Education Week - March 20,2019 - 14

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
Trump K-12 Priorities
Outlined in Budget

FACING ELIMINATION
President Donald Trump's fiscal 2020 budget request
seeks to get rid of 29 programs at the U.S. Department of Education.
Cutting them would create $6.7 billion in savings, according to the department.
Below are the programs the Trump administration wants to eliminate,
along with their current funding levels. (Figures have been rounded.)

A push for school choice, also program cuts
For the third straight year, President Donald Trump has proposed
significant cuts to the U.S. Department of Education's budget. And
although his administration's approach to pushing education choice
shifted somewhat in his budget
request last week for fiscal 2020,
the president's priorities-which
include a $5 billion sweetener for
school choice-will likely fall short
again on Capitol Hill.
Trump's proposal for the Education
Department for the fiscal year that
starts in October is $64 billion, a cut
of $7.1 billion from current spending
levels of just over $71 billion. The
proposed cut of about 10 percent is
larger than the 5 percent cut Trump
unsuccessfully proposed for fiscal
2019, yet smaller than the 13.5 percent reduction he proposed in his first
budget request for fiscal 2018. The
president's federal budget request totals approximately $4.8 trillion, the
largest request in history.
As with last year's budget request,
Trump wants to eliminate $2.1 billion in federal funding for teacher
training under Title II, $1.2 billion in
after-school funding in the 21st Century Community Learning Centers
program, and $1.2 billion in blockgrant money for districts to use to
enhance academic offerings and improve school climate under Title VI of
the Every Student Succeeds Act.
"We find those programs to be
either ineffective, duplicative of
other activities, or better funded
by state and local governments,"

James Blew, the assistant secretary for planning, evaluation,
and policy development, said in a
conference call with reporters last
week. (The Title IV block grants
were created when ESSA was
signed into law in 2015.)
In total, the president and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos also
support the elimination of 29 department programs, including those dealing with arts education, gifted and
talented programs, and literacy work,
for $6.7 billion in budget savings.
On the other side of the ledger,
the administration is supporting a
$5 billion scholarship program, to
be administered by the Department
of the Treasury, that would provide
federal tax credits to individuals
and companies that donate to scholarship-granting groups. (Ultimately,
the administration envisions a 10year tax-credit program worth up to
$50 billion.) DeVos announced her
support for GOP legislation to this
effect last month. The Education
Department request also seeks $30
million for the District of Columbia
voucher program, double its current
funding.
And in a twist on the administration's support for educational choice,
the budget request includes a $200
million program to provide vouchers
that teachers could use for professional development; the program
would be included in the Education
Innovation and Research program.
The administration also wants to
create a $100 million competitivegrant program to help improve school
safety, as part of a $700 million effort

* 21st Century Community Learning Centers: $1.2 billion
* Alaska Native Education: $36 million
* American History and Civics Education: $4.8 million
* Arts in Education: $29 million
* Comprehensive Centers: $52 million
* Comprehensive Literacy Development Grants:
$190 million
* Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants:
$840 million
* Full-Service Community Schools: $17.5 million
* Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education:
$5 million
* Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for
Undergraduate Programs: $360 million
* Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need:
$23 million
* Impact Aid Payments for Federal Property:
$74.3 million
* Innovative Approaches to Literacy: $27 million
* International Education and Foreign Language Studies
Domestic Programs: $65.1 million

* International Education and Foreign Language Studies
Overseas Programs: $7.1 million
* Javits Gifted and Talented Education: $12 million
* Native Hawaiian Education: $36.4 million
* Promise Neighborhoods: $78.3 million
* Ready to Learn Programming: $27.7 million
* Regional Educational Laboratories: $55.4 million
* Special Olympics Education Programs: $17.6 million
* Statewide Family Engagement Centers: $10 million
* Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems: $32.3 million
* Strengthening Institutions: $99.9 million
* Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants:
$1.2 billion
* Supported Employment State Grants: $22.5 million
* Supporting Effective Educator Development:
$75 million
* Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants:
$2.1 billion
* Teacher Quality Partnership: $43.1 million
SOURCE: Office of Management and Budget
Getty

By Andrew Ujifusa

focused on school safety that includes
the Health and Human Services and
Justice departments.

