Education Week - September 7, 2016 - 15

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

Draft ESSA Funding Rules Unveiled
FINE TUNING

By Andrew Ujifusa
& Alyson Klein

The U.S. Department of Education sought to address
concerns from educators about its original ideas for
spending of Title I funding for disadvantaged students
under the Every Student Succeeds Act by incorporating
these changes into its most recent proposal on the issue:

s Stating that nothing in it shall be construed
to require forced teacher transfers

s Offering leeway on intradistrict spending
disparities due to spending on students like
English-language learners and those with
disabilities, as well as on special schools

s Allowing some ﬂexibility for small ﬂuctuations
from year to year in a district's budget

s Giving small schools with enrollments
of 100 or fewer at least some degree
of ﬂexibility from the draft rule

After months of criticism from
Republican lawmakers, state
chiefs, and teachers' unions on its
approach to spending rules for the
Every Student Succeeds Act, the
U.S. Department of Education last
week released a new proposal that
appears to give districts and states
some additional ﬂexibility when it
comes to ensuring federal funds for
low-income students don't replace
state and local dollars.
But, judging from early reaction,
it is unlikely that the changes to
proposed rules for the part of the
law known as "supplement not supplant" will be enough to placate
the sharpest critics of the department's original approach, crafted
as part of a "negotiated rulemaking" process this spring. Those critics include Sen. Lamar Alexander,
R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate
education committee and an ESSA

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education

architect, and his counterpart on
the House side, Rep. John Kline,
R-Minn.
The department's original proposal would have required districts
to demonstrate that state and
local per-pupil spending in Title I
schools, which have large shares
of students from low-income backgrounds, be at least equal to the
average of that spending in nonTitle I schools. The new approach
would provide some additional options to meet a similar goal.
Civil rights advocates have said
both the initial proposal and the
revamped version represent a longoverdue ﬁx to a loophole in Title I
rules with respect to teachers' salaries, one of the biggest expenses on
districts' plates.
But Alexander said the department had overstepped its authority.
He renewed a pledge, made earlier
this spring, to block the rule from
going into effect if it becomes ﬁnal,
using the congressional appropriations process, or other means.

'Zero Authority'
Alexander said in a statement
that U.S. Secretary of Education
John B. King Jr. apparently thinks
he's a member of Congress and
chairman of a "national school
board" in addition to being education secretary.
"His proposed regulation would
give Washington, D.C., control over
state and local education dollars
that it has never had before," Alexander said. "Federal law gives him

Getty

zero authority to do this. In fact, our
new law specifically prohibits his
doing this."
But King said that intradistrict
state and local funding gaps are
inconsistent with the "civil rights
history" that's the source of the
supplemental-money requirement.
"No single measure will erase
generations of resource inequities,
and there is much more work to do
across states and districts to address additional resource inequities,
but this is a concrete step forward
to help level the playing ﬁeld and
ensure compliance with the law,"
King said in a statement.

Debate Continues
Overall, the proposal, which has
been highly anticipated for months,
doesn't seem to have shifted the political landscape on the debate over
supplement-not-supplant. Superintendents, state chiefs, and others
still say the department has put
forth something unworkable.
But civil rights groups and ESSA's
Democratic sponsors-Sen. Patty
Murray of Washington and Rep.
Bobby Scott of Virginia-argue the
new rule strikes the right balance
in ensuring the poorest students
get access to their fair share of resources, while giving local leaders
the ﬂexibility they need.
The proposed rule still needs to go
through a 60-day comment period
before it can be ﬁnalized. It would
give districts the following options
to show compliance with the supplePAGE 16 >

Trump Taps Indiana Lawmaker's Staffer to Craft Plan on School Choice
By Andrew Ujifusa
Republican presidential nominee Donald
Trump's campaign has tapped Rob Goad,
who has worked for an Indiana Republican
congressman, to work on school choice issues
in the real estate executive's bid for the White
House.
Goad is on leave from the office of Rep.
Luke Messer, R-Ind., and for the
past three weeks has been in
New York City working for
N
O
I
T
the Trump campaign as a
ELEC
policy adviser, according to
sources. He's the ﬁrst adviser
for Trump to focus specifically
on education issues. The campaign's aim is
to have Goad ﬂesh out Trump's previously
stated support for school choice, speciﬁcally
choice programs that have been successful in
states, and possibly work on other K-12 issues as well.
Goad may also work on higher education policy for Trump, whose campaign approached the congressional staffer about
joining the team.
A senior policy adviser for Messer, Goad
has handled both school choice issues speciﬁcally and K-12 policy in general in Messer's
ofﬁce, where he has worked for ﬁve years.

2016

Although Trump has riled up many Republican politicians and policy veterans with
some of his public statements and positions,
his campaign's decision to hire Goad seems
like a relatively mainstream GOP choice.
And Goad's focus on promoting school choice
will likely play well with a broad swath of
the Republican Party.
Messer himself is a member of the House
education committee. He has criticized some
of Trump's more controversial statements on
issues not related to education, but has also
indicated his support for Trump. Messer previously backed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush,
also a big fan of school choice, during Bush's
primary campaign for the GOP presidential
nomination.
Trump has largely neglected K-12 during
his quest for the White House, aside from
brief statements supporting school choice, attacks on the Common Core State Standards,
and a pledge to end gun-free school zones. But
Goad's shift to the Trump election team coincides with a new emphasis on K-12 choice
in particular for the Republican presidential
nominee.
As of late on the campaign trail, Trump
has been speaking more frequently about his
support for school choice as part of a recent
attempt to win African-American votes by

decrying the state of education in inner cities.
And in August, his campaign manager,
Kellyanne Conway, said that there would be
an upcoming "education week" for Trump's
campaign. But so far, that kind of weeklong
focus on education has not occurred. Back in
April, the Trump campaign signaled that he
would be giving a policy speech on education
as part of a series of such remarks-a speech
he has yet to deliver.

Track Record on Issue
In a speech last month, however, Trump did
propose creating a tax deduction for child-care
costs, although he didn't provide many details.
His campaign also indicated that he wanted to
scrap the federal Child and Dependent Care
Credit on federal taxes.
Critics, including Democratic presidential
nominee Hillary Clinton, argued that his taxdeduction plan would only benefit relatively
wealthy families.
Picking a staffer from Messer's office,
in particular, to work on K-12 choice policies seems like a logical move by the Trump
campaign.
At an event in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention last month, Messer
spoke about the challenge of increasing school

choice without creating a "federal Department of School Choice."
And during the push to reauthorize federal education law last year, Messer backed
a plan to allow Title I funds earmarked for
students from low-income backgrounds to
be used for private schools. (In Washington
shorthand, that proposal has been dubbed
"Title I portability.")
But the idea didn't get traction and wasn't
included in what became the Every Student
Succeeds Act, the successor to the No Child
Left Behind Act.
In March, the Republican Policy Committee, for which Goad is listed as a staffer, held a
brieﬁng called School Choice: Fact vs. Fiction
& Recent Developments. The brieﬁng featured
Messer, as well as prominent school choice
supporters like Gerard Robinson, the former
Florida education commissioner now at the
American Enterprise Institute, and Adam
Peshek, the director of education choice at the
Foundation for Excellence in Education, which
was founded by Jeb Bush.
Last year, Messer and his fellow Hoosier
on the House education committee, GOP
Rep. Todd Rokita, also questioned the distribution of federal money for charter schools
in Indiana under state Superintendent
Glenda Ritz.

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