Education Budget Gimmick Backfires, Cuts Funding for 2011

Earlier this week, Education Week reported that the stopgap funding bill (continuing resolution) Congress passed for fiscal year 2012 inadvertently cut funding for K-12 programs by $329 million. How did this happen?

It turns out Congress funds four K-12 education programs (Title I grants, IDEA special education grants, Improving Teacher Quality grants, and vocational education grants) annually with a budget gimmick called “advance appropriations.” Normally the gimmick goes off without a hitch, but not this year.

In the 1990s, Congress used spending caps like the ones put in place as part of the debt ceiling agreement earlier this year to clamp down on appropriations bills. Then someone in Congress had an ingenious idea to get around those caps: fund education programs (namely, the Title I grant program) a year in advance so the spending doesn’t count against the current year’s cap. Because the school year starts right before a new federal fiscal year, schools would get the money about the same time regardless.

The gimmick worked like magic. Year after year, Congress put more and more education funding in advance appropriations instead of the regular funding bill. A 2003 attempt to limit advance appropriations was reversed when Congress upped the limits in 2007 and 2008 and began to put funding increases for K-12 programs into advance appropriations.

Although no budget limits (like those used in the 1990s and today’s 2011 Budget Control Act) were in place then, advance appropriations made the current year funding bill appear to spend less. Education funding got a boost while fiscally conservative members of Congress were assured that spending wasn’t increasing too much.

Today, the practice has been taken to such lengths that Congress provides three-quarters of the annual funding for key K-12 programs using advance appropriations.

When Congress passed the fiscal year 2012 continuing resolution last month and temporarily set funding for programs at 1.5% below 2011 levels, lawmakers also indirectly cut all advance appropriations for education programs that were enacted in 2011. That $21.9 billion in advance appropriations that Congress provided in 2011 is technically 2012 funding and therefore subject to the across-the-board cut, thus the $329 million reduction.

Education advocates have asked Congress to address this matter when they pass another CR in the coming weeks. Congress probably will address it and probably should. But this inadvertent funding cut is a teachable moment for Congress: Budget gimmicks meant to hide funding increases can backfire, and school districts pay the price.