Advocate Summary

Issue:  Basic Education
Advocate:  Office of Representative Nita M. Lowey (D-NY) - Beth Tritter
Date of Interview: 8/5/02

Basic Background
Congresswoman Lowey was quite active before I think the issue was, the issue has gotten a lot sexier in recent years, she was very active and interested before it was a very sexy issue – increasing funding for basic education. For a number of years our funding was sort of capped at 98 million dollars, and it was labeled basic education for children, there was no sort of sense that there was adult literacy programs that should be addressed also. And a couple of years ago we started making a big push for funding for basic education and when she became the ranking member on the Appropriations subcommittee on Foreign Operations she made it one of her top priorities and that made a huge difference of what kind of funding we could get. We got 165 million dollars last year and we’re hoping to get 250 this year but I don’t think that’s going to be possible, probably closer to 200, but in the space of a couple of years to see it go from 98 to 200 would be a huge accomplishment. I think it’s a good issue for a lot of members who aren’t as enthusiastic about development aid because they can relate very well to the fact that we need to be spending money on education here at home and it’s something that really translates well. So if you’re an education person here, then you should be an education person. It is sort of the most basic of all, well I guess you could say anything is the most basic of all development initiates but there are so many studies that have shown, particularly educating girls – that there is a domino effect on all sorts of other economic indicators – when you educate a woman, her children are healthier, she is more productive, she brings home more money for here family – apparently when women make money they bring it home to their families, when men make money it doesn’t always make it home – he children are more likely to go to school, specifically her daughters are more likely to go to school, her sons would be anyway if she were educated but the daughters would be more likely if she herself was educated, and the numbers I think this winter are 110 million children out of school and the majority of those are girls so there are huge disparities. The World Bank has gotten very involved in it with the Education for All initiative, trying to get universal primary education by 2015, I think that’s a good goal to shoot for, I think there are going to be a lot of obstacles to funding. It is gaining speed, but it’s not obviously at the same level as the HIV/ AIDS crisis in terms of primacy in peoples’ minds. The HIV/ AIDS crisis though is having a lot of impact on basic education because in Africa a lot of the professional class is dying out, so you have these 20 something, 30 something teachers who are dying of AIDS and that’s effecting educational systems. So I think as the profile of the basic education issue gets higher, you can see how it’s interconnected with all sorts of different issues. Education is an area where cultural sensitivity is very important and there have been interesting case studies where a community that doesn’t send its girls to school, doesn’t send its girls to school, and you wonder why, and you figure it’s because they don’t believe girls should go to school – but that’s not really it, but it’s well there’s nowhere for the girls to go to the bathroom once they are at school, or the walk to school is too far and they can’t accompany their girls to school and they don’t have anyone to and they are scared about the girls walking alone because it’s not safe, or they don’t have the money for a proper uniform. It’s one of those issues where there are obviously macro problems but there are also these micro problems, and if you just identify them and solve them, you can actually get girls in school a lot more easily then you’d think you could. 

There’s a push to get the World Bank to pay more attention to it and to support World Bank efforts. On the US side I think everyone supports basic education, there’s no one who really says no we shouldn’t fund basic education. It’s much less contentious, you know, there are hot buttons in HIV/ AIDS – should we be doing prevention or should we be doing treatment, there are conservatives who are uncomfortable with helping people with HIV/AIDS, I think AIDS can become more of a political issue. It is very similar to basic education because there is a domestic component to it which I think is more politicized than the overseas component. The overseas component I think everyone agrees we should be doing a lot the question is how much and how should we be doing it. Basic education is the same thing in that there is a domestic component to education obviously, which is a huge issue for everyone here in the United States and then there is an overseas component also. The overseas component is just getting some steam and it’s not very controversial, you don’t have these wide splits of people who think that we should be building schools as opposed to buying textbooks, we don’t really have that. The general feeling is that we’re not investing enough. The goal is primary education, lets move toward that – not the goal is to eradicate HIV/ AIDS or treat people with AIDS what one do you want to spend more money on. That’s a good thing for the issue and also a bad thing for the issue, because sometimes controversy generates a little more publicity for it. I think that around the time that the who Afghanistan thing blew up there was a whole bunch of good press around sending girls back to school because girls hadn’t been allowed to go to school. And I think that was one of the first times people had this current example of the importance of education and the extent to which girls are excluded and things like that. People really want education but we have to help get them there. 

