The Department of Education posted new budget tables today showing final program funding levels for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year. The Obama administration had to accept some very difficult budget cuts in the continuing resolution that Congress passed in April to fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year, and ED faced one of the toughest budget environments in recent history.
The Department of Education sought to make the necessary cuts in order to meet President Obama’s goal of reducing the deficit, while also making critical investments in programs that will help our country out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.
Despite the need to make cuts, the Obama administration successfully fought for, and received, a $5.5 billion increase in funding for Pell Grants, ensuring that more than 9 million college students will continue to receive Pells up to a maximum of $5,550.
The Department also received funding for several of President Obama’s top education priorities, including $700 million for Race to the Top, $150 million for the Investing in Innovation program, $30 million for Promise Neighborhoods, as well as funding to maintain levels for key formula programs such as Title I and IDEA.
Click here to find the FY11 budget tables.
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Among the myriad hats I wear at the middle school in which I serve, are those of school librarian and robotics coach. One may fail to make the connection between these two seemingly diverse roles until examining the requirement in our annual robotics competition to present the results of a research project on a topic related to that year’s theme. Robotics teams have used the library to research such diverse areas as transportation innovation, invasive species, biotechnology, food safety, alternative energy and climate change.
Without the resources of a strongly supported library media center, our robotics program could not function at the level we have achieved. With the emphasis in education moving toward strengthening students’ skills in science and technology, it is especially prudent that our nation recognize the critical role that school libraries serve by providing the materials that motivate, inform and encourage the pursuit of these disciplines.
Race to the Top has become as inappropriate as No Child Left Behind.
Dear President Obama,
I am disheartened and disappointed in your decision to withdraw support for school libraries when having these resources is more imperative now that it have ever been. With the growth of the Internet and other forms of modern communication, information is more easily accessible, and while this presents exciting opportunities for learning, if not approached with caution and skill, it can be detrimental to a student’s growth as a digital citizen. People–especially young people–need to learn to ask themselves: “Who is providing our information? Is it reliable? Is it biased? Is it secure? Am I safe?” The need to understand how to locate, access, and evaluate reliable information is imperative to attaining information literacy, a skill desperately needed in today’s society. Information and technological literacy are essential to educational growth as well as to success in a competitive job market, and school libraries are the nuclei around which school communities gather in order to acquire, practice, and hone these skills.
The information literate student should be able to summarize, articulate, apply, evaluate, and synthesize information and its relationship to the universe of knowledge through a wide variety of print and electronic resources. This includes the ability to understand and use current information technology and the ability to reflect on the very nature of information and its impact on society. Moreover, the student should be able to determine its impact on his or her own value system and discuss the new information with peers, teachers, and experts in the subject to determine if a revised search might be needed. Achieving this ability to evaluate information critically is pertinent to technology in that the student who masters this skill will most likely be able to transfer the skill to other subject areas.
Knowing how to critically analyze and evaluate information is essential in maintaining democracy and a free society, and teaching these skills is one of the main goals of library media specialists, and it can only be achieved well-funded, fully-equipped library media centers. I beg you to reconsider.
The following link leads to a recent research study conducted by Stephen Krashen, author of THE POWER OF READING, about the positive impact of libraries and librarians on student learning as well as proposals on where cuts can be made to save money: http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/protecting_students.pdf. If the link does not work, the article (“Protecting Children…”) can be found on his website at sdkrashen.com.
Links for full year CR still pop up with the April 11, 2011 version on the budget tables.