Advocate Summary

Issue:  K-12 Math and Science Education
Advocate:  Texas Instruments – Paula Collins
Date of Interview: 8/5/02

Basic Background
TI was very much involved in the No Child Left Behind debate. During that debate congress authorized a Math/Science Partnership under the Department of Education and they authorized it at 450 million dollars but then they only appropriated 12.5 million dollars for it. And basically what they did, when they passed No Child Left Behind, NCLB under Title II the whole teacher quality piece, they had a number of different parts. And one part was part A which basically took the Eisenhower program and the class size reduction program and collapsed them into one program so that they wouldn’t be separate programs anymore. And that was to be used on a formula basis to improve teacher quality, a number of uses including class size reduction, including professional development, including experiments with differential pay, and all sorts of things people could do to use teacher quality to try to improve education. Than the math & science thing was set up separate from that even though the Eisenhower program had initially been set up for math and science. So the business community, meaning a whole group of folks, formed this coalition called the Business Coalition for Excellence in Education and it was co-chaired by TI, Intel, IBM and Statefarm Insurance, and we had a number of issues that we were following including the high standards, annual assessment, greater accountability, the OIP debate, but definitely teacher quality was a big piece and math and science excellence, and also effective integration of technology in the classroom. And we were very much focused on math and science as one of the pieces because so many of the companies involved, both high-tech and traditional manufacturing have a number of needs for people who are trained in math and science, and we’re just finding that it’s harder and harder to find people who either one, have the entry level skills for the lower level jobs or enough people getting degrees in the physical sciences and engineering and things like that to fill the highly technical professional slots. So a number of companies hire foreign nationals to fill those slots because there just aren’t enough people graduating from universities with degrees in that area. For example for TI, we have a great need for electrical engineers particularly design engineers that design integrated circuits and the number of people graduating from American universities with degrees in electrical engineering have been on a steady decline since the 1980s, there was about 25 thousand, now it’s down to about 12 thousand. And the number of folks graduating with masters degrees and PhDs from US universities, an increasing number of them are foreign nationals, nearly 50 percent for masters level and above 50 percent for PhD levels. So when we are recruiting at college campuses, we are by definition, if we are looking at the higher end, are probably going to have a group that is more than half internationally based. And so there is this huge focus on part of high-tech and other pharmecuticals and other companies are really focused on trying to improve access to folks with degrees. So we were very much focused to make sure that what ever congress did was going to support increased investments in math and science. So the congress passed this bill with the 450 million dollar authorization, we were very excited about that. Then they only appropriated 12.5 million for it, we were very unexcited about that, we thought there’s something wrong here – that there’s so little emphasis. At the same time the administration, in their No Child Left Behind blue print, back in January had focused on math and science partnerships through NSF, and we also supported that too, we thought that was a good idea. NSF has a reasonably good reputation for producing quality programs, they don’t have such a good reputation for moving them out past NSF but the idea is that you can incubate some good programs and then if you have a mechanism to move them out that would be a really good thing, so we were supporting that too. Congress did appropriate I think it was 160 million for the NSF Math and Science Partnerships. Because the Congress appropriated so little for the Department of Education, and by comparison, much more for the NSF program, they decided to basically combine them for purposes of getting grant proposals. And while the requirements are slightly different and in some cases they are considerably different, but for most people they look fairly similar they took potential grant applicants for both of them simultaneously and that process just finished a while ago and they are announcing awardees I just heard today in September. 

Prior Activity on the Issue 
None mentioned.

Advocacy Activities Undertaken
For the No Child Left Behind, to make sure there was a robust authorization, we spoke with members of the two relevant committees – the Senate HELP committee and the House Education and the Workforce committee. We worked with staff, we spoke directly with members. We sent lots of communications to the Hill. Almost every communication we sent had this mantra that we wanted in the bill and one of them was the math and science partnerships. And when it got down to between the House passed bill and the Senate passed bill we had clear conversations with policy makers about what we wanted to come out of this which was investment in math and science funding at the K-12 level. And so it was basic lobbying. Some newspaper interviews. Lots of paper up on the Hill, that kind of thing.

Future Advocacy Activities Planned
We talked some with the coalition of associations, but we didn’t work all that closely together. So we talked, it wasn’t like we were strangers. This year a couple of us are trying to work much more closely with them to up the appropriations in the Department of Education Math and Science Partnerships. 

Key Congressional Contact(s)/Champions
None mentioned.

Targets of Direct Lobbying
None mentioned.

Targets of Grassroots Lobbying
None mentioned.

Coalition Partners: Names/Participants
So the business community, meaning a whole group of folks, formed this coalition called the Business Coalition for Excellence in Education and it was co-chaired by TI, Intel, IBM and Statefarm Insurance

Other Participants in the Issue Debate
We talked some with the coalition of associations, but we didn’t work all that closely together. So we talked, it wasn’t like we were strangers. This year a couple of us are trying to work much more closely with them to up the appropriations in the Department of Education Math and Science Partnerships. I think it was the Math Science Partnership Coalition or something like that. 

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence
That the TIMSS scores, the NAPE scores, our own hiring practices, the fact that all these kids needed remedial help when then got into college, all these things suggested that we needed to do a better job preparing kids. There has been a huge shortage of teachers in math and science and that’s going to get worse rather than better. And that our economy is increasingly dependent on people with these skills and that if we can’t educate our citizenry to be able to step into positions, whether it is the entry level or whether it’s the more technically advanced ones, that we as a country are going to suffer economically, our technological leadership will be in jeopardy and our national security will be in jeopardy. And you know we sort of use those three legs of the stool as pieces of what we thought was important.

