Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the President's fiscal year 2001 budget request for education. I want to begin by thanking you, Mr. Chairman, as well as other Members of this Subcommittee, for your strong and consistent support for education over the past several years. Working together, I believe we have made real progress in helping to expand educational opportunity for all Americans.

The American people have made education one of their top national priorities. We recognize that real progress in improving education depends primarily on State and local efforts. The Federal government can play a critical role, however, in encouraging that progress through support of State and local reforms. In particular, we can provide essential support in the areas of raising standards, improving accountability for results, and helping to meet the needs of disadvantaged and limited English proficient students and students with disabilities.

The American people understand and support this Federal role in education, and they see this time of peace and prosperity as a unique opportunity for the Nation to be investing in the long-term future of our great country by improving education at all levels. Some might argue that the growing Federal budget surplus should be used for broad-based tax cuts, but that is not what I hear when I talk with students, parents, and teachers across the country. Instead, I have found a strong consensus on paying down the national debt and building for the future by investing in the education of our children.

That is why the President is requesting $40.1 billion in discretionary spending for the Department of Education, an increase of $4.5 billion or 12.6 percent. This budget reflects the transition to the second phase of the standards-based reform efforts we launched seven years ago. First, we worked with the Congress to support State and local efforts to raise standards and put accountability measures in place. Standards are now in place in all 50 states and we are working hard to improve accountability. Now we need to ensure that States and communities have the resources needed to ensure that all students can achieve to higher expectations and that teachers are prepared to teach to the new standards.

The Department's request provides significant new resources to help States and communities implement higher standards in their schools while coping with booming enrollments and the need to modernize academic facilities. The request also provides substantial new support to help prepare disadvantaged students for postsecondary education and make college more affordable for all Americans.

INCREASED ACCOUNTABILITY

The 2001 budget for education once again emphasizes accountability for results, particularly for chronically failing schools. Our purpose is not to punish the students in such schools, but to provide the right combination of incentives and support that will accelerate the changes needed to improve the quality of their education.

The President's request for Title I includes $250 million for a second year of accountability grants, an increase of $116 million over the 2000 level. These funds would enable States and school districts to provide the additional assistance needed to help failing schools -- primarily those identified for corrective action under Title I -- turn around and improve student achievement.

The President's proposal also recognizes that in too many schools, students and parents have waited far too long for meaningful change and improvement. For this reason, school districts participating in Title I would be required to offer students enrolled in a school identified for corrective action the choice of attending a better public school -- one that has not been identified for improvement under Title I. The goal here is to help ensure that no student is trapped in a truly bad school, and to reinforce the idea of serious consequences for schools that consistently fail to improve. At the same time, we are emphasizing efforts to turn around poor-performing schools, because even with a public school choice option the majority of students will continue to attend their neighborhood school.

IMPROVING LOW-PERFORMING SCHOOLS

We want to balance accountability for meeting high standards with new resources to help students meet those standards and to help school districts turn around failing schools. This is why, for example, the request includes a $547 million increase for 21st Century Community Learning Centers, for a total of $1 billion for after-school and other extended-learning programs. These funds would support high-quality extended learning opportunities for nearly 2.5 million children, including students in low-performing schools.

We also would add $450 million to reduce class size in the early grades, for a total of $1.75 billion to help children get more personal attention, improve discipline, and learn more. There's no better way to rapidly improve student achievement than to put highly trained teachers into small classrooms where they can provide the individual attention students need to reach high standards. The request would bring the total number of teachers hired under this program to about 49,000, or almost halfway to the President's goal of hiring 100,000 teachers over seven years.

One of the best ways to bring about real change and turn around failing schools is to help communities and schools to put in place reforms based on solid research. This is why our budget includes $190 million for the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration program to help an additional 1,900 schools develop and implement proven, comprehensive reform models. We would also increase funding for educational research by $30 million to help meet the growing need for research-based information on what works in education.

The request also expands the Small, Safe and Successful High Schools initiative to help create smaller, safer, and more disciplined and supportive learning environments in approximately 700 of the Nation's largest high schools. The President's budget would provide $120 million for such effective innovations as schools-within-schools or career academies that assign students to groups of a few hundred -- helping to replace the isolation many students feel in large schools with smaller, more nurturing communities.

