The Administration opposes Senate passage of S. 2, which would
reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA),
as reported by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
If S. 2 is presented to the President in its current form, he will veto
the bill because it fails to continue the Federal obligation and
commitment to support reform in our schools and real improvements in
student performance, particularly among our neediest students and in our
neediest communities. The Administration has a number of serious
objections to S. 2. It would:
Weaken accountability. The bill fails to encourage each
State to develop a single, rigorous accountability system for Title I
and non-Title I schools. Moreover, the bill does not include the basic
components of the President's Education Accountability initiative.
Notably, it would: (1) not require school report cards; (2) fail to
end social promotion and traditional retention practices; (3) not
require all teachers to be certified and teaching in their field, or
be in the process of becoming certified; (4) fail to establish sound,
equitable discipline policies in every school; and (5) not guarantee
resources targeted on the lowest performing schools to help States and
localities turn them around or shut them down. The bill also would not
extend the current ban on the possession or use of tobacco on school
grounds to include alcohol and drugs.
Undermine the Federal effort to help communities reduce class
size in the early grades. The bill fails to provide a separate,
dedicated funding stream for that purpose that is targeted to
high-poverty communities, consistent with the bipartisan agreement
reflected in the Department of Education's appropriations acts for
each of the past two years. Research has shown that students attending
smaller classes in the early grades make more rapid educational
progress, with the greatest benefits accruing to lower-achieving,
minority, and poor children. The bill instead creates a block grant
that fails to guarantee that any funding will be used for hiring new
teachers to reduce class size.
Fail to recognize the importance of high-quality teaching.
The bill does little to improve teacher quality, either through
increased accountability or by ensuring that teachers meet high
standards and have access to ongoing, high-quality professional
development, mentoring, and coaching. In addition, schools should be
held accountable for supporting high-quality instruction by publicly
reporting on teacher quality indicators.
Undermine standards-based reform and the Title I program for
disadvantaged children by allowing 10 States and 20 school districts
to convert their Title I funds into portable student vouchers that
could be used for private education services. The Administration's
opposition to school vouchers is well known. Rather than improving and
reforming public schools, vouchers drain attention and resources from
the neediest public schools. By diverting funds into programs that are
not accountable for results, vouchers would fragment services and
jeopardize the promising recent gains States, school districts, and
schools have made through standards-based reforms.
Convert programs that address national priorities into
unfocused block grants. The ''Straight A's'' proposals would allow
States to consolidate funds designated for Title I activities,
class-size reduction, professional development, technology programs,
and other initiatives into a massive block grant with no meaningful
accountability. Governors could use the money for any ''educational
purposes,'' including providing students with vouchers for private
schools. Moreover, there is no assurance that funds will go to improve
instruction, strengthen curriculum, reduce class size, provide
after-school learning opportunities, or support other proven
strategies for helping all students learn to high standards.
Fail to provide adequate assistance to communities facing the
enormous burden of renovating aging schools. The President's
Budget for FY 2001 proposes a $1.3 billion initiative to provide
grants and loan subsidies for high-need districts to support the
renovation of up to 5,000 schools. The bill should authorize this
assistance.
Fail to target funds to school districts that are facing the
greatest challenges and have the fewest local resources for meeting
those challenges without Federal assistance. While targeting of
funds to high-poverty districts has been a part of the Federal role
ever since the initial passage of the ESEA in 1965, the current
statute still does not concentrate resources sufficiently on those
districts. Therefore, the President proposed amendments to tighten
targeting in several of the major programs. S. 2 would, in many
respects, be a significant step backwards.
Fail to provide adequate funding or focus for the 21st Century
Community Learning Centers, which provide students with extended
learning opportunities before and after school in safe and drug-free
environments. S. 2 would authorize only half of the one billion
dollars requested by the President for fiscal year 2001 for this
important and widely supported program. It also would fail to provide
a needed emphasis on after-school and other extended learning
opportunities.
The Administration also has a number of other significant concerns
with the bill, including the following:
Title I: Helping Disadvantaged Students Meet High Standards --
lack of requirements for certification of new Title I teachers; failure
to increase minimum education levels of paraprofessionals; insufficient
allocations for professional development and for program accountability;
insufficient targeting of funds; and failure to allocate funds for needy
children in Puerto Rico on the same basis as is used for the rest of the
country.
Title II: Teacher Quality -- failure to award half of
professional development funds competitively in order to promote high
quality projects; insufficient emphasis on in-service professional
development; abandonment of current emphasis on math and science;
failure to provide for programs of national interest, such as the
President's proposed programs of Early Childhood Professional
Development and recruitment of "home town" teachers; and an insufficient
duration of support for the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards.
Title IV: Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities --
insufficient emphasis on promoting targeting to high-need districts and
on ensuring accountability and effectiveness; a very cumbersome
mechanism for the administration of national programs; failure to
provide a separate authorization for Project SERV; and failure to
include requirements for the referral of expelled students for
evaluation and mental health services if needed, or for school districts
to establish policies to provide expelled students with appropriate
services to continue their education. The Administration opposes the
provision of the bill that would deny attorney's fees to plaintiffs who
demonstrate in court that certain on-campus memorials or memorial
services violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment,
because such a provision not only raises constitutional concerns as
impermissible viewpoint discrimination, it would also undermine the
important and long-standing national policy of encouraging private
enforcement of our civil rights laws.
Title V-A (current Title III): Technology -- failure to: (1)
target adequately the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund on high-need
districts; (2) authorize separately, and at adequate levels, the current
Community Technology Centers and Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use
Technology programs; and (3) encourage the development or use of
innovative and emerging technologies.
Title VI, Part B: Rural Education Initiative -- substantially
weakens accountability for small, rural school districts that would be
eligible to consolidate funds.
Title VII, Part B: Foreign Language Assistance Program --
failure to improve the program by, for example, focusing it on the early
grades, where research suggests that second languages are better and
more quickly learned.
Title VIII: Impact Aid -- failure to target funds to school
districts most genuinely burdened by the presence of Federally connected
children and Federal property.
Title IX, Part A: Indian Education -- creation of an
unnecessary and burdensome authority to allow grantees to consolidate
resources from across Federal programs.
Pay-As-You-Go Scoring
S. 2 would increase direct spending and receipts; therefore, it is
subject to the pay-as-you-go requirements of the Omnibus Budget
Reconciliation Act of 1990. OMB estimates that the net pay-as-you-go
effect would be zero.
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