Bush's Attack on Public Education

Head Start & Child Care

President Bush's 2004 budget would "dismantle" the Head Start preschool program. The nonpartisan National Head Start Association warns that Bush's 2004 budget would begin a five-year process in which the highly successful federal program would be replaced with "a hodgepodge of inconsistent and untested state government programs." Those untested programs "will serve fewer children than Head Start does now or will provide less comprehensive services to those children who are served."²

Bush's Head Start plan would waste money on administrative costs -- and could reduce the number of children being served. The National Head Start Association estimates that Bush's proposal to establish cumbersome new state bureaucracies to run Head Start would waste $518 million on administrative costs, the equivalent of 59,000 Head Start student slots.³

Head Start programs may be forced to cut the number of children they serve in order to meet the unfunded mandates called for in Republican Head Start bills. H.R. 2210, the House Head Start bill modeled on President Bush's 2004 budget proposal, mandates a number of improvements in Head Start standards, but doesn't provide the funds to pay for those improvements. 

• H.R. 2210 requires that by 2008 half of all Head Start teachers meet educational requirements comparable to those of public school teachers. But the bill doesn't provide the extra $2 billion that researchers say would be needed to increase Head Start teachers' salaries to public-school levels.
• Head Start programs are required to improve their coordination with other early-childhood agencies, but no new funding is offered to support the effort.⁴

The Bush administration would allow Head Start employers to discriminate in hiring based on workers' religion. The House's 2004 Head Start bill (H.R. 2210), which is modeled on the president's 2004 budget proposal, would exempt faith-based Head Start employers from complying with religious non-discrimination laws. "This provision could result in the dismissal or denial of opportunities to teachers solely because of their religion," according to the Center for Law and Social Policy.⁵

The Head Start proposal pushed by President Bush's GOP allies in the House does little to help underserved Latino and migrant families. Only 23 percent of Latino infants and toddlers eligible for Head Start are currently enrolled in the program; and only 19 percent of eligible migrant and seasonal children attend Head Start. But H.R. 2210 "does little" to expand access to Head Start and "ultimately leaves children behind," says Manda Lopez, executive director of the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association.⁶

The Bush administration is trying to radically restructure Head Start even though it was ranked as the No. 1 "customer-rated" U.S. government program. A 1999 study found that Head Start had the highest customer-satisfaction score of any federal program. Moreover, Head Start had a higher customer satisfaction score than many major companies, including Mercedes-Benz and BMW.⁷

Bush officials tried to silence Head Start staff who questioned the president's plan to dismantle the program. In May 2003, Bush's Department of Health and Human Services issued a letter threatening to discipline Head Start teachers and volunteers who criticized Bush's plan. National Head Start Association (NHSA) President Sarah Greene called it a "callous attempt to terrify Head Start staff and volunteers into silence with the prospect of possible jail time."⁸
 
Child care assistance is being cut because of the Bush administration's failure to provide adequate funding. States rely on funding from TANF, the federal welfare program, to help support child care for both working families and families on welfare. But now that welfare rolls are growing again, the Bush administration and its Republican allies in Congress are not raising funding to match the increased needs. In 2002, the states spent $500 million less in TANF funds on child care than they did in 2000.⁹

Working families have been the first victims of the Bush administration's failure to adequately fund child care. Many states have cut -- or even eliminated -- child care support to low-income working families. For example, Maryland's 2004 budget cut child care assistance to low-income working families by 19 percent, from $134 million to $109 million. And as of January 2003, Maryland families will not receive child care assistance unless they have been on welfare within the last year.¹⁰

Primary & Secondary Schools

President Bush has left out billions of dollars in funding that he promised to America's schoolchildren in the No Child Left Behind Act. President Bush built bipartisan support for the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 by promising to raise standards and reduce class sizes in America's public schools. But the first education budget Bush submitted after passing the Act left out more than $6 billion that was needed to fully fund it.¹¹ The Bush administration has actually proposed cuts in No Child Left Behind funding in the last two fiscal years, said Joel Packer, a staffer at the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union. Congress increased the appropriations, he said. ¹² Bush again proposed a cut in NCLB funding for FY2004, but Congress again increased the amount.¹³

Bush's Republican allies in the House passed a 2004 education bill that underfunds the No Child Left Behind Act by more than $8 billion. This funding shortfall would:

• Deny additional instruction in key academic subjects to more than half of all low-income children eligible for it.
• Block 54,000 teachers from receiving the professional development and training promised by President Bush in 2001.
• Cancel pre-school, after-school and weekend programs for more than a million children. The funding for the programs falls 43 percent below the level President Bush promised in 2001.¹⁴

This year 26,000 of the nation's 93,000 public schools failed to make adequate yearly progress, fueling predictions that the law could eventually label nearly all schools as failing. Much opposition is based on the view that the law will require districts to spend large sums to remedy shortcomings in such schools, without full federal financing.¹⁵

"We are being required to do more and more with less and less. The political spin is amazing. NCLB piles on more under-funded mandates than ever before. Some of our districts' NCLB Title I grant budgets were cut anywhere from 25 to 50 percent-not increased as promised. The public is being told one story while the truth is quite different."¹⁶

 "….this law can just overwhelm a school system's ability to meet its requirements, especially when a district is as financially stressed as we are," said Fred Gaige, a school board member in Reading, PA. His school system has been struggling to comply with the law, he said, even as it flirts with bankruptcy because the local manufacturing economy is collapsing.

