U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will testify Tuesday on the administration’s fiscal year 2015 budget request for education before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
The Obama administration continued its commitment to prioritizing education by proposing key investments in education that would create opportunity for every child. President Obama’s FY 2015 budget request for $69 billion in discretionary appropriations for the Education Department represents an increase of 2 percent over the previous year’s funding. The lion’s share of the 2015 request for preschool-12 programs — nearly 90 percent of discretionary spending — goes to formula funds that address the needs of disadvantaged poor and minority students, students with disabilities and English learners.
Opportunity for all also means ensuring all children have rich early learning experiences so they are better prepared to thrive in school. In one of the boldest efforts to expand educational opportunity in the last 50 years, President Obama has committed to a historic new investment in preschool education that supports universal access to high-quality preschool for all 4-year olds from low- and moderate-income families and creates an incentive for states to serve additional middle-class children. The president’s budget request includes $1.3 billion in 2015 and $75 billion over 10 years in mandatory funding, along with $500 million for competitively awarded Preschool Development Grants and other funds.
Along with these proposed investments, the president put forth a new initiative called Race to the Top-Equity and Opportunity (RTT-Opportunity), which would create incentives for states and school districts to drive comprehensive change in how states and districts identify and close opportunity and achievement gaps.