Another way to accelerate change is by giving parents more choices of public schools. Our budget would increase the choices available to parents and students through a $175 million request for Charter Schools. These funds would support the start-up of some 1,700 new or redesigned charter schools, which have the flexibility to offer innovative educational programs in exchange for greater accountability for student achievement. The 2001 request would bring to 2,400 the number of charter schools helped by this program, supporting the President's goal of creating 3,000 charter schools by 2002.

We also are seeking $20 million for the Opportunities to Improve our Nation's Schools initiative, or OPTIONS. This flexible new authority would support 40 grants to States and school districts to implement and test new approaches to public school choice, including inter-district programs and public schools at work sites and on college campuses.

In addition, our budget also acknowledges the importance of recognizing success. A new, $50 million Recognition and Reward program would reward States for improving student achievement and for reducing the achievement gap between high- and low-performing students, as measured by State results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

MODERNIZING OUR SCHOOLS

A key priority for 2001 is to help ensure that all students have the opportunity to attend safe, modern school facilities that are equipped with up-to-date educational technology. With public school buildings averaging some 42 years of age and a backlog of more than $100 billion in repairs, it is clear that we have a lot of work to do. This is why the 2001 request includes two proposals to upgrade school facilities.

The School Renovation program, a major new $1.3 billion discretionary initiative, would help school districts repair or renovate their schools. The $1.3 billion total includes $50 million in grants to approximately 119 districts with at least 50 percent of their children residing on Indian lands, $125 million in grants to high-need school districts, and $1.125 billion that would leverage an estimated $6.5 billion in 7-year, no-interest loans.

The School Renovation initiative would complement the President's School Modernization Bonds proposal, which would provide nearly $25 billion in tax credit bonds over two years to modernize up to 6,000 schools. Tax credit bonds, which the President is proposing for the third year in a row, would provide interest-free financing to help State and local governments pay for modernizing schools and building new schools to relieve overcrowding.

An additional factor driving the demand for the upgrade of school facilities is the explosion in the development and use of educational technology based on multimedia computers and access to the resources of the Internet. Computers are the "black board and chalk" of the future. A key resource for this revolution in educational technology is the E-rate, created by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which provides nearly $2 billion annually in subsidies to help schools and libraries connect to the Internet.

The Department budget would provide $450 million for the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund, an increase of $25 million, to help schools integrate technology into the curriculum and ensure that teachers in high-poverty communities are prepared to use educational technology effectively. We also would double funding to $150 million for the Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology program, which helps prepare new teachers to use technology effectively to improve instructional practices and enhance student learning in the classroom.

And to help close the digital divide in our communities between those who enjoy the full benefits of computers and the Internet and those economically disadvantaged individuals and families who lack access to such technology, the budget would more than triple funding for Community Technology Centers. The $100 million request would support up to 1,000 new centers that would provide area residents access to extended learning opportunities before and after school, adult education, and online job databases.

MASTERING THE BASICS

The President's budget also expands support for programs that help students master the basics and close achievement gaps between disadvantaged and minority students and their more advantaged peers. The request includes $8.4 billion for Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies and $286 million for the third year of the Reading Excellence program, which helps all children to read well and independently by the end of the third grade. We would increase funding for Special Education Grants to States by $290 million for a total of $5.3 billion, while boosting support for Special Education Parent Information Centers by 40 percent.

Indian Education programs would receive $116 million, an increase of 50 percent, to provide larger formula grants to school districts for Indian Education programs, and to launch a new $5 million American Indian Administrator Corps that would train American Indian teachers and professionals to become school administrators.

IMPROVING TEACHER QUALITY

We need to elevate the teaching profession and expand opportunities for teachers to continually update their skills. Improving teacher quality is a major emphasis in the Educational Excellence for All Children Act, the Administration's proposal for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. We need to make sure our teachers are prepared to teach to the new State standards, and we need to help States and communities deal with the projected nationwide shortage of 2 million teachers over the next 10 years. Our budget provides $1 billion for a comprehensive approach to reaching these goals, with an overall focus on preparing both new and experienced teachers to bring high standards into the classroom.

This includes $690 million for Teaching to High Standards State Grants, our Title II reauthorization proposal to promote professional development linked to State standards and assessments. A new $75 million Hometown Teachers proposal would support comprehensive approaches to teacher recruitment and retention in high-need districts, while a $50 million Higher Standards, Higher Pay initiative would help high-poverty school districts attract and retain high-quality teachers through better pay linked to a rigorous peer-review process.

