[Return to ED Homepage]
Statement by
Gerald N. Tirozzi
Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education
on
Fiscal Year 1998 Request for
Elementary and Secondary Education Programs
Mr Chairman and Members of the Committee:
I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the fiscal year 1998 budget request for Elementary and Secondary Education programs.
Just a few weeks ago the President declared education his number one priority and stirred the Nation with his "Call to Action for American Education in the 21st Century." In his State of the Union address, President Clinton described 10 principles that constitute the framework for his national crusade for education. The programs administered by the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) directly address most of these principles.
Our request for $11.1 billion, combined with $5.3 billion proposed mandatory spending for School Construction and the new America Reads Challenge, will help the Nation meet the President's goals for making American elementary and secondary education the best in the world.
American children can learn far more, to higher standards, than they are learning today -- children themselves say this is true. When we set high standards for students, hold them to those high standards, and provide them with the support they need, they rise to the challenge. Students must work to meet challenging standards representing what all students must know to succeed in the next century. The President has challenged every community and State to adopt national standards of excellence in reading and math. States can use the funding from OESE programs to develop the strategies, curriculum, and teacher training needed to help all students achieve to those standards.
Goals 2000 is the cornerstone of Federal support for State and local school improvement efforts. This program is helping more than 4,500 communities across the Nation mobilize to improve the future of their children by designing high-quality approaches to improve teaching and learning. Goals 2000 provides flexible resources that support States and communities in their efforts to set high standards, develop assessments of student performance linked to those standards, and prepare teachers to teach to high standards. In 1998, we are asking for $605 million, an increase of 27 percent over the 1997 level to provide Goals 2000 assistance that will reach an estimated 16,000 schools, and $15 million to fund parental assistance centers in 42 States.
Standards-based reform is taking root across the country. In New York, newly approved standards are in place for all the States's 2.7 million public school students. New Jersey has taken a similar direction through core curriculum standards that New Jersey's Governor Whitman says are the route to educational equity for all students in the State. These standards require that, in order to graduate, students understand the elements of calculus, learn a foreign language, and develop an array of other skills. In Kentucky, students in the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades made substantial improvement on the 1993-94 State assessment and continued improvement on the 1994-95 assessment. In Maryland, 40 percent of all students statewide met the State standards in 1995 -- a 25 percent gain over 1993.
Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides the resources that enable local educational agencies and schools, especially in poor areas, to restructure their teaching and instruction around high academic standards. In addition, Title I helps finance special learning arrangements to help poor and low-achieving children master challenging curriculum linked to the standards. With Title I assistance, these children have the benefit of more individualized instruction, smaller classes, extra time to learn after school and during the summer, computer reinforcement, and preschool programs.
Even though school districts only began implementing the changes in the reauthorized Title I program in September 1995, we are beginning to see promising signs that the program will, over time, help schools eliminate the learning gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children. For example, a few State efforts that predate Title I's shift to standards-based reforms are starting to show significant improvement in the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children. Since 1993, in Kentucky, the overall rate of progress in Title I schools has out-paced that of non-Title I schools. And in Kansas, students in Title I schools are making gains comparable to, and sometimes greater than, students in other schools.
We are requesting $8.1 billion for all Title I programs in 1998, a $379 million or 5 percent increase over fiscal year 1997. The 1998 request would allow Title I to reach more than half the Nation's schools and more than 10 million students, including needy populations of migrant children and youth institutionalized in State neglected and delinquent facilities.
To help meet the needs of highly mobile migrant children and youth, this request includes $319.5 million for the Migrant Education program. This program provides special instruction, health care, and other services to about 610,000 migratory children in schools and at other locations near migrant camps, and also helps States coordinate efforts to reach this especially disadvantaged, hard-to-serve population.
