federal funding waiver doesn't live up to the hype

 I entirely understand how it is that people might have missed this, but if you do pay attention to school funding, you may have caught U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon touting "returning education to the states" through approval of a waiver for Iowa for combining federal funding, in essence, block granting their funding. As the Department's release says: 

Today, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) approved Iowa’s Returning Education to the States Waiver, empowering state education officials to have more discretion over their federal education dollars. Iowa is the first state to apply for and receive such a waiver, which will allow state leaders to focus federal dollars on work that best improves the achievement of Iowa students.

Iowa’s waiver permits the state education agency to combine four federal funding streams into one. Iowa leaders seek to focus more federal resources on improving student achievement rather than federal compliance. This waiver’s flexibility will reduce compliance costs, allowing nearly $8 million to be redirected from bureaucratic red tape to the classroom over four years. State education leaders will use the redirected funds and the greater flexibility they afford to expand support for evidence-based literacy training, strengthening their teacher pipeline, and narrowing achievement gaps.

If you know anything of how much federal funding flows to states, you may have had that *record scratch* sound in your head when you to the bit about "nearly $8 million" up here. 

Excellent work from Mark Lieberman over at EdWeek gives a more clear eyed assessment on this one: 

 ...in contrast with proposals the state put forward roughly a year ago, the new federal approval touches only 5% of Iowa’s overall allocation of federal education funds, the part that’s set aside for the state education agency. The bulk of federal dollars that flow to school districts each year—$900 million worth—will retain their current structure and spending and reporting requirements.

This announcement could signal an acknowledgment from the department that its legal authority to flatten discrete funding programs and implement unrestricted block grants without congressional approval is limited, said Anne Hyslop, the director of policy development for the nonprofit advocacy group All4Ed, and a former senior policy adviser at the Education Department who helped implement the Every Student Succeeds Act.

It also foreshadows an uphill battle for other states aiming to convert federal education funding to block grants, including Indiana, which submitted a request for that flexibility, along with relief from certain school accountability requirements, in October.

I realize that it isn't going to surprise anyone that the Trump administration is being less than forthcoming on what they're actually doing, but it's always worth calling these out.