[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 206 (Thursday, December 21, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2440-E2442]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        TITLE I, AN EDUCATION TOOL MEETING THE NEEDS OF CHILDREN

                                 ______


                          HON. BRUCE F. VENTO

                              of minnesota

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, December 21, 1995

  Mr. VENTO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of an education 
program that is relied upon as an integral component of the Federal 
Government's commitment to ensure quality education for every American, 
title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Funds from title 
I enable schools to provide additional academic assistance to at-risk 
students. These children are our most vulnerable students. They are 
children who are more likely to fail or slip behind academically, and 
they are moderate- and low-income families that often lack the network 
of support and enrichment that contributes to successful education and 
schooling.
  A major element of the title I program is the involvement of families 
in the education of their children. Parents and educators share ideas 
and opinions through the title I Advisory Councils where innovative 
solutions are developed to help these at-risk students learn. 
Furthermore, the parent involvement continues into the classroom 
setting and the home through parent classroom visits and the heightened 
awareness the parent takes home with them regarding the child's 
educational needs. Seventy-five percent of the funds Minnesota spent to 
educate poor children in 1995 came from the $81 million title I fund, 
which Republican reconciliation and appropriation measures propose to 
cut. If these budget cuts are enacted, Minnesota is set to lose $14 
million in title I assistance in 1996.

  Title I is to education what preventative medicine is to health care. 
It assists students just slipping behind in their level of learning and 
achievement in school. By providing this extra assistance, especially 
early in their school years, students are less likely to be held back, 
and, therefore, benefit more fully from the schooling being provided to 
them. This type of key investment, made possible by title I resources, 
is a very important part of ensuring that students do not fall through 
the cracks and that all children receive the help they require and 
deserve to succeed. Unfortunately, prior year funding levels and 
demographic changes in our school settings across the Nation, including 
an increased number of children in need, have translated into a gap of 
needs that are going unmet.
  Today, the shortfall will be compounded by the misguided attempt to 
shift our Nation's priorities away from making investments in our 
Nation's children. The new Republican majority's budget package targets 
title I for a 17-percent funding cut. Urban areas like the Twin Cities 
will be more severely impacted by these proposed cuts due to the higher 
number of low-income families housed by our Nation's cities. Schools 
that currently rely on these funds to give added attention to at-risk 
students will be forced to decrease the number of students receiving 
this aid, or reduce funding in other areas of their curriculum to 
maintain the same level of service.
  Furthermore, when reductions in title I are considered together with 
the cuts being proposed to other programs that assist disadvantaged 
children, the impact becomes enormous on this vulnerable population. 
Funding cuts in programs such as welfare assistance, Supplemental 
Security Income for disabled children, health care coverage and even 
nutrition programs are included in the new Republican majority's budget 
plans that would hit low-income children on all sides at once, placing 
significant new hurdles in the already difficult path to educational 
success for these vulnerable students.
  Investing in our Nation's children is an essential component for the 
future prosperity and competitiveness of our Nation, and education is 
an integral part of that investment. Scientific research has repeatedly 
demonstrated that sound educational investments early in the schooling 
years positively impacts not only a child's academic future, but it 
strengthens their post-school years as well. Every child has the 
potential to succeed, and title I gives at-risk students the 
opportunity to achieve that success. As a society, we should make these 
type of investments today. So-called savings by cutting education 
programs means less success for our Nation's children and, therefore, 
our Nation's future.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to enter two outstanding articles by Thomas 
J. Collins and Bill Salisbury into the Record. They appeared in the St. 
Paul Pioneer Press on December 10, 1995, and I think they are very 
accurate accounts of how much schools in the Twin Cities value the 
activities they are able to pursue through title I and how essential 
this program is to the students who receive extra help from it. We must 
provide these extraordinary teachers, Ray Simms, Mary Bakken, Paula 
Mitchell, Deirdre Vaughan, Audrey Bridgeford, Jean Jones, Myrtis 
Skarich, and Jeff Maday, adequate tools so that they are able to serve 
the needs of our children, our Nation's most important resource.

            [From the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Dec. 10, 1995]

               Title I's Tightrope: Will Poor Kids Lose?

