Education Department reverses rural school funding cuts

"Facing a bipartisan backlash led by Republican lawmakers, the Trump administration is backing off a bookkeeping change that would have drastically cut federal funds for rural schools — at least for a year," Erica L. Green reports for The New York Times.

Hundreds of school districts received significantly less federal funding this year after the Education Department changed how it distributed funds for a program that helps schools with many impoverished students. During a program review of the Rural and Low-Income School Program, the department found that schools had been receiving funding based on the number of students who qualify for free or discounted meals instead of based on census-based poverty data, as the law requires, Green reports.

A Republican-led bipartisan coalition of lawmakers protested the change, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos "determined that she had the authority to allow the use of alternative data for an additional year," Green reports. "The department has also proposed language for Congress to permanently change the data source in the law."