Senate Panel Votes to Freeze Most K-12 Funding

Select programs spared, including literacy efforts, Race to Top competition

Washington

Precollegiate education—including money for disadvantaged children and special education—would see stagnant funding under a measure approved last week by the Senate Appropriations Committee that, nonetheless, aims to reverse some cuts made to K-12 programs in the current fiscal year.

Most programs would see level funding, or be cut, in fiscal year 2012, which begins Oct. 1. Overall, the U.S. Department of Education would get $68.43 billion, a tiny increase from $68.35 billion in fiscal 2011.

But the bill, which was approved Sept. 21 on a party-line vote of 16-14, would give such national nonprofit groups as the National Writing Project and Reading Is Fundamental , which lost federal funds this year, a chance to...