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Statement by
Richard W. Riley
Secretary of Education
on the
Fiscal Year 1998 Budget Request for the Department of Education
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I am pleased to appear before you this morning to talk about the President's 1998 budget request for the Department of Education. I have a statement that I would like to submit for the record, Mr. Chairman, and then I will briefly summarize it for the Subcommittee.
Let me begin by saying how pleased I am that education is a top priority for both President Clinton and the Congress. The Nation is already beginning to respond to the President's call for action on education in his State of the Union address, and I believe that we here in Washington need to give the American people as much help as we can in their efforts to demand more of schools and students.
This is my fourth Congressional hearing this year, and I have been greatly impressed by the broad and bipartisan agreement among Members in both Houses of Congress on what we need to do in education. The President's commitment to high standards; expanding public school choice; safe, disciplined, and drug-free schools; improving the quality of teaching; and enhancing access to postsecondary education is shared by nearly everyone.
There are, of course, some differences on how best to achieve these goals, but they are not insurmountable differences and I am hopeful that we will work together this year in a bipartisan fashion to move the country forward in education.
I have often said that money alone is not the answer to the challenges we face in education. Motivated students, talented teachers, and supportive parents and communities are what really leads to outstanding performance in the classroom. But money makes a difference too, particularly at a time when a record number of students are in our Nation's classrooms. This is the Education Age, and America must have an education budget right for the times.
The President's 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 over five years.
The President's budget directs new resources into four priority areas: putting 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.
As I said last month in my State of American Education speech, it's not enough to have high expectations or set challenging standards. We must put standards of excellence into action. This is the first priority of the President's budget for education.
Over the past four years, President Clinton has worked with Congress to build bipartisan support for effective assistance to states and communities using standards of excellence to improve their schools. The 1998 budget would expand this assistance.
For Goals 2000, 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 program would support higher academic standards by paying some or all of the cost of advanced placement tests for low-income students, thus encouraging these students to challenge themselves and take tough courses.
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.
In addition, we would nearly double funding for Educational Technology. The $500 million request emphasizes linking rural and inner-city schools to the Internet, and would help us reach the President's goal of connecting all schools to the Information Superhighway by the year 2000.
The President's budget would promote innovation and accountability and expand the range of choices available to parents and children within public school systems by nearly doubling funding for Charter Schools. The $100 million request would support planning and start-up costs for as many as 1,100 new schools created by teachers, parents, and other community members.
We also are seeking new resources to improve the quality of teaching. 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. And the budget would provide a $16 million increase for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to greatly speed up the development of standards and assessments in over 30 teaching fields. This increase also would enable teachers to go through the rigorous National Board evaluation process an important step in identifying and rewarding master teachers.
One of the most important proposals for putting standards of excellence into action one that did not make it into our budget documents but about which you are well aware is the plan to develop and support the administration of new national tests in 4th-grade reading and 8th-grade mathematics.
As you know, President Clinton announced this plan in his State of the Union address to the Congress. The decision to support such testing was made after our 1998 budget documents had gone out for printing, and not coincidentally shortly after a trip to Northbrook, Illinois to Chairman Porter's district where the President celebrated the success of the First in the World Education Consortium. This Consortium accepted the challenge of being first in the world in mathematics and science achievement one of our National Education Goals and participating schools and students put themselves to the test on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Consortium schools tied for first place in science and tied for second place in mathematics on TIMSS.
This impressed the President because he felt it reflected exactly what needs to happen in education throughout the United States in every State and school district and school. President Clinton said that day that we would never reach standards of excellence until we have "recognized high standards for math and science and other basic subjects that are national in scope, measured by national and international standards, adopted locally, implemented locally, but nationally recognized and nationally tested throughout the United States." And while he acknowledged that Federal involvement in such testing should be limited, he doubted that it would happen "unless we get out here and beat the drum for it and work for it."
As a result, we are now proposing to use 1997 and 1998 funding available through the Fund for the Improvement of Education (FIE) to develop and begin pilot-testing of the national tests in reading and mathematics. FIE funds for this purpose will be reallocated from planned development assistance to States working on their own assessments. Additional funding to support full administration of the tests by the States in the spring of 1999 will be included in the 1999 budget request.
The tests will be based on the widely accepted 4th-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in reading and the 8th-grade NAEP and TIMSS tests of mathematics. The Department also will seek guidance in developing the tests from parents, teachers, governors, and State and local leaders. These tests will show how well students are meeting rigorous standards and how well they compare with their peers around the country and the world. They also will help parents know if their children are mastering critical basic skills early enough to succeed in school and in the workforce.
I hope we do not cloud our children's future with arguments that are not really relevant about Federal government intrusion. Reading is reading and math is math, whether we are in Maine, Missouri or Montana. I urge you to join me in encouraging states and school districts to accept the President's challenge to participate in these voluntary national tests. Many of our children, schools, and States may not make the grade at the beginning, but these tests will be a very serious tool for showing them where and how they need to improve.
Our second priority is helping all Americans to read well. Learning begins with reading, but over 40 percent of fourth graders read below the "Basic" level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Research shows that if students can't read well by fourth grade, their chances for later success in school are significantly reduced.