Prior Activity on the Issue 
[See above]

Advocacy Activities Undertaken
She’s been working closely with her Republican colleagues and also there are a number of Democrats that are interested in the issue as well. I don’t think there are as many people interested in the issue as you would think because as a separate development issue like HIV/ AIDS, or TB or malaria, each has sort of a congressional champion. Basic education didn’t really have that till very recently, so you have a Democratic/ Republican team of Earl Paleroy and Mark Green from Wisconsin who have been quite active on the issue. They took a trip out to see some basic education projects. 

There are a couple of groups around town that do basic education projects and get that money from USAID but also do advocacy, one is World Learning which is in town, the other is the Academy for Educational Development, they do quite a bit of work as well. Interaction is also interested in basic education, I think Results is also interested; these sort of large development focused groups are interested in basic education, but they don’t have it as their primary goal or their only goal. Last year they hired this gentleman by the name of John Ingram who is a former USAID official and before that worked on the Senate Foreign relations committee, and he is the head of the Basic Education Coalition, which is all these people getting together and saying it’s better if we are sort of coordinated on our advocacy efforts so he’s sort of now the guru and he deals with the World Bank and he deals with the US Government and the administration and Congress and stuff like that. So now there is a, which there never was, a focal point for advocacy efforts. I deal most often with him.

Future Advocacy Activities Planned
So we are kind of climbing and clawing our way up; last year we had a 150 billion at conference and we ended up with 165 just because we made it a priority and asked for it and made it in the end. This year I’d love to see 250, the Senate has 200 and we’ll just have to see how much money there is, I mean there are a lot of priorities and you have as you always do – there are groups in the development community that care about everything and there are those that care about one thing. And the groups that care about one thing want more for their thing and sometimes that means you have to starve other things. It’s a big balancing act every year, and I think that our budget really hasn’t gone up appreciable means that we’re really stuck. 200 or 250 – there isn’t going to be extra money in the bill – it’s got to come out of something. So its difficult. With the Millennium Challenge Account coming up one would hope that there will be some education projects among the projects in there, but that’s sort of nebulous right now. 

Key Congressional Contact(s)/Champions
She’s been working closely with her Republican colleagues and also there are a number of Democrats that are interested in the issue as well. I don’t think there are as many people interested in the issue as you would think because as a separate development issue like HIV/ AIDS, or TB or malaria, each has sort of a congressional champion. Basic education didn’t really have that till very recently, so you have a Democratic/ Republican team of Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) and Mark Green from Wisconsin who have been quite active on the issue. They took a trip out to see some basic education projects. 

Targets of Direct Lobbying
None mentioned.

Targets of Grassroots Lobbying
Not applicable.

Coalition Partners: Names/Participants
There are a couple of groups around town that do basic education projects and get that money from USAID but also do advocacy, one is World Learning which is in town, the other is the Academy for Educational Development, they do quite a bit of work as well. Interaction is also interested in basic education, I think Results is also interested; these sort of large development focused groups are interested in basic education, but they don’t have it as their primary goal or their only goal. Last year they hired this gentleman by the name of John Ingram who is a former USAID official and before that worked on the Senate Foreign relations committee, and he is the head of the Basic Education Coalition, which is all these people getting together and saying it’s better if we are sort of coordinated on our advocacy efforts so he’s sort of now the guru and he deals with the World Bank and he deals with the US Government and the administration and Congress and stuff like that. So now there is a, which there never was, a focal point for advocacy efforts. I deal most often with him.

One of the sort of the advantages to the lobbying effort for basic education funding, coming so late in the game, as opposed to other development initiatives and goals, is that the community is fairly, you don’t have just women groups talking about girls’ education, you have everyone lobbying for the same budget. 

Other Participants in the Issue Debate
None mentioned. 

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence
The truth of it is that it’s a very simple argument and there’s no sort of ideological split between the basic education camps. People understand it, as soon as you explain – ok, why is basic education important? – well why is education important? You can’t hope to have a productive society that’s going to be healthy, that’s going to be able to read labels on medicine cans and figure out how to feed their children, and go to work, and become trading partners with the United States without an educated society. So if you keep people from going to school then you are sort of dooming them to a cycle of poverty illiteracy and things like that. That’s an argument that appeals to all sorts of people, it’s an argument that appeals to people that are very interested in trade – because you can’t have trade with a society that has no people who are educated. It appeals to people who are interested in development as a humanitarian goal, or a moral imperative – because if you deny these children an education you a dooming them to that same cycle of poverty. And from a democracy goal. You know, if you are interested in health there’s a good argument for education, if you’re interested in democracy building there’s a good argument for basic education, if you’re interested in trade promotion there’s a good argument for basic education. So it really sort of runs the gamete and the arguments aren’t so different, you don’t have to tweak them that much to make them appeal to different people. 

