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Boston Globe
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
‘I do fear it's not going to go to the students': Critics fear shift to state control risks education funding cuts
Related : As President Trump takes step toward shuttering the department of education, some conservative leaders are calling on him to go further and turn over funding for low-income and special education students to states through unrestricted block grants. Proponents argue the current system that directs money to individual schools with strict limits on what it can be spent on is inefficient and cumbersome. But critics worry converting the program to block grants will divert money from needy students and lead to long-term funding declines, as has happened with other block grants. In Massachusetts, such a move could jeopardize $500 million in Title 1 and IDEA funding and thousands of staff serving critical student needs. That's just a small fraction of the state's education spending, but in New Mexico and other less wealthy states, federal money is even more important, sometimes accounting for more than one-fifth of all education spending. Advertisement Title I sends more than $18 billion to schools that serve low-income children across the country, and IDEA directs another $15 billion to students with disabilities. because they say they could make better use of the money. Some states are But opponents say the history of other federal block grants predicts converting the programs into a block grant will lead to long-term funding declines. First money gets handed to states with little to no requirements, and then alleged misuse by the states is used as a justification to cut the grants. Advertisement One such case of block grant misuse is a 'Ironically, the desire to grant more flexibility ends up being the reason for the lack of future policymaker support, because we don't know how the money is being spent,' said Robert Kim of the Education Law Center, a progressive legal advocacy nonprofit based in New Jersey. 'The potential for waste, fraud, and abuse with a loosening of the reins here is enormous,' he said. been cited as a reason to cut funds. For example, and meal delivery for low-income seniors, a 'no-strings-attached slush fund for states with no accountability.' The program's funding when accounting for inflation has shrunk dramatically over time. Advertisement From 2000 to 2017, inflation-adjusted funding for 13 housing, health, and social services block grant programs fell by 27 percent, the data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities show. Related : Proponents of block granting education funds argue the existing system has failed to improve American schools and instead hamstrings schools and districts with too much bureaucracy. Title I and IDEA are allocated to schools and districts based on concentrations of eligible students and have strict rules for what the funds can be spent on. For example, a school can use Title I funds to help pay for a teacher's aide, but can't use it to pay their full salary unless the aide only works with low income students. At a 'The program's formulas have become increasingly complex,' Gentles said. 'The monitoring requirements have burdened states and districts and each level of government takes a hefty cut of the $18 or $19 billion in annual funding while low-income students continue to struggle.' Gentles argued it would be more efficient to combine federal education funding streams — such as Title I and IDEA, which goes to students with disabilities. 'Ensuring that all students have access to high quality education is a worthy goal,' she said. 'Pretending that Title I in its current form has met that goal is foolish.' Advertisement The conservative Heritage Foundation, which led the writing of Project 2025, declined to comment for this article. Massachusetts Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler said the limited federal role of providing dedicated funds for high needs students is critical. While Massachusetts is committed to directing federal funds to high-needs students, the possibility of mismanagement in other states could lead to overall cuts, even to the Commonwealth. And that worries him. 'Students cannot afford to lose that support,' Tutwiler said. 'If those dollars go away, it would mean ... substantively reducing strategies that are designed to support meeting the needs of our most vulnerable students.' Kim, of the Education Law Center, raised concerns that by switching to block granting education funds, local education spending on needy groups could decline. That's because of rules that require districts to keep up their own spending levels if they want their federal dollars. 'If you block grant, there's a high risk that the requirement that states pony up their own share craters,' Kim said. 'Those laws have been critically important in education.' Heisey, the New Mexico mother, agreed. 'It's like, when the cat's away, the mice will play,' she said. 'Unless [states] know that somebody's going to be checking in on them, you know they're not going to do the right thing. And I think we've seen that for years and years.' Heisey said she is worried that under the Trump administration children like hers may be harmed if the government shifts federal dollars meant for low-income children and students with disabilities into individual state's hands. 'If the federal government is thinking about giving this blanket money to these states and saying there's no strings attached, I do fear it's not going to go to the students that it's intended for,' she said. Advertisement Mandy McLaren of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Christopher Huffaker can be reached at
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NC's expanded vouchers have a hidden cost. Public schools will feel it
