It seems absurd that the line between a transformational presidency and Jimmy Carter II might be a sliver of one percent of the vote in Ohio. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Federal Policy
What Are the Key Federal Policy Issues for Nonprofits?
Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, wrote an opinion piece last week for The Chronicle of Philanthropy that was critical of the Independent Sector’s new report on nonprofit advocacy, Beyond the Cause, arguing that is was undermined by “a self-serving agenda and an implicit, if not intentional, suggestion that Independent Sector become the central hub of the [nonprofit] sector’s advocacy efforts.”
The Chronicle headline would lead you to believe that the article was primarily about Eisenberg’s discomfort with the notion of Independent Sector serving as the voice for all on nonprofits, but the meatier part of his critique actually concerned the specific policy issues that they reported as the most critical to the field. He doesn’t agree with their choices, and suggests five policy changes that he thinks would make more of a difference. Those changes are (in a nutshell):
- Improving what he labels as a “dysfunctional” nonprofit regulatory system.
- Mandating an increase to the share of assets foundations must distribute annually.
- Encouraging greater socioeconomic diversity on nonprofit boards of both foundations and nonprofits.
- Closing the growing gap between large and small nonprofits. He notes that small organizations are shrinking (or closing) while large nonprofit are thriving and that tis disproportionately hurts the poor and disadvantaged, who typically get services from smaller, community-based nonprofits.
You can read the entire article to read his arguments in depth.
It’s useful to think about the most pressing policy issues impacting nonprofits, even though I don’t think it’s easy to come up with a list that every nonprofit would agree on, considering the size and diversity of the sector—which includes organizations ranging from universities with multi-million endowments to small, all-volunteer organizations with tiny budgets. And sometimes we forget that the sector includes a wide variety of political points of view as well.
For his part, Eisenberg thinks it’s impossible for nonprofits to share a broad consensus about which issues are most important, and that “the best that nonprofits can accomplish is to strengthen their individual advocacy and lobbying activities and join with other organizations in coalitions that fight for specific policy changes.”
But is it really impossible to come up with a short list of changes that a broad consensus of organizations could agree are important? And while I agree that working via coalitions is an effective strategy, the reality is that the best coalitions often are led by a trusted leader that pulls everyone together and keeps things organized. While I don’t think a single entity could speak for everyone on every issue facing nonprofits, a lead organization that was able to bring the sector together on a handful of the most critical issues, if it resisted the temptation to dominate the advocacy space on its own, could be very effective. The more groups there are advocating here in Washington on behalf of this sector, the more likely we are to drown each other out.
For the record, here are the issues that Independent Sector picked as most important:
- Protecting against proposals that could limit the organizations eligible for charity status.
- Protecting against proposals to limit or remove charitable tax deductions for donors.
- Clarifying advocacy and lobbying rules for charities and private foundations.
- Guarding against any proposed revisions to Internal Revenue Service disclosure forms that could hamper nonprofit operations.
- Reducing/eliminating overly burdensome paperwork and red tape involving government contracts with nonprofits.
- Providing more government-financed research on the nonprofit sector.
Early Reports Suggest DACA Increasing Demand for Adult Education
Back in I August I wrote an article suggesting that the new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative might increase demand for GED classes—and for adult education classes in general.
According to Miranda Leitsinger of NBC News, it has. Although it’s not clear yet what the impact of DACA has been on the demand for adult education in general, she reports that interest in the GED test is on the rise, at least in some states.
Some GED state testing centers are seeing a spike in requests to take the test or a course, as well as an uptick in calls with questions about the exam since the government began accepting applications for the deferred action program on Aug. 15, according to an informal survey of state GED test program administrators conducted by the GED Testing Service, the official creator of the exam.
In Iowa, centers have experienced a 20 percent rise in English as a Second Language attendance for GED prep, while Massachusetts has seen a 25 percent to 50 percent surge in registration for the test through Spanish. In North Carolina, there has been a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in testing requests, including to take it in Spanish, prompting adminstrators to order more such tests for next year.
I suspect that the main reason an increase in demand is only being reported from some states is due to a lack of data. The GED test program administrator survey cited here, for example, is characterized as “informal,” and it could be that many states did not respond or have not collected data on this yet.
