The House Subcommittee on Appropriations for Labor, Health, Human Services and Education opened hearings this morning, with Secretary DeVos as witness to testify about the Trump administration’s budget proposal. She. Wants to combine the funding for 29 programs and send the money to states as a block grant, to be used as they wish, she wants deep cuts in overall spending but a new $5 billion federal voucher program, which she calls “education freedom scholarships.” Charter school advocates were stunned to learn that the federal Charter Schools Program was one of the 29 that would disappear into a block grant.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro opened the hearing with this statement.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 27, 2020
CONTACT:
Will Serio: 202-225-3661
Chairwoman DeLauro Opening Remarks for House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Hearing with Secretary DeVos on the President’s Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Request
(As prepared for delivery)
Good morning, Secretary Devos. Welcome to the Subcommittee. It is our second budget hearing of the year. It is your fourth budget hearing with us. Today, we are examining the President’s Department of Education budget request for fiscal year 2021.
As I was reviewing the budget materials, Madame Secretary, this much was clear to me. You are seeking to privatize public education. But, I believe that is the wrong direction for our students and our country. Instead, we need to be moving towards expanding public policies like early childhood education that we know help students to succeed. We see this in other countries around the globe. They are not shrinking public support; they are expanding it.
I will get more into the consequences of the cuts that you are proposing. But, I want to start by examining your privatization philosophy, the false premise on which it is built, and the research it ignores.
Contrary to your claims, the nation’s public education system, which 90 percent of our children attend, has witnessed significant progress for all groups of students over the last 30 years. Average mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have improved for 4th graders (by 13 percent) and 8th graders (by 7 percent). While overall reading improvements have been more modest, Black 4th graders’ scores improved by 6 percent and 8th graders’ by 3 percent. Hispanic 4th graders’ scores improved by 6 percent and 8th graders’ by 5 percent.
There is more to do to address the disparities in achievement. We know we face significant challenges in assisting the kids that come into our system in education districts where they experience poverty and exposure to violence, often resulting in trauma. But, the solution is not less resources, nor is it more privatization.
In fact, the administration’s own data has shown how privatization has let down students. The Trump administration evaluated the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and found that vouchers had a statistically significant negative impact on the mathematics achievement of impacted students. In other words, more vouchers, lower math achievement. That is not a lone data point, either. Previous multi-sector studies using NAEP data have found that no student achievement scores for children in private schools were higher than those of children in public schools by any statistically significant degree.
So, your push to privatize public education is based on false premise that is not supported by data.
Its consequences would be to undermine the education of students in nearly every state, particularly for vulnerable students in high-need regions, including rural parts of our country.
• You would end career and college readiness for 560,000 low-income, middle school students across 45 states by eliminating the highly competitive grant program known as GEAR UP (-$365 million).
• You would endanger academic tutoring, personal counseling, and other programs for 800,000 students in sixth grade by slashing TRIO programs by $140 million. TRIO serves low-income, first-generation students and students with disabilities, helping them graduate from college.
• You would endanger education access for children experiencing homelessness by eliminating the Education for Homeless Children and Youth program (-$102 million). This funding is desperately needed. In the 2016-2017 school year, more than 1.3 million enrolled children had experienced homelessness at some point in the past 3 years, an increase of 7 percent from 2014-2015.
• You would endanger youth literacy as well as potentially increase class size and undermine efforts to support diverse teachers by eliminating the main program — Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants which we increased for the first time in many years (-$2.1 billion).
• You would potentially put higher education out of the financial grasp of students by flat funding the Pell Grant ($6,345). 40 percent of undergraduate students or 7 million students rely on Pell Grants to afford higher education. But while Pell covered 79 percent of the average costs of tuition, fees, room, and board at a four-year public institution in 1975, it covers only 29 percent today. Our students cannot afford for us to stand pat like this.
• And, finally, your budget would risk exacerbating the financial challenges of under-resourced rural districts by converting rural formula grants into the block grant. These districts already struggle with lower student populations and higher transportation costs and your move to undermine their funding in this way is unacceptable.
With all of this, let me say, it is not going to happen.
I am supportive of the recognition of I-D-E-A State grants ($100 million proposed increase) and career and technical education, ($680 million proposed increase) for CTE State grants. Although I am disappointed that Adult Education State Grants are left with level funding. I plan to ask you that about later.
You have also once again requested an increase for student loan servicing. We included new reforms in the fiscal year 2020 bill to help us conduct more oversight and ensure borrowers are getting the help they need. Many of these ideas stemmed from an oversight hearing that this Subcommittee held last year. To be direct, I will need to see how the Department implements the new requirements as I review your request for next year.
