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March 15, 1996 |
With the current continuing resolution (CR) expiring today and the full-year CR for 1996 still under discussion, the Senate and House have passed for the President's signature a one-week CR extending current funding levels for the Department and other agencies through March 22.Earlier this week, the Senate passed -- by a strong bipartisan vote of 84-16 -- an amendment to restore $1.356 billion in education funding to the full-year appropriations bill that would fund the Department through the end of fiscal year 1996 (September 30).
Last week (on March 7), the House approved its version of the 1996 appropriations bill. Unlike more standard appropriations bills, the House bill provides for two different funding levels: a "base" appropriations and another "contingent" level, predicated upon enactment of savings in certain federal programs. The House-passed levels (both base and contingent) remain far below both fiscal year 1995 levels and the President's fiscal year 1996 request.
As we go to press, the Senate has not yet completed action on the full continuing appropriations bill, and the House and Senate have yet to go to conference. Although the Congress has bought another week of time with the short-term CR, it is hard to predict the final outcome of 1996 funding for the Department.
The New Visions Charter School in Minneapolis (MN) is using Goals 2000 funds -- and new flexibility allowed under Title I (it is a *schoolwide program*) -- to help children overcome reading problems. Results thus far are impressive. Before arriving, students at New Visions were gaining only a half-year in reading per academic year. Since entering New Visions, students are averaging between 13 and 18 months of reading gains per year. In addition to using Goals 2000, New Visions is a *schoolwide program* under Title I and is using the new flexibility allowed under that program.
More than 560,000 individual student records have been processed (as of March 11) in an all-out effort to eliminate delays in the 1996-97 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) process. Delays resulted from the loss of 21 working days (due to shutdowns of the federal government followed by the January blizzard) during the start-up and testing period for a new computer processing system. "Please be assured that processing...[these applications] is a very high priority for the Department and that we are committing the necessary resources to remedy the problem," Secretary Riley said in a March 6 letter to college presidents. Among the steps being taken to correct the problem: Supplemental worksites have been set up, and additional employees have been hired by contractors so that the work of processing applications is going on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Customer support service hours have been extended and the number of service representatives on the hotlines have been increased. "We expect that our contractors will return to the normal 14-day processing cycle by March 31," the Secretary stated in the letter. "As a result, we expect that the last batch of paper applications received in March will be processed no later than April 15."The full text of the Secretary's letter -- as well as frequent updates on the status of processing applications -- are available in the Department's Online Library at: http://www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/announce/OPESec.html
On March 8, Labor Secretary Reich and Education Secretary Riley announced that37 communities across the country will receive local School-to-Work partnership grants totaling more than $20 million. The grants, to be awarded jointly by the Departments of Labor and Education to 22 states and Puerto Rico, will go to communities that have formed partnerships between their education and business sectors to help young people make the transition from school to careers. For additional information, including a list of communities and states selected from 215 applications, the March 8 press release is available in our Online Library ("Riley, Reich Announce Local School to Work Grants").The National Skill Standards Board will hold a public meeting on March 19 at the Madison Hotel in Washington, D.C. The agenda includes a discussion of Equity 2000, an overview of work profiling systems, the role of literacy in developing skill standards, an overview of standards and workforce development in the states, and more. The public is invited to attend the day-long meeting, which runs from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Support at home for literacy is associated with reading achievement at all three grade levels measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), according to the 1994 NAEP "Reading Report Card." Released last week by the National Center for Education Statistics, the Reading Report Card found that students who read frequently for fun (on their own time) scored higher. So did students who had several types of literacy materials at home (such as a dictionary, newspaper, encyclopedia, magazines, books). Students who watched the most television per day also had lower average reading proficiency. The most disappointing finding, said Secretary Riley at the release of the report, is that 12th graders' reading proficiency declined (in public and private schools). Among the other findings: students across all grades who had more frequent home discussions about their studies had higher reading proficiency. Eighth and 12th graders whose teachers asked them daily or weekly to explain or support their understanding of what they read had higher scores than students who were asked to do less.Two weeks ago, in his State of American Education address, Secretary Riley said that teaching our children good reading habits is "our most urgent task," and he announced a new national reading and writing partnership with such diverse members as the American Library Association, AMC Theaters, the Library of Congress Center for the Book, the Girl Scouts of America and Pizza Hut. The partnership soon will announce an expansion of READ*WRITE*NOW!, a reading program begun last summer.
The President and Vice President welcomed the 15 largest empowerment zones (EZs) to the second White House Empowerment Conference last month, where Secretary Riley and other Department officials discussed how EZ activities can be connected with schools and school reform. Also, the Vice President announced an initiative to ensure that each of the approximately 500 schools in the EZs will be connected to the information superhighway, and he highlighted the support that the Department's new Regional Technology in Education Consortia will give to this effort. The 15 EZs are part of a larger network of 105 communities designated as EZs and ECs under the "Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community" initiative. Under this initiative, which is a centerpiece of the Administration's community and economic development strategies to assist distressed urban and rural communities, the 105 communities have developed and are pursuing long-range strategic plans to demonstrate how government, community groups, the private sectors, schools and others can work together to increase employment opportunities, improve life chances for children and families, and promote economic development.
On February 27, Senators Bill Frist (TN) and Tom Harkin (IA) introduced S.1578, a bipartisan bill to amend the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the 20-year-old law that helps America serve more than 5.4 million children with disabilities. On March 1, the House Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities released its *draft* IDEA bill; a bill is expected to be introduced in the House soon. Both bills would authorize appropriations under IDEA for fiscal years l997 through 2002. The Senate bill and House draft bill are available online at:
http://thomas.l oc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c104:S.1578:On March 7, the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families held a hearing on IDEA. Several panelists, including a teacher and a parent (who had been a special education teacher), emphasized the importance of providing disabled children a free and appropriate public education with the requisite protections presently embodied in current law and the Administration's bill, H.R.l986.gopher://gopher.house.gov:70/OF-2%3A839312 41%3AIDEADRAF
More than 17,500 volunteers participated in NetDay96, according to the NetDay96 home page (http://www.netday.org/). The goal of this one-day effort on Saturday (March 9) was "to facilitate the cabling of at least 5 classrooms and a library or a computer lab in every K-12 school in California that chooses to participate." More than 3,000 kits were mailed to California schools, each worth about $500 and each including 2,000 feet of cable. The President, Vice President, and Secretary Riley participated in the event, which was coordinated by Sun Microsystems and which is part of an effort to wire 20 percent of California's public schools by the end of this school year.
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