President Releases His FY 2014 Budget Today

/ The Old Crank

The President releases his budget today, at 10am. Those of you who are familiar with the federal budget and appropriations process know that the President is extremely late in submitting a budget this year. He is supposed to release it the first Monday in February.

But as those of you who follow budget and appropriations also know, nothing about the process has worked the way its supposed to for several years now.

The U.S. Department of Education will hold a briefing on the President’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget Request Wednesday, April 10, starting at 1:30pm in the Department Auditorium (400 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Washington, DC, 20202). If you are not in D.C., they will be live streaming the briefing. Just go to http://edstream.ed.gov/webcast/Viewer/?peid=b3c44e2a90df4d978e44a729b10ef0541d.

For adult education advocates, don’t expect anyone to say much on adult education specifically, but the President will propose a number of initiatives related to job training, including revisiting the structure of the federal job training system, including the creation of a “Universal Displaced Worker program;” a renewed call for a Workforce Innovation Fund to test new State and regional ideas on training and employment services; and an  $8 billion for a Community College to Career Fund to support State and community college partnerships with businesses and other stakeholders.

Thanks

/ The Old Crank

Last Friday I had the pleasure of co-presenting—along with Art Ellison, the state director of adult education in New Hampshire—a workshop on federal adult education policy for the Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Education‘s annual NETWORK conference. Thanks to everyone who participated, and for the great questions. Sorry I didn’t have more encouraging news!

I will post my presentation here on this site later this week.

It’s Possible America Doesn’t Actually Know What It Wants

/ The Old Crank

By now I’ve seen a dozen or more polls like this one that show popular support for federal education spending exceeding support for other popular and well-known federal programs, including Social Security and Medicare. Often, as in this case, it’s number one, ahead of everything else.

But I wonder if the poll questions lead to results that overstate the actual popular support for federal education programs.

For example, how often are those who are polled told that federal education spending typically accounts for only about 10% of education funding in their school district, (and possibly less). Would they feel as strongly about protecting this funding knowing that it represents a relatively small amount of their school’s overall budget?

If they were given the names/purposes of specific federal education programs, would those poll as well, especially if people had no direct experience with those programs?

And obviously, it would be interesting to see the responses to these questions broken out by age group. I probably felt a lot less strongly about Medicare than I did about education when I was in my twenties. (In fact, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have told you what Medicare was when I was in my twenties.)

Also discouraging: this same Pew Research Center poll that shows broad support for education also has “aid to needy” coming in dead last, by a pretty significant margin. Low-income children receive 70% of federal education money.

In other words, I wonder whether the positive poll numbers in support of education generally might mislead advocates into thinking there is greater support for specific federal education programs than there actually is—particularly those programs that low-income families depend on. (Of course, there may be some polling out there that I haven’t seen that does attempt to drill down a bit more on this issue.)

It Doesn’t Matter What the Huffington Post Thinks

/ The Old Crank

That’s the first thing I thought when I read this long list of sequestration effects. Yes, they’re terrible, and most are just really nonsensical from a public policy point of view. (And if you don’t have time for the whole list, just read this one.)

But what’s more significant, I think, is this: Congress has been on a two-week recess. Have they heard about any of these effects when they were back home? It’s oversimplifying to suggest that that an outcry back home would have been enough to pressure Congress into immediately doing something about this upon their return—but if they’re not hearing about the negative effects from constituents back home, that would seem to significantly diminish any chance that it will be repealed or replaced anytime soon.