ARLINGTON, Va., April 13, 2001 (PRIMEZONE) -- The following is being issued by Larry Parker, Senior Reporter, Teacher Choice of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution:
In his ambitious education reform package, President Bush has proposed greater accountability for schools, including a reduction in funding for those that don't meet performance standards. As a primary tool, the plan would increase spending at and through the U.S. Department of Education, which in turn will send more money to schools that succeed, and less to some that fail.
The approach raises the interesting question: Will the Department itself be held to meaningful standards of accountability for the way it spends its money? How will its performance be measured, and if it is, what will be the penalties and rewards for doing a bad job or a good job?
These tensions came into relief recently when Department of Education officials admitted to Congress that approximately $450 million, sought in audits over the last three fiscal years, is in fact "missing." Of course, the lost millions come exclusively from the administration of former President Bill Clinton. But that fact hasn't helped Congress through more than several years of hearings on the Department's casual approach to its own bookkeeping.
As Michigan Representative Pete Hoekstra confided to an Alexis de Tocqueville Institution researcher last year after one of the audit hearings, "they just tell us they can't find the money and give us a smug smile -- because there doesn't seem to be any way to discipline the Department when it doesn't perform, no matter how brazenly."
So far, the Bush program doesn't seem inclined to discipline the department either. An estimate from the President's Office of Management and Budget, provided to Teacher Choice, a research program of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, shows the department adding "approximately 750" new staff members over the next three years, an expansion of more than 20 percent. In fact, under the President's own budget the department's budget would nearly double from 2000 through 2006, and virtually triple in a decade, from $23 billion in 1996 to $60.1 billion in 2006 if Bush is reelected. In fact, as this chart illustrates, Bush would increase the department's budget by a higher percentage per year than the combined average of former Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton. (Source: President Bush's February 2001 budget proposal and historical data.)
Dept. of Education Spending Increase Per Year
(In Percent)
Last 4 Presidents 6.4% (average annual increase)
George W. Bush 7.4% (planned increase)
Sen. Jeffords' plan 9.2% (estimated increase)
This plan was dealt a blow in Congress in early April, but this was because many members faulted it for not increasing the Department's budget enough. Senate Democrats were joined by one important Republican -- Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Jim Jeffords of Vermont -- in a statement complaining that education spending rises "only" about 6% in the current year's budget.
Senator Jeffords, cooperating with his committee's ranking member, Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy, wants far more. Where the President's plan asked for an 8 percent increase in federal funds for K-12 education, for example, Jeffords' committee reported a bill that instead would increase federal money for elementary and secondary education by 52 percent, to a record $27.7 billion.
Jeffords, and some in the Bush Administration, appear to think that the majority of classroom teachers want more federal money, even if it comes with waste (as seen under Clinton) or new rules and regulations (likely under an effort to crack down on "waste"). It's not clear that this is where sentiment lies. A 1997 poll found that more than half of Washington, D.C. teachers cited the high cost and complexity of school administration as the main cause of public education woes in the nation's capital. A 1999 poll of 30 award-winning teachers at de Tocqueville's National Teachers Summit said that teachers' top frustration was "too many rules and restrictions on (the) ability to teach effectively." And a non-scientific survey just last month of teachers from Maine to California found teachers supporting the principles of "accountability" in the Bush education plan, but fretting about the strings it might put on them.
Those teachers seem to regard federal and even state education bureaucracies skeptically and even warily. "If schools are going to be held accountable," as a Teacher Choice member from Illinois put it, "maybe the federal department should be too."
-0-
CONTACT: Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, Arlington
Larry Parker, Teacher Choice Senior Reporter
(703) 351-4969