Apologies for missing the call today and for being only able to send a quick and dirty update on the President’s proposed FY 2021 budget to this list. Juggling a bunch of other stuff this week. In a nutshell, the Administration is requesting a 5% cut across all federal agencies except for the Department of Defense (naturally). That would lower NDD funding to $37 billion below the cap that Congress enacted for FY 2021.  Some reports indicate a cut to Department of Education programs of $5.6 billion; Sara Abernathy of CEF calculates it as a $5.7 billion overall, for complicated reasons I won’t bore you with, although she is right. :) Most of the spending cuts proposed are ones that the Congress has rejected in the past.   It mostly repeats proposals that they made last year. Two notable new things: It consolidates 29 mostly ESSA programs into a new block grant and slashes the total funding by 20% ($4.8 billion) below the FY 2020 enacted levels. CEF’s table (which I’ve attached) highlights which programs were consolidated. It provides a $763 million increase for Career and Technical Education (CTE). As Michele noted yesterday, it leaves Title II adult education funding at FY 2020 levels. In addition, it basically says nothing about any specific plans for adult ed, it just essentially repeats the language in the WIOA statute. In past years — particularly in the Obama years, but in the Trump years also, they will come up with some language about how they would like to target the National Leadership money — often accompanied by an increase to the National Leadership funding line item. All of which ends up being a pointless exercise in that Congress has never exhibited any interest in increasing that line item. This year they didn’t even bother. I liked ACTE’s statement on the Perkins CTE increase: "[T]he nation’s education and workforce system functions best when its varied programs and resources are leveraged together. We are concerned to see significant cuts overall to the Departments of Education and Labor in the President’s budget proposal. Substantially cutting or eliminating other programs outside of Perkins impacts schools’ and postsecondary institutions’ abilities to deliver high-quality CTE to students. For instance, programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and Higher Education Act all help support CTE programs, teachers and students through activities such as student financial aid, teacher professional development, and both academic and employability-related supports. We strongly encourage Congress to reject these harmful proposals, while embracing the historic investment that the President has rightly made in Perkins.”  https://ctepolicywatch.acteonline.org As noted above, I’ve attached CEF’s funding table that shows the level of discretionary funding for the education-related programs they track. There were a few other increase: IDEA state grants, Minority science and engineering, Student Aid Administration. They propose cutting IES by $58 million (9.3%) but provides a $3 million increase for statistics and a $28 million increase for assessment activities. Here is the key document for this group: Department of Education CAREER, TECHNICAL, AND ADULT EDUCATION  Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Request  https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget21/justifications/n-ctae.pdf Jeff Jeff Carter Cell: (202) 374-4387 | @jeffcrtr Senior Policy Advisor National Coalition for Literacy http://www.national-coalition-literacy.org/ mailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org Former President, Committee for Education Funding Executive Director Physicians for Social Responsibility 1111 14th St, NW, Suite 700 Washington, DC 20005 http://www.psr.org/ | mailto:jcarter@psr.org