Stop Sequestration Now

Sequestration

The Congressional budget impasse of recent months has set in motion huge, across-the-board cuts to federal programs. 

Called sequestration, the cuts to the federal education budget could affect millions of students, tens of thousands of educators, and programs in every school and district.

• Sequestration Cuts to Education by State
• What You Need to Know
• What You Can Do
• FAQ's

Find Out More

For more information, read "Sequestration and Education Funding: A Primer" (PDF).

Please share this resource, part of the ASCD Policy Points series, with your colleagues and urge them to take action too.

Tell Congress to stop sequestration.

Sequestration Cuts to Education by State

The state-by-state reports linked below were produced by the White House to detail the effect of sequestration on jobs and the economy across the country and in every industry. 

Click on your state's name to view the numbers and descriptions (PDFs).

The U.S. Department of Education prepared these two reports detailing the state-by-state cuts to Title I and IDEA funding under sequestration:

• State-by-State Title I Impact (Excel)
• State-by-State IDEA Impact (Excel)

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What You Need to Know

• Sequestration will take effect March 2013.
• Unless Congress acts to stop sequestration before March, education spending will be cut by 5.3 percent (Congressional Budget Office, February 2013), or about $2.8 billion, affecting every federal education program.

Most federal education programs will suffer cuts to their 2013–14 school budgets, including

Impact Aid will face an approximately $68 million cut during the 2012–13 school year.

Use the sequestration calculator at the top of this page to see the cuts for your state, district, or school.

• The Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee has released a report detailing the state-by-state consequences of the cuts on education, health, and workforce training programs, including numbers of jobs lost and students affected: Under Threat—Sequestration's Impact on Nondefense Jobs and Services (PDF).
• Some programs are mostly exempt from sequestration, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
• The defense industry has pulled out its big guns to lobby Congress to carve defense spending out of the sequestration equation, leaving the rest of the programs to face potentially greater cuts. In fact, one option to replace sequestration proposed by lawmakers would spare defense programs at the expense of deeper cuts to nondefense programs, including education.
• Other interest groups are also on Capitol Hill telling Congress not to cut their programs (health, transportation, agriculture, etc.).

Educators need to speak up and speak out. The federal budget ought not to be balanced on the backs of our children. Lawmakers need to know that educators are aware of the looming cuts and expect them to fix this issue immediately.

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What You Can Do

• Use the sequestration calculator on this page to learn how much your state, district, or school will lose due to the cuts.
• Tell your elected officials that sequestration must be stopped by using our action alert system!
• Share this information with your educator colleagues and friends. Congressional leaders need to hear from across the country about the devastating effect that sequestration will have on the children they represent.

Click here to tell Congress to stop sequestration.

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Sequestration FAQs

1. What is sequestration?

A: Sequestration is a fiscal policy procedure adopted by Congress to deal with the federal budget deficit. Simply put, sequestration is the cancellation of previously approved spending— an automatic form of spending cuts. As modified by the fiscal cliff deal passed by Congress January 1, sequestration will take effect March 1, 2013 but impose cuts over a period of nine years, 2013–2021.

Some federal programs are called “mandatory” and are mostly spared from sequestration. However, the rest of the government, the so-called “discretionary” programs, are subject to significant cuts starting in 2013 that will be divided between nondefense spending ($700 billion) and defense spending ($500 billion).

2. Why is sequestration happening now?

A: A law passed by Congress and signed by the president in August 2011 created a Congressional supercommittee to deal with the federal budget deficit and pass a package of spending cuts by Thanksgiving.

As an incentive for Democrats and Republicans to reach agreement, the law contains the threat of the across-the-board cuts (sequestration) if the deadline arrived and the deal wasn’t struck. Congress failed to reach agreement, thus triggering sequestration in January 2013.

3. Can sequestration be stopped?

A: Yes. Although sequestration is the law right now, Congress can pass another law that would repeal it. However, additional spending cuts would most likely be required to replace the automatic cuts. Last year, the House and Senate proposed legislation that would have replaced the sequester, but would also have imposed dramatically deeper cuts to education and all other nondefense discretionary programs.

For example, a House-passed Republican bill would have prevented any cuts to defense by increasing the cuts to domestic programs, including education, by $19 billion. The president’s FY13 budget proposal also would have eliminated the need for sequestration by reducing government spending in most areas (although it proposed a slight increase in education spending).

4. What can I do?

A: Send messages to your senators and representative urging them to repeal sequestration. First, use the Sequestration Effect Calculator on the sequestration page to determine the dollar amount of cuts that your school budget or programs will face if sequestration is not repealed.

Then, go to the Action Center and use the figure generated by the calculator to customize the e-mail message to your lawmakers.

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