A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Special Issue on the President's 1998 Budget

Highlights of his request for the Department are below. The full summary & the Secretary's statement can be found in our Online Library at: http://www.ed.gov/offices/OUS/Budget98/ Also, the President's 10-point plan for ensuring that Americans have the best education in the world -- which he announced in his State of the Union Address -- plus materials supporting his call for challenging national standards in reading & mathematics, are now available at: http://www.ed.gov/inits.html

Highlights from the Department of Education 1998 Budget Summary

• $605 million for Goals 2000 State Grants, an increase of $129 million, to help States and schools develop and implement challenging academic standards and reform teaching and learning in order to reach the National Education Goals. An additional $15 million would support 42 parental assistance and information centers.

• $400 million for School-to-Work Opportunities -- $200 million each from the Departments of Education and Labor -- to permit all 50 States to fully implement school-to-work strategies as an integral part of their educational systems.

• $500 million for Educational Technology, up $243 million, to help schools integrate technology into the curriculum so that all students can become technologically literate, and to improve the quality of instruction in core subjects.

• $100 million for Charter Schools, a $49 million increase, to support planning and start-up costs for between 900 and 1,100 new or redesigned public schools that offer enhanced public school choice. These State- or locally authorized schools are created by teachers, parents, and other members of the community and, in exchange for greater accountability for student achievement, are exempted from many local, State, and Federal education regulations. The Administration's goal is to stimulate the creation of 3,000 charter schools by 2002.

• $360 million for Eisenhower Professional Development State Grants, up $50 million, to support sustained, intensive training to upgrade the skills of teachers and principals to better deliver instruction in the core academic subjects, especially in mathematics and science.

• $21 million, up $16 million, to fast-forward efforts by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to develop standards and assessments and implement certification programs in more than 30 teaching fields. Funds also would enable more teachers to undergo the assessment process -- an important step in identifying and rewarding master teachers. The goal would be to certify 105,000 master teachers by the year 2006.

The Department also is seeking $167 million for Research, Statistics, and Assessment, an increase of $30 million or 22 percent over the 1997 level for these programs. These funds support education reform by investigating what works in teaching and learning, gathering data on the effects of reform and the return on investments in education, monitoring progress toward the National Education Goals, and assessing the progress of American students in achieving mastery over challenging subject matter.

IMPROVING READING FOR ALL AMERICANS

The request provides $200 million in mandatory funding for America's Reading Corps, which would enlist and train one million tutors who will provide individualized and small group assistance after school, on weekends, and during the summer for K-4 students who are behind in reading. The Department plans to contribute $1.4 billion for the Reading Corps over the next five years; most of these funds would pay for reading specialists (who would train or supervise the tutors) and materials. In addition, the Corporation for National and Community Service would contribute $1 billion ($200 million in 1998), primarily for tutor recruitment.

The Department would use an additional $60 million in mandatory funds in 1998 for the Parents as First Teachers program. This program would support effective, proven efforts to assist parents in helping their children become successful readers.

Success in reaching the goal of the America Reads Challenge -- ensuring that all children read well and independently by the end of the third grade -- will require much more than after-school tutoring. That's one reason why, for example, the 1998 request includes significant increases to strengthen in-school reading instruction through programs like Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies and Special Education Grants to States. Both programs provide substantial resources to States and schools that are used to improve basic skills like reading.

Parental involvement in reading to children is also a key to reaching the America Reads Challenge. And students who speak a language other than English need extra help learning to read English. The budget includes increases for the following programs that provide assistance in these areas:

• $108 million for Even Start, a $6 million increase to permit expansion of local programs that help young children develop the skills required for success in elementary school while enabling their parents to gain the basic literacy skills needed to reinforce their children's education.

• $199 million for Bilingual Education, an increase of $42.3 million or 27 percent, to help local school districts build their capacity to operate high-quality instructional programs for limited English proficient (LEP) students.

• $382 million for Adult Education State Grants, up $41.7 million or 12 percent, to help adult Americans improve their literacy skills so they can succeed in their roles as workers, citizens, and parents.

PROVIDING EXTRA HELP FOR STUDENTS MOST IN NEED AND MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF HIGHER ENROLLMENTS

• $7.5 billion for the Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies program, an increase of $347 million, to help low- achieving students -- particularly those in high-poverty schools -- meet the same challenging academic content and performance standards expected of all children. The request also would target a larger share of Title I resources on communities and schools with the highest concentrations of children from low-income families.

• $620 million for Safe and Drug-Free Schools programs, an increase of $64 million, to help States and school districts address the pervasive problems of student drug and alcohol use and school violence.

• $3.2 billion for Special Education Grants to States, an increase of $141 million, to help States cover increases in costs attributable to serving additional children, while maintaining the overall Federal share of the excess costs of serving children with disabilities at 8 percent.

