Alabama Education Association April 16, 2010

HEADLINE: Proposed new federal funding methods could hurt Alabama

Now that the education budget has passed the Alabama Legislature and is likely to be signed into law by the governor, it is time to pay attention to another part of our school funding - federal funds. Today, our schools depend to a great extent upon action by the United States Congress to pick up a significant part of the budget for instructional money for most of our school systems.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and many other such programs flow federal dollars directly into classroom personnel and programs. These employees work side by side with those employed with local and state funds and are often indistinguishable from one another. Yet, should federal funding cease it would have an immediate and dramatic effect on our day to day school operations, cutting a large percentage of personnel in many of our local schools.

Changes proposed in funding mechanism

The Obama Administration is contemplating some dramatic changes that can negatively impact many Alabama schools. President Lyndon Johnson saw the need to provide more help to low achieving, low-income students. His ESEA program provided millions of new dollars to help students in the regular school setting.

George W. Bush added a new twist when he proclaimed the start of a program called No Child Left Behind, ushering in a new era of accountability, and relying on the use of standardized testing to grade schools.

The Obama Administration has recently issued its blueprint for major changes in the way our schools are to receive federal funds. Instead of broad grants of money based on the number of students falling into low income, low achievement categories, most of the funding would be based upon the writing and awarding of competitive grants. This places most school districts in our state at a competitive disadvantage because they cannot afford the cost of employing a person with such grant writing skills.

Action needed now to save education jobs

Your help is needed now to save educator jobs and to prevent students from losing good teachers. You can do some cyber-lobbying through contacting Senators Shelby and Sessions and our seven members of the United States House of Representatives by sending them e-mails urging them to resist changes in federal funding that will put most of our schools in danger of losing funds that are vital to their current operations.

Ask our delegation to Washington to reauthorize ESEA without major changes in the manner of allocation and to pass the federal jobs legislation to preserve existing teaching positions and to create new jobs as quickly as possible.

Tell them what an education jobs program could do for our schools and our students. Explain how many teachers hired from local funds have been lost since our schools went into proration.

Tell the story of how your school and your classroom has been affected by state and local budget cuts.

Your job could be at stake

Tell our delegation your thoughts about the new guidelines for federal funds which:
- Emphasizes standardized testing and fails to allow multiple measures of student learning.
- Ties teacher evaluation to student test scores;
- Creates turnaround models for failing schools that are federally-mandated and non-research based (see earlier ASJ editorial for information about the four models);
- Includes funding that favors some school districts over others (grant-based rather than needs based);
- Makes no mention of parental obligations or responsibilities with no family engagement expected or required; and
- Has insufficient efforts to deal with inequities or gaps in opportunity, tools, and resources.

During this summer and early fall, the United States Senate and House of Representatives will be re-authorizing most legislation that provides federal funding for programs that now pump millions of dollars into local school budgets. If our Congressional delegation hears from enough members, it can have a major impact on their thinking as these issues come before them.

This is a project on which the entire education family can come together. AEA is currently working with the Alabama Association of School Boards (AASB), the School Superintendents of Alabama (AASA) and the principals association Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools (CLAS), along with the Alabama Legislature to speak out on these major changes in federal funding. Won't you join with us? Contact our Washington delegation, today.