President Bush's new High School Initiative has the potential to do more to curtail the high dropout rate problem among Hispanics and other minorities than any other federal initiative in history, senior Department of Education officials said today during a press briefing for Hispanic journalists. Briefing reporters today were Ray Simon, Assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education; C. Todd Jones, associate deputy secretary for budget; Kathleen Leos, associate deputy under secretary for English language acquisition; Sally Stroup, assistant secretary for postsecondary education; and Adam Chavarria, director of the Department's White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.

The president's fiscal year 2006 budget includes $56 billion in discretionary funding for the U.S. Department of Education to ensure a highly qualified teacher for every student, including English language learners, and more Pell grant funding for students to attend college, among other initiatives. Since taking office, President Bush has increased education funding by $13.8 billion, or 33 percent.

To help every high school student reach high standards, the president is urging Congress to pass a new $1.5 billion High School Initiative to ensure high school students are prepared to graduate with the skills they need to succeed. The initiative calls for measuring student progress in reading and math at least three times during the course of high school—and includes $250 million to pay for these assessments. It also allows states and districts to use the resources for individual performance plans, dropout prevention efforts, demanding vocational and technical courses, college awareness and more.

"President Bush and Secretary Spellings are committed to helping reduce the dropout rate," said Assistant Secretary of Education Ray Simon. "Many students who drop out of school could have been prevented from doing so if they had received help earlier. This funding will provide school districts the resources and flexibility to develop and implement programs of one-on-one individual intervention for students and their families and performance plans to follow the students' progress and ensure that their individual needs are addressed. Hispanics stand to benefit greatly from this proposal."

Hispanics have the highest dropout rate compared to other groups of students—27 percent in 2001, the latest year available, according to the Department's National Center for Education Statistics. This figure is about four times higher than that for white students and more than double the figure for African-American students.

"The Hispanic high school dropout rate has not changed substantially in the last three decades. Many Hispanic students are entering high school reading below grade level, not academically prepared in the core areas of math and science and lacking access to highly qualified teachers," said Adam Chavarria, executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. "The President's High School Initiative, specifically the intervention programs, can and will help alleviate these issues by targeting resources to those Hispanic students who are most at-risk of dropping out."

According to a Manhattan Institute report, two-thirds of our nation's students leave high school unprepared to even apply to a four-year college. It also offers evidence that the achievement gap, which starts at a young age, continues into high school and ultimately results in high dropout rates.

"No Child Left Behind has put us on the road to equality in education by helping to close the achievement gap," said Kathleen Leos, associate deputy under secretary for English language acquisition. "The High School Initiative provides nationwide resources to tackle the educational needs at the high school level, including the severe dropout problem among Hispanics and other minority groups. States must reform our nation's upper grades so that a high school diploma means the graduate is academically prepared to enter the workforce or go on to college," said Leos.

President Bush's proposed 2006 budget also includes several proposals aimed at helping teachers help their students—including $500 million for a Teacher Incentive Fund to attract and reward the very best teachers for high-risk, high-poverty schools—and making permanent the increase in loan forgiveness from $5,000 to $17,500 for highly qualified math, science and special education teachers who serve low-income communities. The funding ensures a quality education for all children, including our nation's five million English language learners, 80 percent of whom are Spanish speakers.

President Bush's 2006 budget also includes a record $13.7 billion for the Pell Grant program to improve access to higher education and make it more affordable. The maximum Pell Grant award would be increased by $100 annually over the next five years from $4,050 to $4,550 and would help an estimated 5.5 million low-income students pay for their higher education in 2006. In total, the Department of Education will administer more than $78 billion in grants, loans and work-study assistance to more than 10 million students and parents in FY 2006, a $1.3 billion increase for the Pell Grant program. The president believes that students would be better served by focusing federal dollars on grants for low-income students like the Pell program than on loans, which have to be repaid.

The proposed budget also includes $125 million for a new Community College Access program, which would provide incentives to states to improve access to a college education, particularly for low-income and minority students, through "dual-enrollment" programs offering both high school and college credit to high school students who take college-level courses.

It also includes $50 million for a new presidential Math-Science Scholars program, which would provide up to $5,000 to low-income students pursuing math and science studies.

The president's proposed budget also targets $95.9 million to help Hispanic-Serving Institutions, a key part of the administration's effort to increase academic achievement, high school graduation, postsecondary participation, and lifelong learning among Hispanic Americans.

Other highlights of the 2006 budget include:

• $25.3 billion—an overall increase of nearly $1 billion—for the No Child Left Behind Act;
• $250 million to measure student performance in reading/language arts and math in high school;
• $200 million—a $175 million increase—for the Striving Readers program to improve the reading skills of teenage students;
• $13.3 billion—a $603 million or 4.7 percent increase—for Title I grants to help local school districts improve low-performing schools, enhance teacher quality and expand choices for students and parents. If enacted, the request would be an overall increase of $4.6 billion, or 52 percent, in Title I funding since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act; and
• $11.1 billion—a $508 million increase—for special education grants to states, a 75 percent increase for students with disabilities since 2001.
• $50 million for a Choice Incentive Fund to give parents more opportunities to transfer their children to better-performing schools; and
• $219 million for charter schools, including $37 million to help charter schools acquire, lease and renovate their facilities.

The president's 2006 budget also saves taxpayers' money by proposing to stop funding programs that duplicate efforts already under way or that have been proven ineffective.

For more information regarding the president's FY 2006 education budget, log on to http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2005/02/02072005.html.

Background information from NCES (National Center for Education Statistics):

Hispanic students have higher high school dropout rates than white or black students.

Young adults who do not finish high school are more likely to be unemployed and earn less when they are employed than those who complete high school. The percentage of 16- to 24-year-olds who are out of school and who have not earned a high school credential, such as a General Educational Development (GED) credential, is called the status dropout rate. In 2001, the status dropout rate for Hispanics was 27 percent, higher than the 7 percent rate for whites and the 11 percent rate for blacks.

The average status dropout rate for Hispanics is partly attributable to the markedly higher dropout rates among Hispanic immigrants; more than one-half of Hispanic immigrants never enrolled in a U.S. school, but are included as high school dropouts if they did not complete high school in their country of origin. The 2000 status dropout rate for Hispanics born outside the United States (44 percent) is higher than the rate for first-generation Hispanic youths (15 percent). However, among youths born in the United States, both first- and second-generation Hispanics are still more likely to drop out than their counterparts of other races or ethnicities.

The latest data from NCES:

Dropout Rates in the United States:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2005046

Digest of Education Statistics,
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt107.asp

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