• $150 million for Immigrant Education, up $50 million, in recognition of the additional costs faced by school districts that serve large numbers of recently arrived immigrant students. The request would help pay the costs of educating some 875,000 recent immigrant students.

• The School Construction initiative, which would use a one- time $5 billion mandatory appropriation to pay for up to half the interest on school construction bonds or similar assistance. This program is designed in part to help States and communities address the facilities needs created by growing enrollments.

In addition, the Department is proposing a new program of After- School Learning Centers to help 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. The 1998 request includes $50 million to support the development of hundreds of new after-school programs focusing on activities designed to improve student achievement and prevent juvenile violence and substance abuse.

MAKING COLLEGE MORE AFFORDABLE FOR ALL STUDENTS

The President also helped raise the maximum Pell Grant award by $400 or 17 percent -- from $2,300 in 1993 to $2,700 in 1997 -- while total Federal student financial aid available has grown more than 70 percent -- from $25 billion in 1993 to $43 billion in 1997 -- and the number of students receiving Federal student aid climbed 1.3 million or 20 percent.

For 1998, the President is proposing a combination of budget and tax initiatives that would significantly expand access to postsecondary education for lower-income students while providing new assistance to middle-class families struggling to pay for college. The request would raise the total aid available for postsecondary education and training from $42.8 billion in 1997 to $47.2 billion in 1998, an increase of $4.4 billion or 10 percent (not including the tax initiatives). The number of students receiving assistance would rise to 8.1 million, an increase of almost 450,000 students. The 1998 budget also would promote hard work in high school and college by rewarding high achievement. Highlights of the request include the following:

• $7.6 billion for Pell Grants, up $1.7 billion or 29 percent, to raise the maximum award to $3,000 and provide grants to an additional 348,000 students, in part through a proposed change to need analysis rules. The $300 increase in the Pell maximum award -- the largest increase in two decades -- would improve access to postsecondary education for students from low-income families, and studies show that grant aid increases college completion rates for such students.

• Need analysis for independent students without dependents would be changed so that more of these students would be eligible for student aid. The proposed expansion of the asset protection allowance for independent students -- who are generally defined as at least 24 years old, married, or military veterans -- would treat these students similarly to all other students, correcting an inequity created by the Higher Education Amendments of 1992.

• $857 million for Work Study, an increase of $27 million, would add 28,000 new recipients as part of the President's commitment to increase the number of recipients to one million by the year 2000. The President also is encouraging schools to use Work-Study funds for students to serve as tutors in the America Reads Challenge, in part through a waiver of the institutional matching requirement.

• The request would save student borrowers more than $2 billion over the next five years by cutting loan fees in the Direct Loan and Federal Family Education Loan programs.

• An additional $3.5 billion in taxpayer savings over five years would be achieved through a restructuring and streamlining of the guaranty agency system.

• $525 million for the TRIO programs, up $25 million, would provide important outreach and support services to an additional 36,662 students.

• $132 million for Presidential Honors Scholarships would reward the academic excellence of the top 5 percent of graduating students in every high school in the Nation by providing a one-year, $1,000 scholarship to help cover college costs.

• $39.3 million for Byrd Honors Scholarships, up $10.2 million to provide four cohorts of recipients with the full $1,500 scholarship authorized by law.

• $6 million for the Advanced Placement Fee program would for the first time supplement State efforts to subsidize and, in some cases, pay the full cost of advanced placement tests for low-income students, who may not be able to afford the test fee. This program would help raise academic expectations by encouraging low-income students to take such tests for college credit, while also stimulating more high schools to offer advanced placement courses.

TAX PROPOSALS

• The America's Hope Scholarship proposal would help make two years of postsecondary education universally available to all Americans by providing a tax credit of up to $1,500 to first-year postsecondary students and to second-year students who earn at least a B average.

• A proposed Middle Class Bill of Rights tax deduction would allow up to a $5,000 deduction ($10,000 in 1999 and later years) from income for payment of postsecondary tuition and fees. The deduction would be available even to taxpayers who do not itemize deductions.

• The proposed expanded use of Individual Retirement Accounts would provide a strong incentive to individuals and families to save for college by allowing penalty-free withdrawals after 5 years if used to pay postsecondary education expenses.

• The proposed extension of the exclusion for employer- provided educational assistance, currently scheduled to expire in mid-1997, through December 31, 2000. The Section 127 provision allows taxpayers to deduct up to $5,250 in employer-provided postsecondary tuition expenses from their incomes each year. The proposal would also reinstate and extend through December 31, 2000 the expired exclusion for employer-provided graduate education.

Have a comment or suggestion on ED Initiatives? Please send it to Kirk Winters in the Office of the Under Secretary at kirk.winters@ed.gov.

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Last Updated -- Feb. 10, 1997, (pjk)