Republican state lawmakers refuse to tell the truth about school vouchers. They claim that providing hundreds of millions of tax dollars to help families pay for private school tuition will not affect public school funding. But that's not what the experience in other states shows. A study supported by the Education Law Center in 2023 looked at seven states where voucher programs are well established – Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Wisconsin. It found that the portion of state gross domestic product allocated to funding public schools decreased. Yet Republican lawmakers say that won't happen in North Carolina, despite a massive expansion of the state's voucher program known as Opportunity Scholarship. The program now offers vouchers of varying amounts to all families of all incomes, even those with children already attending private school. Last year the legislature approved spending $463 million more on vouchers. By the 2032-33 fiscal year, the program is expected to cost $825 million annually. House Speaker Destin Hall says people concerned about funding of the state's public schools need not worry about the flood of cash going to private schools. In his March 12 response to Gov. Josh Stein's State of the State speech, Hall said, 'Expanding opportunity and supporting our teachers are not competing goals. They're two sides of the same coin. Empowering families and investing in our teachers builds a stronger, brighter future for all of North Carolina's children.' Hall and fellow Republican leaders want to have it both ways, or rather they want North Carolinians to think they can have it both ways – spend lots of taxpayer dollars on private school vouchers and still have plenty to support good public schools. This fits with another distortion that Republicans keep repeating – that the legislature has been generous in increasing teacher pay. Or, as Hall put it in his response, 'the Republican-led General Assembly has consistently invested and will continue to invest even more in meaningful teacher raises.' Let's unpack these claims, starting with the second, based on figures provided by the Public School Forum. In 2011, the year Republicans gained control of the legislature and have since held it, the average North Carolina public school teacher pay was $46,514. The average teacher pay in 2022-23 (the latest available hard figure) was $56,559. That's an increase, yes, but teachers still have lost ground to inflation. If average teacher pay had kept up with inflation since 2011, it would be $67,063 today. So much for 'meaningful teacher raises.' Remarkably, raising teacher pay, as inadequate as it has been, is the good news for schools under Republican rule. By the broader measure of school funding, North Carolina ranks 48th among states in per-pupil funding and 49th in funding effort. When it comes to vouchers, Republicans turn up the gaslighting. Remember that the Opportunity Scholarship program was introduced as a way to help low-income families move on from low-performing schools. Now it has morphed into a universal voucher system. Will that affect the funding for public schools? Republicans say no because the voucher money is not drawn from public school funds. That's true, but the surge in private school funding certainly dampens the appetite for public school funding increases, especially when Republicans want to keep cutting taxes. Days after Hall delivered his we-can-do-both message about vouchers and public school funding, Rep. Julie von Haefen, D-Wake, proposed a school funding bill that shows how dire the situation already is. Her bill, which she has proposed previously, calls for the legislature to provide full funding for public schools under the Leandro plan that Republican leaders have ignored. How far is the state behind in meeting the Leandro plan? As of now, von Haefen said, the state would need to spend $4.3 billion this year just to get back on track with the Leandro schedule. Meanwhile, Stein's budget asks the legislature to approve a $4 billion bond to make improvements to repair and replace deteriorating school buildings across the state. None of that spending will be approved by Republican lawmakers, of course. But somehow Republicans are asserting that spending hundreds of millions on school vouchers will not come at the expense of public schools. Von Haefen said the cost of vouchers will have an even more pronounced effect if the economy slows as projected. 'The huge expansion of these vouchers is going to affect our public schools because our revenues are down and they are going to be dropping every single year as the voucher spending is going up,' she said. 'So something has to break and to me that's just going to be that our public schools system is going to continue to suffer.' Vouchers will expand school choice, but they'll also expand the shameful gap between what public schools need and what the legislature provides. Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Incredibly misleading': Pa. immigration advocates blast Pennridge enrollment requirements
A Bucks County school district is requiring parents to submit student enrollment records that the officials have no legal right to demand, including paperwork that undocumented immigrants would not possess, advocates say. Parents who want to enroll their children in Pennridge School District must supply a copy of a student's "original, state-sealed" birth certificate or a passport to demonstrate his or her age, according to the district's webpage. They must also upload their own Pennsylvania-issued photo identification or a United States passport to the registration portal, the district says. However, an undocumented immigrant would not have access to a driver's license, state-issued photo ID or passport, advocates say. And kids born outside the United States might not have the proofs of age listed by the district. Kristina Moon, a senior attorney with the Education Law Center, said the information posted online by the district is 'incredibly misleading and harmful to families.' While the district's student registration page says the process merely complies with legal mandates, Moon said the documentation requirements don't match — and even conflict with — Pennsylvania law. 