakers consider options for reducing the federal deficit, which in fiscal 2018 stood at $778 billion, or 3.8 percent of gross domestic product. There are a total of 121 possibilities the CBO lists for reducing the deficit, and there are a few programs listed that education policy advocates and observers might be interested in. The report also explores changes to Pell Grants and certain loan forgiveness programs available to teachers.
Keep in mind that this report from the CBO doesn’t require or place any burden on Congress to do anything—the office is just listing options for lawmakers to consider. Also: The CBO isn’t explicitly endorsing any of these options.
Child Nutrition Programs
Instead of the current funding and structure provided to school meal programs, the CBO outlines an approach familiar to many who deal with education policy and politics: block grants.
“This option would convert SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps] and the child nutrition programs to separate, smaller block grants to the states beginning in October 2019. The block grants would provide a set amount of funding to states each year, and states would be allowed to make significant changes to the structure of the programs,” the report states.
The budget analysts say this approach would reduce total spending on child nutrition programs by $88 billion, while savings for SNAP would be $160 million over the same time period. Spending on child nutrition programs like school lunch totaled $23 billion in fiscal 2018…
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Despite past pledges to shrink or eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, the spending bill that President Donald Trump signed into law provides a small boost to the department’s budget for this fiscal year.
The increase of $581 million for fiscal 2019 brings the Education Department budget to roughly $71.5 billion. It’s the second year in a row Trump has agreed to boost federal education spending—last March, Trump approved spending levels that increased the budget by $2.6 billion for fiscal 2018.
The spending deal for fiscal 2019, signed late last month, includes relatively small increases for Title I (the main federal education program for disadvantaged students), special education, charter schools, career and technical education, and other programs. Although fiscal 2019 began on Oct. 1, the agreement mostly impacts the 2019-20 school year.
In addition to Education Department programs, funding for Head Start—which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services—now stands at $10.1 billion, a $240 million increase from fiscal 2018. And Preschool Development Grants, also run by HHS, are level-funded at $250 million.
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Is preschool worth it? Policymakers, parents, researchers and us, at NPR Ed, have spent a lot of time thinking about this question.
We know that most pre-kindergarten programs do a good job of improving ‘ specific skills like phonics and counting, as well as broader social and emotional behaviors, by the time students enter kindergarten. Just this week, a study looking at more than 20,000 students in a state-funded preschool program in Virginia found that kids made large improvements in their alphabet recognition skills.
So the next big question to follow is, of course, Do these benefits last?
New research out of North Carolina says yes, they do. The study found that early childhood programs in that state resulted in higher test scores, a lower chance of being held back in a grade, and a fewer number of children with special education placements. Those gains lasted up through the fifth grade.
The research, published this week in the journal Child Development, studied nearly 1 million North Carolina students who attended state-funded early childhood programs between 1995 and 2010, and followed them through fifth grade.
They concluded that the benefits from these programs grew or held steady over those five years. And when the researchers broke the students down into subgroups by race and income — they found that all of those groups showed gains that held over time.
“Pre-kindergarten and early education programs are incredibly important,” says Kenneth Dodge, the lead author on the study and the director of the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy. “Especially for parents, for business leaders — because of the workforce development aspect — and for policy makers who are spending the money on it.”
This new research confirms what researchers recently found in Tulsa, Okla. – one of the most highly regarded preschool programs in the country. In that study, children who attended Head Start had higher test scores on state math tests up through eighth grade.
The big difference between the long-term findings in North Carolina and Tulsa and the fade out in Tennessee, researchers say, is the quality of the preschool program.
Having a high-quality program is key, says Dodge. “The long-term impact,” he says, “depends entirely on quality and how well elementary schools build on the foundations set in pre-K.”
Experts cite several key elements in “high-quality” preschool: small class sizes, student-directed learning and lots of open-ended play. And researchers have warned that outcomes are short-lived when those elements are not present.
“I think that the question is turning away from whether we should do pre-kindergarten and instead to how should we do pre-kindergarten,” says Dodge.
While President Obama made universal, high-quality preschool a priority, it’s unclear at this early stage whether that focus will continue in the Trump administration. Conversations about broad changes may continue to happen more at the state and local level.
Most states have some version of pre-K — 42 states plus the District of Columbia had state-funded programs in the 2014-2015 school year, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research, based at Rutgers University.
“I don’t think we can anticipate that the federal government is going to roll out a single universal preschool program,” says Dodge. “The reality is that preschool is becoming a state and local and community initiative.”
Dodge says that’s why research looking at these state programs – which often vary in size, quality and funding – is so important.
Capitol Hill’s budget arm says that among the many options federal lawmakers have for cutting the budget deficit, they could consider eliminating Head Start and federally supported school meal programs.
Is preschool worth it? Policymakers, parents, researchers and us, at NPR Ed, have spent a lot of time thinking about this question.