And, with regard to Charter Schools, there is a place for them. They have a role in the education system. However, we have moved in the direction of creating a parallel education system. Concerns remain around issues of accountability and transparency, which to this point they have not been forthcoming. As I have said again and again, I believe Charter Schools ought to be held to the same rigor. And, where they fail, we need to know about it.
To close, Madame Secretary, you are clearly seeking to privatize public education. I hope that I have been clear that we are not going to do that. Because doing so ignores the research indicating the gains we have made, ignores the many areas private education shortchanges students, ignores the very reason the federal government has needed to be involved in education as so powerfully indicated with Brown vs. Board of Education, and ignores the spirit and values of this country. No, instead, we need to be expanding public policies that boost education attainment, not restricting or reducing them.
So, I look forward to our discussion today. Now, let me turn to my colleague, the Ranking Member from Oklahoma Tom Cole. Mr. Cole?
###
delauro.house.gov
BRAVO! Eloquently stated and on point!!
It is positive trend to see a representative ask about evidence that supports funding being requested. For the past decade we have been on a privatization path that has disregarded evidence and accountability. It is refreshing to see that Rep. DeLauro is asking the right questions. Our public schools have been host for a variety of parasitic schemes designed to move public funds out of public schools and transfer them to private interests.
Now that charters have become normalized, right wing ideologues like DeVos seek to allow public money to go in any number of directions including useless vouchers. Block grants allow states to potentially use public schools like an ATM for any number of privatization schemes for which there is no evidence to support their value. Along with little fiscal accountability vouchers are a bad educational investment.
Under DeVos’ plan public schools that serve the neediest students would suffer more under funding and disinvestment. Our public schools that serve the most students deserve better treatment. Democratic public schools need support and investment to continue to serve our nation well and prepare our young people for the future.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Betsy DeVos and the Trump Administration are clearly seeking to privatize public education so a few already wealthy individuals in the private sector will be able to increase their fortunes at the expense of OUR children.
“You are seeking to privatize public education”
Wherever did she get that idea?
I think Rosa DeLauro reads Diane’s books snd blog
Bernie Sanders too.
And Elizabeth Warren too.
(Or at least someone on their campaign staff in charge of education).
But not Buttihedge and certainly not Doomberg.
SomeDAM Poet,
You made me laugh. So true, “But not Buttihedge and certainly not Doomberg.”
PERFECT. Thank you.
“Instead, we need to be moving towards expanding public policies like early childhood education that we know help students to succeed.”
To hell with early childhood education. Let the children be children.
EXACTLY! Small children should be playing together and being read to. Every time some idiot attaches the word “education” to something involving small children, it is a sure sign that testing and data collection is right around the corner.
Duane S & LisaM: I respect your concerns that fed funding for universal early-childhood education could well attach harmful mandated testing/ data-collection, misguided curriculum, & god knows what else. But the fact remains that today middle-class & working class livelihood requires two FT jobs, which means FT child-care. That’s already a reality. And many other families live w/pervasive insecurity, w/one parent staying at home because the job he/she qualifies for does not clear the cost of FT child-care. I think we are well past the days of “Let the children be children“ and “Small children should be playing together and being read to”— that’s a fiction which is only reality for upper-midclass families where one breadwinner can support the family. A recent study by a conservative think-tank shows that it takes a middle-class breadwinner 53 wks (i.e. more that a year’s salary) just to cover housing, healthcare, transportation, & education— w/o a spouse’s 2nd salary, there’s no $ for… food. Or clothing. Or etc. So let’s get real.
As a very wise person once said
“Achievement is the be all and end all for everything in life, including achievement. When we have achieved achievement, we will know that we have a achieved what we set out to achieve.”
Supposed to be response to Duane below.
WordPress is a site programmed by an idiot, full of bugs with fury , signifying nothing.
The system is designed so that most working families cannot plan for the future or save for retirement. The cost of living goes up much faster than wages.
I understand the economics of it all. Why can’t universal pre-K be play based? Why does everything have to be a “teaching moment”? ….Because when the gov’t throws money at something, it wants “results/data” in return. Let the children be children.
Oh, B35, I’m being quite real. I have three grown children but was fortunate to be able to figure out early child care with minimal costs.
I know it’s not kosher to say something like “Why are women choosing to have babies without the support of the fathers?” Yes, that is reality. Yes, there is more than enough wealth in this country to provide day care, no not PreK schooling, real day care. But there is no political will. We could provide for families that struggle to survive but too many lack compassion. That is reality. We could provide living wages for all but the reality is that those with the money will not back it. That is reality.
