This week, several members of the Conservative Leaders for
Education coalition officially submitted comments on
the proposed “supplement not supplant” rules
proposed by the U.S. Department of Education under the Every
Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). In the letter the coalition of
state lawmakers and education education officials called for
the Department to rewrite their proposed language noting that
the rules are “overly prescriptive and will end up
complicating and inhibiting the efforts of educators and
policymakers on the ground to meet the real challenges of
students and teachers.”
Click here for the full letter
or see below.
November 7, 2016
James Butler
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue SW., Room 3W246, Washington, DC 20202.
Docket ID: ED-2016-OESE-0056
Dear Mr. Butler,
Conservative Leaders for Education (CL4E) is a new initiative
chaired by former Education Secretary William Bennett and
comprised of state policy-makers and legislators with an acute
interest in and purview over state education policy.
Specifically, we have articulated four fundamental principles
that we believe should underpin education policy: Local
Control, Choice, Accountability, and Quality Content. To
learn more about these principles and our efforts visit our
website at
www.ConservativeLeaders4Ed.org
We write today to provide a state policy perspective on the
U.S. Department of Education’s (DoE) proposed rules for
implementation of the “supplement, not supplant” requirement
in the expenditure of title I, part A federal funds.
We want to first emphasize that as a group of state
policy-makers we do not take a position on how any given state
or LEA should expend, and account for the expenditure
of these funds, in their overall compliance with the
long-standing supplement, not supplant requirement. The Every
Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) specifically, and wisely, left
those specific policy and budgeting decisions at the state and
local levels.
We do write in support of maintaining state and local
decision-making in how best to both comply with the federal
supplement, not supplant requirement AND most
effectively innovate to help the schools and students these
federal funds are directed to.
In reviewing this NPRM we were first struck — and
frankly somewhat shocked — by the following sentence in
DoE’s own summary of the NPRM (at Page 61153, emphasis added):
“The proposed regulation would require that an LEA distribute
almost all state and local funds they receive through one
of the three methodologies.”[1]
It is hard to overstate the sweeping nature of not only this
statement, but the very concept that the distribution of
“almost all state and local funds” by every school district
across this huge and diverse nation is best accomplished by 1
of 3 systems designed or driven by Washington, D.C. As state
policy-makers we recognize the incredible diversity of
circumstances and challenges LEA’s face just within our own
state’s borders. Even at the state level we are very cautious
to presume that an approach that might work for some LEAs is
also the correct approach for all of them in the state.
While some may respond that there does exist the fourth
“special rule” that an LEA might consider developing on its
own, compliance with that “special rule” process is extremely
cumbersome, and further still requires an LEA to complete its
budget calculations in a manner that simply disregards unique
circumstances at individual schools within an LEA, such as
differences in staff experience levels.
This kind of federal micro-management is exactly what the ESSA
intended to shift away from.
As state education policy-makers, we have no higher priority
than attempting to raise the academic performance of
challenged students and struggling schools. Title I funds can
be an important part of developing a comprehensive strategy in
each state and LEA towards that crucial goal. There is simply
no reason to hamstring that state and local policy development
and innovation by forcing it to fit within one of a handful of
federally approved approaches. The longstanding supplement,
not supplant requirement can be met without putting these kind
of new federal barriers in place.
As is too often the case, what may be well-meaning but overly
prescriptive federal regulations can actually end up
complicating and inhibiting the efforts of those at the ground
level in their efforts to meet the very real challenges these
students and schools face on a daily basis.
We note that the Council of Chief State School Officers
submitted draft regulations demonstrating that compliance with
the supplement, not supplant requirement does not require the
kind of federal micro-management represented by the current
NPRM.
We encourage DoE to return to the drawing board and start this
process anew with a focus not on creating a couple of approved
federal forms and formulas for thousands of LEAs and all the
states to then figure out how to conform to, but instead a
focus on how the federal program rules can actually help and
encourage states and LEAs to innovate in finding better ways
to serve these students and schools with the federal funds
that have been specifically allocated for that purpose.
Sincerely,
Representative Paul Boyer (AZ)
Chair, House Education Committee
Senator Owen Hill (CO)
Chair, Senate Education Committee
Mary Scott Hunter (AL)
Representative, Alabama Board of Education
Senator Peggy Lehner (OH)
Chair, Senate Education Committee
Senator Luther Olsen (WI)
Chair, Senate Education Committee
Representative Amanda Price (MI)
Chair, House Education Committee
Senator Howard A. Stephenson (UT)
Chair, Senate Education Committee
Senator Mike Wilson (KY)
Chair, Senate Education Committee
(All signatories are founding members of Conservative
Leaders for Education)
[1] The three methodologies DoE
is referring to are: 1. A per-pupil weighted formula; 2. A
resource allocation formula, (as many LEAs and the CCSSO have
detailed in submitted comments, neither of these first two
methodologies comport with actual budget practices or solid
educational decision-making in most LEAs) or; 3. A new state
developed funds-based formula, but the proposed requirements
for development of such a new statewide budgeting formula are
exceeding complex and cumbersome.
