Good Ideas for Early Education in Administration’s FY2010 Budget Proposal
Blog Post
May 6, 2009
Today the Obama administration released detailed proposals for the President's fiscal year 2010 federal budget. (Detailed information from the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services--Administration for Children and Families available at these links.) These proposals include significant new investments in early education, including the creation of several new initiatives designed to support learning and development in children’s first several years of life.
The administration’s proposals would create several new federal programs that would support early education:
Title I Early Childhood Grants: This program would create incentives for school districts to use their federal Title I funds to launch or expand high-quality pre-k and other early childhood programs. Under current law, school districts may use Title I funds, which are intended to improve education for disadvantaged youngsters, to support early education programs for preschool-aged children. Very few districts use Title I funds for this purpose, however, and only 2 percent of Title I funds nationally go to support pre-k. The administration’s budget proposal for the Department of Education would provide states with $500 million to make 1:1 matching grants to school districts that use Title I funds to invest in early education programs.
Early Learning Challenge Fund: During the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama proposed establishing a federally funded program of Early Learning Challenge Grants to help states improve quality and strengthen coordination among early learning programs for children from birth through age 5. The administration’s budget proposal for the Department of Education includes $300 million to fund a competitive program of Early Learning Challenge Grants to states.
Early Literacy Grants: The fiscal year 2009 Omnibus appropriations bill eliminated $393 million in funding for the Reading First program, which supported scientifically based literacy instruction in kindergarten through 3rd grade. The administration’s budget proposal for the Department of Education includes $300 million in funding for a new Early Literacy Grants demonstration program. This program, a part of the existing Striving Readers program, would provide local education agencies with funding to implement comprehensive and coherent reading instruction programs in the elementary grades, with an emphasis on building comprehension skills and on instruction in vocabulary development, oral language fluency, use of academic language, and writing skills.
Home Visitation: The administration’s budget proposal for the Department of Health and Human Services includes $124 million in mandatory funding for programs in which professionals visit the homes of low-income pregnant women, mothers, and their children to provide information and support. This proposal is based on evidence that high-quality home visiting programs, such as David Olds’ Nurse Family Partnership Program, are effective in improving long-term outcomes for mothers and their children and on reducing public costs for education, health care, and other social services. The program would award competitive grants, with priority for program models that have strong research evidence of their effectiveness. Funding would also be available to support the development and evaluation of promising models. The $124 million in funding would allow states to fund home visiting services to 50,000 families.
In addition to these four programs, the administration has proposed $10 million in funding to support the creation of Promise Neighborhoods, modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone. These initiatives would coordinate an array of services and interventions, including early childhood programs, to establish a comprehensive approach to improving outcomes for children in high-poverty communities.
Proposed Funding for Existing Programs
The administration has also proposed funding increases for existing early education programs, including a $50 million increase in funding for the Early Reading First program, and a $122 million funding increase for Head Start and Early Head Start programs. The Head Start and Early Head Start funding increase is intended to ensure that the Head Start base funding level for 2010 includes funding to cover the share of the 2009 cost-of-living adjustment that was paid for using American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds. The administration has proposed level funding for IDEA Preschool and Infants and Families programs, as well as the Child Care and Development Block Grant.
While it proposes new early education programs and increased investments in some existing ones, the administration has also proposed eliminating the Even Start program, funded at $66.5 million in fiscal year 2009. Even Start supports family literacy programs that combine early childhood and adult education services, but recent national evaluations have failed to produce evidence of the programs effectiveness.
The administration has also proposed reducing funding for Title I Grants to LEAs by $1.5 billion below the fiscal year 2009 level. The ARRA provides substantial resources for Title I programs, above and beyond those provided by regular appropriations legislation. Because districts will have access to these additional resources in fiscal year 2010, the administration has proposed reallocating some Title I funds in order to focus them on specific priorities and efforts to turn around low-performing schools. These reallocated funds will support funding increases for several programs, as well as new investments, including those in the Title I Early Childhood Grants, Early Learning Challenge Fund, and Early Literacy Grants.
Good Ideas and Some Remaining Questions
Early Ed Watch is pleased to see new early education investments playing a prominent role in the administration’s budget proposals. The Title I Early Childhood Grants program, in particular, is a promising approach to encourage districts to use substantial new funds they are receiving through the stimulus to support pre-kindergarten programs aligned with their Title I-funded programs in the early elementary grades. The combination of state fiscal crises and substantial new funds that ARRA provides to school districts already means that districts will need to play an increasingly prominent role in increasing access to quality early education opportunities over the next few years. Creating incentives for districts to take on this new leadership role, and use it support high-quality, early education investments that are aligned with their early elementary school curriculum and broader school improvement efforts is a good strategy for federal and state level policymakers.
We still have questions about many elements of the administration’s early education proposals, however. In particular, we are curious about how the Early Learning Challenge Grants will actually work in practice.
Early Learning Challenge Grants are part of the Department of Education’s budget proposal, but many of the programs at the state level that are supposed to be coordinated under these grants—such as child care and Head Start—are funded by the Department of Health and Human Services. How will these two agencies coordinate at the federal level to support state-level coordination on early learning issues? The budget request lists a number of metrics that states receiving the grants will be required to address, including measures related to “child health and safety, the effectiveness of the early learning environment, the qualifications of early education staff, research-based curricula, and program effectiveness, including child outcomes.” These are all important areas to measure, but how states measure them, and whether/how the Department holds states accountable for improvements on those measures, will be important issues to follow as this program develops. We also strongly encourage the administration to ensure that states use these grants to support coordination not only within the birth-to-5 sector, but also between early childhood programs and the K-12 public school system.
We also have questions about Early Literacy Grants. The administration’s proposal appears to be an effort to restore funding that the Reading First program provided for early literacy programs, while at the same time accommodating Reading First critics who argued that the program was too restrictive in the approaches it prescribed. We are concerned, though, that too much flexibility might allow districts to use these funds for ineffective literacy programs. What sort of requirements and quality controls will the Department put in place to ensure that the new Early Literacy Grants support effective, research-based approaches to early literacy?
Finally, we have questions about the administration’s Home Visitation proposals. In particular, we are curious about how this program will interact with Early Head Start, which also provides home visiting and other services to new and expectant mothers and their children, and which recently received a large influx of ARRA funds to dramatically increase the number of children and families served. How will HHS ensure that these programs do not duplicate one another’s efforts? Is there sufficient capacity to support both an expansion of Early Head Start and the launch of a new Home Visitation program in a high-quality fashion?
Despite the questions, we are excited about the early education investments proposed in the administration's budget. They represent a smart approach that leverages existing resources and supports models with evidence of effectiveness. The next question is how Congressional appropriators will respond to these proposals. Early Ed Watch will continue to follow these issues throughout the appropriations process.