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 $260 million in mandatory funding for two components of the Challenge: America's Reading Corps and Parents as First Teachers. We plan a total of $1.75 billion for this initiative over the next five years, with the Corporation for National and Community Service contributing an additional $1 billion.
Most of the funds would be used 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.
A Parents as First Teachers component will 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.
I want to emphasize here that the assistance offered through the America Reads Challenge would supplement the reading instruction provided in the regular classroom. We will continue to support existing programs that make a significant contribution to improving reading skills, such as Title I and Special Education. Our budget includes increases for each of these programs.
The 1998 request also provides increases for other programs focused more specifically on reading. 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.
All across the nation, schools are struggling to make room for new students while they provide services for students with special needs. These students include low-achieving and limited-English-proficient students, and students with disabilities. Helping these schools and students is the third priority in our 1998 budget request.
For Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies, we are asking for $7.5 billion, an increase of $347 million, to help low-achieving students in the poorest school districts meet the same challenging standards expected of all children. The request would target a larger share of Title I resources on communities and schools with the highest concentrations of children from low-income families.
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.
Children cannot be expected to reach high standards 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.
I want to be clear here that I am very concerned about the enormous variation in the effectiveness of the drug prevention activities funded by this program. Our schools must do a better job of getting the anti-drug and anti-violence message across to young people. We know a lot about what works when it comes to drug prevention, and we also know that the proven models are not being used as much as they should. That is why we are proposing appropriations language for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program that would require the use of proven, research-based approaches to drug and violence prevention.
The Department also is proposing a new initiative to support safe learning environments for our children. The $50 million After-School Learning Centers program would 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 President is requesting a one-time appropriation of $5 billion in 1998 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 point of our efforts to put standards of excellence into action, improve reading, and help students with special needs is to raise our expectations of educational achievement for all Americans. As a result, more and more people will be reaching for higher education to meet their educational and career goals. That is why the fourth priority in our 1998 budget is to make college more affordable.
President Clinton is proposing a combination of budget and tax initiatives for 1998 that would significantly expand college access for lower-income students, while providing new assistance to working families and middle-class families struggling to pay for college.
The request includes $7.6 billion, an increase of $1.7 billion or 29 percent, to support two significant changes in the Pell Grant program. The first is an increase in the maximum Pell Grant award to an all-time high of $3,000, up from $2,700 in 1997. The second is an expansion of the eligibility of independent students with no dependents. This need-analysis change would make 218,000 additional independent students generally defined as over age 24 eligible for Pell Grants.
We also are proposing changes to the student loan programs that would save billions of dollars for both students and taxpayers. Our proposal would cut origination fees from 4 percent to 2 percent for need-based loans, and to 3 percent for other loans, thus saving 4 million low- and middle-income students $2.6 billion over five years. We would further reduce Federal and borrower costs by lowering the interest rate during in-school, grace, and deferment periods when lender costs are very low by 1 percentage point. Finally, we would save taxpayers $3.5 billion over five years by streamlining the guaranty agency system to clarify the federal government's role as sole guarantor of all student loans and by linking agency fees to performance in collecting on defaulted loans.
In addition to these changes in Department programs, 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 stay drug-free and maintain at least a "B-minus" average (2.75 GPA) to qualify for the tax credit in their second year of postsecondary study. We expect 4.2 million students to benefit from HOPE Scholarships in 1998, with total savings to students and families reaching $18.6 billion by 2002.
President Clinton is also proposing an education and job training tax deduction. 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 8 million students would benefit from the tax deduction in 1998, with total savings reaching $17.6 billion by 2002.
Some have argued that HOPE Scholarships would do little to increase access to postsecondary education, and instead would merely subsidize those who would attend college anyway. I believe such critics are ignoring evidence that we need to improve access to college for both low- and middle-income students, who have much lower rates of participation in postsecondary education than higher-income students. In 1994, only 45 percent of high school graduates from low-income families and 58 percent from middle-income families went directly to college, compared to 77 percent of students from high-income families.
Our data also show that low- and middle-income students are less likely than higher-income students to earn bachelor's degrees within five years, and one of the main reasons that students drop out of college is lack of money. HOPE Scholarships can help close both of these gaps in access and completion by changing the expectations of many Americans who still do not consider a college education to be within their reach and by putting more resources into the hands of students and families.
Other postsecondary education priorities in the Department of Education's budget include a $27 million increase for Work-Study to keep us on course toward funding one million work-study jobs by the year 2000, a $25 million increase for TRIO to provide outreach and support services to almost 37,000 more students, and $132 million to give Presidential Honors Scholarships to the top five percent of graduating students in every high school in America.
I am very excited about the opportunities for real and dramatic improvement in education at all levels that are reflected in the President's 1998 budget request for education. I believe the Nation is ready to do what needs to be done to raise educational achievement for all Americans to the levels needed for success in the 21st century. This budget will help, and I hope you will give it your fullest consideration.
Thank you, and I will be happy to respond to any questions.
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