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Good morning, and thank you all for coming.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Clinton inspired the nation with his stirring call for a "national crusade" for education.
He said that his number one priority for the next four years is to ensure that all Americans have the best education in the world. And he issued a bold action plan for improvement that included a call for rigorous academic standards and testing.
That was Tuesday. Today, we issue our education budget for 1998. Today, we put our money where our mouth is, and we do it within a balanced budget.
This budget supports the President's goals and gives the American people the tools they need to achieve them. It includes historically high levels of investment in every area of education from pre-school to high school to college.
Let me pause right here to say that money alone is not the answer. No President, no Secretary of Education, no member of Congress can make the final difference in the classroom. That's the responsibility of students, educators, parents, and communities.
But money is part of the equation, particularly at a time when a record number of students are in our nation's classrooms. We must invest in every one of those young lives. This is the Education Age, and America must have an education budget right for the times.
This budget fits the bill. For fiscal year 1998, the President is asking for a total of $29.1 billion in discretionary funds for the Department of Education, an increase of $2.9 billion or 11 percent over the 1997 level.
The President's budget also includes a significant investment of mandatory funds for two new initiatives: The America Reads Challenge and the School Construction initiative. And to complement the education funds in our budget and help Americans pay for college, President Clinton is proposing tax cuts that would save students and families an estimated $36 billion in postsecondary education expenses over five years.
These resources are focused into the following areas of priority: Putting high standards of excellence into action; improving reading for all Americans; providing help to schools and students with special needs; and expanding access to higher education.
For Goals 2000 State Grants, the cornerstone of federal support for schools and communities that want to raise standards, we are requesting $620 million. That is an increase of $129 million over 1997. The increase would permit grants to an estimated 16,000 schools, or one-third more than the 12,000 currently receiving Goals 2000 assistance.
We are also requesting $6 million for the Advanced Placement Fee program. This would -- for the first time -- supplement state efforts to subsidize or, in some cases, pay for the full cost of advanced placement tests for low-income students. This would help raise academic standards by encouraging all students to challenge themselves and take the tough courses. It would also help to fight the tyranny of low expectations, which tragically hold back so many of our students.
The President's budget also includes $400 million for School-to-Work Opportunities, $200 million each from the Departments of Education and Labor. These funds would help all 50 states to fully implement their strategies for preparing students for work and further education.
Our request would also nearly double funding for Educational Technology to $500 million to help meet the President's goal of linking every school to the Information Superhighway by the year 2000. It would especially help to link rural and inner-city schools to a wide world of learning.
The President also is committed to expanding the range of choices available to parents and children within public school systems. Funding for Charter Schools would be doubled to over $100 million to support planning and start-up costs for up to 1,100 new schools created by teachers, parents, and other community members.
The skills of teachers need to be upgraded if they are to teach to high standards. The request includes $360 million for Eisenhower Professional Development State Grants, up $50 million over 1997, to help teachers better deliver instruction in the core subjects.
We also are asking for $21 million for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, an increase of $16 million, that would greatly speed up the development of standards and assessments in over 30 teaching fields. It would also help enable teachers to go through the rigorous evaluation needed to become master teachers.
The goal of the America Reads Challenge is to ensure that all children read well and independently by the end of the third grade. The President's budget includes mandatory funding for two components of the Challenge: America's Reading Corps and Parents as First Teachers.
We are requesting $200 million in 1998 to begin enlisting and training one million volunteer tutors for the Reading Corps, which would provide reading assistance after school, on weekends, and during the summer for children in grades K-3 who need assistance. We plan a total of $1.45 billion for the Reading Corps over the next five years, with the Corporation for National and Community Service contributing an additional $1 billion.
For Parents as First Teachers, our budget includes $60 million in 1998 -- $300 million over five years -- to support programs that assist parents in helping their children to read. These programs put a strong emphasis on helping children before they enter school. And that is so important, because new scientific findings about the brain tell us that it is essential for children to start learning as early in life as possible.
All told, the America Reads Challenge would be funded at $2.75 billion over five years.
