The House Democrats released an outline of their stimulus package a few hours ago. The big items for education: $13 billion more for Title I (doubling the appropriation for that program); $13 billion more for IDEA (more than doubling that one); $14 billion for k-12 school construction (plus $25 million for charters); $1 billion for technology; $250 million for state data systems; and $200 million more for the Teacher Incentive Fund (to support pay-for-performance programs). And then the REALLY big item: a $79 billion state bailout fund, of which $39 billion must go to education (k-12 and higher ed), though much of the rest could go to the schools, too, at the discretion of the states.
That puts you in the neighborhood of $80 billion for k-12 education, as rumored yesterday (and as Checker, Rick Hess, and I speculated last week).
It's not clear to me whether these amounts are all to be appropriated immediately, or would be spread out over several years. But keep in mind: Uncle Sam currently spends about $40 billion a year on the schools, so the House is talking about tripling that sum (the regular $40 billion plus this new $80 billion). Wow!
So what to think about this? In our NRO piece, Checker and Rick and I laid out three principles for any stimulus spending. It should:
1.???????????? Provide targeted aid to taxpayers and families in the short term;
2.???????????? Make a tangible difference in student learning; and
3.???????????? Avoid imposing long-term cost burdens that will tie reformers' hands down the road.
Clearly the House Dems weren't paying us any attention, because most of their proposals fail all three tests. The worst offender is the Title I boost. Under current statute, these dollars must "supplement, not supplant" state and local dollars, meaning districts can't use Uncle Sam's dough to plug holes in their budget. So how on Earth will districts spend this money? (They already tend to have a hard time spending current allocations on time.) Will they hire new staff? Talk about burdening reformers down the line. Go on a spending spree for curricular materials? That wouldn't be so bad if they choose well, but what's the chance of that? Offer more professional development, even though we already know most PD does very little good?
The increase for IDEA actually makes a lot more sense. As the Dems said in their release, this will "increase the federal share of special education costs and prevent these mandatory costs from forcing states to cut other areas of education." In other words, local districts were already paying out of pocket to support federal mandates around special education. Getting more federal funds for this purpose will allow them to shift local special ed dollars to their general account, mitigating the effects of budget cuts. The only downside: these dollars aren't as targeted to poor communities as the Title I formula is.
And how about school construction? Well, it won't do much to boost student learning, but it probably won't do too much harm. More money for merit pay is great, but talk about a non-shovel-ready-project! But building state data systems is actually a fantastic idea, and not just because we mentioned it in our NRO article. It's an important one-time investment that could yield great benefits down the line.
This proposal is going to be the subject of much conversation and debate in coming weeks. Let me make a proposal: Let's avoid calling it a "stimulus" and instead call it what it is: a spending package meant to hold schools harmless from impending budget cuts. It won't juice the economy, but it will make the education blob's January very, very bright.
