A Crystal Ball That Could Turn Bleak - Brief Article

School Administrator, March, 1996 by Nick Penning

If you or I were to pull out a crystal ball, what might it tell us about the future of education at the federal level?

If the past few months are any guide, we would see the U.S. House of Representatives cozying up to the concept of publicly funded vouchers for students who wish to attend private schools. The House overwhelmingly embraced the concept when it passed an education amendment to the District of Columbia appropriations bill for the 1996 fiscal year.

Thanks to the continued opposition to the voucher provision by Sen. James Jeffords, R-Vt., chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on District of Columbia Appropriations, the funding bill was held up for several months. The only problem is Jeffords can't by himself continue to hold off the wave of congressional support for vouchers. He is clearly viewed by his GOP colleagues as the most liberal Senate Republican.

With the announced 1997 retirement of Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., chair of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, Jeffords is in line to become the panel's new chair, based on seniority. However, a behind-the-scenes effort is trying to deny that chairmanship to Jeffords because he doesn't act enough like a Republican. More conservative members of the Senate may hold the possible loss of the chairmanship over his head to force Jeffords to toe the party line during the remaining months of Kassebaum's term.

Already Jeffords has made slight moves from his typical positions when he approved a conference report that will allow some states to terminate the entitlement nature of the National School Lunch Program and turn it into a block grant. He is a strong defender of the school lunch program, but it would appear he made the right choice in holding off vouchers while allowing some states to experiment with the lunch block grant.

Funding Fate

Also on the horizon, barring some miraculous change of face, are, at the very best, frozen levels of federal spending on education for the next seven years. No increases, just freezes.

The budget for fiscal year 1996, which was the subject of so much contention between Congress and the White House, in the end focused much more attention on Medicare and Medicaid than on elementary and secondary education. However, education, because of AASA members' congressional contacts and those of colleagues in the field, became too costly politically to cut. Cutbacks certainly were in the cards when the budget process began.

In the end, thanks to the efforts of AASA members, education became a hands-off budget item. Still, that crystal ball could bring us bad news if we slip off the political radar screen just a little. What was in store before education became untouchable was seven bleak years of consistently declining budget totals for elementary and secondary education.

However, K-12 funding remains in the same bill as the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Plan, which was gutted by the House at the same time it snatched $1 billion from the Title I program. If you asked the average Hill-watcher which program was likely to be restored, they would say energy assistance because some poor folks freeze or go without food if the program fades away.

In the end, ways can be found to fund both programs if the political pressure is strong enough in both budget areas to make them both untouchable. That's why one never should take anything for granted and never assume the best or the worst.

Just keep applying solid, steady pressure on the importance of federal education efforts and get parents, teachers, and community leaders to do the same. We can get the crystal ball to turn out our way if we never yield to the naysayers.