More Resources President's Budget Request for 2008

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

Thank you for this opportunity to testify on behalf of the President's 2008 budget for education. Ensuring access to a high-quality education continues to be a top priority for both the Administration and the American people, and I know that the Members of this Subcommittee and the Congress as a whole share this commitment to education. We saw evidence of this in the final 2007 Continuing Resolution completed by Congress and signed by the President just a few weeks ago, which included increases for key education programs, including programs like Title I and Pell Grants that are a key focus of the President's 2008 request.

President Bush's total discretionary request for the Department of Education in 2008 is $56 billion. As you know, we prepared our 2008 request before Congress completed action on 2007 appropriations for the Department, and at that time our 2008 discretionary budget was the same as the 2007 CR level. The Department's request is, of course, part of the President's budget for the entire Government, and reflects his determination to eliminate the overall Federal deficit by 2012, while continuing to increase our investment in activities that support the No Child Left Behind goal of ensuring that all students are on grade level in reading and math by 2014.

Accomplishing these twin goals of deficit reduction and increasing support for priority programs requires a disciplined approach to budget decisions for 2008. Our request demonstrates this discipline by proposing the termination of programs that have achieved their original purpose, duplicate other programs, are narrowly focused, or are unable to demonstrate effectiveness, as well as reduced funding for lower-priority programs and activities. This combination of terminations and reductions would make available approximately $3.3 billion for the Administration's priorities.

The structure of today's hearing requires me to cover an unusually broad range of Federal education programs. In my testimony I will focus first on the President's major priorities for fiscal year 2008, including reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, and then briefly touch on other programs that I believe are of interest to the Subcommittee.

Our top priority for 2008 is reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as reauthorized 5 years ago by the No Child Left Behind Act, or NCLB. In January, the Administration released Building on Results: A Blueprint for Strengthening the No Child Left Behind Act, which describes our principles and priorities for reauthorizing NCLB. We now are drafting detailed proposals for consideration by Congress that would put those principles and priorities into place.

Our first goal for reauthorization is to retain what Secretary Spellings calls the "bright line principles" of NCLB, including annual assessment for all students, disaggregating assessment results by student subgroups, and 100 percent proficiency in reading and mathematics by 2014. Our reauthorization proposal would build on this foundation by:

• Strengthening efforts to close achievement gaps, both by giving educators additional tools and resources to turn around low-performing schools and by providing new options to the parents of students in such schools;
• Giving States greater flexibility to measure student progress, improve assessment, and target improvement resources;
• Improving high school performance by expanding assessment, promoting rigorous and advanced coursework, and providing high schools with a fairer share of resources to support reforms;
• Helping teachers to close achievement gaps by supporting intensive aid for struggling students, research-based instruction to improve learning in mathematics, and new incentives and rewards for teachers who work in low-achieving, high-poverty schools.

While the headlines often focus on complaints about specific aspects of No Child Left Behind, what has most impressed me as I travel around the country and talk to parents, educators, and State and local leaders is the broad agreement and commitment to continuing the progress we have made in strengthening educational accountability and improving student achievement under NCLB. This common ground is reflected in most of the early discussions and reports on the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, which have included recommendations to focus more attention on the high school level, the importance of improving math and science instruction, and greater flexibility to assign our best teachers to our most challenging schools. This consensus is reflected both in Building on Results and in our 2008 budget request, which was designed to help move the reauthorization debate forward in key areas.

One major emphasis in our budget and reauthorization proposals is improving the performance of our high schools. Last week's release of the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress—NAEP—results for 12th-graders in reading only confirmed what we have long known: our high schools are not making the grade in the national effort to ensure that all students are proficient in core academic subjects. The average reading score for high school seniors in 2005 was lower than the score in 1992, and the percentage of 12th-graders scoring "Proficient" or better on the NAEP reading assessment has now decreased from 40 percent in 1992 to 35 percent in 2005. I know that State academic standards differ from those measured by NAEP, but sliding backward on NAEP carries ominous implications for our efforts to reach NCLB proficiency goals.

One answer to stopping that backward slide is an obvious one: give high schools their fair share of Title I funding. Currently, our high schools enroll about 20 percent of poor students but receive only 10 percent of Title I allocations. To help correct this resource imbalance, our NCLB reauthorization proposal would change local allocation rules to require each school district to provide Title I allocations to its high schools that roughly match the share of the district's poor students enrolled by those schools. The $13.9 billion request for Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies in our 2008 request includes our estimate of the funding required to implement the new allocation rules without taking resources from Title I elementary and middle schools.

In addition to ensuring that high schools receive their fair share of Title I resources, our reauthorization proposal would expand assessment at the high school level to encourage greater rigor in high school course-taking and to help make sure all high school graduates are prepared for postsecondary education or competitive employment in the global economy. The $412 million request for State Assessment Grants would help pay for new assessments in reading and math at two additional high school years, including an 11th-grade assessment of college readiness in each subject. We also would require States to use a valid and uniform graduation rate definition, and to include progress in improving the graduation rate as part of adequate yearly progress determinations for high schools.

The growing national consensus on the connection between the success of NCLB and our economic competitiveness is reflected in renewed support for the President's American Competitiveness Initiative—ACI—in our 2008 request. The ACI would support greater rigor in our high schools by ensuring that students in the early grades master the basics they need to succeed in more advanced high school subjects and by strengthening coursework in our high schools. The budget request provides a total of $365 million in new funding for the ACI, including $250 million for the elementary and middle school components of Math Now, which would encourage the use of research-based instruction to improve math achievement. We also are asking for a $90 million increase for the Advanced Placement program to train more teachers and expand the number of high schools offering AP and IB courses in math, science, and critical foreign languages to their students. And we are seeking $25 million to create an Adjunct Teacher Corps, which would encourage experienced individuals from scientific and technical professions to teach high school courses, especially in high-poverty schools.