And that 110 million, that’s sort of “the” statistic, HIV/ AIDS  there are a lot of shocking statistics. The number of kids out of school is as much of a shocking statistic as you need. It’s easy to make this argument without statistics. 

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence
See above.

Targeted Arguments, Targets, and Evidence
So it really sort of runs the gamete and the arguments aren’t so different, you don’t have to tweak them that much to make them appeal to different people.

Nature of the Opposition
There’s a push to get the World Bank to pay more attention to it and to support World Bank efforts. On the US side I think everyone supports basic education, there’s no one who really says no we shouldn’t fund basic education. It’s much less contentious, you know, there are hot buttons in HIV/ AIDS – should we be doing prevention or should we be doing treatment, there are conservatives who are uncomfortable with helping people with HIV/AIDS, I think AIDS can become more of a political issue. It is very similar to basic education because there is a domestic component to it which I think is more politicized than the overseas component. The overseas component I think everyone agrees we should be doing a lot the question is how much and how should we be doing it. Basic education is the same thing in that there is a domestic component to education obviously, which is a huge issue for everyone here in the United States and then there is an overseas component also. The overseas component is just getting some steam and it’s not very controversial, you don’t have these wide splits of people who think that we should be building schools as opposed to buying textbooks, we don’t really have that. The general feeling is that we’re not investing enough. The goal is primary education, lets move toward that – not the goal is to eradicate HIV/ AIDS or treat people with AIDS what one do you want to spend more money on. That’s a good thing for the issue and also a bad thing for the issue, because sometimes controversy generates a little more publicity for it. I think that around the time that the who Afghanistan thing blew up there was a whole bunch of good press around sending girls back to school because girls hadn’t been allowed to go to school. And I think that was one of the first times people had this current example of the importance of education and the extent to which girls are excluded and things like that. People really want education but we have to help get them there. 

[Impediments]
There is a limited foreign aid budget that the major impediment. And also it’s my understanding that USAID used to have a lot more development experts who were specifically education experts and they downsized in the 90s and a lot of those people either retired or were let go. And they’re still, I think, recovering - they don’t have the personnel they need. So you know, they get rid of their people, our budget doesn’t rise very much, as long as we are keeping our interests steady in terms of the amount we are devoting to it, they’re going to keep their personnel steady. And we have said over the past couple of years “you need to beef up your staff on this” we want you to have improved programs and if we’re going to give you this money you need people to manage it so go find education people.   

So we are kind of climbing and clawing our way up; last year we had a 150 billion at conference and we ended up with 165 just because we made it a priority and asked for it and made it in the end. This year I’d love to see 250, the Senate has 200 and we’ll just have to see how much money there is, I mean there are a lot of priorities and you have as you always do – there are groups in the development community that care about everything and there are those that care about one thing. And the groups that care about one thing want more for their thing and sometimes that means you have to starve other things. It’s a big balancing act every year, and I think that our budget really hasn’t gone up appreciable means that we’re really stuck. 200 or 250 – there isn’t going to be extra money in the bill – it’s got to come out of something. So its difficult. With the Millennium Challenge Account coming up one would hope that there will be some education projects among the projects in there, but that’s sort of nebulous right now. 

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition 
Not applicable.

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition
Not applicable.

Targeted Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition (and Targets)
Not applicable.

Described as a Partisan Issue
No.

Venue(s) of Activity
House and Senate Foreign Relations committees

Action Pending or Taken by Relevant Decision Makers
The appropriations bill will be voted on following the recess.

Policy Objective(s) and Support for/Opposition to the Status Quo
Working to increase funding for international basic education.

Advocate’s Experience: Tenure in Current Job/Previous Experience
I’ve been with this office for 3 years, I’ve been on the Hill for 4 and I have a degree in Middle Eastern studies, I came straight from graduate school, so I have two degrees in Middle Eastern studies. 

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