• Senate Passes Education Funding Legislation, Fails to Provide Full Funding For IDEA Despite Senators' Efforts
• Education Secretary Spellings Issues Flexibility on Highly Qualified Teacher Deadline
  
• House Education Committee Rejects Vouchers in Hurricane Relief Bill

Senate Passes Education Funding Legislation, Fails to Provide Full Funding For IDEA Despite Senators' Efforts

On Thursday, the Senate approved legislation that under funds IDEA, despite the efforts of Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT) to provide an additional $4 billion, which would have put IDEA on track to achieving full funding by 2011.

The Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill, which passed by a vote of 94-3, provides only $10.60 billion – or 18 percent of the national average per pupil expenditure -- for IDEA for FY 2006. Currently, IDEA is funded at a level of 18.6 percent, still well short of Congress’ 30-year-old commitment to pay 40 percent of the average per pupil expenditure.

The Clinton-Dodd amendment would have provided the additional funds necessary to reach the IDEA authorized level of $14.65 billion for FY 2006, but the amendment failed when Senator Specter (R-PA), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS Subcommittee, objected to the amendment on the grounds that the additional funding it called for was not off-set by funds taken from another program in the legislation. Based on this procedural argument, the Senate defeated the amendment by a vote of 53-46. In June, the House of Representatives voted on its version of the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill to fund IDEA at only $10.74 billion, or 18.1 percent. The President’s request of $11.1 billion for IDEA would maintain the current 18.6 percent.

CEC is extremely pleased that many of its members and others visited our Legislative Action Center and sent numerous letters to their Senators in support of the Clinton-Dodd amendment. Even though the amendment did not pass, it is clear that Senators from across the country know that fully funding IDEA is a priority to their constituents.

On a positive note, the Senate did approve funding for Javits Grants for students with gifts and talents. The Javits program is the only federal initiative that directly funds programs to improve the education of gifted and talented students. The Senate voted to fund this program at last year’s level, $11million. Earlier this year, in its version of the education funding legislation, the House voted to eliminate funding Javits Grants and the President zeroed out the program in his FY 2006 budget request. Click here to tell Congress to retain funding for Javits Grants in the final version of the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill.

In addition, the Senate bill increased funding for Title I Grants to local education agencies to $12.84 billion, an increase of $100 million over fiscal year 2005 funding levels. Title I Grants are the key federal program supporting the No Child Left Behind Act by providing funds to school districts to help disadvantaged children obtain a high quality education.

Other programs to receive an increase in funding include, Pell Grants, TRIO and Head Start. While funding for Pell Grants was approved at $13.177 billion, an increase of $812 million, the funding increase supports a maximum grant of $4,050, the same amount as last year. Senator Kennedy (D-MA) offered an amendment that would have increased the maximum grant to $4,250, but that amendment was defeated. Pell Grants are a need-based grant to help low- and middle-income undergraduate students and their families pay the costs of postsecondary education and vocational training.

The TRIO program, which provides support services to students from disadvantaged backgrounds in middle school through college, received and additional $5 million in funding, to $841.5 million.

Head Start is comprehensive child development program that seeks to increase the school readiness of young children in low-income families. Funding for Head Start increased by $31.2 million to $6.874 billion.

In addition, the Senate bill restored funding to some programs that were eliminated from the President’s budget request, including, GEAR UP and Perkins Career and Technical Education, at $306.5 million and $1.309 million, respectively. Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) is a program to encourage more young people from low-income families to consider and prepare early for college. Funding for Perkins Career and Technical Education supports local career and technical programs.

CEC will continue to monitor the FY 2006 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill as the House and Senate will work to iron out the difference between their two bills. CEC will keep you informed of its progress.

Education Secretary Spellings Issues Flexibility on Highly Qualified Teacher Deadline

On October 21, 2005, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings sent a letter to the Chief State School Officers informing them that the Department of Education would allow states to take up to an additional year to achieve 100 percent compliance with the highly qualified teacher provisions under No Child Left Behind if states can demonstrate “good faith” efforts to comply with the highly qualified provisions in the law. The guidance in the letter from Secretary Spellings also applies to the highly qualified teacher provisions for special education teachers in IDEA 2004.

Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and IDEA, teachers must meet highly qualified standards by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. However, realizing that many states will not achieve the goal of having a highly qualified teacher in every classroom by that deadline, the Department of Education issued new guidance that outlines how states that may not be achieving full compliance of the highly qualified teacher provisions can demonstrate good faith efforts toward compliance and receive an additional year to fully comply with the law.

In order to show good faith efforts toward complying with the highly qualified provisions under NCLB and receive an extension on full compliance, Spellings’ letter says that a state must meet the following four criteria:

1. The state must have a definition of a "highly qualified teacher" that is consistent with the law, and it must use this definition to determine the status of all of its teachers.

2. The state must provide parents and the public with accurate, complete reports on the number and percentage of classes in core academic subjects taught by highly qualified teachers.

3. The state must provide complete and accurate reporting of highly qualified teacher data to the Department of Education.

4. The state must take action to ensure that inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field teachers do not teach poor or minority children at higher rates than other children.
If, after reviewing the state’s Consolidated State Performance Report (CSPR), the Department determines that a state meets all four of the requirements above but is falling short of the highly qualified teacher goal, the Department will request that the state submit a revised plan, by May 31, 2006, for reaching the highly qualified teacher goal in the 2006-2007 school year.

CEC is pleased that the Department of Education is providing flexibility to the states in meeting the requirements for having highly qualified teachers in their schools. CEC is concerned that many high caliber teachers, both in special and general education, will be forced to leave the profession simply because they will not be able to meet the highly qualified requirements in a timely manner.

To read the full text of Secretary Spellings’ October 21 letter, go to http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/secletter/051021.html .

House Education Committee Rejects Vouchers in Hurricane Relief Bill

On Thursday, the House Education and Workforce Committee rejected legislation that would have included school vouchers for the nearly 370,000 students displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The legislation, which was passed Friday by the committee without the voucher provision, was part of the House budget reconciliation package in which the committee was tasked with the goal of slashing $18.1 billion in federal education programs.

By a vote of 26-21, the panel rejected Committee Chairman Boehner’s proposal to create a $2.5 billion account for displaced students to pay for public, private, or charter school tuition. An alternate measure, offered by George Miller (D-CA), the Democratic ranking member on the committee, would have provided grants of up to $8,314 per student for schools that enroll displaced students. The committee defeated the Miller amendment as well.

CEC sent a letter to the members of the Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Boehner and Ranking Member Miller earlier this week voicing CEC’s strong opposition to any federal voucher program in hurricane relief legislation. The letter was also sent to all Education and Workforce Committee members.