Reported this morning on politico. The interesting question is, what does Ptesident Obama see as his legacy in education now that Race to the Top is over?
OBAMA’S FINAL BUDGET: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: President Barack Obama’s FY 2017 budget will propose spending billions on his education legacy, but might not invest enough for advocates focused on implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act. Obama’s budget increases Title I grants by $450 million above the FY 2016 enacted level, totaling $15.4 billion, according to documents obtained by POLITICO. But the devil is in the details: Changes in the new law, including a 7 percent set-aside for school improvement within Title I, could potentially result in initial cuts to districts’ Title I allocations. We’ve got the full story: http://politico.pro/1O0sv5N.
– “When you look at the funding and you can’t provide increases for the formula grant programs that are the center of the new law, it says a lot,” said one advocate about Obama’s proposed Title I funding.
– Grants to states under IDEA are essentially frozen at $11.9 billion. But if Congress is going to increase funding for anything, it’s likely going to be for special education because it’s a popular bipartisan issue, advocates say.
– The budget proposes a modest $1.3 billion, or 2 percent, increase in discretionary spending over the fiscal 2016 appropriation for the Education Department, at $69.4 billion.
– The budget will propose a host of legacy-building administration plans: A $4 billion computer science initiative, a $1 billion program to help attract and keep teachers in high-needs areas and a $120 million request to encourage school integration. Charter School Grants get a $17 million boost over the 2016 enacted level at $350 million and Magnet Schools Assistance gets an $18 million boost at $115 million. Both magnet schools and charter schools can be part of strategies that encourage integration, the administration is expected to emphasize.
– On pre-K: Obama’s budget includes, for HHS, $350 million in discretionary funding for Pre-K Development Grants. That’s a $100 million increase over the FY 2016 appropriation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
any links to the answers from Clinton and Bernie when they were asked about this? (probably not important enough an issue).
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Oh Diane,
Thank you so much for you site here, and your willingness to put out the facts.
Your question, “… what does President Obama see as his legacy in education”…?
I don’t know what he “sees”. Who does?
But I know what I see.
After that “close reading” thing (and I read it more than 3 times!), plus, I couldn’t get the full politico report because I have to pay for it (but you summarized it), I see Obama leaving a “mess” in education, and hoping (THE AUDACITY OF HOPE!), that his next (hopefully) Democratic president will do better.
No one can “budget” for monies that are not there.
But you can close more public schools, try to fund more charter (private) schools, cut teacher salaries and benefits, try to implement standards that have not been proven to work, allow governors to poison children with no Federal (EPA) accountability etc. and “hope”, that when your job is done as Commander in Chief, you will see no hope.
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Don’t count on Hillary to do it, however. Her campaign treasurer has a long history of being a Rheeformist and Walton family vassal. Here is an excerpt from an Alternet article that raises my hackles/ (link follows) Please share and cross-post. Thanks!
“Hillary Clinton’s campaign is holding fundraisers in Mexico this Wednesday, just one day after the New Hampshire primary. Clinton is not attending the events, and offshore fundraising efforts aren’t rare for presidential candidates, but the players involved have direct connections to Walmart, where Clinton served as board member from 1986-1992.
“The events are being hosted by Clinton campaign treasurer Jose Villarreal, who has maintained close connections to Walmart and the Walton family for years. As the Huffington Post’s Samantha Lachman detailed in 2015, “Villarreal has spent decades on the boards of companies dominated by the Waltons, who remain a target of choice for the progressives whom Clinton’s 2016 campaign is trying to win over. He was the lead director at Walmart; a board member at First Solar, an energy company where the Waltons are the largest investors; and a board member at Teach for America, the KIPP Foundation and Leadership for Educational Equality, to which the Waltons also have strong ties.”
http://www.alternet.org/labor/clinton-offshore-fundraising-effort-being-co-hosted-walmart-lobbyist
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Oh, what a true and clever epithet: a Walton family vassal! 🙂
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“Charter schools can be part of strategies that encourage integration.” This is a lovely ideal, but the reality paints a very different picture. In addition to not serving the same population as public schools, charters are more segregated than public schools. Charters have failed to deliver on equal opportunity for all. When charters skim the best students off in poor neighborhoods, they leave the poorest, mostly minority students in impoverished students in cash starved public schools. This is anti-democratic practice promoted by Washington.
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This is mere lip service to charter integration. If DoEd doesn’t enforce integration and push-outs the trend will continue.
What’s $15m for charters supposed to do- open charters to about 5 more students with disabilities?
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I’d like to know how this translates in to dollars per pupil and also who will decide how the money is used.
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I wish ed reformers would just fund the mandates they put in place instead of piling on more and more programs.
Are they aware in DC that most public schools have lost funding over the last 8 years?
Why are they adding more programs? They could adequately fund the giant Common Core effort with the 4 billion going to computer science. They put in a more difficult test and then walked away. They completely lost interest in the Common Core once the testing was in place, which is exactly what critics said they would do.
They are setting schools and children up to fail. They stuck them with a higher bar but no support. That’s a recipe for failure.
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I am sure the “computer science” mentioned is not to teach students coding. The $4 billion is probably there to enable Gates to get states to adopt “adaptive, personalized learning.” That always was Gates’ end game anyway, I think.
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Exactly: I tried to figure this out by thinking of NCLB/R2T school reform as a recipe for chaos, but really it is simply a recipe for a predictable and purposeful failure.
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