An Update on Federal Education Spending

Earlier this year, President Obama proposed a 7.5 percent increase in discretionary spending for the U.S. Department of Education in his Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 budget. If enacted, the increase would be the largest since FY 2002—right after NCLB was signed into law.

For much of the year, educators wondered how much of that increase would actually happen. Now, as the weather has heated up, so has action around federal education spending. On July 16, a House of Representatives subcommittee began work on the bill that will fund the U.S. Department of Education in FY11. On July 27, 2010 its Senate counterpart will began work on its version of the bill.