What House Republicans want to do to public education funding

The priorities for 2024 education funding were spelled out in HR 5894, the biggest domestic funding bill for the departments of labor, education and health and human services. It was approved this week by a House committee and sent to the full House for consideration, but a planned vote this week was postponed when right-wing Republicans refused to consider more legislation because they were angry that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) passed a bill with Democratic votes to keep the government open.

House Democrats — and possibly some moderate Republicans — will balk at some of the deep education cuts proposed in the legislation, as will the Democratic-led Senate. But the education priorities in the bill show where the Republican leadership stands on federal funding for public education and what they might do if they win control of Congress and the White House in 2024.

The Republican legislation would (among other things):

• Cut Education Department funding 28 percent cut ($22.5 billion)
• Cut by 80 percent ($14.7 billion) for Title I, a program which is intended to support schools with high percentages of students who live in poverty and which is at the heart of the federal K-12 education law called the Every Student Succeeds Act. Critics said this cut, if enacted, could lead to the loss of 220,000 teachers from classrooms serving low-income students.
• Eliminate funding ($2.2 billion) for state grants that support programs that improve teacher and principal quality.
• Eliminate funding ($1.2 billion) for Federal Work Study, which provides part-time jobs for students with financial need so they can earn money to help them pay for college
• Eliminate funding ($890 million) for a program that supports 5 million English language learners

President Biden has proposed a 2024 budget that seeks to increase Education Department spending by nearly 14 percent ($10.8 billion) and boost Title 1 spending.

Democrats blasted the legislation — which also makes cuts in the departments of labor, health and human services and other related agencies — saying that it “decimates support for children in K-12 elementary schools and early-childhood education and “abandons college students and low-income workers trying to improve their lives through higher education or job training.” A coalition of 54 education, civil rights, immigration, and other advocacy organizations wrote a letter to oppose the bill, saying if it were passed as written and became law it would “devastate America’s education system at a time when students are struggling to recover from the covid pandemic to the detriment of students, educators, families, and the country as a whole.”

Republicans explained their cuts — at least for K-12 school districts — by saying that they received billions of dollars in federal coronavirus support in recent years and had not spent it all. Reasons that money has not been spent include delayed access to funds; a nationwide shortage of teachers, health professionals, support staff and others that made it impossible to use money targeted for such positions; programs that are designed to be multiyear; and an effort by school districts to make the money last. Most of the money in the first two coronavirus funding bills has been spent. The third, which was by far the largest, required districts to spend at least 20 percent on academic recovery, but the rest could be used for other efforts to respond to the pandemic. Districts have until September 2024 to commit any unused funding.

Rep. Robert B. Aderholt (R-Ala.), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services, and education, defended the Title 1 cut on the House floor Tuesday, saying, “While Title I grants do support school districts everywhere, including rural schools in districts like my own, these funds disproportionately support big city public schools: The same public schools that failed to educate the most-vulnerable children entrusted to them, by closing their doors for almost two years … until this funding is drawn down and it is used responsibly, the federal government should not continue to make further investments in these failing schools.”

The differences in the Democratic and Republican funding proposals reflect differences between Democrats and Republicans about public schooling. The nonpartisan Pew Research Center reported that in June 2022, 72 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents viewed public schools as having a positive effect on the country when asked, while 61 percent of Republicans and those leaning Republican said they were having a negative effect.

Another Pew survey, in March, found that 62 percent of Democrats had a favorable opinion of the Education Department, while 65 percent of Republicans saw it negatively — the largest divide found among the other 15 federal agencies and departments that were part of the survey.

The Republican bill also says no federal funds it appropriates can be used to “carry out any program, project, or activity” that “promotes or advances” critical race theory, which is a scholarly tool set for examining systemic racism in the United States. Republicans have made it the focus of what is called the new “culture wars,” passing laws in some states restricting how teachers can talk about race and racism.

Critical race theory laws have teachers scared, confused and self-censoring

The bill also bars any of its appropriated funding to “implement, administer, apply, enforce, or carry out” executive orders that President Biden has signed to further racial equity. It references three executive orders signed by Biden.

His Jan. 20, 2021, order called for the federal government to adopt a “comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected.” A June 25, 2021 executive order to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in the federal workforce, and a Feb. 16 executive order called for extending the reach of the first two orders, in part by requiring department and agency heads to create equity teams that coordinate the implementation of equity initiatives.

The Republican bill also seeks to:

• Eliminate funding ($139 million) for magnet schools
• Eliminate funding ($87 million) in social and emotional learning grants
• Eliminate funding ($75 million) for a program that provides campus-based child care for low-income parents in secondary education
• Cut $50 million from a program that supports full-service community schools, which provide wraparound services for students and their families
• Eliminate funding ($50 million) for research and development infrastructure grants that go to historically Black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and universities and minority serving institutions
• Cut $35 million from the Office for Civil Rights

For the first time since 2012, it keeps level the maximum Pell Grant, funding provided to millions of students from low-income families to help them pay for college at a time of rising tuition costs, and fails to increase funding to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, the primary federal program to help students with disabilities, even though Congress pays for far less of the cost than it had promised when it became law.