Dive Brief:

• Besides sending Donald Trump to the White House, last week’s election created single-party rule in Iowa’s state government as Republicans took over the Senate, making education advocates wonder what will happen to school funding, especially.
• The Gazette reports school funding decisions may be made on time without the need to compromise across parties, though House Republicans recommended a 2% increase last year, compared to Senate Democrats’ 4%.
• Republicans could strip power from state teacher unions, and schools are waiting to see whether Educational Savings Accounts are brought up now that the Senate is no longer a Democrat-controlled roadblock to the school choice measure, which would allow families to direct their children’s per-pupil funding to the school of their choice, including a private or home school.

Dive Insight:

The GOP now controls the state legislature and the governorship in half of the states. For Democrats, that is true in only five states. While Republican governors have put forward aggressive cuts to school funding measures in several states in recent years, including Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, education advocates have long appealed to the courts for relief — regardless of whether state funding formulas and amounts have been created by Democrats or Republicans. According to the National Access Network, lawsuits have been filed in 45 out of 50 states over school funding methods.

Whether this election created a shift in power in state governments or not, the Every Student Succeeds Act has brought far greater responsibility onto elected and appointed officials. Every state is in the process of creating a plan to implement ESSA that the U.S. Department of Education will review this summer. Education leaders who consider civic engagement to be part of their job description should not miss their opportunities to comment on proposed state plans in the coming months.