By Washington Partners and Jackie Taylor

FY2012 Appropriations

On May 20, the House reached its deadline to submit its programmatic funding priorities to Chairman Rehberg (R-MT), as reported in NCL’s May 22 Update. This was a quick turnaround for signatures, and advocates did well in calling attention to this opportunity to their House Members. Final Copy of Roe-Hinojosa Letter

Several of you received commitments from your House Member to sign on, but given the time constraints…

By Washington Partners and Jackie Taylor

ESEA Reauthorization

With the House of Representatives in recess, Capitol Hill was relatively quiet last week. Before leaving town for a district work period, House Education and the Workforce Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education Subcommittee Chair Duncan Hunter (R-CA) introduced the first installment for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which would make good on one of the first Republican promises regarding reform of this law—making it smaller and less costly. The bill repeals the authorizations…

By Jackie Taylor and Ellen Fern

FY2011 Appropriations

Congressional leaders agreed late Friday to a compromise that will keep the federal government funded for the remainder of the fiscal year—averting a government shutdown less than an hour before it was set to start. They also passed a short-term resolution that would fund the federal government through Friday, April 15.

By passing  a new, one-week extension, both chambers were given the time to work out the legislative language for a final agreement to cut an…

FY2011 Appropriations Update—Is it Over Yet?

The 6th short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) will expire on April 8th.  Early reports indicated that talks between the House and Senate were not going well and that a government shutdown was more likely. However, today’s new development reveals a tentative agreement on a package that cuts an additional $23 billion compared to current funding, $33 billion compared to FY2010, or a total of $73 billion compared to President Obama’s FY2011 budget proposal.

Speaker Boehner had directed the Appropriations staff to…

Even Start’s funding was eliminated as part of the CR that ended last Friday, March 18, 2011. Even Start has often been widely misunderstood and inaccurately reported as ineffective. Below is a letter from Barbara Van Horn, Reading Co-Director of the  Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy and Board Member with the National Coalition for Literacy, who sets the facts straight about Even Start Family Literacy.

Action Request: To add Even Start back to the full year FY2011 Continuing Resolution, a congressional champion must advocate and negotiate for it as part of the FY2011 long-term CR negotiations. http://blog.ncladvocacy.org/?p=2816 By Jackie Taylor and Washington Partners

• Save Even Start
• Congressional Visit Campaign

If the 2-week stop-gap continuing resolution (CR) is passed without changes to Even Start, then Even Start will be eliminated. In addition to calling your legislators to save Even Start, it is critical that we get all Members of Congress to visit adult education and family literacy programs while they are back home. Congress has scheduled Constituent Work Weeks each month for legislators to travel back…

By Jackie Taylor

President’s Budget Proposal

On Monday, February 14, the President released his budget proposal for fiscal year 2012. “Within a constrained fiscal environment and a five-year freeze on discretionary spending, the budget proposes a $7.5 billion, 10.7% increase in overall discretionary spending for programs in the Department of Education ($2 billion (+4.3 percent) excluding Pell grants),” according to the Committee on Education Funding. While there are also many program reductions and eliminations in the budget, the Adult Education State Grants are funded at…

The House and Senate are finalizing a short term continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government through March 4, 2011. A more conservative 112^th Congress will make the funding decisions to finish out the FY11 program year. Many of these Members were elected on promises of slashing spending. This leaves adult education and family literacy funding in a vulnerable and uncertain state. In particular, Even Start (ES) historically has been targeted, among other small education programs, for cuts.

You can take the following steps now to elevate the…

By Jackie Taylor

For those of us who work in adult education and literacy, it’s no surprise that many of our programs have waiting lists of adults who want to improve their basic skills or learn English. In a recent Washington Post article, community colleges now also face similar demands: Adults want new skills but…

Many irons in the fire, but will Congress get it all done before November? Updates this month include appropriations, WIA, ESEA, and TANF reauthorization, immigration reform, House resolution for dedicating Adult Education and Family Literacy Week 2010, advocacy for Even Start and for including adult education in the National Education Technology Plan.

Appropriations:

Despite the fact that adult education serves approximately two and a half million of the ninety-three million adults in need each year, adult education has been nearly flat funded for almost a decade,

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