If you haven’t noticed B35, I don’t like the “let’s get real” attitude. It’s all real for everyone wherever they find themselves. How do we go about taking care of those less fortunate folks?
You’re right Duane, “let’s get real” was uncalled for, sorry. Both you and LisaM put your finger on it. You point to the lack of political will [& empathy] required to improve the social reality. LisaM’s “why can’t universal PreK be play-based” points to the typical expression of govt’s lack of will: the economist-based data-gathering approach, a wasteful distraction from reality, benefiting only the pocketbooks of data-gatherers, whose results inevitably invite in more corporate moochers looking to feed at the public trough.
“There is more to do to address the disparities in achievement.”
If I may quote A. Bierce on “achievement”.
ACHIEVEMENT, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.
As a very wise person once said
“Achievement is the be all and end all for everything in life, including achievement. When we have achieved achievement, we will know that we have a achieved what we set out to achieve.”
I’ll go with Bierce’s definition of achievement:
“ACHIEVEMENT, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.”
Ditzy DeVoid, because, if you have money, it doesn’t matter how ignorant and incompetent you are
This just in: rutabaga tapped to play Trump in new Sony Pictures bioepic
COVID-19 issue resolved. Trump orders Dense Pence to sharpie “No Virus” on U.S. map
I plan to wash my hands often… as THIS is what our ‘experts’ mare saying. How simple.
Posted at Oped News. https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/No-Privatization-of-our-Pu-in-General_News-Dept-Of-Education-ED-gov_Education-For-All_Education-Funding_Educational-Crisis-200228-640.html#comment757365
with this 92 character title, intro and comment summarizing the important points.
No Privatization of our Public Schools! says Rep. DeLauro to Secretary DeVos-at Budget Hearing
“This is how education is undone. Ed. Sec’y DeVos ( billionaire who owns Amway) testified re:Trump’s ‘budget’ proposal at the House Subcommittee on Appropriations for Labor, Health, Human Services & Education. Here’s the scam: a new $5 billion federal voucher program, “education freedom scholarships” — which makes deep cuts in overall spending. House Rep. DeLauro said: “this much is clear to me. You are seeking to privatize public education.” This “is the wrong direction for our students & our country”…. Because we need to be moving towards expanding public policies like early childhood education that we know help students to succeed. We see this in other countries around the globe”… “I will get more into the consequences of the cuts that you are proposing. I want to examine your privatization philosophy, the false premise on which it is built, and the research it ignores. ”
My comment: READ the whole statement (FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Will Serio: 202-225-3661 ) which reveals the truth about the assault on public education, which is just as dangerous as the assault on health care. https://delauro.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/chairwoman-delauro-opening-remarks-house-appropriations-subcommittee-12
Partial statement from From House Chairowman Rep. Rosa DeLauro at the hearing.
“Contrary to your claims, the nation’s public education system, which 90 percent of our children attend, has witnessed significant progress for all groups of students over the last 30 years. “In fact, the administration’s own data has shown how privatization has let down students”So, your push to privatize public education is based on false premise that is not supported by data.
“Its consequences would be to undermine the education of students in nearly every state, particularly for vulnerable students in high-need regions, including rural parts of our country.”
“You would end career and college readiness for 560,000 low-income, middle school students across 45 states by eliminating the highly competitive grant program known as GEAR UP (-$365 million).
“You would endanger academic tutoring, personal counseling, and other programs for 800,000 students in sixth grade by slashing TRIO programs by $140 million. TRIO serves low-income, first-generation students and students with disabilities, helping them graduate from college.
“You would endanger education access for children experiencing homelessness by eliminating the Education for Homeless Children and Youth program (-$102 million). This funding is desperately needed. In the 2016-2017 school year, more than 1.3 million enrolled children had experienced homelessness at some point in the past 3 years, an increase of 7 percent from 2014-2015.
“You would endanger youth literacy as well as potentially increase class size and undermine efforts to support diverse teachers by eliminating the main program — Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants which we increased for the first time in many years (-$2.1 billion).
“You would potentially put higher education out of the financial grasp of students by flat funding the Pell Grant ($6,345). 40 percent of undergraduate students or 7 million students rely on Pell Grants to afford higher education. But while Pell covered 79 percent of the average costs of tuition, fees, room, and board at a four-year public institution in 1975, it covers only 29 percent today. Our students cannot afford for us to stand pat like this.
“And, finally, your budget would risk exacerbating the financial challenges of under-resourced rural districts by converting rural formula grants into the block grant. These districts already struggle with lower student populations and higher transportation costs and your move to undermine their funding in this way is unacceptable.”