The Senate has not moved spending bills forward

In mid-June, the House approved on a party line vote a package of spending bills that included the fiscal year 2020 Labor HHS Education Appropriations bill, which funds all Department of Education programs including Title II-A. If enacted into law, federal education spending would see a greater than $4 billion increase over last year, including major bumps for Title I, special education and Pell Grants. And Title II-A would receive a $500 million increase, its largest increase in a decade. In response to this vote, Learning Forward issued a statement which said, in part:

"Learning Forward is immensely gratified by the House of Representatives' vote to approve a historic $500 million funding increase for Title II-A of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which supports professional development, mentoring, induction, and retention for America's educators. This money is critical to supporting our nation's teachers, who too often feel undervalued and under-resourced. It is poetic that this vote comes on the heels of yesterday's release by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's report that finds that 89% of U.S. teachers believe that professional learning has a positive impact on their teacher practice and that those who participate in such learning display higher levels of self-efficacy and job satisfaction."

The jubilation about this legislative victory was tempered, though, by the failure of Congress and the White House to achieve a meaningful breakthrough on setting overall spending limits. As a result, the Senate has not moved forward with any of its spending bills and some are suggesting that a year-long continuing resolution (CR) that would fund all programs at last year's levels might be the end result. If that were to occur, Title II-A's increase would disappear and it would only be funded at the current level of $2.055 billion. By the end of July, we will likely know which funding route Congress will take.