Editorial: Bush education plan is deeply flawed

02/19/2007

Star Tribune
Published: February 19, 2007


To hear Bush administration officials tell it, their $56 billion proposed education budget for 2008 makes bold investments that "strategically" meet student needs.

On what planet? Details of Bush's education package show that it takes baby steps forward while continuing a much larger slide in the other direction.

Constructively, the president finally recognizes the need to increase funding for college Pell Grants, his signature No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Title I programs for disadvantaged kids. But even those advances come at the cost of decreases in other areas.

Although the proposed budget cuts education spending by only 4 to 5 percent, that "saving" eliminates crucial help for many of the nation's neediest kids -- and their families.

The Bush plan, for example, would increase college grants for low-income students from the current $4,050 up to $4,600. That's worthy, but is undermined by the proposal to cut $770 million from federal supplemental education opportunity grants.

At the K-12 level, the president touts putting an additional $1.2 billion into seriously underfunded No Child Left Behind mandates. Yet much of that money is designed to expand NCLB into the nation's high schools, while still failing to fully fund it at the K-8 level.

As Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., argues, the administration proposal is "a shell game" that often pits one group of students against another. "Why should we underfund the younger students to give to their older brothers and sisters? Both deserve our investments," she said.

More than 40 current education programs are targeted for elimination, including arts and vocational education, parent resource centers and education technology grants. Support for Bush's own top initiative, NCLB, would remain about $15 billion below the level allocated when the bill was signed into law.

To make matters worse, poor students especially will be affected by program cuts in other areas such as home energy assistance, supplemental food programs, job training and child care. Head Start would take a whopping $100 million hit.

Congress should make sure that education gets better federal support than that.