Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

It is my honor to appear before you today to discuss the President's fiscal year 2003 budget request for the Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) in regard to issues of teacher recruitment, preparation, and development.

Recent studies offer compelling evidence that confirms what parents have always known—the quality of the teacher is one of the most significant determinants of student learning. The Department's budget supports major efforts to meet the President's goal of placing a qualified teacher in every classroom in America in order to ensure that no child is left behind.

The Challenge

Our Nation faces serious obstacles to improving teacher quality and enhancing the teaching profession to meet the needs of all students. Teachers have never had to be as well prepared as they do today. Teachers must be prepared to address the needs of diverse students, enhance education through technology, and help their students meet new, more challenging academic standards. Moreover, as a result of demographic trends, America's schools will need to hire more than 2 million teachers over the next decade, more than half of whom will be first-time teachers. Teacher shortages are particularly acute in high-poverty areas and in academic fields such as mathematics, science, special education, and bilingual education. As a result, States and school districts face the dual challenge of attracting more people into the teaching profession while improving teacher quality. For these reasons, the Nation's attention has focused increasingly on the roles of institutions of higher education and States in ensuring that new teachers have the content knowledge and teaching skills they need to help all students reach high academic standards. Our fiscal year 2003 budget proposes to address these challenges in three ways: (1) by providing teachers with the training and support they need and deserve; (2) by attracting capable individuals into teaching; and (3) by holding institutions of higher education accountable for the quality of the teachers that they produce.

Teacher Preparation and Support

In the past, a lack of collaboration between teacher preparation programs and colleges of arts and sciences, and between institutions of higher education and the school districts they serve, has resulted in too many new teachers unprepared for the realities of today's classroom. The lack of an effective system to hold institutions of higher education accountable for the quality of the teachers they graduate has meant few consequences for institutions that fail to improve and reform how they prepare teachers. Too often, new teachers enter the classroom with inadequate knowledge of the subjects and skills they are assigned to teach, including reading, math and science, and special education. Then, new teachers receive only minimal professional support in their early years of teaching. As a result, it is not surprising that 22 percent of new teachers quit the profession in their first year, and between a third and half of those entering the teaching profession leave before the end of five years. Research also shows that the teachers most likely to leave the profession after only a few years tend to be the most qualified ones.

To address these needs, the Administration is requesting $90 million in fiscal year 2003 to continue support for the Teacher Quality Enhancement program in Title II of the Higher Education Act. This program is designed to increase student achievement by improving the way our Nation recruits, prepares, licenses, and supports teachers. It achieves these goals by providing incentives, encouraging reforms, and leveraging local and State resources to ensure that current and future teachers have the academic content knowledge and teaching skills they need to instruct all students effectively.

Of the total amount requested for the Teacher Quality Enhancement program, $33.9 million would be provided to States to enable them to continue developing innovative ways to improve the quality of the teaching force and to hold teacher preparation programs accountable for preparing competent teachers. States may use these funds to reform teacher licensing and certification requirements, provide alternative routes to State certification, develop mechanisms to ensure the effective recruitment and payment of highly qualified teachers, address the problem of social promotion, and award scholarships to prospective teachers. In keeping with the Department's increased focus on accountability, States that receive funds under this program are required to submit an annual accountability report to the Department. This report describes how grant funds are used to boost student achievement, raise standards, strengthen certification and licensure requirements, decrease teacher shortages, increase opportunities for professional development, and increase the integration of technology into the classroom.

Since the program was initiated in fiscal year 1999, awards have been made to agencies in 31 States. Seventy-nine percent of these grantees are reforming teacher preparation curricula to be aligned with K-12 standards for teacher content mastery, 95 percent are increasing professional development activities, and 65 percent are supporting the development of mechanisms to hold teacher preparation programs accountable for the quality of their graduates.

Our fiscal year 2003 budget request would also provide $46.7 million for partnerships to implement a wide range of reforms and improvements in teacher preparation programs. These partnerships—consisting of at least one institution of higher education preparing teachers, a college of arts and sciences, and one high-need local school district—are designed to strengthen links between key players in the teacher preparation process. Funds must be used to implement reforms to hold such programs accountable for preparing highly competent teachers, providing high quality clinical experience, and creating opportunities for professional development. Funds may also be used to prepare teachers to work with diverse student populations, involve parents in their children's education, disseminate information on effective practices, coordinate with State activities, implement mechanisms to provide administrators with managerial and leadership skills, and award scholarships to prospective teachers. Grant recipients must establish evaluation plans to measure increased student achievement, teacher retention, teacher certification, teacher competency, and technology integration.

To date, 33 partnership grants have been made to agencies in 24 states. Eighty-six percent of these awards focus on improving student achievement, 86 percent require prospective teachers to undergo formal skills assessments as a measure of accountability, and 77 percent use these assessments to improve teacher-training programs. A comprehensive national evaluation of the impact of the partnership grants program is underway and the first report should be available in the summer of 2002.

In addition to the Teacher Quality Enhancement program, the Department administers several other programs that help to strengthen the institutions that prepare America's teachers. Our fiscal year 2003 budget includes $39.1 million for the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) to continue support for competitive FIPSE projects. FIPSE supports locally developed projects that are models for innovative reform and improvement in a broad range of postsecondary education areas. In fiscal year 2002, priority is being given to projects that propose reforms in five designated categories, one of which is improving the preparation of K-12 teachers.

