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House Education
Panel Approves Family Literacy
and Impact Aid Legislation
WASHINGTON – The House Education and the Workforce
Committee approved today two bills to renew parts of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
The bills are H.R. 3222, Literacy Involves Families Together (LIFT)
Act, and H.R. 3616, the Impact Aid Reauthorization Act of 2000. Both bills passed by voice
vote.
“I am convinced that literacy is the key to ending the cycle of
poverty, and that family literacy programs are crucial if we are to
accomplish this goal,” said House Education and the Workforce Committee
Chairman Bill Goodling (R-PA).
“Across the country Even Start programs are helping parents reduce
their dependence on public assistance, obtain employment, or advance in
their current jobs.
Meanwhile, school performance improves for children whose parents
participate in such programs.
The LIFT Act will strengthen Even Start and make the program more
effective.”
The LIFT Act makes
changes to improve the quality of services under the Even Start program,
Goodling said. LIFT
strengthens accountability; expands the ages at which children can be
served; sets standards based on scientific research; encourages
coordination with other federal programs to provide better services; and
provides funding for training and technical assistance to local Even Start
instructors.
“Across the country, Even Start programs are helping parents who
are high school dropouts obtain their equivalency certificates, while
teaching them how best to foster their children’s academic success,”
Goodling said. “Other
programs are teaching English grammar to recent immigrants and helping
them understand the public school systems in which their children are
enrolled. I am convinced that
Even Start is working to help children, parents, and families learn to
read and to improve the quality of their lives. I urge the full House to support
the Even Start program by passing the LIFT Act.”
The Impact Aid bill is designed to help school districts deal with
the loss of tax revenue that results from a heavy presence of federally
owned land and property.
Among the changes H.R. 3616 made to the program were changes in the
formula for payments for federal property to ensure more equitable funds
distribution, as well as support for small school districts affected by
federal property.
(Summaries of the LIFT Act and Impact Aid program as
passed by the committee follow.)
LIFT:
Literacy Involves Families Together Act
Summary of Improvements to the Even Start
Program
The Literacy Involves Families Together Act will make changes to
improve the quality of services under the Even Start Family Literacy
Program. Key changes in the
new legislation are:
- Strengthens Accountability. States will review the
progress of local programs to make sure they are meeting the goals of
helping parents to read, helping children to learn, and training parents
on how to be good teachers for their children.
- Quality Improvements. States can use a portion of
federal money to provide training and technical assistance to Even Start
instructors, as long as the level of service to program participants at
least remains the same.
States provide such training through a grant, contract, or other
agreement with an organization experienced in providing quality training
and technical assistance to family literacy instructors.
- Scientific Research Standards. Even Start programs will use
instruction based on scientifically based research for children and
adults. Since there is not
much scientific evidence on how adults learn to read, this provision may
be applied to the extent possible to adults.
- Eligibility of
Religious Organizations.
The bill clarifies that religious organizations are eligible to
provide services to program participants. An amendment by Rep. Mark Souder
(R-IN) would ensure that the government considers religious
organizations, as providers of assistance, on the same basis as other
non-governmental organizations, as long as the program is implemented in
a manner consistent with the establishment clause of the
Constitution. The amendment
does not require any religious organization to participate in Even
Start. Rather, it simply
states that the program may not prohibit religious organizations from
participating in the Even Start program and may not require those
religious organizations to eliminate their religious character in order
to participate.
- Family Literacy in Title I and
Migrant Programs. The
bill amends Title I and the Migrant Education Program state plans of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The bill allows states to
encourage organizations with large numbers of children, whose parents do
not have a high school education or who have low levels of literacy, to
operate family literacy programs.
- Qualifications
for Instructional Personnel.
The bill sets forth qualifications for individuals providing
academic instruction to program participants and for the individuals
administering local Even Start programs.
- Coordination
Grants. The bill
continues provisions in current law providing grants to states to
coordinate existing state, federal and local adult education and early
childhood programs in order to create additional family literacy
programs.
- Even Start Services to Older
Children. The bill
allows Even Start to serve children older than 8 if schools use Title I
funds to pay a portion of the cost of those services.
- Set-aside for Migrants and Native
Americans. The bill
increases from 5 percent to 6 percent the set-aside to serve migrants
and Native Americans once appropriations for Even Start reach $200
million.
- Coordination of Native American
Programs. Even Start
and other programs operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
provide family literacy services to Native Americans. The bill allows program
coordination to prevent duplication and ensure the sharing of
information about quality programs.
- Reading Research Project. The bill funds a research
project to find the most effective ways to improve literacy among adults
with reading difficulties.
The project will also determine how family literacy services can
best provide parents with the skills they need to support their
children’s reading development.
The National Institute for Literacy will receive money for the
project, which may be carried out by the institute, another federal
agency, or a private organization.
- Authorization. The bill increases Even Start authorization to
$500 million for the first year.
- Inexpensive
Book Distribution Program (Reading is Fundamental/RIF). The bill adds a new title
extending and amending the authorization for the Inexpensive Book
Distribution Program. New
provisions would assist low-income communities to meet the non-federal
share of the cost of the program and allow the awarding of multi-year
subcontracts if it is believed that they will assist local projects to
obtain additional local support.
The Impact Aid
Reauthorization Act of 2000
Summary of Major Provisions
The following are the major provisions of the Impact Aid
reauthorization bill being introduced by Rep. Robin Hayes
(R-NC).
- Changes the formula for payments for federal property to ensure a
more equitable distribution of funds.
- Incorporates into the Impact Aid law the pilot program for “heavily
impacted” school districts included in the past two Labor/HHS/Education
Appropriations bills.
Instead of a separate authorization for heavily impacted
districts, this provision would provide those school districts
qualifying as heavily-impacted with an increase in their basic support
payments based on their high need.
- Ensures
equitable payments for children living on land formerly owned by the
federal government. As the
military privatizes more and more military housing, it is expected that
school districts will not receive adequate funding under Impact Aid to
make up the difference between the amount of taxes paid on such property
and the amount they would have received for each child if the property
had retained its non-tax status.
This provision would continue to count such children as on-base
children, but would reduce the amount of their Impact Aid payment by the
actual amount of the taxes used for educational purposes.
- Requires
the Education Department to provide a notice to schools that miss filing
deadlines and provide them a period of time within which to submit
applications for Impact Aid.
This change would address the growing number of yearly Impact Aid
amendments due to school districts missing deadlines.
- Revises the
construction provisions of the Impact Aid law to allow federally
impacted school districts with no bonding capacity, or schools that have
health or safety hazards, to apply for the existing Impact Aid
construction program and shift some of the existing construction money
to serve these districts.
The Education Secretary would then fund the highest priority
projects.
- Provides a
funding floor to small school districts with fewer than 1,000 children
who have a per pupil average lower than the state average. This provision would guarantee
them a foundation payment of no less than 40 percent of what they would
receive if the program were fully funded.
- Allows schools
to continue to receive higher payments for children who move off base
during rebuilding, but limits the time period to two years. Current law allows schools to
continue to receive higher payments if the children move off base during
renovation of military housing.
The bill expands this provision to instances where housing is
being rebuilt.
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