How Do Districts Plan to Use Their ESSA Block Grant Money?

How Do Districts Plan to Use Their ESSA Block Grant Money?

by | Jun 17, 2018 | Education Week, ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), K12 Education, National, STEM, Title IV

Education Week logoMany districts are about to get a big boost in funding for the most flexible piece of the Every Student Succeeds Act: the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants, better known as Title IV of the law. The program just got a big, $700 million boost from fiscal 2017 to fiscal 2018, bringing its total funding to $1.1 billion. And it could get even more money next year, because the House appropriations subcommittee in control of federal education spending is seeking $1.2 billion for the program in new legislation.

Districts can use Title IV funding for a wide range of activities that help students become safer and healthier, more well-rounded, or make better use of technology. And districts have a lot of leeway to customize Title IV to their needs. However, districts that get $30,000 or more must do a needs assessment, and spend at least 20 percent on an activity that makes students safer, and 20 percent on something that makes kids more well-rounded.

So how do districts plan to spend the money? Three education groups—AASA, the School Superintendents Association, the National Association of Federal Program Administrators, and Whiteboard Advisors—surveyed districts to find out. Since May, 622 districts have responded to the survey…

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Want more on Title IV? Check out this explainer. And if you want to dive even deeper, check out an archived version of this webinar.

Betsy DeVos Wants to Direct Federal Funds to School Choice, STEM, Workforce Readiness

Betsy DeVos Wants to Direct Federal Funds to School Choice, STEM, Workforce Readiness

by | Feb 28, 2018 | Betsy DeVos, Education Week, ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), K12 Education, National, School Choice, U.S. Department of Education

Education Week logoU.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will give applicants for federal grants a leg-up if they are planning to embrace things like school choice, STEM, literacy, school climate, effective instruction, career preparation, and serving military-connected children and students in special education.

That’s according to the final list of Education Department priorities slated for publication in the Federal Register on March 1.

If the list looks familiar, it’s because it hasn’t gone through substantial changes since DeVos first outlined her proposed priorities back in October. DeVos made some tweaks based on more than 1,000 outside comments.

The department gives away at least $500 million in competitive-grant money every year. Every administration sets “priorities” for that funding. These matter because applicants that include one or more of those priorities in a grant proposal are more likely to get money. The priorities are one of the few vehicles DeVos—or any secretary—has for pushing an agenda without new legislation from Congress…

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Search to Fill One of Education’s Biggest Jobs Begins as New York City Chief Steps Down

Search to Fill One of Education’s Biggest Jobs Begins as New York City Chief Steps Down

by | Dec 21, 2017 | Education Week, K12 Education, New York

Carmen Fariña, the chancellor of New York City Schools, announced Thursday that she would be resigning in 2018, leaving behind a school system fundamentally changed from where it stood when her tenure began four years ago.

Fariña, 74, plans to leave her job as head of the 1.1 million-student school system, the largest in the country, prior to the end of the school year.

“I took the job with a firm belief in excellence for every student, in the dignity and joyfulness of the teaching profession, and in the importance of trusting relationships where collaboration is the driving force,” Fariña wrote in a letter to staff Thursday. “These are the beliefs that I have built over five decades as a New York City educator, and they have been at the heart of the work we have done together for the past four years.”

A nationwide search for her successor is already underway, with plans to hire a successor within months, said Mayor Bill de Blasio. Under state law, the city’s mayor controls the schools.

Who de Blasio has in mind for his next chancellor isn’t yet clear, but school leadership experts say the job requires a hard-to-find combination of someone with credibility as an educator and the acumen to navigate the rough-and-tumble politics of New York City…

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Hundreds of Comments Pour In on DeVos’ Priorities for Education Grants

Hundreds of Comments Pour In on DeVos’ Priorities for Education Grants

by | Nov 21, 2017 | Betsy DeVos, Education Week, ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), K12 Education, National

Remember those 11 competitive-grant priorities that U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos sketched out last month? In case you forgot: Expanding school choice and rewarding applicants that want to focus on STEM were on her list.

