No Child Left Behind Act | Helping Teachers and Students |
Education and the Economic Stimulus Bill
It’s important to remember that state and local governments exercise primary control over education – building schools, hiring teachers, deciding curriculum, and setting standards for students to meet. As a result, state and local governments contribute the bulk of education funding, an estimated 83 cents of every dollar spent, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Even after significant increases in federal funding in recent years, the federal government’s share amounts to just over eight percent, with private sources contributing the remainder.
State and local control means that most decisions about education can be made by those closest to the students, and that’s in our children’s best interests. Most decisions should continue to be made locally by those who know children best and who are most accessible and accountable to parents, rather than by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.
Nevertheless, the federal government can still play an important, though supplementary, role in education. Responding to public sentiment, Congress has approved significant increases in funding for education. This year alone, funding will total $68.6 billion, up nearly 61 percent from the $42.2 billion spent on education in 2001. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA), which was enacted in 2002, authorized these increases.
Congress passed the NCLBA to foster change in the nation’s school system so that all children are taught to succeed. The 2002 law requires that student progress be measured during the critical years of learning so that children do not fall behind. It establishes real consequences for schools that persistently fail to make progress in teaching all students, and it ensures that state and local education leaders have the administrative flexibility they need to make improvements.
Recent studies have shown that the NCLBA is working. Nationwide, students demonstrate improvement across-the-board in fourth and eighth grade reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, with minority students posting all-time highs in a number of categories. According to the most recent information available from the Department of Education, Arizona’s students have also shown great improvement in their test scores thanks to the NCLBA. Some of the achievements include:
- a 14-percentage point improvement in third-grade mathematics proficiency;
- a seven-percentage point narrowing of the Hispanic-white achievement gap in third-grade reading;
- an 11-percentage point narrowing of the Hispanic-white achievement gap in third-grade mathematics;
- a three-percentage point narrowing of the American Indian-white achievement gap in third-grade reading; and
- a 12-percentage point narrowing of the American Indian-white achievement gap in third-grade mathematics.
While the NCBLA has helped improve the quality of education, we still can build on the law’s success. One of the most important changes we can make is to give parents with children at underperforming schools the choice to transfer them to schools with a proven record of academic excellence. My hope is that all students will have the opportunity to thrive in schools that challenge students to their fullest potential.
Acting on a bipartisan basis in recent years, the Senate approved a range of bills of interest to our nation’s students, teachers, and parents, among them:
- The Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act. This bill, which passed the Senate unanimously, increases the annual and aggregate borrowing limits for Stafford Loans for dependent undergraduate students, independent undergraduate students, and dependent undergraduate students whose parents are unable to obtain a PLUS Loan. This bill was signed into law on May 7, 2008.
- The College Cost Reduction Act. This legislation, which I supported, represents a landmark overhaul of the federal student aid program that will help make college more affordable for students. It increases the maximum Pell grant from the current level of $4,310 to $5,400 per student by 2012; reduces Stafford loan interest rates from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent; and caps loan repayments at 15 percent of discretionary income.
- Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007. This bill, which cleared Congress with my support, reauthorized the Head Start program, the nation’s primary child-development program for low-income preschoolers. The President signed this bill into law on December 12, 2007.
- Teacher Tax Relief. Legislation I supported established a tax deduction that allows teachers to deduct a portion of the costs of classroom materials paid for out of their own pockets. The deduction was originally enacted in 2002 and was recently extended through 2009. I believe the deduction should be made permanent.
This so-called economic stimulus bill, which Congress passed and the President signed into law in February 2009, provides billions in new funding for the Department of Education, yet not one dollar would be reserved for the kind of school choice initiatives, including voucher programs, that have been so successful in Arizona. In fact, our state has one of the best performing state voucher scholarship programs in the nation. In 2007, over 76,000 Arizonans contributed $54 million for scholarships to more than 27,000 needy students.
Arizona’s public schools are steadily improving, but parents should always have the opportunity to send their kids to better-performing schools. Instead of promoting parental choice, the stimulus bill simply showered billions on archaic federal programs. For more information about the stimulus bill, click here or visit the Economy section of my website.
