UPDATED

By Alyson Klein and Lauren Camera

President Barack Obama may not have many allies left in the newly GOP-dominated Congress—but he's still planning to ask lawmakers for a sizable increase for the U.S. Department of Education in his fiscal year 2016 budget request.

The request, being formally unveiled Monday, includes big hikes for teacher quality, preschool development grants, civil rights enforcement, education technology, plus a new competitive-grant program aimed at helping districts make better use of their federal and local K-12 dollars.

The administration also is seeking big spending bumps for programs that have proven unpopular with Republicans in Congress, such as the School Improvement Grant program.

Overall, the president wants a total of $70.7 billion in discretionary spending for the U.S. Department of Education, an increase of $3.6 billion, or a 5.4 percent hike over 2015 levels. 

"American students are making very real progress," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said on a press call Monday afternoon, pointing to rising graduation rates and plummeting drop-out rates in states around the country. "From 2008 to 2012, we saw more than 1.1 million additional students of color go to college. But we know we're nowhere near where we need to be. We can't slow down."

The increase for education—and other domestic programs—is the administration's first volley with the Republican Congress on an issue that's likely to dominate budget talks all year long: whether and how ...