To help meet the growing demand for high-quality leadership in our school districts and schools, particularly in the area of implementing standards-based reforms, the budget includes $40 million for a School Leadership Initiative. This new program would fund consortia-based efforts to provide current and prospective superintendents and principals -- particularly those serving high-poverty, low-performing districts and schools -- with the professional development opportunities needed to help them serve as effective leaders.

The request also would provide $50 million to reward school districts that show the largest increases in the number of teachers who are fully certified and teaching in the field in which they are trained, $25 million to encourage career-changing professionals to enter the teaching ranks, and $30 million to train some 15,000 early childhood educators and caregivers in techniques to improve early literacy skills and prevent later reading difficulties.

In addition, the 2001 budget includes $100 million for Bilingual Education Professional Development to help address the critical national shortage of well-prepared bilingual and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers.

NEW PATHWAYS TO COLLEGE

A college education remains the best guarantee of success in a rapidly changing, technology-based economy that demands critical-thinking skills and the ability to adapt to new ways of doing business. Postsecondary institutions are enjoying their own enrollment boom -- climbing last fall to a record 14.9 million students -- but too few disadvantaged and minority students are entering and completing college.

To help give these students and their families new pathways to college, the 2001 budget includes a $125 million increase for GEAR UP to provide 1.4 million low-income elementary and secondary school students the skills and encouragement they need to enter and succeed in college. We also are asking for $725 million for TRIO outreach and support services to more than 760,000 disadvantaged postsecondary students. The TRIO request includes $35 million for a new College Completion Challenge Grant program that would help reduce the college dropout rate, particularly among poor and minority students. Another pathway to college is Tech-Prep Education, which supports efforts by partnerships of high schools, postsecondary institutions, and employers to create comprehensive technical education programs that prepare students for both college and high-tech careers. The 2001 budget nearly triples Tech-Prep funding to $306 million.

MAKING COLLEGE MORE AFFORDABLE

Just as important as preparing for college is helping students and families pay the rising costs of a postsecondary education. Over the past six years larger Pell grants, expanded work-study opportunities, lower borrowing costs on student loans, and Hope and Lifetime Learning tax benefits have made college financially possible for all who qualify.

Paying for college is still a difficult burden, however, especially for low- and middle-income families. Our 2001 budget would help reduce that burden. For example, we are proposing a maximum Pell Grant award of $3,500, a $200 increase over the 2000 level. A $60 million increase for Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants would provide a total of $875 million in grant assistance to an estimated 1.2 million undergraduate students, or 64,000 more than in 2000. And a $77 million increase for Work-Study would continue the President's commitment to give 1 million students the opportunity to work their way through college.

Outside the discretionary budget for postsecondary education, President Clinton would dramatically expand tax benefits for postsecondary education through a new College Opportunities Tax Cut. This proposal would build on the Lifetime Learning Tax Credit to give over 5 million families the option of taking a tax deduction or claiming a 28 percent tax credit on up to $5,000 in annual postsecondary education tuition and fees. The limit would rise to $10,000 in 2003, and the Treasury Department estimates families would save an additional $30 billion over 10 years, compared to the current Lifetime Learning tax credit.

To increase academic opportunities for minority students and increase their numbers in high-skill fields such as science and engineering, the President's budget proposes $40 million for Dual-Degree Programs for Minority-Serving Institutions. This program would provide competitive grants to partnerships between Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) and nationally recognized research universities. Participating students would earn two degrees in five years, one from the MSI and one from the partner institution in a field in which minorities are underrepresented.

Finally, the President's budget targets additional funds to Latinos as part of the Administration's Hispanic Education Action Plan. The 2001 request includes more than $800 million in increases intended to help expand educational opportunities and improve outcomes for Latinos. In addition to increases for programs like Title I and TRIO that serve large numbers of Latino students, the request provides an $86 million increase for Adult Education, most of which would be used to triple funding for Common Ground Partnership Grants. These grants support demonstration programs that provide immigrants and other participants with English literacy skills, coupled with civic education and basic skills that are necessary to effectively navigate key institutions of American life. The budget also includes nearly a 50 percent increase for Hispanic-Serving Institutions to support postsecondary education institutions that serve large percentages of Latino students.

I believe this budget is a fitting start to a new century -- the Education Century -- and would provide the resources needed to increase both quality and opportunity in our education system. The 2001 request will, as the President noted in his State of the Union address, move the Nation "a long way toward making sure every child starts school ready to learn and graduates ready to succeed."

I will be happy to answer any questions you may have about the President's 2001 budget for education.

[ Return to Speeches and Testimony ]