stimulus

The National Institute for Early Education Research has joined the blogosphere! Its new blog, Idea Factory, seeks to collect and share ideas and examples from the around the country of how states and school districts can use federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to support quality pre-k programs. Of course, we here at New America's Early Ed Watch have our own ideas on this subject, as well.  

States and school districts have begun receiving billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds for early education. One of the most important ways that the states and districts can do this is by investing stimulus funds in early education and PreK-3rd reforms to ensure that all students establish a solid foundation of math, literacy, and social/emotional skills by the end of third grade. Two new issue briefs from the New America Foundation's Early Education Initiative provide guidance and options for how states and school districts can use stimulus funds to improve access, equity and alignment in early learning for children from birth through elementary school.

On May 7 the Office of Management and Budget released the President’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2010. As Early Ed Watch reported at the time, that budget includes funding for several new early education programs, including Title I Early Childhood Grants, Early Learning Challenge Fund, Early Literacy Grants, and Home Visitation. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be taking a closer look at these proposed programs. Today, we turn to Title I Early Childhood Grants.

How much does it cost? And, how are we going to pay for it? Debates about improving quality, access, and alignment in early education programs often hinge on these two questions. No matter how much researchers demonstrate that investments in quality early education today pay for themselves in future benefits and taxpayer savings, today’s policymakers must still find the resources—out of current budgets—to pay for those investments. That’s especially challenging in today’s tight fiscal climate.

A new set of resources from the Foundation for Child Development seek to provide an answer to the question of “how much does it cost” to provide all children with access to a high-quality preK-3^rd early education program. Lawrence O Picus, Allen Odden, and Michael Goetz are nationally recognized school finance experts whose work has played a role in school finance adequacy litigation in states across the country. Their evidence-based approach to estimating the costs of an adequate education provides the basis for school finance systems in several states.

HHS has released guidance and state allocations for $2 billion in Child Care and Development Fund funds appropriated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Guidance at the link above, state allocations after the jump.

Yesterday the Department of Health and Human Services released additional information on new Head Start and Early Head Start funds appropriated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the fiscal year 2009 omnibus appropriations legislation. The ARRA provides $2.1 billion over two years for Head Start and Early Head Start, $1.1 billion of which is allocated to Early Head Start and $1 billion for Head Start. The fiscal year 2009 appropriation provides $7.1 billion in funding for both Head Start and Early Head Start programs, a $234 million increase over the fiscal year 2008 appropriation.

But it’s more complicated than that. Head Start funds are allocated to a variety of purposes and activities—including cost of living allowances for Head Start staff, quality improvement activities, and expansion to serve additional children—according to various provisions set out in the 2007 Head Start reauthorization legislation, the ARRA legislation, and the fiscal year 2009 appropriations legislation. Untangling the amount of money that goes to different purposes can be confusing. The Department’s release yesterday helps make this clearer.

The chart below shows the amount of new Head Start funds under the ARRA and fiscal year 2009 appropriation that will be allocated to different uses. (In includes only the increase in Head Start funds for fiscal year 2009, not the entire appropriation.)

This is a slide from a new Department of Education slide presentation, created by Department officials to provide states, school districts, and education stakeholders with information on when they'll receive and how they may use funding provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the stimulus legislation. The Department of Education specifically encourages school districts to include early childhood education facilities in any facilities investments they make using ARRA funds.

Ed Week’s David Hoff draws attention to a provision in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that could complicate school districts’ efforts to spend $10 billion in Title I funding provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Under NCLB, school districts must provide students with supplemental tutoring or give them the option of transferring to a better-performing public school if they are enrolled in schools that have failed to meet student achievement benchmarks for multiple years. Districts must set aside up to 20 percent of Title I funds for these purposes.

But in practice, many school districts with low-performing schools haven’t actually spent the full 20 percent set-aside on school choice or tutoring (also known as supplemental educational services, or SES). That's in part because of a lack of better-performing schools for students to transfer to, and in part because many districts have done a lousy job of making parents aware of their options under the law. Districts that don’t spend the full set-aside may use that money for other purposes, but they must wait until the following year to do so. With the new infusion of Title I funding, the amount of set-aside money districts are unable to spend is likely to grow. And some observers fear that a delay in spending these funds could undermine their stimulative impact.

Complicating the picture are regulations put in place near the end of the Bush administration that would make it more difficult for school districts to roll over unused set-aside funds and use them for other purposes. Lobbyists for school districts and school administrators are citing the stimulus as a reason that the Obama Administration should undo those regulations and expand waiver authority for districts to use the set-aside funds for things other than public school choice and SES. Education reformers and advocates for low-income children fear that such changes might make it harder for children stuck in poorly performing schools to get the educational supports they need and could reward school districts for bad behavior.

We have a better idea: Maintain the requirement that districts set aside 20 percent of Title I funds for public school choice and SES, but allow them to use that funding for pre-K as well. Don’t allow districts to roll over unspent set-aside funds, but if they can’t or don’t spend the full set aside on choice and SES, require them to use the remaining funds to provide high-quality pre-K for children in neighborhoods. Services could be provided through school-based programs, Head Start, or community-based providers who meet high quality standards (such as employing teachers with bachelor's degrees).

"The role of consumers has had considerable attention in the press because the economy desperately needs additional spending right now. But it is not - and should not be - the responsibility of middle-income families to provide that spending."

Robert Frank made a good point this weekend.

Possibly the most frustrating part of the economic recovery debate has been the willingness of many policymakers and thinkers to lay the responsibility of recovery at the feet of the American consumer. Luckily, economists (like Mr. Frank) and think-tank types (like our own Alejandra Lopez-Fernandini and Rourke O'Brien) have been presenting the argument in recent weeks that, quite likely, we should give families signals to save and perks when they do. From last Thursday's USA Today:

Yet those Americans who choose prudence should not be made to feel unpatriotic -- as if they are destroying the economy of their country -- because they fail to spend recklessly. It's time we move beyond this economic belief that places the health of the U.S. macroeconomy squarely on the willingness of individual households to spend, spend, spend.

Text of the Conference Report on the stimulus bill is now available on the House Rules Committee website (warning: these are very large files). The House and Senate are voting on the legislation today. Early Ed Watch read through the bill and took a closer look at the funding levels the bill provides for various early education programs:

Early education advocates are pleased that the conference committee restored Head Start funding in the bill to the $2.1 billion level in the House version, up from the $1.05 provided for Head Start in the Senate bill. But they should actually be pretty disappointed with the conference committee. While the Senate's version of the bill would have set-aside 15 percent of new IDEA and Title I funds for programs to serve preschool-aged students, the conference committee dropped that provision from the bill. Had the provision remained in the bill, that would have meant nearly $2.3 billion more in funding for early education programs than the conference bill provides. The early education funds lost because the conference committee dropped the 15 percent set-aside of Title I and IDEA funds for preschool-aged children from the Senate's bill outweigh the gains from restoring Head Start funding to the House level.