SHOVEL THIS, kids. Last weekend, Senate Democrats, in trying to get a filibuster-proof number of Republicans on board with the stimulus bill, allowed tens of billions of dollars to be slashed from education. It made you forget who won the election.
So begins Derrick Jackson in a Boston Globe op ed entitled Shovel-ready stimulus buries schools. Jackson offers some pointed remarks on why it was wrong to cut the proposals for education spending. He is accurate but incomplete. And Gene Robinson reminds us in his Washington Post column entitled Roll Over the Republicans that
President Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress can no longer afford to let comity defeat common sense.
So let me use that as a basis to explain the common sense of Federal spending on Special Education.
There are some parallels in the remarks offered by the two men. After noting the howls of John McCain about "generational theft" and Mike Pence opining that the American people were tired of "massive, unaccountable government spending" Jackson reminds them - and us - that
What the American people were tired of back in November was the massive spending on Iraq, and the unaccountability of such entities as former Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton, and other overcharging no-bid military, terrorism, and disaster contractors.
After references to Iraq and oil company profits, Jackson reminds offers notes the chronic underfunding of No Child Left Behind, and says
This was all supposed to change under Obama. But the so-called Democratic majority in the Senate has not yet gotten the memo from the voters to stand up for the kids.
Similarly in his arguing against compromise with Republicans after a stimulus proposal that already was watered down to accommodate ideology on things like tax cuts, Robinson first argues, perhaps somewhat tongue in cheek, as follows:
Hundreds of millions of dollars for contraceptives? To the extent that those condoms or birth-control pills are made in the United States and sold in U.S. drugstores, that spending would be stimulative in more ways than one.
He then notes the proposal for $79 billion directly to the states is money that would have flown out the door, then argues
But in the Senate, the ad hoc "gang" of moderate Republicans (all three of them) and conservative Democrats cut those state funds to $39 billion. It's wrong to see this as the normal give-and-take of legislative sausage-making, the usual trek down a well-worn path toward the golden compromise that everyone can live with. This is not, repeat not, a time for compromise. Meeting in the middle, which the Senate sees as its role in our democracy, renders the whole exercise potentially useless. If we don't get enough money into the economy, and if we don't do it soon, we risk wasting a king's ransom on a stimulus that's too puny to stimulate.
I am a teacher. Elsewhere I will shortly have an exchange with a fellow teacher exploring the specifics of education as it appeared in the House version of the stimulus. That was written before the details of the Senate compromise were known. As Jackson writes:
The Senate version of the stimulus plan had $40 billion less for state aid than the House bill, to account for current or looming school cuts. The Senate had $2 billion less in Pell college grants, $1 billion less for Head Start, and $16 billion less in school construction aid.
As states and localities face ever increasing shortfalls in projected revenue, and are obligated by state constitutions to have balanced budgets, they are proposing severe cuts in spending on education. The quickest way to cut educational costs is to cut jobs. Last night Obama reminded us that we are running a risk of adding to the current downward spiral unless we can stop the hemorrhaging of jobs, and that only the Federal government has the ability to provide the funds necessary. Let me explain briefly why the proposed spending on Special Education is especially on target for this task, even though it is not in the items mentioned by Jackson in his brief on behalf of educational spending in the stimulus.
Some history. In 1975 the Congress passed the Educating All Handicapped Children Act into law. It established a set of rights for children who are more difficult to educate because of varying disabilities to receive a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. It also committed the Federal government to begin to pick up increasing amount of the average additional costs imposed by the law. The Federal share was supposed to reach 40% of those average additional costs by the early 1980s. By then the law had been reshaped, and renamed to Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). And yet, the highest the Federal share of those costs has ever been is 18.5% of Average Per Pupil Expenditure in FY2005. The amount proposed in the Bush administration for FY2009 was $11.5 billion. That represented something less than 17% of the estimated costs imposed on states and localities by the law. The stimulus as past by the House would have added $13 billion over two years to that $11.5 billion base, $6 billion in FY 2009 and $7 billion in FY 2010. Please note: in neither case would the total level of the Federal share reach even 30%, much less the 40% promised in the original legislation more than 30 years ago.