Leitsinger also suggests that DACA is increasing immigration advocates’ awareness of the lack of adult education services available:
I think it’s fair to say that the immigrant rights movement is discovering the education reform movement … and that they’re really coming to understand, first of all, how hard it is to get a GED and secondly, how limited the capacity of adult education programs is,” said Margie McHugh, co-director of the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy. “Certainly this 350,000 or so young people are the most immediate concern and the most vulnerable for not making it through the process, and that’s very much related to both the difficulty of pursuing a GED or completing a GED … and also the lack of availability of programs.”
What’s critical about all this is that it means that the relief provided by DACA is going to be much more accessible to those with the means to pay for GED classes. I’d be interested to know the extent to which the administration took into account the availability of free/low-cost adult education services when they formulated this policy, and whether they were concerned that the lack of such services might seem unfair to those with limited means. Secondly, now that there is evidence that the potential DACA applicants are frustrated by the lack of affordable services, whether this presents an opportunity for immigration rights advocates and adult education rights advocates, working together, to ramp up our advocacy on the need for adult education services.
What Does Governor Romney’s Pledge Not to Cut Education Spending Really Mean?
During last week’s debate, Mitt Romney made what sounded like, to many, a straightforward promise not to cut federal education spending if elected: “I’m not going to cut education funding. I don’t have any plan to cut education funding and—and grants that go to people going to college… I’m not planning on making changes there.”
How seriously you take this pledge seems to depend a lot on which candidate you support. But it’s fair to argue that there’s some wiggle room in Romney’s statement. For one thing, we know that presidents can propose what are ultimately going to be de facto program cuts to some programs but call them something else. Over the last several budgets, for example, the Obama administration has proposed what are essentially cuts to certain federal education programs by proposing to “consolidate” them under broader program titles. While that doesn’t necessarily mean that overall education spending gets cut, it can lead to certain funding streams being reduced under the new consolidated programs, whatever they may be. (Thus the administration was able to say that they proposed an overall increase to education in FY11, even while creating conditions that essentially resulted in the elimination of federal funding for family literacy when it consolidated away the Even Start program.)
There are also programs outside the Department of Education budget, such as the Corporation for National and Community Service (to pick one example) that provide educational programs. This you could eliminate CNCS while still claiming you are technically not cutting education, even though elimination of this program would effectively reduce federal education resources. (By this logic, some would argue that eliminating funding for PBS, as Romney did say he would do, would also effectively be an education cut.)
And while the automatic, across-the-board sequestration cuts that are currently set to occur on January 2nd can’t by any stretch be considered Romney policy, if he is elected and those cuts go into effect, he will in fact be presiding over a significant cut to education spending, and/or be working with Congress on legislation to eliminate sequestration with another plan. His pledge to not cut education spending would be more significant, I think, if he would make it explicit that his sequester replacement plan would leave education spending untouched.
Most importantly, as we’ve seen over the last several years, Congress and the administration often must compromise in order to get a budget passed, and in that compromise the administration may be forced to cut programs it would rather not cut in order to preserve funding for programs it believes are more important. If Romney is elected, we can assume that Republicans will retain control of the House, and possibly gain control of the Senate (where Paul Ryan would have the tiebreaker vote). Doesn’t it seem likely that Congressional Republicans would craft a budget with significant education cuts whether Romney likes it or not? And then what would he do? Would Romney actually pick a fight with his own party over these cuts?
I think it’s safe to assume that the Obama administration did not intend to reduce education spending when it took office in 2009. But that hasn’t prevented federal education spending from declining significantly. Is it reasonable to expect that a Romney administration would make the same effort—and with better success—at fighting off Congressional spending cuts to education than the Obama administration has?
A good followup question to Romney about his debate statement would be: Does your pledge not to cut education spending include a promise to veto any legislation passed by Congress that includes education cuts? I hope this comes up again in a future debate.
P.S. For adult education advocates, it’s also worth thinking about what other areas of the budget Romney might propose going after in order to preserve K-12 and higher education funding. Is adult education part of the education funding Romney is pledging to protect? (Doubtful.) If not, would adult education be even more vulnerable to cuts as Romney struggles to find other areas of discretionary spending to eliminate in order to offset the K-12/higher education spending holds?
Literacy & Policy 