"The administration says the law is not an unfunded mandate, but many of us feel that it is," said Kory M. Holdaway, a Republican member of the Utah Legislature who, as chairman of the National Conference of State Legislatures' Committee on Education, voiced legislators' complaints to White House officials in a November meeting.

Almost 9 in 10 of the nation's school superintendents believed the law required them to undertake extensive initiatives without enough money.¹⁷                                                                                     

President Bush supports programs that would drain funds from struggling public schools and give money to private schools. President Bush backs voucher programs that would give public school funds to private schools. The president has played a key role in trying to impose a voucher program on Washington, D.C.¹⁸

University & Vocational Education

President Bush broke his campaign promise to increase college scholarships for students from working families. During the 2000 campaign, President Bush said he would raise the Pell Grant college scholarship to as much as $5,100 for college freshmen.¹⁹ Today, the maximum Pell Grant remains frozen at $4,050,²⁰ despite substantial increases in college tuition that have occurred during President Bush's term in office.²¹

In 2003, the Bush administration made controversial changes to the Pell Grant program that will:

• Cut scholarship funding by $270 million in the 2004-2005 academic year.
• Deny scholarships to 84,000 students who currently qualify for support.²²

President Bush has moved to slash funding for vocational and technical education. Bush's 2004 budget would cut vocational and technical education grants by more than $300 million -- a 24% reduction.²³

Republican backlash in the states

• Virginia  
  By a vote of 98 to 1, the Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates passed a resolution calling on Congress to exempt states like Virginia from the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. In their resolution, the House sharply criticized President Bush's signature education program, saying the law will cost “literally millions of dollars that Virginia does not have.” No Republicans voted against the resolution, a fact that House Education Committee Chairman James H. Dillard II (R-Fairfax) said is proof that "the damn law is ludicrous." "I'm all in favor of accountability and higher standards, but Virginia already has a system in place," said Republican House Caucus Chairman R. Steven Landes (R-Augusta). "This could cost us more money than the money coming in from the federal government."
• Ohio  
  As a result of a Republican legislative initiative in Ohio, the state commissioned a study released this month that found the federal government had significantly underfunded No Child Left Behind.
• North Dakota  
  In North Dakota, a resolution sponsored by Democrats that stated the "cost to states of implementing the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is as yet unclear" was passed by both the Republican-controlled House and Senate.
• Utah  
  The Republican legislature in Utah is considering legislation to forgo the federal money and opt out of the program entirely. ²⁴

Left Behind

Gifted students left behind.  To abide by No Child Left Behind, schools are shifting resources away from programs that help their most gifted students. The effects may be felt most by gifted low-income minority pupils whose parents don't have the option of shifting them to private schools or providing outside enrichment to compensate for cutbacks. Moreover, the priority changes wrought by the law are coming just as districts had been making progress in identifying and nurturing brainy minority students, who've long been underrepresented in such programs.²⁵                                         

Military families left behind. Bush's 2004 budget recommends cuts of $172 million, or 14 percent, in payments called "impact aid" that make up for lost local tax revenues from tax-exempt property. The analysis by the staff of Rep. David R. Obey (Wis.), the top Democrat on House Appropriations reports, calculates that the military portion of the program is set to fall by $200 million, more than 30 percent, -- much of that affecting children of troops that have served in Iraq. Bush's proposed cuts in impact aid would reduce the budgets of two schools near Fort Hood: Killeen's school budget by $ 22 million, or 13 percent, while Copperas Cove would lose $ 9.6 million, or 22 percent. Similar effects were found in schools for military children in Georgia, North Carolina and Kentucky. Already, Obey’s staff reports, Defense Department schools overseas had to end the school year a week early because of a lack of money.²⁶

Sources

¹ Rep. George Miller, House Education and the Workforce Committee, "Broken Promises: The GOP Record on Education," August 2003. http://edworkforce.house.gov/democrats/brokenpromises.pdf

² National Head Start Association, "Dismantling Head Start," 4/16/03. http://www.saveheadstart.org/SHS_white_paper082703.PDF

³ Ibid.

⁴ Center for Law and Social Policy, "Headed in the Wrong Direction: Why the House Head Start Bill (H.R. 2210) Is Unlikely to Make the Program Better," 7/11/03. http://www.clasp.org/DMS/Documents/1057944079.98/headed_wrong.pdf

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ National Head Start Association, "Controversial House Head Start Bill 'Abandons' 750,000 Hispanic Children in Southwest, Rest of U.S.," 7/2/03. http://www.saveheadstart.org/070203_hispanic_release.html

⁷ National Head Start Association, "Dismantling Head Start," 4/16/03. http://www.saveheadstart.org/SHS_white_paper082703.PDF

⁸ The American Prospect (Web edition), "Head Hunter: The Bush administration wants to slash Head Start," 7/10/03. http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/07/markowitz-m-07-10.html
 
⁹ Center for Law and Social Policy, "Making the Case for Increasing Child Care Funding," 9/26/03. http://www.clasp.org/DMS/Documents/1064524921.76/CC_fact_sheet.pdf

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Rep. George Miller, House Education and the Workforce Committee, "Broken Promises: The GOP Record on Education," August 2003. http://edworkforce.house.gov/democrats/brokenpromises.pdf

¹² San Francisco Chronicle, "President takes to the road to promote education initiative," 1/5/04. 
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/01/05/national0352EST0453.DTL

¹³ Center on Education Policy, ^"From the Capital to the Classroom: Year 2 of the No Child Left Behind Act,"  January 2004 http://www.ctredpol.org/pubs/nclby2/cep_nclb_y2.pdf

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ New York Times, "Some School Districts Challenge Bush's Signature Education Law,"  1/2/04