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Heritage Foundation
Obama
Administration Proposes Expanding Government-Funded Preschool
Lindsey Burke
Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged a revamp of the “tired” and
“prescriptive” law currently known as No Child Left Behind today,
calling for a law that replaces NCLB with one that includes “more
money” than is currently authorized.
Duncan urged Congress to increase spending, ensure educational “equity”
and to include preschool as a component of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act.
The push to include preschool as part of Act was particularly notable.
This is a dramatic departure from the earlier purpose of the ESEA—which
has historically focused on K-12 education for disadvantaged
students—and represents significant increased federal intervention in
early childhood education.
This ESEA mission creep reflects the Obama administration’s goal of
creating a “cradle-to-career” taxpayer-funded “free” education system,
beginning with federally funded preschool and now extending through
“free” community college, which the administration announced Friday.
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Duncan urged a re-write of ESEA that “recognizes that no family should
be denied preschool for their children.” But it’s not clear that there
are many families who want to send a child to preschool and cannot. The
administration also should consider that combined estimates from the
National Institute for Early Education Research and the U.S.
Department of Education suggest that between two-thirds (66 percent)
and three-quarters (74 percent) of 4-year-old children are already
enrolled in some form of preschool program.
Many of those children (28 percent), particularly children from
low-income families, are enrolled in state- and federally funded
preschool programs. For its part, the federal government currently
operates 45 early learning and child care programs, of which 12 have as
an explicit purpose to provide early childhood education and care.
Instead of creating a new preschool entitlement through a contortion of
the ESEA, Washington should divest itself from the provision of
preschool and childcare. The federal government’s failed track record
on Head Start has demonstrated that there is little wisdom in managing
large-scale preschool and childcare programs from Washington.
In addition to the call for an expansion of the ESEA downward into the
realm of preschool, Duncan also urged an increase in spending for the
programs that fall under the ESEA, including a $1 billion boost for the
Title I program, which provides federal funding to low-income school
districts. In all, the administration wants a $2.7 billion increase in
spending on programs that are authorized by the law.
In the half-century that has followed the enactment of the original
ESEA, graduation rates for disadvantaged students have remained flat,
American students rank in the middle of the pack of their international
peers, reading and math achievement has been virtually stagnant and
achievement gaps persist.
Federal per-pupil spending on education has nearly tripled since the
1970s, and there is little evidence that continually increasing
spending on programs will lead to increases in student performance
Although Duncan’s speech is illustrative of the White House’s
priorities for the law, over the next few weeks Congress, specifically
the House and Senate education committees, likely will offer their own
draft re-writes. At a minimum, any potential reauthorization of NCLB
should:
Allow states to opt out. Including the Academic Partnerships Lead Us To
Success (A-PLUS) approach in a reauthorized ESEA would enable states to
consolidate their federal education funds authorized under NCLB and
allow them to be used for any lawful education purpose they deem
beneficial under state law. This allows states to opt out of the
prescriptive programmatic requirements of NCLB and use funding in a way
that will best meet their students’ needs.
Reduce program count. The original ESEA included five titles, 32 pages
and roughly $1 billion in federal funding. By the time ESEA was
reauthorized for the seventh time in 2001 as No Child Left Behind, new
mandates had been imposed on states and local school districts, and
program count continued to grow as part of a trend by national
policymakers to have a “program for every problem.” To pay for the
dozens of competitive and formula grant programs that comprise the law,
funding for NCLB exceeded $25 billion in fiscal year 2014. The growth
in program count and spending over the decades has failed to improve
educational outcomes for students, and as such, should be curtailed.
Eliminate burdensome mandates. Accountability and transparency “should
be vehicles to reinvigorate the relationship of the American people
with their schools rather than merely mechanisms employed by government
officials to oversee and hold government schools accountable.” Congress
should eliminate the many federal mandates within NCLB masquerading as
accountability, including Adequate Yearly Progress requirements, Highly
Qualifed Teacher mandates and costly maintenance of effort rules.
Create a state option of Title I funding portability. The $14.5 billion
Title I program comprises the bulk of NCLB spending. Acting as a
vehicle to provide additional federal funding to low-income school
districts, Title I was one of the 1965 ESEA’s original and primary
purposes. Funding through Title I, however, is distributed through a
convoluted funding formula, “with provisions that render the final
results substantially incongruent with the original legislative
intention.” In order to make Title I work for the disadvantaged
children it originally was intended to help, Congress should permit
states to make Title I funding portable, allowing funding to follow a
child to the school of his parents’ choice—public, private, charter or
virtual.
In the 50 years since the passage of the ESEA, currently reauthorized
as No Child Left Behind, its most significant contribution has been a
dramatic escalation of spending and a bureaucratic compliance burden
that has made states more responsive to Washington than to local
parents, teachers and taxpayers.
Fifty years later, it’s time for a serious re-examination of the
nation’s largest K-12 education law, not a blind expansion of the
failed status quo.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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