Education Week - May 15, 2013 - 17

EDUCATION WEEK

GOVERNMENT

MAY 15, 2013

POLITICS

Shawn Poynter for Education Week

Head Start Centers Feel Sequestration Pain
By Christina A. Samuels
When the automatic federal
budget cuts known as sequestration went into effect in March,
Margaret Molloy and her staff at
a Head Start agency in the Tucson, Ariz., area started looking for
places to make cuts.
Child-Parent Centers Inc., which
oversees 40 centers serving nearly
2,800 children in the southeastern
part of the state, made plans to
scale back on classroom supplies,
learning materials, and conference
travel. Some center maintenance,

such as painting, would be deferred
the upcoming school year.
But with personnel costs taking
up the largest share of the agency’s budget, the Arizona agency is
also going to eliminate 160 slots in
Head Start and Early Head Start
when the program resumes Sept. 1,
saving the cost of 10 teachers, six
assistant teachers, and some administrative support staff.
“These are, by far, the most serious cuts I’ve experienced,” said Ms.
Molloy, who has been involved for
40 years with Head Start, which is
overseen by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services. The
reduction in the number of children served through the program
for low-income children will have a
direct effect on schools, she believes.

“The emphasis on increased academic readiness for kindergarten
is huge,” Ms. Molloy said. “Every
child who doesn’t have an opportunity to be kindergarten-ready is
really hurting the economy in the
long run.”

Automatic Reduction
The sequestration cuts, which
affect a broad range of federal
programs, were put in place in
2011 as part of a deal to raise the
country’s debt ceiling. The cuts
were intended to prod lawmakers
to make a long-term deal to address the budget deficit, but that
never happened. Without congressional action, the budget will be
reduced $1.2 trillion over the next

decade, including $55 billion over
10 years from the hhs.
Head Start and Early Head Start
serve nearly a million children
and families. The programs were
funded at nearly $8 billion in fiscal
2012, marking a period of extended
growth due in part to the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The sequestration cuts, which
represent a 5.27 percent reduction
for Head Start from fiscal 2013
spending, take Head Start funding back to approximately $7.6 billion, which is close to where it was
in 2008. The administration has
framed the reduction as the loss of
70,000 slots.
And while lawmakers have
been quick to end a furlough of
PAGE 18 >

Arizona ELL Battle Carries On, Despite Ruling
By Lesli A. Maxwell
Disputes over Arizona’s approach to educating English-language learners show few signs
of abating as the plaintiffs in a
2-decade-old lawsuit continue to
challenge the state’s requirement
that such students spend more
than half their school day learning
English, with little access to other
academic content.
Plaintiffs in Flores v. Arizona
late last month appealed a federal
judge’s March ruling that the state’s
required language program—which
keeps ells separate from their nonell peers for four hours a day of
English instruction—does not vio-

late federal civil rights laws.
The Arizona Center for Law in
the Public Interest, which represents the plaintiffs, strongly disputes that, arguing that Englishlearners are essentially segregated
from their peers and are denied
access to core academic content,
making it impossible for many to
catch up. The plaintiffs, as well as
some academic researchers, say the
four-hour instructional bloc harms
English-learners, especially those
at the high school level who have
little time to take the credit-bearing
courses they need to graduate.
“There is a wide gap between
what the court finds to be theoretically sound for English-learners and

what researchers find,” said Oscar
Jiménez-Castellanos, an assistant
professor of education at Arizona
State University, in Phoenix, who
co-authored a recent report on the
state of ell education in Arizona.
“The empirical evidence is showing a decline in graduation rates for
English-language learners, and we
are seeing a steady misidentification of ells.”

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POLICY
BRIEF
Assistant
teacher
Elizabeth
Rollins watches
children play
at the ClaxtonWest Head
Start Center,
in Knoxville,
Tenn. She has
worked at
the center for
10 years. Citing
automatic
budget cuts,
the KnoxvilleKnox County
Head Start
agency chose
to end its
service year
two weeks
early.

Federal aid cutbacks
affect students, staff

progress for English-learners.
“This lawsuit is exactly the wrong
medicine right now,” said Mr. Huppenthal. “It sends out toxic signals
to districts.”
Mr. Huppenthal and supporters
of the state’s four-hour instructional
model say it allows ells to focus on
learning English so they can then
be successful in learning academic
content.
“It’s so clear to me that what we
are doing is correct and that the
‘Wrong Medicine’?
results, when this is implemented
But John Huppenthal, Arizona’s with fidelity, are outstanding,” he
superintendent of schools, said that added.
the language program for ells is
The superintendent said Arizona
proving successful and that the cen- leads the nation in its rates of reter’s recent appeal will only impede
PAGE 18 >

NSF Peer Review
On GOP’s Radar
Congressional Republicans are
broadening attempts to exert
more control over the peer-review
process for the National Science
Foundation, in a move that could
chill research into politically
controversial education topics.
House Science, Space,
and Technology Committee
Chairman Lamar S. Smith,
R-Texas, last month began
circulating a draft bill that
would change the grant-review
process at the National Science
Foundation.
The bill, called the “High
Quality Research Act” in a
draft obtained by the American
Association for the Advancement
of Science’s ScienceInsider, would
require the nsf to certify, on an
online website, that any grantfunded research is advancing
national health, prosperity, or
welfare; not duplicating other
federal research; and “is the
finest quality, is ground breaking,
and answers questions or solves
problems that are of utmost
importance to society at large.”
At the same time, in a letter
to acting nsf Director Cora
B. Marrett, Rep. Smith said
he had “concerns” about the
“intellectual merit” of five
grants and asked for peerreview and program-officer
notes on their approval.
n

The moves provoked backlash
from science advocates and
congressional Democrats.
“By making this request,
you are sending a chilling
message to the entire scientific
community that peer review
may always be trumped
by political review,” wrote
Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice
Johnson, also of Texas, in a
letter to the chairman.
The squabble carries high
stakes for education. In
the fiscal 2013 budget, the
National Science Foundation’s
budget for science, technology,
education, and mathematics
education alone is more than
$1.15 billion. By contrast,
the federal Education
Department’s research agency,
the Institute of Education
Sciences, had $597.3 million to
spend on education research
this fiscal year.
The nsf declined to comment
on the debate.
For his part, Rep. Smith
issued a statement saying the
draft came from “bipartisan
discussions” and the bill
“maintains the current peerreview process and improves
on it by adding a layer of
accountability ... to ensure that
taxpayer dollars are spent on
the highest-quality research
possible.”
—SARAH D. SPARKS

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - May 15, 2013

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