This report argues that advance appropriations serve no functional purpose for schools, but they create a loss of transparency, comparability, and simplicity in federal education budgeting. It allocates spending before future budgets have been established. The approach was originally used to skirt spending limits and budget procedures in place from 1991 to 2002. These spending limits and procedures have expired, and Congress continues to advance appropriate education funding. This report provides a full discussion of why advance appropriations came to be, how they are used today, and what steps Congress can take to eliminate them. When Congress began providing advance appropriations, it bought itself a way around annual budget spending caps. The price for this gain is now being paid through the complex, multiple year appropriations process that exists for a subset of education programs--a process that clouds the debate about federal education funding. The report concludes by saying that advance appropriations provide no practical benefit to schools over regular appropriations, and since spending caps are no longer in place, the practice should therefore be abolished. (Contains 5 figures and 27 endnotes.)