                         (By Thomas J. Collins)

       For a fleeting moment Tuesday evening, the glass-enclosed 
     vestibule of the Naomi Family Center in downtown St. Paul 
     offers a silent, fishbowl view of lives in turmoil.
       Teacher Ray Simms is about to step inside, as he does four 
     evenings each week. Silly, isn't it, he says to himself. The 
     better I do my job, the less need there may be for it in the 
     future, he thinks.
       In the lobby, he walks past the cacophony where young women 
     and their children flood toward a counter to get evening meal 
     tickets amid the heavy cafeteria odor of dishwater and 
     cooking meat. Up a clanky elevator to the second floor, Simms 
     on this night will test his sixth-grade student's ability to 
     tally time.
       Simms and Eugene Booker sit in overstuffed chairs for two 
     hours, counting hours, minutes and seconds like those that 
     have measures the sixth-grader's life since he and his family 
     lost their home in April. Later, the two move on to 
     complicated math problems.
       This isn't a classroom. It's a homeless shelter. And to 
     Simms a teacher at Benjamin E. Mays Magnet School, it's not 
     the familiar clanging of lockers or chatter of students he 
     hears outside this door.
       The special instruction Simms provides, as well as one-on-
     one sessions he and other teachers offer to poor kids in 
     schools throughout the city, is part of a program that makes 
     up one of key education targets for those trying to keep the 
     federal budget in line.
       The bulk of education money in the United States comes from 
     state and local sources. But when the budget cutting is 
     finished in Congress, education, like many other services, 
     will feel the pinch. And Simms' program, known as Title I, is 
     likely to feel it more than most.
       It won't be eliminated, but enough will be trimmed around 
     the edges to allow some kids who cannot read or write to slip 
     away.
       Under a proposal in Congress, Minnesota's share of Title I 
     money would decrease by $14 million next year from $81 
     million. The money pays for programs in every one of the 
     state's 400 school districts, aimed at supplemental support 
     to low-income or transient students at risk of failing in 
     school.
     
[[Page E2441]]

       As public schools increasingly come under attack for 
     failing low-income and minority children, Title I has been a 
     life raft for teachers trying to whittle classes that are too 
     large, implement new teaching methods, extend school days if 
     needed, shore up flimsy graduation standards and simply help 
     kids keep up with their peers.


                        jump-start for learning

       Mary Bakken drapes her left arm around a tiny first-grader 
     at Prosperity Heights Elementary School as he sounds out a 
     simple sentence. She gets the magnetic letters that form the 
     words and he pieces them together.
       She mixes up the letters and he rearranges them, an act 
     repeated several times. One of the words he is supposed to 
     know is ``how.'' Bakken asks him to write it and he does, 
     finishing the ``w'' with panache.
       Nearby another boy is struggling with the word ``have.'' 
     Paula Mitchell and her pupil go over and over the word, 
     rearranging and writing the letters until he, too, move on.
       For an hour each morning, the two boys have the undivided 
     attention of their teachers--a jump-start if you will--before 
     they rejoin their regular classes.
       ``It has been wonderful,'' Mitchell said of the experience 
     later. ``These children are the most in need. They can be 
     helped right away before they feel like they are failures.''
       Deirdre Vaughan, who coordinates Title I programming at 
     Prosperity Heights, said about half of the school's 418 
     students need the extra help that the federal program 
     finances. These are students who are scoring below the 30th 
     percentile in national reading and mathematics tests, she 
     said.
       ``Personally, I see great success with these children,'' 
     she added. ``I see children who like coming to school, whose 
     attendance is improving, whose parents are involved in the 
     program as well as the community.''
       Nationally, the programs have yet to be proved effective in 
     raising test scores for low-achieving children. But experts 
     claim they are a good start.
       ``A substantial portion of the enormous number of dollars 
     spent annually on marginally, if at all, effective special 
     education programs needs to be redirected toward preventing 
     initial reading failure,'' said John Pikulski, who teaches 
     courses in literacy education at the University of Delaware 
     in Newark.
       That makes sense to Trish Hill, whose 6-year-old daughter 
     Alisha is a first-grader at Prosperity Heights. Alisha 
     started school without knowing her alphabet.
       ``I tried working with her a bit at home but it didn't 
     help,'' Hill said. After several weeks of the Title I 
     regimen, in which Alisha reads simple sentences to her mother 
     each night and reassembles a sentence from words that have 
     been cut out in class, she is catching up.
       ``She's really excited about school now,'' Hill said. ``The 
     program makes kids like Alisha feel good about themselves.''