In his fiscal year 2003 budget, the President has also requested a total of $462.9 million for programs designed to strengthen the academic quality, institutional management, and fiscal stability of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Historically Black Graduate Institutions (HBGIs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), and Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving Institutions—a $15.8 million increase over fiscal year 2002. Federal funds provided under these programs may be used to support a wide variety of activities, including establishing or enhancing teacher preparation programs.

The President's budget also proposes a total of $102.5 million for the International Education and Foreign Language Studies (IEFLS) programs, an increase of $4 million over fiscal year 2002. Of this amount, $13 million is for Overseas Programs that support study, curriculum development, and other academic activities in foreign countries by teachers and prospective teachers. The goal of the program is to improve language skills and cultural awareness and promote and improve modern foreign language training and area studies in K-12 and institutions of higher education. The Overseas Programs focus specifically on teacher preparation and development, creating a significant educational "ripple effect" as each teacher or faculty member trained under an IEFLS overseas program takes the experience back to the classroom.

Recruitment

To address teacher shortages, the Administration proposes to provide incentives to strengthen the recruitment of mathematics, science, special education, and bilingual teachers. Research indicates that if States would open up the teaching profession to well-educated, highly qualified individuals from other fields, and to well-prepared liberal arts graduates, we could dramatically reduce shortages while increasing teacher quality. The Department will therefore work with States, partnerships, and other groups to increase alternative and innovative routes to teacher certification, through programs such as Troops to Teachers and Transition to Teaching, that open up the teaching profession to talented individuals and provide them the training and support they need to become high quality teachers.

Recruitment and the development of alternative routes to teacher licensure are major parts of the Teacher Quality Enhancement State and partnership grants described above. In addition, our fiscal year 2003 budget for the Teacher Quality Enhancement program would provide $8.9 million for grants specifically to support recruitment efforts. These funds would support innovative efforts by States and collaborative partnerships to respond to shortages of mathematics, science, special education, bilingual and English as a Second Language teachers. Local educational agencies could use these funds to recruit highly qualified teachers, award scholarships for candidates to complete teacher preparation programs, support scholarship recipients, and provide follow-up services to former scholarship recipients. Scholarship recipients are required to teach in a high-need local educational agency for a period of time equal to the period for which they received scholarship assistance. To date, 28 recruitment grants have been made to agencies in 17 states. In addition to providing scholarship funds and support services, 63 percent of recruitment grant recipients are supporting other innovative strategies to ensure that high-need school districts are able to recruit qualified teachers.

In addition to the Teacher Quality Enhancement grants for States and partnerships, the Federal student financial aid programs play an important role in the recruitment and preparation of teachers. In 1999-2000, nearly half (45.1%) of the individuals enrolled in postsecondary education majoring in education or related fields received Federal student aid averaging nearly $5,300. In that year, a quarter of those majoring in education or a related field received a Pell Grant and a third received a Stafford loan.

Offering student-loan forgiveness in exchange for service is one way to recruit and retain qualified undergraduates majoring in education. In 1999-2000, two-thirds of all graduating seniors who majored in education had received Stafford loans at some point in their undergraduate career. For those with Stafford loans, the average debt was approximately $15,500. Currently, all teachers who were new borrowers as of October 1998 and teach for five consecutive years in qualified low-income schools are eligible for up to $5,000 in loan forgiveness under the Federal Family Education Loan and Direct Loan programs. The President has proposed substantially increasing the maximum amount of loan forgiveness available—up to $17,500—for mathematics, science and special education teachers at qualified low-income schools.

The Department has designed these efforts to complement other major investments in recruitment efforts outside of OPE. States and local districts may use the $2.8 billion Teacher Quality grants to fund recruitment efforts, including alternate routes to certification or reform of traditional certification systems.

Accountability

The Administration also strongly supports holding institutions of higher education that prepare teachers accountable for the quality of their graduates. In the past, these institutions have too often been indifferent to the success of their graduates in passing State teacher assessments. State certification and licensure requirements also need to be reexamined to make sure that what they demand of prospective teachers is supported by scientific evidence of what makes for effective teaching. In too many States, requirements are light on the attributes that research has shown to matter—such as content knowledge—and heavy on regulations that research has shown not to matter—such as requiring education school courses.

In order to promote accountability, Title II of the Higher Education Act requires that all institutions of higher education with teacher preparation programs report annually to the State and the general public on the percentage of their program completers who pass State teacher certification or licensure assessments. States are then required to report this data to the Department of Education. Finally, the Secretary is charged with preparing a report for Congress and the public. The Department is currently completing the report based on submissions from all the States and expects to release the report soon. The Administration believes that by making this information available to the public, individuals can make more informed choices and valid comparisons between schools, districts and States. Ultimately, this public disclosure creates a positive incentive for institutions of higher education to focus on important, performance-based outcomes, and for the entire institution to take responsibility for graduating well-prepared teachers.

Conclusion

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. While there are many more initiatives at the Department to improve teacher quality—such as funding professional development through Title I and Title II of No Child Left Behind—these are the activities we are proposing to fund within the Office of Postsecondary Education. I thank you for the opportunity to appear today. My colleagues and I would be happy to answer any questions that the Committee members may have.

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