| May 20, 1996 |
Wyoming received 2nd-year funds last week, bringing to 40 the number of states that have been awarded 2nd-year Goals 2000 funding. The District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have also received year two funding under Goals 2000.Nineteen Wyoming school districts and communities are already using Goals 2000 to develop their own technology plans aimed at helping students reach high standards. For example, Laramie County School District -- in partnership with other districts and Laramie Community College -- created a plan to use technology for individualized instruction, teacher learning, and better governance and management of schools.
In creating school-to-work systems, states are building on a number of existing strategies. Hawaii, in its first year of School-to-Work Opportunties Implementation funding, is drawing on models such as the Farrington Health Academy, a school-within-a-school tech-prep program that recently received the "Secretary's Award for Outstanding Vocational-Technical Education Programs." This effort connects Hawaii's largest high school, Farrington High, with Kapiolani Community College, and the University of Hawaii (UH) School of Medicine. Business partners include Kaiser Permanente, Queen's Medical Center, and Castle Medical Center. The academy emphasizes high academic and occupational standards, prepares students for responsible citizenship and productive employment, provides work-based learning (including paid work experience and workplace mentoring), offers exploration and counseling in a career cluster, and provides a sequential program of study that leads to employment and postsecondary education.
Two U.S. Education Department initiatives have been selected as semi-finalists in the 1996 "Innovations in American Government" awards program sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan program and the Goals 2000 Teacher Forum were named among 22 federal projects in the national competition of some 1,560 applicants.The popular Direct Lending program began at 104 colleges in 1994 and transformed a complicated, paper-intensive process provided through a myriad of lenders and secondary markets into "one-stop shopping" for obtaining federal loans for postsecondary students. Direct loans also give students flexible repayment plans that fit their incomes. Now offered at some 1,350 colleges and trade schools, direct lending serves an estimated 2 million borrowers.
The Goals 2000 Teacher Forum brings teacher leaders from each state to Washington, D.C., where they provide input on issues such as upgrading teachers' professional skills, effective teaching strategies, and a range of other reform topics. The purpose of the Forum is to help make teachers *partners* in -- not objects of -- reform, by building teacher leadership capacity. Following the forum, teachers continue to communicate and share information via a listserv (an email-based discussion using the Internet).
On May 16, the House approved the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal years 1997-2002 by a vote of 226-195, after rejecting -- by wide margins -- three budget alternatives offered on the House floor. The resolution sets overall spending levels in major categories, including one covering the Department's programs.Unfortunately, in the area of funding for education and training, the House-passed budget resolution is $60 billion below the President's balanced budget plan for 1996-2002. In fact, the resolution is $58 billion -- or 19% below the FY 1995 enacted level.
As reported last week, the House Budget Committee report also went a step further than the actual resolution to make specific recommendations to eliminate Goals 2000, direct student loans, bilingual education, and Perkins Loans capital contributions. However, these detailed recommendations will not be binding on House appropriators when they begin writing next year's funding bill for the Department.
At press time, the Senate is continuing debate on its version of the budget resolution.
Last week, "EDInfo" received its 5,000th subscriber. The service began June 1995 and offers 3 e-mail messages each week on new ED reports and initiatives. To take advantage of it (with the understanding that *one* message each week will be "ED Initiatives," the weekly update on progress on the Secretary's priorities), simply:
- address an e-mail message to: listproc@inet.ed.gov
- write in the message: subscribe EDInfo firstname lastname
- send it!
For more information or help, please e-mail Peter Kickbush (peter.kickbush@ed.gov), Office of Intergovernmental and Interagency Affairs (OIIA).
Last month, the Department's award-winning Web site received nearly 2 million "hits" (files accessed) -- more than six times the number of files accessed during April 1995. New additions to the Web site can be found at http://www.ed.gov/news.html#new and include:
- "GCSWeb" -- the new Grants and Contract Information home page -- offers information on how to obtain grants from the Department, as well as information on contracting procedures for product and services procurements.
- The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) new home page offers publications, projects, and more from the primary federal entity for collecting, analyzing, and reporting statistics on the condition of American education and on education activities internationally.
- The Department's redesigned strategy for assessing the effectiveness of the new Title I -- in the context of state, local, and other federal efforts -- is described in "Mapping Out the National Assessment of Title I: The Interim Report."
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