As the years go by and annual NCLB targets rise on the path to 100 percent proficiency by 2014, it is increasingly clear that the ultimate success of NCLB hinges on State and local school improvement efforts. An estimated 20 percent of Title I schools currently are identified for improvement, with a growing number of those now entering the corrective action and restructuring stages of improvement, under which school districts are required to make fundamental reforms in instruction, staffing, and school governance to turn around chronic low-performers.

No Child Left Behind encourages a comprehensive, broad-based approach to school improvement, including technical assistance from States and school districts, the adoption of research-based improvement strategies, more effective teaching, and the provision of choice options for students and their parents. A key goal of the Administration's budget and reauthorization proposals is to provide more effective support for the NCLB school improvement process.

First, the 2008 request would help build State capacity to support school improvement by providing $500 million in Title I School Improvement Grants, which would be reauthorized to permit States to retain up to 50 percent of their allocations under this program for State-level improvement activities, such as the provision of technical support in areas like analyzing test results and revising budgets, increasing professional development, and making available school support teams. States would be required to subgrant the remaining funds to school districts to support local LEA and school improvement activities.

Second, our reauthorization proposal for School Improvement Grants would permit the Secretary to retain up to 1 percent of appropriated funds to support efforts to identify and disseminate proven, research-based school improvement strategies. This proposal would help ensure that new school improvement dollars are invested in effective practices.

Third, our budget request would expand incentives for talented and effective teachers to work in challenging school environments. The data are fairly conclusive that we currently have a considerable mismatch between our most experienced, talented teachers and our most challenging schools. Our budget request would provide $199 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund to encourage more school districts and States to develop and implement innovative performance-based compensation systems. These systems would reward teachers and principals for raising student achievement and for taking positions in high-need schools, making an essential and valuable contribution to meeting the school improvement goals of NCLB.

In addition to the Teacher Incentive Fund, our reauthorization proposal would give superintendents and other school leaders greater freedom to reassign teachers to best meet the needs of schools working to improve student achievement. This proposal would apply only to schools identified for restructuring that are undergoing fundamental reforms in governance and staffing.

Our final proposal in the area of school improvement recognizes that school improvement takes time, and that students and parents?especially in the case of chronically low-performing schools that have missed proficiency targets for many years?should have real choices while schools are working to turn around their performance. The 2008 request includes two new proposals that would give such students the opportunity to transfer to a better school, whether it is a private school or a public school in another district.

The first is $250 million for Promise Scholarships, which in conjunction with other Federal education funds would provide scholarships of about $4,000 that would allow students at schools undergoing restructuring to transfer to a better public or private school. Parents also could use Promise Scholarships to obtain intensive supplemental educational services—SES—for their children in lieu of transferring to another school.

Second, our $50 million proposal for Opportunity Scholarships is intended to stimulate State and local choice initiatives, including those modeled after the DC Opportunity Scholarships program. This proposal would either pay the costs of attending a private school selected by eligible students and their parents or provide $3,000 to pay for intensive SES.

The President's 2008 request for education also provides substantial funding for other programs and activities that help States and school districts meet the educational needs of students of all ages and backgrounds.

For example, the budget includes $1.1 billion to maintain support for the successful Reading First program, which despite some management difficulties is now producing strong evidence of success in the use of research-based reading instruction to improve the reading skills of young children. We also are seeking $100 million to expand the similarly designed Striving Readers program, which helps secondary school students struggling to read on grade level.

We also would provide $2.8 billion for Improving Teacher Quality State Grants to fund professional development activities that help ensure that all teachers meet the highly qualified teacher requirements of No Child Left Behind. Our reauthorization proposal for this program would add a priority for professional development activities that strengthen teacher qualifications in mathematics, the sciences, and critical foreign languages.

The request includes $671 million for English Language Acquisition State Grants, which funds State and local efforts to help the growing population of limited English proficient—LEP—students achieve English language proficiency. This key student population has been highlighted in recent news reports because of concerns about the appropriateness of including such students in the content assessments required by No Child Left Behind. The Administration believes it is essential to maintain high expectations and standards for LEP students, include them in NCLB assessments, with appropriate accommodations wherever possible, and move them quickly toward English language proficiency. Our 2008 request would help achieve these goals, and our reauthorization proposal would codify current regulatory flexibility regarding assessment and adequate yearly progress determinations for LEP students while maintaining the expectation that such students will ultimately reach the same grade level proficiency goals as other students.

The 2008 President's budget provides $11.5 billion for Special Education to improve educational and early intervention outcomes for children with disabilities, including $10.5 billion for the Special Education Grants to States program, the same as the 2007 CR level at the time we put together our request. The budget includes another $3.2 billion for vocational rehabilitation services, disability research, training, and other programs directed at helping individuals with disabilities obtain gainful employment and live independently.

In conclusion, I believe our 2008 request puts scarce Federal education dollars in the right places, providing new investments in activities that carry the greatest promise of ensuring the success of No Child Left Behind, while maintaining essential support for other Federal education programs and activities. The request supports our comprehensive proposal for reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, yet maintains the fiscal discipline required to meet the President's deficit reduction goal. The new leadership of Congress will undoubtedly have its own ideas about how to shape the balance of policies and funding to best meet our national education needs, but I also believe that we are not far from the kind of bipartisan consensus on key issues that produced the first No Child Left Behind Act, and in this context I look forward to a constructive debate in the weeks and months to come.

I will be happy to respond to any questions you may have.

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