uage Assistance: $17.9
Thurgood Marshall Legal Educational Opportunity Program, which helps provide low-income students of color with support to access and complete law school: $3.0
Women's Educational Equity: $3.0
Federal Perkins Loans : $66.1
And this is just a partial list. There are other proposed cuts as well, ones that seem particularly paradoxical in the wake of the NCLB's stated commitment to quality education. For instance, even with all the focus on developing and maintaining a qualified teacher in every classroom, the administration wants to cut "Teacher Quality Enhance-ment" monies to save $68.3 million.
Just for perspective, I compared some of these proposed program cuts to the federal budget request for weapons systems for fiscal year 2006. I found that the $94.5 million saved by cutting Smaller Learning Communities programs will just about pay for exactly one of the 38 requested F/A-18 jet fighters. Cutting GearUp will almost pay for a single C-17 Transport Aircraft, and the combined cuts of Upward Bound, Talent Search, Even Start, and Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities (a little over $1 billion total) will buy a little less than one half of a federally requested SSN-774 "Virginia" Attack Submarine. I could go on, but I'll stop before my head explodes.
The DOE says many of the proposed cuts are because the programs are redundant with existing or new programs. So Teacher Quality Enhance-ment, School Dropout Prevention, and Alcohol Abuse and Reduction programs, for instance, will supposedly now be taken care of by existing NCLB programs and grants. The feds have deemed others, like Upward Bound, Talent Search, GearUp, and the National Writing project as "ineffective" or only "partially effective," so they too will go.
The Bush administration clearly thinks too much money is being spent on education programs, particularly those that target low-income students and students of color. Even worse, they think NCLB funding is supposed to make up for the loss of these programs.
Once again, educators are being told that we have to do more with less. This message is especially harrowing considering the June 2004 report by the Center on Education Policy that found that NCLB Title I programs aimed at low-income students are only serving about 60 percent of eligible children. The report went on to add that, "The current Title I appropriation of about $12.3 billion is only half of the approximately $24.7 billion it would cost to serve all children counted under the Title I basic formula using the law's own expenditure factors." The proposed program cuts, combined with current educational under-funding, represent a continuation of the Bush agenda of slashing-and-burning public education.
Does the Bush Administration's proposed 2006 budget really speak to educational equality in our country? Absolutely not. And once again we are left with the empty promises of NCLB.
I fear that without programs like Upward Bound, the Betos and Vangies in this country won't have opportunities to go to college. But, if the opportunities are not there, where will they go? Just because the Bush administration expresses absolutely no tangible commitment to helping these students, it doesn't mean they vanish into thin air.
Perhaps that is the ultimate tragedy of a callous education policy like NCLB: No matter how ridiculous the legislation is and how little money is spent, the kids will still be standing there, like Beto and Vangie, demanding to be remembered.