Amid Budget Clash, Government Shutdown Looms

Advocates escalate efforts against House budget cuts to key education programs

Education advocates fought last week to stave off deep cuts to key programs in the current year’s federal budget, and nervously eyed a coming clash in Congress over efforts to reach a spending agreement, as the prospect looms of the first government shutdown in more than a decade.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers divided over just how much to scale back government spending, after the GOP-controlled House of Representatives approved a bill Feb. 19 that would cut more than $60 billion out of discretionary spending, including more than $5 billion from the budget currently funding the U.S. Department of Education.

That bill, passed on a nearly party-line vote of 235-189, would make hefty cuts to such high-profile programs as Title I grants to school districts and the School Improvement Grants school turnaround program. The Head Start preschool program, administered by the Department of Health and Human Services, also would...