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence
[Three main arguments – see above]

Targeted Arguments, Targets, and Evidence
By and large we were talking to the authorizers last year and so we didn’t really target our arguments because a lot of them came with a similar mindset. We did not do a good job of working the appropriations committee last year, because we were suffering under the very naïve assumption, based on comments that a number of the authorizers made to us, which was that the appropriations process, while it would not necessarily fulfill what the authorizers envisioned in terms of full funding, but that the funding would sort of mirror proportionally what the Congress had decided in No Child Left Behind. So we were flabbergasted quite frankly when this 450 million dollar authorization translated into 12.5 million dollars. We just didn’t know what to do with that. 

Nature of the Opposition
There wasn’t any opposition. We’re not entirely sure what happened, there was a lot of finger pointing going on. And there was also some confusion with the Math Science Partnership at NSF and if that was redundant or how was it different. It’s not entirely clear that the administration was bought into what the Congress did in No Child Left Behind on the Math Science Partnership. I think they sort of thought, “oh well we want to do this through NSF, they have the track record, let’s work through them.” So I think there were a lot of things that were playing into it. But if you look at the No Child Left Behind structure which says all kids are going to be tested annually in math and reading and before too long, science and a billion dollars was provided for reading, plus anything in Title II Part A that schools wanted to use from teacher quality for reading, and we accept that and support it because if you can’t read you can’t do a lot of other things so that is a critical thing, but you also need numeric skills early on too and math facts and the like. Reading got a billion, math and science got 12.5 million, physed got 70 million, history got a 100 million, civics got 30 million, arts got 25 million – and it’s like wait a second! – there is something wrong. There is something wrong! And Congress is getting much better about talking about the criticality of math and science to the economics of this country, to our national security, the Hart Rudman report came out in the beginning of 2001 that talked about how they had five priorities for Homeland Security before anybody even heard of September 11th – number two on the list was math and science, it was research and development at the higher end, and it was math, science quality education and quality teaching really, to ensure that we had kids coming through that could do this stuff. And so we were dumbstruck, we were like “12.5 million?” You know, we recognize you might not want to throw a billion at it because there are still some things you need to get through and understand about how to teach kids but…And you look at the Eisenhower grant which is now Title II Part A, but there is no dedicated funding stream for math and science anymore, when there was – before No Child Left Behind, Congress had appropriated 480 million dollars for Eisenhower grants and while not all of that was dedicated to math and science at least 250 million was dedicated to it and estimates are that 375 million was spent on math and science. So if you look at it from that perspective you’ve gone from a 375 million dollar dedicated funding stream to a 12.5 million dollar funding stream. And then there’s this kind of thing “well the NSF got a 160 million for their math and science partnership and doesn’t that offset some of it.” And yes, in some respects it does, accept that the math and science partnerships at NSF are competitive they’re not formula driven so not every school system can get it. The ones in the Department of Education are needs driven you have to do a needs assessment before you determine where the money is going to go. Plus the NSF has traditionally had a separate stream of funding for K-12 anyway over the last several years, and they’ve been pulling back on their systemic initiative program and now their ramping up the MS Partnership and so we’re loosing money in the game is basically what it comes down to for the Math and Science education from a federal funding source. We can access the money that is in Title II Part A for math and science but there is no guarantee that you’re going to get it. People who want that money have to prioritize and figure out what they want – do they want it for reading do they want it for history do they want it for any other kind of thing, the money is available for a lot of different uses – class size reduction – so there is no clear funding stream to ensure that teachers are going to have access for professional development or whatever.

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
Senate HELP
House Education and the Workforce

Action Pending or Taken by Relevant Decision Makers
The appropriations bill still needs to be voted on following the August recess. 

Policy Objective(s) and Support for/Opposition to the Status Quo
Working to increase funding for the Department of Education’s Math and Science Partnership program, also supportive of NSF’s program.

Advocate’s Experience: Tenure in Current Job/Previous Experience
I’ve been here three years, I always worked on international trade issues until I came here.

Reliance on Research: In-House/External (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
Well, I think you should consider me not as Texas Instruments but me as a broader business community effort that is doing this because we’re not doing it on our own. We’re working with AEA, working with NAB, working with the Business Roundtable, the Semi-Conductor Industry Association, and a number of other independent companies like, Intel and HP, and Agilend (sp?), so it’s not just TI and we all share the exact same concerns about the workforce and to have kids educated in ways that are going to make them able to continue to help grow the country. So we collectively work together and we do a number of things. We read and analyze the TIMSS report, we read and analyze the NAPE reports, we read a lot of the literature that is produced by various think tanks around the country some of them based here, some of them based other places. We read things that come out like the Hart Rudman report, we read various things that are out there and take that information and assess it to see whether it’s one, valid, two relevant, and what the source of their statistics is, whether they’re credible or not credible sources. And then we use that information to build our case. To make sure that whatever we’re saying is based on things that policy makers can depend is reasonably accurate. 

Number of Individuals Involved in Advocacy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
Four.

Units in Organization Involved in Public Affairs/Policy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
There are four of us, I’m the only one that works on education issues, we also have someone on technology issues like broadband, spectrum allocation, and then also international trade, export controls, environmental issues, tax issues, corporate governance issues a whole broad array, immigration issues. We’re a small office by Washington standards.

Advocate’s Outstanding Skills/Assets (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Type of Membership: None, Institutions, Individuals, Both (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Membership Size (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Organizational Age (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Miscellaneous