By Monty Neill, interim executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as FairTest, a non-profit organization that works to end the flaws and misuse of standardized testing.

An Open Letter to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder by David Arsen, Professor of K-12 Educational Administration, Michigan State University.

As a response to AASA’s sequestration survey, which reported a complete lack of meaningful information on the sequester, Congress passed the Budget Transparency Act, which required the President to issue a report of the impact on the sequester for discretionary appropriations. The administration released the OMB Sequester Transparency report. Given the automatic, across-the-board nature of the sequester, the published numbers are not all that surprising. The cuts to non-defense discretionary (which includes education funding) would be 8.2 percent. The cuts to USED will total $4.113 billion. An 8.2% cut would mean a loss of roughly $1 billion to IDEA (funded at $12.6 billion) and a loss of approximately $1.3 billion to Title I (funded at $15.8 billion). The cuts to non-defense mandatory programs would be 7.6 percent.

It should be noted that the six-month continuing resolution that will be in effect when the sequester kicks in (1/2/13) includes a small increase (roughly 0.6%) over FY12 levels. Final FY13 numbers remain unknown. Between the funding gap of the FY13 CR and the yet-to-be-determined final FY13 numbers, the only certainty is that the sequestration percentages issued in this report are most certainly subject to change. More details are available on the AASA Leading Edge blog.

In a primary election that surprised many, Lansing mayor Virg Bernero and Ann Arbor businessman Rick Snyder came out on top in their party primaries on Tuesday.