Letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee

July 14, 2005

Dear Senator:

On behalf of the National Education Association's (NEA) 2.7 million members, we would like to express our concerns regarding the fiscal year 2006 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill scheduled for mark-up this week.

NEA recognizes the difficulty in crafting a bill given the tight budget and limited resources provided to the subcommittee. We are quite pleased that the subcommittee chose to reject efforts to reform high schools at the expense of career and technical education and, instead, opted to restore funding for this essential high school program. We also appreciate the inclusion of funding for GEAR-UP and TRIO, which had been targeted for elimination. Last, we recognize the importance of the elimination of the Pell Grant shortfall.

Nonetheless, we do believe the bill as approved by the subcommittee falls far short of what is needed for education and will leave far too many students and schools without the resources they need to succeed. We are disappointed both with the overall education funding levels and, in particular, with the targeting of some of those limited resources to misplaced priorities.

The proposed bill would offer the smallest increase in a decade for education programs (a mere 0.2 percent increase). Many key programs would be significantly underfunded or eliminated. For example, the bill would:

• Cut No Child Left Behind (NCLB) programs by $750 million. The proposed cut, from $24.5 million to $23.77 million (-3.1%), comes as many schools are already struggling to meet NCLB mandates. In the 2004-05 school year, almost 11,000 public schools (an increase from 6,190 in the previous year) had already failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) under NCLB for two or more years, and thus faced federal sanctions. These schools will face even greater challenges in the coming year as testing and teacher quality requirements go into full effect.

The insufficient funding proposed for Title I in particular will make it even more difficult for schools to succeed. The subcommittee bill would provide only a $100 million increase (0.8%) over current Title I funding, and the proposed funding level of $12.8 billion would actually fall some $503 million less than the President's budget request of $13.3 billion.

• Reduce the federal share of IDEA funding from 18.6 percent to 18.0 percent. The subcommittee bill would provide only a $100 million increase for IDEA special education, and the proposed $10.69 billion funding level would fall more than $407 million below the President's request.

• Cut funding for education technology by $71 million. The subcommittee bill would cut education technology from $496 million in FY05 to $425 million in FY06, on top of a cut of $196 million in FY05. This cut comes despite the fact that one in four states has no dedicated technology funds to track NCLB student achievement data or improve teachers' use of technology.

• Freeze funding for after-school programs. After-school programs make a significant difference in maximizing academic achievement for all students and in keeping children safe and away from unsafe or illegal activities. Yet, even at current levels, only 38 percent of applicants receive federal funding.

We are also concerned that the bill would eliminate programs such as comprehensive school reform, Even Start, smaller learning communities and dropout prevention, and would cut the Safe and Drug Free School program by more than 25 percent.

Finally, we oppose targeting of funds to abstinence-only education. Recent studies have highlighted the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only education. Given limited resources, we believe spending funds in this area reflects misplaced priorities, and we urge the committee to shift these HHS funds to proven, underfunded programs such as Head Start.

We thank you for your consideration of our views on these important issues. We will provide additional comments on amendments as information becomes available.

Sincerely,

Diane Shust, Director of Government Relations

Randall Moody, Manager of Federal Policy and Politics