                         eligibility teetering

       Propserity Heights on St. Paul's East Side is hanging on by 
     its fingernails to the cusp of the Title I program. Seventy-
     five percent of its students receive free or reduced lunches; 
     any fewer and it would be ineligible.
       Prosperity Heights could be cut from the program next year 
     as the district struggles with a reduced Title I budget. 
     Teachers like Bakken and Mitchell could disappear as well.
       ``I would be very concerned about meeting the needs of our 
     students if Title I was not here,'' Principal Audrey 
     Bridgeford said.
       Teachers Jean Jones and Myrtis Skarich say they couldn't 
     meet those needs.
       They now address them by pulling low-achieving students out 
     of class for an individual tutoring or by breaking classes 
     into small groups with the help of other instructors.
       ``I started teaching 25 years ago, and until we got this 
     model I was never able to intervene when I needed to when a 
     student was missing something,'' Jones said. ``It's really 
     less frustrating for me and for the children.''
       Richard Christian has a twin purpose when he visits Jones' 
     class every Monday morning as part of the schools' Title I 
     funded package. Sure, he wants to help his son Shawn and 
     other first-graders improve their reading skills. But he's 
     also on a mission to heighten the visibility of black men 
     like himself in schools.
       ``It's very important for African-American males in 
     particular to have a place in the classroom,'' he said after 
     he finished helping another student with a difficult 
     sentence. ``The kids are too important for everyone not to be 
     involved.''
       Jeff Maday barely has time to visit his own daughter 
     between substitute teaching in St. Paul and working as a 
     Title I tutor in homeless shelters six days a week. Tuesday 
     he was trying to explain the symmetry between 24 inches and 2 
     feet. But his sixth-grade student, recently arrived from 
     Chicago, is skeptical. How could 24 of anything equal 2?
       They go over and over the concept until a broad grin breaks 
     out on the student's face.
       ``The opportunity to work one-on-one doesn't happen in the 
     regular classroom,'' Maday said. ``You can't just write these 
     kids off. It would be such a waste of potential.''
                                                                    ____


            [From the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Dec. 10, 1995]

                            The Budget Issue

                          (By Bill Salisbury)