'I have no idea where this is coming from,' she said of Pennridge's demand for parental photo identification. Attorneys with the ACLU of Pennsylvania also took issue with the district's registration process. "Requiring a parent to provide a Pennsylvania photo ID or a U.S. passport in order to enroll their child in school is contrary to Pennsylvania law and would exclude eligible children — for example, U.S.-citizen children of some noncitizen parents, or children without lawful immigration status — from registration," said Keith Armstrong, an immigrant rights attorney with the ACLU. Pennridge Superintendent Angelo Berrios said the district enrolls students regardless of their immigration status or that of their parents. 'No student has ever been turned away from Pennridge due to their immigration status and all students receive the same first-class services from the district regardless of their immigration status,' Berrios wrote by email. More: Immigration arrests in schools? How schools could react to new Trump ICE directive He wrote that Pennridge does accept documents other than a passport or birth certificate to verify a student's age, including baptismal certificates, notarized statements from relatives and prior school records that show a birth date. However, Pennridge's online student registration portal does not outline those options. It asks parents to upload a birth certificate or passport and indicates that those documents are required to continue the enrollment process. The mandate for driver's license or passport is 'in furtherance of our responsibility imposed on the District by the Pennsylvania Department of Education regarding enrollment verification,' Berrios wrote in an email. A photo identification is not one of the items, though, that the state lists as mandatory for student registration. School districts must ask families to submit documents showing a child's age and place of residence and that they're immunized against certain diseases. Parents must also provide a sworn statement on the student's disciplinary record, and the child must complete a home language survey. Baptismal records and other documents Berrios described in his email are fairly common documents for schools to ask for to establish a student's date of birth, according to a review of policy manuals hosted on the BoardDocs websites belonging to hundreds of school districts across Pennsylvania. Some school districts, like Quaker Valley in Allegheny County, include a valid passport among the acceptable documents to prove a child's age, but typically as one of several options along with other certificates. The Upper Moreland School District, in Montgomery County, can accept a Pennsylvania driver's license, but will also accept any PennDOT-issued identification, lease agreement or utility bill for parents to establish residency. Upper Moreland's policy on student enrollment expressly states the district can't ask for certain documents including the visa of a parent or gaurdian or a student's immigration status. Pennsylvania officials expressly prohibit schools from exceeding this list of requirements — or from asking about a family's immigration status during the admissions process. Districts can ask for other records but can't demand them as a condition of enrollment, according to state education department. They must also show flexibility in the types of identification they require and shouldn't require paperwork that would give away a student's immigration status, advocates say. Even if Pennridge is accommodating in the documents it accepts, the district's online instructions only mention two options for proving a child's age and could be misleading parents, Moon said. "When they say something is required for a child to attend school, parents assume staff at schools know the law," she said. "So it's really damaging both for the individual student who's denied their entitlement to attend school and also for the respect and reputation of the individual school and all of our schools when staff are not appropriately providing accurate information to parents." The ACLU of Pennsylvania and Education Law Center recently sent school districts a letter reiterating state guidance on student records, saying compliance is especially critical as President Donald Trump vows to carry out mass deportations. Trump recently rescinded a longtime policy that prevented federal immigration arrests at sensitive locations such as schools and hospitals. With many families worried about sending their kids to classes in this climate, it's as important as ever for districts to fulfill their legal obligations to undocumented students and protect their constitutional right to public education, the groups contend. Bethany Rodgers is a USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania investigative journalist. Chris Ullery is a data reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times and can be reached at cullery@ This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Pa. school district demands student records that some migrants lack
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Preschool enrollment steadily declining in some of N.J.'s poorest districts, report says
Nearly 10,000 students eligible for free, full-day preschool in so-called Abbott districts are not enrolled, the Education Law Center says. (Courtesy of the New Jersey Governor's Office) Nearly 10,000 3- and 4-year-olds eligible for full-day preschool in some of New Jersey's poorest school districts are not enrolled, according to a new report whose authors say their findings detail an alarming trend of steadily declining enrollment. The Education Law Center report found that most districts aren't reaching their enrollment targets, the pandemic accelerated enrollment losses, and just four of the state's 31 lowest-income districts have higher preschool enrollment in the last school year than in 2009. 'It is tragic that these kids that are eventually going to enroll in the public school system are not taking advantage of these two years of free, high-quality pre-K that we have such strong evidence in New Jersey of showing the academic and social benefits of the program,' Danielle Farrie, the center's research director and co-author of the report, said in an interview. