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Search Terms: Riley, Richard, House or Senate or Joint

Document 3 of 5.

MARCH 3, 1999, WEDNESDAY

SECTION: IN THE NEWS

LENGTH: 2259 words

HEADLINE: PREPARED STATEMENT BY
RICHARD W. RILEY
SECRETARY OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
BEFORE THE SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE
LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES AND EDUCATION SUBCOMMITTEE
SUBJECT - FISCAL YEAR 2000 BUDGET
REQUEST FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

BODY:
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
I am pleased to have this opportunity to talk with about President Clinton's fiscal year 2000 budget request for the Department of Education. I want to begin by thanking you, Mr. Chairman, as well as other Members of this Subcommittee, for your strong support of education over the past several years. Together I think we have made real progress in making the kind of investments in education needed to help prepare all Americans for the challenges we face in the new century that lies just around the corner.
In particular, our joint effort to help States and communities to set academic standards for all children has been a tremendous success. With the help of programs like Goals 2000, 48 States have developed state-level standards, and two States have pushed for standards at the local level. Progress toward meeting these new standards has been uneven, however, particularly in high-poverty schools. The President's 2000 budget for education is designed to improve student achievement by accelerating change and increasing accountability based on these State and local standards.The President's request would help end social promotion, reduce class size, modernize schools, raise the quality of teaching, improve literacy and help new Americans learn English, and provide new pathways to college for disadvantaged students.
SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION AND CLASS-SIZE REDUCTION
Before I describe our discretionary request, I want to highlight the School Construction and Modernization tax incentive, which the President is proposing for the third year in a row. Students cannot learn--and teachers cannot teach--to high standards in falling down, overcrowded classrooms. The President's proposal would support almost $25 billion in interest-free bonds to help build or modernize up to 6,000 schools.
Modernizing classrooms--and building more of them--goes hand-in-hand with the Class-Size Reduction program launched just last fall. The goal is to recruit and train 100,000 new teachers to help school districts reduce class sizes in grades 1-3 to a nationwide average of just 18 students. The 2000 request includes $1.4 billion to help school districts hire a total of 38,000 teachers in the second year of the program, an increase of 8,000 over the 1999 level. There's no better way to rapidly improve student achievement than to put highly trained teachers into small classes where they can provide the individual attention students need to reach high standards.
The budget also provides $461 million for Goals 2000 State grants to help some 5,000 school districts continue standards-based reform efforts. I should note here that a recent report from the General Accounting Office found that State officials considered Goals 2000 to be a "catalyst" and "a significant factor in promoting their education reform efforts." That is exactly what we hoped for when we worked with Congress to create this program 5 years ago, so I am happy to see that it is working as intended.
Another catalyst for change in our schools is technology, and our request includes $450 million for the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund, an increase of $25 million to help pay for hardware, train teachers to use technology in the classroom, and develop and buy educational software.
IMPROVING ACCOUNTABILITY
As you heard in the State of the Union Address, strengthening accountability will be a key focus of our efforts to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) over the coming year. The President's budget backs this effort with major increases in two areas.
First, to help end the practice of social promotion, we are asking for $600 million for 21st Century Community Learning Centers, an increase of $400 million to help some 2,000 additional school districts create or expand after-school and summer programs that can help students catch up academically. This request would serve approximately 1.1 million students of the estimated 15 million school-aged children who go home alone after school each day. In places like Chicago, after- school programs have helped to end social promotion by strengthening academic achievement, and not by retaining students in grade.
Second, the request for Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies contains $200 million to help turn around failing schools. Contrary to several reports that I have seen in the news media, our goal here is not to expand Federal control over local schools, but to help States and school districts implement the Title I accountability provisions established by Congress during the last ESEA reauthorization.
One of the best ways to bring about real change and turn around failing schools is through research-based reforms. That is why our request includes $175 million for the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstrations program, an increase of $30 million to help an additional 560 schools carry out research-based school improvement. We would also increase funding for educational research by $45 million to help meet the growing need for research-based information on what works in education.
The charter school movement continues to bring together teachers, parents, and community leaders to reinvent public schools and turn around lagging student achievement. The budget provides $130 million for Charter Schools, an increase of $30 million, to support up to 2,200 new or redesigned schools that offer innovative approaches in exchange for greater accountability for student achievement.
The 2000 request also continues support for mastering the basics, including $8 billion for Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies and $286 million for the second year of the new Reading Excellence program, which helps all children to read well and independently by the end of the third grade. A new $50 million Special Education Primary Education Intervention program would help school districts meet the needs of children aged 5 through 9 who have marked difficulty learning to read or who have behavioral problems. The budget also would double funds for improving writing skills to $14 million, while providing $6.7 million for America Counts, a new initiative to ensure that middle school students master the fundamentals of algebra and geometry.
BETTER TEACHING FOR ALL STUDENTS
Another major emphasis in the 2000 budget is on better teaching for all students. Raising the bar for teachers will be especially difficult in view of the estimated shortage of 2 million teachers over the next 10 years, but it is essential if we are to improve student achievement.
Teacher quality also will be a key priority in the Administration's proposal to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Now that challenging academic standards have been established in every State, we see improving classroom instruction as essential to driving these standards down to the classroom level.

