Literacy Wins, History Loses in Federal Budget

Foreign-language, civics, economics aid also scrapped

The budget compromise recently hammered out in Washington breathes new life into a major literacy initiative at the U.S. Department of Education, but wipes out federal aid for some other department programs targeting aspects of the curriculum, including instruction in American history and foreign languages.

Congress restored the moribund Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy program, which seeks to promote literacy from birth to the end of high school, as part of an omnibus spending bill for fiscal 2012 that President Barack Obama signed into law late last month. The literacy program, which only recently got off the ground, received no federal aid last fiscal year, but in a quirk of the budget process, money from the year before that is fueling $180 million in grants was awarded to six states in September.

"My reaction is one of gratitude and surprise," said Phillip Lovell, the vice president of federal advocacy for the Washington-based Alliance for Excellent Education, about the decision to keep Striving Readers going. "Like anything else in life, once something is gone, it's hard to get it back."

He added: "This program is just getting under way, so to cut it before it has a chance to demonstrate results didn't make a whole lot of sense."

But the bipartisan budget deal left a number of other education programs without a dime, including the Teaching American History grants program, which has provided more than $1 billion to fuel professional development for K-12 history teachers since its inception in fiscal 2001. Also eliminated was the $27 million Foreign Language Assistance program, first established two decades ago.

"We are extremely disheartened that in the final budget deal, Congress zeroed out the funding for [foreign languages]," said Martha G. Abbott, the executive director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, based in Alexandria, Va. "Now, there is no funding for foreign language K-12 programs from the U.S. Department of Education in an era when our nation's language capacity is so greatly in need of strengthening."

Ms. Abbott noted that some grant recipients are in the middle of multiyear commitments that will be cut short.

District Competitions

The fate of the federal Striving Readers program, first funded in fiscal 2010, had been in question after its budget was zeroed out for fiscal 2011.

In its first phase, the program provided about $10 million in grants to 46 states to devise statewide literacy plans. Following that, about three dozen states competed for larger grants to help bring those ideas to life in local communities.

In September, the Education Department awarded $180 million in grants to Georgia, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Texas to support local work consistent with the states' literacy plans. Each of those states is expected to receive continued federal funding for an additional four years.

In Georgia, which won a $27 million Striving Readers grant for its ...

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