Early childhood education reform was a major component of President Barack Obama's platform during the campaign. He promised to work with schools to create more healthful environments for children, promote more early education, and double funding for afterschool programs. He also pledged to invest $10 billion a year in early educational and developmental programs, a promise that we last reviewed in January 2010. We found that while the total new funding increased substantially compared to previous years, it was short of the $10 billion that Obama promised. The Early Learning Challenge Fund was also still awaiting action in the Senate, so we rated the promise Compromise.
Since then, Congress has passed the much-debated health care bill, and President Obama has released his 2011 budget proposal, so we decided to revisit the promise.
First, let's take the Early Learning Challenge Fund, which would have provided competitive grants to states to improve the quality of services for children under five. In his budget request for 2010, Obama asked for $300 million but received zero during the annual appropriations process. The experts we spoke with said that Congress made the decision knowing that the House had already passed a student-aid reform bill that would have provided $1 billion for the program over eight years in September 2009.
By the time the Senate was ready to vote on the proposal, however, things had taken a turn for the worse. The student-aid bill had become attached to the health care legislation, and when the Congressional Budget Office lowered its estimate of how much money the final health care package would save, the Early Learning Challenge Fund was axed.
By the time President Obama signed the final health care legislation in March 2010, the early learning funding was gone, but the legislation did provide $1.5 billion over five years for an evidence-based home visitation program for new and expectant at-risk families.
In July of this year, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education approved a bill appropriating $300 million for the early learning program. That's despite Obama not asking for any funding in his 2011 budget request (because the White House had assumed that the Senate would pass the House bill) and the House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee not including the program in its annual markup. Both the House and the Senate still have to approve the proposal voted out of the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations subcommittee before it becomes law.
Congress is still in the midst of considering Obama's 2011 budget request, so it's hard to tell how the final numbers will play out. Compared to the 2010 fiscal year, Obama asked for an increase of $989 million in funding for the Head Start program and $800 million for the Child Care and Development Block Grants. Proposed funding for IDEA Part C, the program for children with disabilities, is set to remain the same as in fiscal 2010, but the final decision lies with Congress. Obama also asked for a $250 million increase in Special Education Grants to States, which school districts may use to improve educational outcomes for children between 3 and 21 years old with disabilities. Add it up and you get a little over $2.2 billion in proposed new funding for 2011, including the home visitation program in the health care bill. As we pointed out in our last update, the promise doesn't specify that the administration will spend $10 billion in new dollars, but the experts say that's the only way to interpret it, since federal funding for these purposes already exceeds $10 billion annually. But even if we include spending increases from last year, that still only puts Obama at $7 billion, $3 billion short of the promised $10 billion.
It remains unclear whether Congress will end up funding Obama's Early Learning Challenge Grant, and Obama has yet to reach the $10 billion mark, so for now, the rating remains unchanged.
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Mixed record on early intervention educational programs
Our Sources
New America Foundation, Reconciliation Bill Sets Sail Without Early Learning Challenge Grants, by Lisa Guernsey, March 19, 2010
New America Foundation, House Clears the Way for Early Learning Challenge Fund, by Lisa Guernsey, Sept. 17, 2009
National Institute for Early Education Research, Early Learning Challenge Fund Dropped from Health Care Reform but Home Visitation Survives, May/June 2010.
New America Foundation, A Look At Proposed Federal FY 2011 Funding for Early Education: Part 2, by Laura Bornfreund, July 29, 2010
New America Foundation, A Look at Proposed Federal FY 2011 Funding for Early Education, by Laura Bornfreund, July 19, 2010
U.S. Department of Education, Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Summary and Background Information, accessed Sept. 10, 2010
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, FY 2011 Budget Request, accessed Sept. 10, 2010
E-mail interview, Laura Bornfreund, Early Education Initiative analyst at New America Foundation, Aug. 1, 2010
Phone interview, Cornelia Grumman, Director of The First Five Years Fund, Aug. 3, 2010