Our Indian Education program helps ensure that Native American and Alaska Native students will meet high standards. In 1990, Indians were more than twice as likely as the overall population to live below the poverty level, and only 66 percent of American Indians 25 years old and over were high school graduates. While about 9 percent of all Indian students are enrolled in schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, more than 91 percent are enrolled in public schools which do not receive BIA funds. These public school students are the primary focus of the Department's Indian Education program. Our request of $62.6 million for Indian Education includes $59.7 million, a 2.9 percent increase over last year, for Grants to Local Educational Agencies to ensure that Indian students in public schools benefit from educational reforms underway in the States.
Any lingering doubts about the need for the kind of support provided by Goals 2000 and Title I were laid to rest by the recently announced results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS. This study showed that differences in academic performance are linked primarily to what is taught and how it is taught. TIMSS showed that higher-level academic content -- taught by teachers with a deep understanding of that content and how to teach it -- leads to improved student performance. TIMSS highlighted the importance of setting tough standards in mathematics, such as those proposed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and of making sure teachers are prepared to teach to those standards.
Only intensive, ongoing professional development will ensure that educators have the knowledge and skills necessary to teach children to standards of excellence. To help States and school districts provide this kind of professional development, we are requesting $360 million for the Eisenhower Professional Development program, an increase of $50 million or 16 percent, to support high-quality teaching in the core academic subjects, with a continued emphasis on mathematics and science. With nearly 14,000 school districts participating and almost 350,000 teachers benefitting, the Eisenhower program is, in many cases, the only source of professional development funds for school districts.
The President has challenged every State to let parents choose the right public school for their children, and we are asking Congress to nearly double funding for Charter Schools to $100 million in 1998. Charter schools are created by teachers, parents, and other community members and are exempt from many regulations in exchange for greater accountability for student achievement. Charter schools must meet high standards in order to stay open. Currently, 25 States and the District of Columbia have charter school legislation and more than 400 schools are in operation. With funding at the requested level, about 1,100 charter schools would receive start-up and initial implementation support -- the main obstacles that charter school developers say they face in creating these schools. The Administration's goal is to stimulate the creation of 3,000 charter schools by the end of this century, giving parents greater choice among public schools and stimulating the competition and innovation that will improve all public schools.
To help deal with critical facilities problems and overcrowding, we are proposing a School Construction Initiative that would provide a one-time, $5 billion mandatory appropriation to help communities finance school construction and renovation across the Nation. The problems are large -- the General Accounting Office has estimated that one-third of schools need extensive repairs or total replacement -- but we estimate that our $5 billion expenditure will leverage a total of $20 billion to improve school facilities and will spur additional State, local, and private efforts. This is America, a world leader, and our children should not be attending schools with leaking roofs, broken plumbing, and dangerous fire hazards.
The Impact Aid program, for which we are requesting a total of $658 million, will provide funding for general operating expenses in school districts affected by a Federal presence and also help upgrade some school facilities and programs. Our request would provide school districts funding to support the education of the two categories of federally connected children that create the greatest financial burden on school districts -- children living on Indian lands and the children of members of the uniformed services who live on Federal property.
Included in the Impact Aid request is $10 million for facilities maintenance for approximately 50 schools owned by the Department -- schools that are used to educate the children of our military men and women. Many of these schools are in disrepair, with leaking roofs, inadequate electrical wiring, or problems with asbestos. These funds will upgrade buildings in disrepair so they can be transferred to the school districts in which they are located.
The Technology Literacy Challenge Fund, which we propose to increase from $200 million to $425 million, will help schools prepare students for the 21st century. This formula grant program will enable States and communities to purchase computers, train teachers to use computers as effective instructional tools, wire classrooms to the information superhighway, and integrate effective and engaging software into the school curriculum. CEOs of some of America's most innovative technology and communications firms have already responded to the President's challenge to work with schools to get computers into the classroom, link schools to the Internet, develop effective educational software, and help train our teachers to be technologically literate.
The President has challenged America to connect every classroom and every library in the United States to the Internet by the year 2000 -- a very ambitious undertaking, since only 14 percent of public school classrooms currently are connected. To help make this happen, States are developing strategic plans for long-term financing of education technology and assisting school districts with the greatest needs, and are sending in these plans with their applications for funding under the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund.
