Federal Education Funding, More on the U.S. Department of Education—and a Couple of Court Wins
Hi Friends,
I had a couple weeks back in Michigan after a month of travel in January, but now I’m back on the road starting in New Orleans with a speech to AASA, the School Superintendents Association (if you see me, say hello!) and then on to South Carolina and Ohio (twice). While I’m in Ohio, I’ll be opening the Network for Public Education conference in Columbus with a fireside chat Friday evening, April 4, with Diane Ravitch.
Diane recently published an amazing essay in the prestigious New York Review of Books, reviewing my book The Privateers and framing that in the larger context of the history of school privatization dating back to the 1950s. It’s worth the read for her contribution alone, regardless of whether you care for my stuff or not. 😊
I’m grateful there are lots of folks out there interested in what I have to say. But I also know that’s mostly because there’s so much going on right now around threats to public education—and to public services more generally—that we’re all hungry for information and a way forward.
So, because it’s the season, bear with me as I dial in on a couple of items around the federal budget and federal funding for education in particular.
Federal Funding 1: ELC in the News and in the Arena
First, shout out to ELC’s Executive Director Bob Kim, who appeared last week at a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on federal investments in education. And then, Bob appeared again two days later at the Brookings Institution’s panel on the U.S. Department of Education’s new guidance on civil rights.
At the congressional hearing, Bob had to square off with representatives from the Heritage Foundation and something called the “Defense of Freedom Institute,” 🙄 one of the many dark money groups trying to privatize education. The Heritage panelist was the author of Project 2025’s education chapter. So, you can imagine what Bob had to deal with (bless him).
The one thing I want to flag about this is it was a hearing about education spending. And since the subcommittee is being run by the GOP, it meant ample chance for the two right-wing panelists and the committee members to repeat the myth that “money doesn’t matter” when it comes to education outcomes. The Heritage panelist even cited old research by Eric Hanushek, godfather of that myth, even though he has all but recanted that position. Let’s just repeat for the 1000th time, with a go-to reference if you need it: research is “essentially settled” on this question: more money improves both short-run and long-run student and community outcomes.
By the way—and as Bob pointed out—that’s even true for COVID recovery (ESSER) funding: the money did help students recover, but not enough to bring students back academically from a once-in-a-century pandemic. One way to think of this is that public school spending is absolutely necessary for educational improvement. It’s just not always sufficient to overcome poverty, pandemics, or historical economic neglect. And adequate funding is always better than not enough.
I also want to give a shout out to Rep. Mark Pocan, who, during the subcommittee hearing, correctly noted research of mine and others showing that 75% of voucher users were already in private school and that it’s the wealthiest families using most of the vouchers today. He also mentioned an older paper from my team showing that it’s the most at-risk kids who are often forced to leave voucher schools, though they do better when they land back at their local public school.
(This illustrates one of the major reasons why the Right is trying to defund education research and evidence-based education policy.)
Federal Funding 2: A Bit More on the U.S. Department of Education
In my last newsletter, I made some notes about the U.S. Department of Education and Linda McMahon’s confirmation hearing, and I don’t want to repeat myself.
Except now we have news that President Trump is issuing an executive order directing McMahon to dismantle what she can in the Department, subject to what Trump seems to suggest are the limits of federal law. To me, that makes the new order just a press release with Trump’s signature on it. But we’ll have to see how far they take it.
In the meantime, I do want to underscore the issues with moving pieces of that department into other agencies, whether it’s Title I and IDEA into Robert F. Kennedy’s Health and Human Services, the Office of Civil Rights into the Department of Justice, or other plans raised in last week’s hearing.
Don’t believe claims that those programs could “just” be moved without funding cuts. When the subcommittee asked panelists how much federal funding could and should be cut, the Heritage Foundation panelist said, “90 percent.” Meanwhile, ELC’s Bob Kim said zero, and a raise would be better. Good stuff – both the “quiet part out loud” bit from Heritage and Bob’s response.
The point is that these folks do want to cut federal education spending, and the honest among them will just say so. Here I want to stress that we ought not to get caught up only in conversations about “agencies” and “departments” and organization charts. Those are important. But we also need to talk about real human impacts.
One way to do that is with an important new resource from the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, which allows you to calculate federal education spending by congressional district. And as I mentioned previously, check out Education Law Center’s new advocacy tool, Trump 2.0: How Much Federal Education Aid Could Your State Lose?
A Few Court Wins
Now, let’s close on a good note. Federal courts are beginning to kick in and stop a variety of Trump/Musk efforts to access our private data, in some cases stopping efforts to cut federal jobs as well.
In education: last week, judges stopped Musk from accessing private student loan data, as well as certain U.S. Treasury data. These are important wins in terms of holding the line against what amounts to an unelected billionaire running wild through the federal government.
Public Funds Public Schools and many of our allies will continue using all available avenues to challenge moves to enact federal vouchers, so stay tuned for more information about that.
Hang in there everyone. This moment too shall pass.
Josh
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