================================================================= ALAWON Volume 6, Number 10 ISSN 1069-7799 February 20, 1997 American Library Association Washington Office Newsline In this issue: (196 lines) PRESIDENT'S EDUCATION INITIATIVES AMERICA READS CHALLENGE AFTER SCHOOL LEARNING CENTERS ADULT EDUCATION SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION HIGHER EDUCATION NATIONAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL INTERAGENCY INITIATIVES - NEXT GENERATION INTERNET PROGRAM _________________________________________________________________ PRESIDENT'S EDUCATION INITIATIVES On February 6 U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley said the President's priorities for the new education initiatives include putting high standards of excellence into action, improving reading for all Americans, providing help to schools, and students with special needs and expanding access to higher education. Secretary Riley emphasized the increase in Goals 2000 State Grants funding to $620 million, an increase of $129 million over FY97. The funds would permit grants to an estimated 16,000 schools -- one-third more than the 12,000 currently receiving Goals 2000 assistance. Included in the assistance would be $6 million for the new Advanced Placement Fee program. This program would for the first time subsidize or pay the full cost of advanced placement tests for low-income students. It is envisioned that this fund would help raise academic standards by challenging all students to take advanced placement courses. The President's request nearly doubles funding for Educational Technology to $500 million to "help meet the President's goal of linking every school to the Information Superhighway by the year 2000. It would especially help to link rural and inner-city schools to a wide world of learning." On February 8 the President announced on his radio address that the first of the Technology Literacy Challenge Grants for FY97 had been awarded to Illinois, Mississippi and New Mexico. This program provides formula grants to all States based on their share of ESEA Title I allocations; states then award competitive grants to local school districts. FY97 was the first funding year for this program. Funding for the Technology Innovation Challenge Grant program, which has been funded since its inception in FY95, would be expanded from $57 million in FY97 to $75 million in FY98. Through this program 43 awards have been made to local partnerships of schools, business and industry. _________________________________________________________________ AMERICA READS CHALLENGE Plans for the America Reads Challenge would include mandatory funding for two components of the Challenge: America's Reading Corps and Parents as First Teachers. The President's budget requests $200 million in FY98 to begin enlisting and training one million volunteer tutors for the Reading Corps, which would provide reading assistance after school, on weekends, and during the summer for children in grades K-3 who need assistance. Secretary Riley stated that for the Parents as First Teachers initiative, the budget would include $50 million in FY98 to "support programs that assist parents in helping their children to read. These programs put a strong emphasis on helping children before they enter school. And that is so important, because new scientific findings about the brain tell us that it is essential for children to start learning as early in life as possible." Other areas of funding increases which would support the America Reads Challenge include additional funding for Title I of $7.5 billion, an increase of $347 million, to raise academic achievements of poor and disadvantaged children; an increase of $6 million for Even Start, for a total of $108 million. This would expand local family literacy programs that combine early childhood education for preschool children with instruction in literacy skills for parents. Additional funding would be given to bilingual education of $199 million. _________________________________________________________________ AFTER SCHOOL LEARNING CENTERS The Secretary also announced proposed funding for after school learning centers, originally established in ESEA title X, Part 1. Funding for these centers would rise from FY97 level of $1 million to $50 million to help hundreds of rural and inner-city schools stay open after school hours and serve as neighborhood learning centers where students can do homework and obtain tutoring and mentoring services. School libraries would seem to be a logical center for much of this activity to take place but the funding for ESEA Title VI has been eliminated from the President's budget. The Department of Education figures supplied last year to Rep. Istook (R-OK)indicated that 40 percent of Title VI block grants are spent on school library materials. _________________________________________________________________ ADULT EDUCATION Adult education would be increased by $42 million to help adult Americans improve their literacy skills. The adult education state grants would rise from FY97 level of $340.3 to requested level of $382 million. The National Institute for Literacy would be funded at $6 million but the literacy program for prisoners funded at $4.7 million in FY97 would be eliminated. Budget narrative suggests that "because all states use a portion of their Adult Education State Grant funds to provide literacy services to incarcerated and other institutionalized individuals, the Department is not requesting funding for the separate Literacy Program for Prisoners activity. _________________________________________________________________ SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION The President's budget also includes a new school construction initiative where the government would pay for up to half the interest on school construction bonds or similar financing mechanisms, with a target of stimulating at least $20 billion in new construction or renovation projects. Projects could include emergency repairs to ensure health and safety; technology upgrades; building new schools to serve growing enrollments; ensuring access for disabled individuals; and improving energy efficiency. School librarians will remember Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun's (D-IL) legislative initiatives for several years past which included construction or retrofitting for technology for school libraries. _________________________________________________________________ HIGHER EDUCATION The Clinton budget proposes a combination of budget and tax initiatives to expand college access for lower-income students while providing new assistance to working families and middle-class families. The budget request would increase the maximum Pell Grant award to a high of $3,000, and modify the need-analysis formula for certain independent students. This couldmake over 200,000 additional independent students eligible for Pell grants. The President proposes a $27 million increase for college work-study jobs, with a percentage of these positions to be used as tutors in the new America Reads initiative. The budget includes a Hope Scholarship proposal to give a tax credit of up to $1,500 for two years of postsecondary education, and a middle-income tax deduction which would allow students and families to deduct up to $5,000 in postsecondary tuition and fees from their taxable income. Another proposal would be the extension of the exclusion for employer-provided educational assistance up to December 31, 2000. The tax provision is scheduled to expire in mid-1997. The Section 127 provision allows taxpayers to deduct up to $5,250 in employer-provided postsecondary tuition expenses from their incomes each year. The proposal would also reinstate and extend through December 31, 2000, the expired exclusion for employer-provided graduate education. _________________________________________________________________ NATIONAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL INTERAGENCY INITIATIVES - NEXT GENERATION INTERNET (NGI) PROGRAM The President's budget proposes $100 million for each of the next three years to support the Next Generation Internet, which seeks to develop a research network that can reach speeds 100 to 1,000 times faster than the Internet and greatly improve the quality of service. The proposal is part of an overall request for $1.1 billion, 10 percent more than in FY97, for research and development in computers and communications technologies under the Administration's High Performance Computing and Communications initiative. _________________________________________________________________ ALAWON is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. 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