Slipping Through the Cracks

Related Programs:
Federal Education Budget Project

When Congress resumes consideration of the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, strengthening the federal role in supporting high school reform will be a key issue on the agenda, and with good reason. While elementary school students, on whom most of NCLB’s funding and accountability requirements focus, have made significant achievement gains in recent years, high school achievement has stagnated. Only 70 percent of high school freshmen graduate within four years. Among those who do make it to graduation, only a third have the skills they need to succeed in college.

Currently, NCLB’s funding and accountability requirements focus primarily on the elementary and middle school grades. But that doesn’t mean the federal government isn’t making significant investments in educating high-school-age youth. In fact, the federal government invests more than $7 billion a year in educational programs for high-school-aged youth and young adults, and 83 percent of that funding comes from programs outside of NCLB. While these programs provide important services, many of them are not focused on raising young people’s academic achievement or preparing them for college. To be effective in advancing high school reform, and ensure that policymakers are actually seeing the bigger picture, it is important to ensure that they have a full understanding of the current array of federal programming, recognize the problems and inefficiencies within the current framework, and are receptive to suggested reforms.

To this end, a new report from the New America Foundation’s Federal Education Budget Project analyzes the more than 30 programs, across several federal agencies, that comprise the federal government’s $7 billion annual investment in educating youth, and identifies four areas of concern:

• There is no dedicated federal funding stream to support high school reform efforts. Despite the fact that the federal government invests in a variety of youth centered programs, few directly provide high schools with resources to support reform. Programs that do, often have limitations that prevent them from being effective drivers of a national high school reform agenda.
• Federal investments are not aligned with high school reform priorities. The national high school reform movement focuses on reducing dropout rates and raising the level of rigor in high school coursework so that graduates are prepared for college. Current federal investments in high-school-aged youth, which focus primarily on preparing students for the workforce and providing second chance education, are ill-aligned with these current national goals.
• Federal funding provides a critical educational safety net for youth and young adults who slip through the cracks in our public education system, but that safety net is frayed. The federal government invests $3.2 billion annually in programs that support an educational safety net for out-of-school youth and young adults. While these programs play an important role in making second chance education available to these individuals, these programs serve, at best, only a third of those who need their services, and are often inefficient or use ineffective methods.
• We do not effectively target resources to prevent students from falling through the cracks in the first place. The federal government currently spends more on programs to make up for the shortcomings of our high schools than it does to improve our high schools so that young people don’t fall behind to begin with. In the long run, prevention is cheaper and more effective than remediation and should be the focus of future reforms.

To address these problems and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of federal investments in high-school-aged youth, policymakers should take the following steps:

• Create a federal funding stream for high school reform and improvement that will reduce the need for costly and only modestly effective remedial services later.
• Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of educational safety net programs for out-of-school youth and young adults.
• Help high school reformers, local school districts, and community-based providers working on high school reform goals gain access to funding streams for youth education and training.
• Eliminate or overhaul ineffective programs and those that do not focus on national priorities.