Last week President Obama signed into law a Continuing Resolution (CR) agreement. The agreement extends funding for education programs at Fiscal Year 13 levels – minus $85 billion in automatic, across-the-board cuts as a result of sequestration – through September 30 2013.

The Resolution requires all agencies to submit an operating plan to Congress showing the amounts for programs, projects, and activities by the end of April.

President Obama is expected to release his FY14 budget proposal on April 10.

Also last week the U.S. Department of Education released a series of new tools to help families make better informed decisions about their choice for higher education as well as understand their loan debt. The tools include:

• Comparisons  on critical information, including college costs, average student loan debt and graduation rates; and
• Two new features on StudentLoans.gov: (1) A complete counseling website and (2) a repayment estimator.