More than 1,000 people and organizations had some thoughts for DeVos and her team when it comes to these priorities, which the department will use to help decide who gets hundreds of millions of dollars in competitive grants.

DeVos had pitched giving applicants a leg-up in applying for the funds if they focus on school choice, innovation, citizenship, meeting the needs of children with disabilities, STEM, literacy, effective instruction, improving school climate, expanding economic opportunity, or helping military-connected students. She gave the education community thirty days to offer formal feedback.

She got nearly 1,500 comments from the education field. We read them, €”well, okay, fine, some of them, €”so you don’t have to.

Below are some comments from various groups.

National Coalition for Public Education

The coaliton, which is made up of 50 organizations, including both national teachers’ unions, AASA: The School Superintendents Association, the National PTA, disability rights groups, the NAACP, and others, is not at all happy with the department’s plan to give grant applications a leg-up if they focus on school choice.

“The Department should not reward states for adopting voucher programs that do not serve all students, fail to improve academic achievement, undermine public education funding, harm religious freedom and lack critical accountability for taxpayers,” the groups wrote.

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Source: Education Week Politics K-12

Keep Us Involved in ESSA Plans, Unions and District Leaders Tell State Chiefs

by | Nov 11, 2017 | Education Week, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), k-12, Tennessee, US Department of Education

Associations representing local superintendents, teachers, state lawmakers and others have sent a clear message to chief state school officers: Work with us on the Every Student Succeeds Act.

On Tuesday, 11 groups sent a letter to the Council of Chief State School Officers expressing their disappointment that the U.S. Department of Education removed a requirement that states detail their work with stakeholder groups in their consolidated plans for ESSA. Nonetheless, they say the group has an obligation to make sure each chief “demonstrates clearly and explicitly in each state plan how stakeholders were involved in its development, and how they…

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Budget Tangles Ensnare Key Early-Childhood Programs – Education Week

Budget Tangles Ensnare Key Early-Childhood Programs – Education Week

by | Oct 11, 2017 | California, Congress, District of Columbia, Education Week, ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Idaho, K12 Education, Michigan, Oregon, Texas, Utah

October 10, 2017

Congress is late in turning in two important assignments that affect young children: Both the Children’s Health Insurance Program and a federally funded program that provides counseling to vulnerable families expired Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Neither program will run out of money immediately, and both programs have support from Republicans and Democrats. But the expiration, even if it proves temporary, illustrates how difficult it has been for Congress to address other legislation as it has wrestled, unsuccessfully, with repealing the Affordable Care Act.

The highest-profile of the two programs to expire is the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which Congress failed to extend by the end of September, could put a financial strain on states—and eventually jeopardize coverage for the roughly 9 million children covered by the program…

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NATIONAL: Trump Budget Reported to Use Title I, Research Aid to Push Choice

NATIONAL: Trump Budget Reported to Use Title I, Research Aid to Push Choice

by | May 17, 2017 | Education Week, ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), K12 Education, National, Washington

President Donald Trump’s full education budget proposal for fiscal 2018 would make notable cuts to the U.S. Department of Education, and leverage existing programs for disadvantaged students and K-12 innovation to promote school choice, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Trump’s full education funding blueprint would cut $9.2 billion, or 13.6 percent, from the Education Department’s current $68 billion budget, said the report, based on still-unreleased budget documents. Also, the spending plan calls for the creation of a new, $1 billion federal grant program under Title I to allow students to take federal, state, and local dollars to their public school of choice. That money would be added to the $15.9 billion Title I receives this budget year, fiscal 2017 that current funding is not “portable” to public schools of choice and goes out by formula.

Both the cuts and the new grant for Title I, along with other aspects of the full budget proposal expected to be released as early as next week, are consistent with Trump’s preliminary budget released in mid-March...

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