Our ESEA reauthorization proposal will include a new initiative, called Quality Teachers and High Standards in Every Classroom, that would help States and school districts continue the work of aligning instruction with State standards and assessments while focusing most resources on improving teacher quality through high-quality professional development. This new initiative, which would not take effect until fiscal year 2001, would replace the current Goals 2000, Title II Eisenhower Professional Development State Grants, and Title VI Innovative Education Program Strategies State Grants programs.
For fiscal year 2000, the President's budget includes $335 million for Eisenhower Professional Development State Grants, which help States and school districts provide intensive professional development in all the core academic subjects. The newly authorized Teacher Quality Enhancement Grant program would receive a $40 million increase, for a total of $115 million. These funds would help States improve the quality of their teaching force, strengthen the capacity of educators to design effective teacher education programs, and reduce shortages of qualified teachers in high-poverty school districts.
The $1.4 billion Class Size Reduction program also is an important part of the teacher quality effort, because it allows school districts to use up to 15 percent of their allocations to improve teacher quality through such activities as testing new teachers for academic content knowledge and professional development for current teachers.
A $25 million increase for Bilingual Education Professional Development would help address the critical national shortage of well- prepared bilingual and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers. And a new $10 million American Indian Teacher Corps program would recruit and train 1,000 new Indian teachers over the next five years to work in Native American communities.
IMPROVING SCHOOL SAFETY
School safety is a concern of teachers, parents, and students alike. The President's budget includes significant support for a wide range of efforts to keep schools safe and drug-free. The $439 million request for Safe and Drug-Free Schools State grants would target larger grants to school districts with the most severe problems by requiring States to distribute 30 percent of their allocations as competitive grants.
We would also increase funding for the Coordinator Initiative, which would put a skilled program coordinator in nearly half of all middle schools to help develop and implement effective drug and violence prevention strategies. And a new $12 million initiative known as Project SERV (School Emergency Response to Violence) would strengthen current ad hoc efforts to provide emergency assistance to schools affected by violence or other traumatic incidents.
EXPANDING OPPORTUNITIES FOR POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION
One of the most important achievements highlighted by President Clinton in his State of the Union Address was the simple statement that "we have finally opened the doors of college to all Americans." Over the past six years, larger Pell grants, expanded work-study opportunities, lower borrowing costs on student loans, and generous Hope and Lifetime Learning tax credits have made college possible for all who qualify.Paying for college is still a difficult burden, however, especially for low- and middle-income families, and our 2000 budget would help reduce that burden. The maximum Pell Grant, for example, would rise to $3,250, an increase of $125 over the 1999 level. A $64 million increase for Work-Study would fulfill the President's goal of giving 1 million recipients the opportunity to work their way through college. The Work-Study request also would bolster the "America Reads" and "America Counts" initiatives, under which Work-Study recipients serve as reading and math tutors.
Despite the availability of student aid, too few disadvantaged and minority students pursue and complete a postsecondary education. The 2000 budget contains several proposals to increase college-going and college-completion rates for these students.
We would double funding to $240 million for the GEAR UP program, which supports new partnerships between postsecondary institutions and middle schools to help disadvantaged students think about and plan for college early on in middle school. The request would provide early intervention services such as mentoring, tutoring, and career counseling for about 381,000 students in nearly 1,000 high-poverty middle schools. The budget also includes a $30 million increase for TRIO, for a total of $630 million to support outreach and support services extending from middle school through graduate education.
Two new initiatives would encourage students to enter and complete postsecondary education. The $35 million College Completion Challenge Grants program would help postsecondary institutions increase the persistence rate of students who are at risk of dropping out. And the $15 million Preparing for College initiative would provide vital information to young students and their parents about the importance of higher education and the steps needed to go to college.
IMPROVING THE SKILLS OF ADULT AMERICANS Finally, the President's budget includes significant increases for programs to help adult Americans master literacy and other basic skills. Adult Education State Grants, for example, would increase by $103 million, or 28 percent, to expand State efforts to help immigrant and other limited English proficient adults--including Hispanics--to learn English, make a successful entry into the workforce, and be part of the American success story.
The request also would provide $70 million to demonstrate methods of providing instruction in English as a second language and civics/life skills to recently immigrated young adults who were never enrolled in American schools and who completed minimal education in their native countries.
Disadvantaged adults also would benefit from a proposed $55 million expansion of the Community-Based Technology Centers program, which helps community residents gain technology skills, take courses on- line, and access on-line job databases by bringing technology to public housing, community centers, libraries, and other community facilities.
I believe the President's budget offers a significant opportunity to bring real change to our schools and enhance lifelong learning for all Americans. I look forward to working with the Subcommittee to make good on this opportunity.
I will be happy to take any questions you may have.
END

LOAD-DATE: March 4, 1999

Document 3 of 5.


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