Not in Sync
Blew admitted that the administration has not been "synced up"
with Congress about Trump's previous budget requests for education.
Lawmakers have ignored Trump's
proposed cuts and instead increased
Education Department spending for
both fiscal 2018 and 2019.
Early reactions to the budget from
lawmakers gave no indications that

the landscape has changed, particularly since Democrats now control the
House of Representatives.
Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the chairman of the House education committee, said in a statement that
Trump's request "ignores the needs
of America's children" and doesn't
invest in "our future." And Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the chairman of
the Senate appropriations committee, said in a statement about the
overall $4.8 trillion federal government request that, "I look forward to
reviewing additional details of the
president's budget proposal."

The administration should get
high marks for proposing $500
million for federal charter school
grants, a $60 million increase over
current levels, and other attempts
to increase K-12 choice, said John
Schilling, the president of the
American Federation for Children,
the school choice advocacy group
formerly led by DeVos. "These proposals represent the most ambitious agenda yet for expanding educational freedom and opportunity,"
Schilling said in a statement.
But other advocates in the educaPAGE 17 >

DeVos Eases Restrictions on Religiously Affiliated Contractors
By Alyson Klein
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced last week that her department will no
longer enforce a restriction that prohibits religiously affiliated organizations from providing
contracted services to private school students
under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Under ESEA, the current version of which is
the Every Student Succeeds Act, districts have
to offer low-income or vulnerable students who
attend private schools the same services that
their public school counterparts get.
The law prohibits the money from going directly to, say, Roman Catholic schools, however.
Instead, districts must consult with private
school leaders to get a sense of their needs.
Then they can provide the services themselves
or work with a contractor to offer them. The
provision is known as "equitable participation,"
and it has been part of the law for decades.
But the provision as it is now implemented

bars religious organizations from serving as
contractors under the law. That runs counter
to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Trinity
Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. vs. Comer,
according to DeVos and her team. The court
decision, handed down in 2017, found that a
Missouri program that denied a church the opportunity to apply for a grant for playground
resurfacing was unconstitutional.
The provision "impermissibly excludes a
class of potential equitable service providers
based solely on their religious status, just like
the state policy that was struck down" in the
Trinity Lutheran case, DeVos wrote in a letter to Congress explaining her decision. "It
categorically excludes religious organizations
simply because they are religious."

have to be completely secular and nonideological in nature. What's more, the contractor chosen can't be affiliated with the private school
where the services are being offered.
Under ESSA, it's already OK for a religious
organization-a Catholic university, for example-to provide services such as professional
development for educators to a school district
using federal funds, a department official
noted. The only prohibition in the law was on
contractors working with private schools.
DeVos made the announcement at the Council for American Private Education, or CAPE,
annual meeting in Washington.
Elizabeth Hill, a spokeswoman for DeVos
said the move "is further evidence of the secretary and the administration's commitment to
making sure that schools are not discriminated
against based on their religious affiliation."
Districts Retain Control
But Jeff Simmering, the director of governImportantly, though, under the change, dis- ment relations for the Council of the Great
tricts will still have the ultimate say over which City Schools, said he's still mulling the impact
contractors are used. And any services provided and legal implications of the change.

14 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 20, 2019 | www.edweek.org

"I'm not saying it's incorrect, but it's a jump in
legal logic to go from saying it's OK to provide
funds to a contractor who is going to resurface a
private school playground to a contractor that's
going to provide instructional services," he said.
"I'm sure we will all have an opportunity to
think long and hard" about the impact of that,
"because I'm sure it's going to be challenged."
Advocates who closely monitor the separation of church and state expressed concerns
about the move.
"Betsy DeVos is neither the Supreme Court
nor Congress. She does not get to unilaterally
declare that a statute is unconstitutional, especially with a provision that is designed to protect
church-state separation, a bedrock of our democracy," said Maggie Garrett, the vice president for
public policy at Americans United for Separation
of Church and State, an advocacy organization.
"Trinity Lutheran was an incredibly narrow decision that was about providing playground material to a church, not about providing educational
services to impressionable young schoolchildren."
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