The America Reads Challenge supports the Administration?s efforts to strengthen in-school instruction through increases in Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies. For 1998, our request includes $7.5 billion, an increase of $347 million, to raise the academic achievement of poor and disadvantaged students by providing extra help with reading, writing, and math. I am pleased that in the President's first term, we changed Title I to link it to high standards for all students.
The 1998 request also provides significant increases for other reading programs. We are seeking a $6 million increase for Even Start, for a total of $108 million. This would expand local family literacy programs that combine early childhood education for preschool children with instruction in basic literacy skills for their parents.
Our $199 million request for Bilingual Education, up $42 million from the 1997 level, would help ensure that students who speak a language other than English receive the extra help they need to learn to read English. And a $42 million increase for Adult Education State Grants would help adult Americans improve their literacy skills.
The budget would provide $3.2 billion for Special Education Grants to States, an increase of $141 million or 4.5 percent over the 34 percent increase in 1997. The request would help states cover the increased costs of serving additional children with disabilities.
We also recognize the additional costs faced by school districts that serve large numbers of recently arrived immigrant students. To help districts pay these costs, the request includes $150 million for Immigrant Education, a $50 million or 50 percent increase over the 1997 level.
Of course, students cannot be expected to learn in schools where they are threatened by drug abuse and violence. To help fight these threats, we are asking for $620 million for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools programs. This is an increase of $64 million, or nearly 12 percent, over the 1997 level.
The Department also is proposing a new program of After-School Learning Centers. The request includes $50 million to help hundreds of rural and inner-city public schools stay open after school hours and serve as safe, neighborhood learning centers where students can do their homework and obtain tutoring and mentoring services.
In addition, the 1998 budget includes a one-time appropriation of $5 billion to stimulate state and local efforts to repair and modernize school facilities, particularly in urban areas, which often have the greatest need.
The new School Construction initiative would pay for up to half the interest on school construction bonds or similar financing mechanisms, with a target of stimulating at least $20 billion in new construction or renovation projects. Projects could include emergency repairs to ensure health and safety; technology upgrades; building new schools to serve growing enrollments; ensuring access for disabled individuals; and improving energy efficiency.
The budget request would increase the maximum Pell Grant award to an all-time high of $3,000, up from the 1997 level of $2,700. At the same time, we would modify the need-analysis formula for certain independent students to correct an inequity arising out of the Higher Education Amendments of 1992. The need-analysis change would make over 200,000 additional independent students eligible for Pell Grants. These are older students who are generally aged 24 and over. The budget includes $7.6 billion, an increase of $1.7 billion or 29 percent, to pay for these proposals.
We also are proposing changes to the student loan programs that would save student borrowers $2 billion over the next five years while saving taxpayers an additional $3.5 billion over the same period.
Student loan origination fees would be reduced from 4 percent to 2 percent on Stafford subsidized loans--cutting in half the fees charged to the neediest students--and from 4 percent to 3 percent on other loans. The FFEL guaranty agency system would be streamlined to clarify the federal government?s role as sole guarantor of all student loans, and agency fees would be linked to performance in collecting on defaulted loans.
As I mentioned earlier, the President's budget includes two major tax initiatives that together would save more than 12 million postsecondary students and their families an estimated $4 billion in 1998.
The America's Hope Scholarship proposal would help make two years of postsecondary education universally available by providing a tax credit of up to $1,500 each year during the first two years of college. Students would have to maintain at least a "B" average to qualify for the tax credit in their second year of postsecondary study. The Treasury Department estimates that 4.2 million students would benefit from Hope Scholarships in 1998, with total savings to students and families reaching $18.6 billion by 2002.
President Clinton is also offering a Middle-Income Tax Deduction proposal. This would allow students and families to deduct up to $5,000 in postsecondary tuition and fees from their taxable income. The deduction would rise to $10,000 in 1999. More than eight million students would benefit from the tax deduction in 1998, with total savings reaching $17.6 billion by 2002.
Other postsecondary education priorities in the Department of Education?s budget include:
In his second inaugural address, the President spoke of a land in which "education will be every citizen's most prized possession." This budget will help put that "most prized possession" within the reach of every American.
Thank you, and I will be happy to take your questions now.
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