School funding is being drastically cut, both by states and by local government. The latter obtain most of their moneys for schools from real property taxes, and when the value of that property craters as it has in the past year they see a concomitant loss of funds. Some places, like the jurisdiction in which I teach, cannot raise their tax rates absent a referendum from the voter. Meanwhile the slowing of the economy has similarly lessened state revenues, causing them to have to slash their expenditures, including the funding they can offer schools. Virginia is cutting state funding for things like school counselors. Other states are making across the board cuts including for school funding. And school systems are forced to lay off teachers and other staff.
Remember that IDEA REQUIRES expenditures. If the Federal government does not pick up its fair share, the states and localities either violate the law and not provide the required services (and this does happen, thereby depriving students of their right to a free and appropriate public education), or they must make one of two choices: (1) raise their own taxes to make up the difference; or (2) cut regular educational services to fulfill their legal requirement for special education.
In the current economic situation, we are seeing regular education suffer as funding is cut. We will probably also see the educational opportunities for children supported by special education diminished as well, and that would have long term consequences both for them and for society as a whole, since without an appropriate education they will be less productive members of society. But let me only consider how the stimulus could prevent the diminution of regular educational functions.
For every additional dollar provided by the Federal government in moving towards meeting its own share, that is a dollar the states and localities can take from what they are already spending and transfer it back to regular educational spending. In other words, if the stimulus provides $6 billion more for special ed in FY 2009, that is equivalent to giving the states and local governments the same amount to offset cuts in regular education they would otherwise have to make. And probably 80% of those cuts will be in form of personnel. Cutting personnel means larger class sizes - even before the recent proposed cuts in state aid, the district in which I teach was going to increase class sizes in grades 1-3 by 2 students per class. That might not seem like much, but based on the best research our class sizes were already too large.
The purpose of a stimulus is to get money into the economy as quickly as possible. We want that money to be quickly spent, since spending generates additional cash flow through the multiplier effect. Most teachers spend most of what they receive. Cutting teaching jobs (and those of custodians and other support personnel) also means cutting the revenue of small businesses that they patronize. It may mean increasing foreclosures, further depressing the value of real estate. We cannot afford to continue shedding jobs of any kind.
The so-called moderates were incredibly shortsighted in the cuts to educational spending they included in the Nelson-Collins amendment. Jackson's language focuses on the "shovel-ready" aspects of educational funding. And yes, construction funding carries one of the highest multipliers of money put into the economy. It is also, I might note, tilted heavily in the direction of jobs held by men, whereas the retention of teaching jobs does far better in preserving jobs held by women. I hope people bear that in mind. Te Senate proposal has cut in half the funding for Special Education in the stimulus. That is shortsighted on so many level.
Last night the President made clear that he hopes to restore much of the funding cut for education. I sign on to those hopes. My own job is not in jeopardy. And I do not teach special education (although I always have a few gifted students who use the services provided under IDEA in order to succeed in school). I could well see my class sizes, already too large, expand yet again in this financial crisis. Perhaps instead of 6 classes totaling 184 students (one withdrew yesterday), I might have six totaling 198. That is an increase of only a bit over 2/class.
Jackson urges that Obama "pull out his bully pulpit club" on the matter of education. He concludes
Obama said over the weekend, "Let's do whatever it takes to keep the promises of America alive in our time." But as of this moment, the kids are being told they are not shovel-ready. The Senate, in the negotiations of expediency, has yet to dig deep for them.
That is true. It is shortsighted to make such cuts that affect the long-term future of our children and hence of our society. The funding on special education is especially worthy, given that the Federal government has never even met HALF of its promised 40% share of the costs. As passed, by the House, it still would be falling well short of what it should be doing. Cutting the $13 billion to only $6 billion over two years will costs tens of thousands of jobs that could otherwise be saved, not only those of school personnel, but those in the communities where those laid-off teachers live and work.
I do not know if the Senators in the group that made these cuts are willing to let a conference report that restores some of them go through the Senate. There is the very real possibility that a conference report could fail if it strays too far from what was agreed to in the Senate. I hope our Senators are not so short-sighted. And in the event we cannot directly get the funds for special education restored in conference that the Congress will move expeditiously to provide that funding through some other mechanism. We cannot afford to slash education. Providing a greater proportion of the Federal share of special education is an effective way to offset the teaching and other educational jobs that would otherwise disappear due to the financial crisis in which now find our nation.
Peace.