We know that teachers teach best, and students learn most effectively, in schools that are safe and orderly. No American teacher should have to teach in, and no American child should have to attend, a school that is overrun with drugs or crime. The problems in this area are not trivial: in 1994, 14 percent of public school teachers reported that they had been threatened or physically attacked by a student during the previous year, and a 1991 study showed that nearly half a million teenagers are victimized each year by violent crime occurring at or near school. In addition, youth drug use is, unfortunately, on the rise. The Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities program is designed to help make our Nation's schools safe and drug free by supporting comprehensive, integrated approaches to drug and violence prevention tailored to community needs. We are requesting $620 million for this program in 1998. In order to improve program accountability, the budget includes appropriations language that would require school districts to use their State grant funds on prevention strategies that research shows are effective.
When it comes to success in school, a child's ability to read independently makes all the difference. Children who have learned to read well by the end of the third grade are prepared to use their reading skills to learn history, literature, and science in the later grades. Children who don't learn to read well are more likely to drop out of school and have a lifetime of diminished success in school and employment -- as well as being cut off from the joy that reading can bring us. That is why President Clinton launched the America Reads Challenge. This initiative will enlist and train one million volunteer tutors who will provide assistance after school, on weekends, and during the summer for students in pre-kindergarten through the third grade who are behind in reading. I want to emphasize here that the assistance offered through the America Reads Challenge will be designed to support the reading instruction that teachers provide in classrooms, by supplying the extra help many children need to reinforce the skills they are learning in school. The President's budget includes a total of $2.75 billion for this initiative over 5 years as follows: $1.725 billion in Department of Education mandatory funds, $200 million annually in Corporation for National and Community Service discretionary funds, and $5 million annually in Department of Education discretionary funds requested under the Educational Research, Statistics, and Improvement account for the biennial administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in determining progress in reading.
I understand and share your concerns about whether these programs will meet the ambitious goals we have set for them. The Department is committed to ensuring that programs make a difference in the lives of children. Can students read better? Write better? Do math to higher standards? Are schools safer and free from drugs and alcohol? We recognize that these are ambitious goals -- and that Federal funding is but a small part of total education funding -- but we must do the best we can to answer these questions.
In order to assess the impact of Federal dollars, we are continuing to develop and refine performance measures for our elementary and secondary programs. Developing good performance information and attaining the desired outcomes requires effective partnerships with States, LEAs, and higher education institutions. We are continuing to work closely with SEAs and LEAs that will provide the data for measuring program performance. Also, we are currently dealing with the issues of collecting data without markedly increasing the burden on grantees.
For the largest programs that account for most of our budget, we have already made good progress in coming up with quantifiable goals and key indicators. We are also aligning Department data collections and evaluations with those targets. For example, key performance goals for the Title I program include demonstrating improved student learning, and school and classroom improvement. Indicators tied to these goals will measure, among other things, the extent to which students in high-poverty schools show gains in reading and mathematics that are at least comparable to those of other students in their State, and the success of Title I provisions in promoting learning to high standards. For the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program, the indicators will attempt to measure such program outcomes as use of alcohol and other drugs and incidence of violence and other criminal acts in schools; types of services provided; participation in the program by school districts, schools, and students; and selected aspects of program administration.
Collecting data takes time, and results on some key indicators of student improvement will not be available for several years. In the meantime, we will release several new evaluations that provide baseline data for measuring progress over the next few years at the Federal, State, and local levels. For example, the Department will soon publish the final report of the seven-year "Prospects" longitudinal study of Title 1, which examines student achievement and other educational outcomes of disadvantaged students compared to other more advantaged students. We will also release a broad evaluation of the performance of Federal programs, including Goals 2000, Title I, and other elementary and secondary efforts to assist school reform, as perceived by principals, teachers, and State and local education officials.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared remarks. My colleagues and I would be happy to respond to any questions you may have.
-###-
[ Return to Speeches and Testimony ]
[Return to ED Homepage]