Education advocates are already bracing for protracted budget battles in the coming year, even as they sort the winners and losers in the bill approved by Congress late last week financing the U.S. Department of Education and the rest of the federal government through September. The hard-fought agreement followed months of wrangling between Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, who aimed to significantly curtail domestic discretionary spending, including for K-12 education, and the Obama administration, which sought to shelter education and other White House priorities. Though a number of smaller, targeted programs ended up being eliminated or cut back over a series of stopgap spending bills, in the end just over $1 billion was sliced from the U.S. Department of Education's discretionary budget in the deal approved April 14. The final tally: $68.5 billion for fiscal year 2011, down from $69.8 billion in the previous fiscal year after adjusting for the Pell Grant program. The agreement preserves current-year funding for key formula-grant programs, including Title I grants to districts, financed at $14.5 billion, and special education state grants, funded at $11.5 billion. And President Barack Obama won surprise, one-year extensions for two marquee education initiatives launched under the economic-stimulus package in 2009: the Race to the Top competitive-grant program, which will be financed at $700 million, and Investing in Innovation, or i3, which will receive $150 million.