       One in five public school students in Minnesota has a stake 
     in the outcome of the budget battle between President Clinton 
     and congressional Republicans.
       Those 80,000 pupils get special help from a federally 
     funded program, called Title I, that tries to provide 
     children from poor families with the basic skills they need 
     to keep up with their classmates.
       House Republicans, in their drive to balance the budget and 
     shrink the federal government, voted to slash Title I funding 
     by 17 percent this fiscal year--a cut that could for example 
     eliminate funding for intensive reading services for nearly 
     14,000 Minnesota children who are at risk of failing in 
     school.
       President Clinton, a strong proponent of the program since 
     his early days as governor of Arkansas, is resisting the 
     cuts. He has proposed a modest increase in funding for the 
     program.
       Education funding is one of the five budget areas where 
     Clinton and congressional Republicans have fundamental 
     disagreements. The others are Medicare, Medicaid, the 
     environment and tax cuts.
       Title I is the biggest and most critical federal education 
     program at stake in the budget negotiations. ``It is our 
     flagship program in elementary and secondary education,'' 
     Marshall Smith, U.S. undersecretary of education, said in an 
     interview last week.
       The federal government provides only a tiny fraction of the 
     money U.S. schools spend on kindergarten through 12th-grade 
     education. But it supplies $3 of every $4 spent on special 
     services for poor children.
       The House bill would reduce Title I funding by $1.1 
     billion, to $5.6 billion in the fiscal year that began Oct. 
     1. (The Senate has not passed an education appropriation 
     measure, although a Senate committee approved a 10 percent 
     cut in Title I.)
       ``With that $1.1 billion, we could provide intensive 
     reading services to every kid in first grade who is in the 
     bottom 25 percent of his class,'' Smith said.
       Minnesota, which got $81 million from the program this 
     school year, would get $14 million less next year.
       ``The bulk of our Title I dollars go for teacher aides that 
     work with (kindergarten through fourth-grade) students who 
     are struggling in reading and math,'' said Jessie Montano, 
     director of the office of state and federal programs in the 
     Minnesota Children, Families and Learning Department. ``If 
     those funds are cut, some of those aides would be laid off, 
     and many more children who are eligible for special 
     assistance would not get it.''
       While all Minnesota school districts get some Title I 
     money, Minneapolis and St. Paul schools would be hardest 
     hit by the cuts because they get the biggest shares of the 
     federal money, based on their large concentrations of 
     students from poor families. St. Paul stands to lose 
     nearly $2 million in Title I funding, while Minneapolis 
     could drop $2.1 million. St. Paul school officials say 
     about 1,250 students would be dropped.
       Minnesota schools also face cuts in a variety of smaller 
     federal programs. For instance, the House bill would reduce 
     federal support for programs to combat drug abuse and prevent 
     violence by 60 percent, or $3.5 million for Minnesota 
     schools, according to the U.S. Education Department.
       The House would eliminate all funding for Goals 2000, a 
     program intended to bring schools up to higher academic 
     standards. Minnesota, which is using the money to develop and 
     implement new high school graduation standards, would lose 
     nearly $1 million.
       The House and Senate both would consolidate more than 100 
     separate job training and placement programs into three block 
     grants to the states. Under that plan, Minnesota would get 
     $1.3 million less for vocational education next year, the 
     Education Department estimated.
       Schools in the state would also get less federal aid for 
     bilingual and migrant education, dropout prevention, staff 
     professional development, experimental schools and several 
     other small programs. It's highly unlikely that states or 
     local school districts would replace the federal dollars they 
     lose, said Michael Casserly, executive director of the 
     Council of the Great City Schools. He said schools in the 
     nation's 45 largest cities, which stand to lose the most 
     Title I funding, are least able to replace it because their 
     budgets are already tightly squeezed.
       Republicans say Title I, along with most other domestic 
     programs must be cut to balance the budget.
       ``Our bill cut $9 billion from education, and we're proud 
     of that,'' said Elizabeth Morra, spokeswoman for the House 
     Appropriations Committee. ``Just about every program took 
     some kind of hit'' to balance the budget.
       Education could use some belt-tightening, Morra said. 
     ``Those programs have been growing out of control in recent 
     years.''
       The federal government is funding 240 separate education 
     programs this year, up from 120 programs in 1983, and that 
     growth needs to be reined in, she said.
       She predicted Congress would settle on $6 billion 
     appropriation of Title I, which would be a $700 million cut 
     from this year's level but almost as much as the program 
     received in 1994. ``It's hard to argue that $6 billion is not 
     a lot of money,'' she said.
       Title I is ``generally thought of as a good program,'' she 
     said, but it does not appear to be closing the learning gap 
     between the rich and poor.
       Smith, the undersecretary of education, agreed. He said the 
     program was closing the gap in the 1970s and early 1980s, but 
     has not made progress in recent years, for two reasons.
     
[[Page E2442]]

       First, he said, the Reagan and Bush administrations 
     weakened the program.
       Second, he said, ``poverty, crime and a whole lot of other 
     things got markedly worse in the cities during that period.''
       To improve the program's effectiveness, Clinton and 
     Congress last year changed the law to focus more money and 
     effort on improving needy students' basic skills, especially 
     in reading and math, Smith said. It's too early to measure 
     the results of that change, he said, and too early to dismiss 
     the program as ineffective.
       Montano said the program has been effective in Minnesota. 
     Minnesota student participants have always exceeded the 
     national average in gains in reading and math skills, she 
     said.
       Morra also criticized Title I for wasting money on school 
     districts that don't need it. Ninety percent of the nation's 
     school districts receive money from the program, including 
     those in the nation's 100 wealthiest counties. ``Title I 
     needs targeting,'' she said.
       ``She's right,'' Smith said. The administration proposed 
     targeting the money, but House Republicans and Democrats 
     ``shot it down for political reasons,'' he said. The 
     lawmarkers didn't want to take money away from the wealthy 
     school districts they represent.
       Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the 
     House Appropriations Committee, said Title I cuts are 
     unnecessary. He noted that while the Republicans slashed $1.1 
     billion from that program, they voted to pay for 20 more B-2 
     bombers than the Pentagon requested at a cost of $1.2 billion 
     per plane.