Investing in our Future: Helping Teachers and Schools Prepare Our Children for College and Careers

Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee approved H.R. 5, the Student Success Act. The legislation would lock-in sequestration funding levels, eliminate accountability for taxpayer dollars, and allow states to shift Title I funds from high-poverty schools to more affluent districts. Today, the White House is releasing a report that provides a state-by-state impact of locking in ESEA funding levels at sequestration and a list of the school districts most negatively impacted by changes to the Title I allocation formula.

After an economic crisis that hit school budgets and educators hard, we cannot just cut our way to better schools and more opportunity.  H.R. 5 would deny students and teachers the resources they need by:

·         Cementing recent education cuts, ensuring that federal education funding will be lower in 2021 than it was in 2012, before the recent education cuts and despite inflation and growing enrollment. The House Republican proposal caps spending on the ESEA for the next six years at $800 million lower than it was in 2012. In Title I alone, the bill will provide over $7 billion less to our schools than the President’s budget over six years, and the impact on each state is presented in Appendix 1.

·         Eliminating guarantees that education funding reaches the classroom, while opening the door for education investments to be wasted on things like sports stadiums and other unrelated pet projects. The House Republican proposal would allow states and localities to reduce the overall amount they spend on education and the funding they direct to classrooms and teachers without losing a dime of federal resources. 

·         Cutting investments to those schools that need help most by allowing states to cut federal resources for schools that need it most, while giving it to wealthier schools instead. The 100 school districts facing the largest cuts in dollar terms face an average 15 percent cut, and some especially high-poverty school districts would see cuts as large as 74 percent.

                                            

·         Eliminating accountability for taxpayer dollars rather than working to use them in ways that improve student learning and ensuring that all students succeed and we do what works to improve even the lowest performing schools.

President Obama has a different vision to improve schools and help teachers by giving them the resources they need, identifying what is working, and fixing what doesn’t work so that we can guarantee every child has a world-class education. He would reduce student testing to the bare minimum to let teachers get back to teaching, while ensuring that parents and teachers know how students and schools are doing each year so we can ensure that every child is learning and problems in low-performing schools are addressed. And his Budget would strengthen our schools by investing an additional $2.7 billion in ESEA programs next year alone and expand high-quality preschool, so teachers, principals and educators have the support and resources they need to help students succeed in the classroom.