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the implementation of New Jersey's court-ordered, full-day preschool program in the state's 31 poorest districts, formerly called 'Abbott' districts. They are named after one of the plaintiffs in a series of lawsuits that led the state Supreme Court to find that a funding disparity between rich and poor districts violated the state's constitutional guarantee of a 'thorough and efficient' system of education. Because of the rulings, all 31 districts are mandated to provide full-day preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds. They must meet certain standards, including a maximum class size of 15 students, a program length of six hours per day for 182 days with a certified teacher and assistant, and adequate facilities, including transportation and health services as needed. The curriculum must also meet the state's early childhood education standards. The towns are expected to enroll 90% of the eligible preschoolers in the district, but the Education Law Center found just five did so in the 2023-24 school year: Hoboken, Harrison, Irvington, Millville, and Salem. In 2009-10, 18 districts met the enrollment threshold, according to the report, which analyzed data from the state Department of Education. Hoboken had the largest share of eligible students enrolled in 2023-24, at 142% (the report notes the statistics can get skewed in a place like Hoboken where young families may only enroll their child for a year before moving elsewhere). Towns like Keansburg, New Brunswick, Gloucester, Pleasantville, and Philipsburg significantly missed the target in the 2023-24 school year. Districts can see dramatic swings from year to year — Keansburg had 96% of its eligible population enrolled in 2022-23 and that figure dropped to 58% the following year — but a majority have seen a decline in the last 15 years, the report says. 'More must be done to encourage families to take advantage of the two years of preschool they are entitled to,' the report says. The report notes that decreased preschool enrollment during the pandemic was not unique to New Jersey, citing a census report showing a nearly 10% drop in the number of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in preschool nationwide between 2019 and 2021. But despite an increase in preschool enrollment following the pandemic in the 31 former Abbott districts, total enrollment is still below prepandemic levels, the report says. During the 2023-24 school year, about 35,000 students were enrolled in full-day preschool in those districts, a figure that represents just 78% of eligible preschoolers. While districts aim for 90% enrollment of eligible students, it's not compulsory for them to enroll all eligible students and districts aren't punished for failing to reach targets. Farrie said a lack of outreach could explain why a district hasn't enrolled most of its eligible students, or it could be harder for districts to attract families to preschools post-pandemic. The state should be finding the answers to these questions, she said, noting there was a 'massive push' to advertise the program when it first began. 'It may be the effects of that initial push are just kind of phasing out and we need another massive communications push to inform parents of what's available and how important it can be for the kid's success, so I do think it's a state obligation to do that,' Farrie said. The report calls on the state Department of Education to 'ramp up efforts' to understand and reverse these trends. The Education Law Center wants to see more collaboration between school districts and preschool programs, with special attention to enrolling 3-year-olds. It is also pushing for more school construction, saying the New Jersey Schools Development Authority — which oversees construction of schools in the 31 districts — has identified preschool capacity deficiencies in 10 of the districts. The center also said the state should provide more funding to the 31 districts. The Department of Education should revisit the state's school funding formula to evaluate whether per-pupil spending in the 31 districts is sufficient to meet their needs. Nicole Ciullo, associate director of policy at Education Law Center and co-author of the report., noted that as districts move to increase enrollment, capacity issues could be exacerbated. 'It's great to be able to serve these students, but you need additional classroom space to be able to do that and accommodate increases to the preschool populations,' Ciullo said. The state Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Axios
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Georgia could lose funding if Trump guts Department of Education
President Trump 's campaign promise to dismantle the Department of Education could prove more costly for red states like Georgia than blue ones. Why it matters: Funding for public schools primarily falls to local and state governments, but federal funds work to fill in the gaps. States that voted for Trump last November, on average, use more federal funding in their education apportions than states that voted for former Vice President Harris. State of play: The federal government contributes 16.1% of Georgia's education funding, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. If Trump reduced Title I federal funding to zero, Georgia would lose $621.2 million in revenue, according to the Education Law Center. Zoom out: Average federal spending in the 2021-22 school year (the latest available) was 17% in Trump-voting states, compared to 11% in states that voted for Harris. At 23%, Mississippi had the highest proportion of federal public school funding that school year, with South Dakota and Arkansas following with 22% each, per USA Facts. New York, at 7%, had the lowest. The intrigue: Even if the Department of Education is disbanded, programs within its purview could fall to other federal agencies. Head Start, for example, is already run by the Department of Health and Human Services. Reality check: A president does not have the authority to create or dismantle a federal agency, only Congress. Go deeper: What to know about Trump's plan to eliminate the Department of Education
