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26–056 PDF 2006

S. HRG. 109–289

THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN GLOBAL

COMPETITIVENESS

HEARING

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, 

LABOR, AND PENSIONS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

ON

EXAMINING THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS, 

FOCUSING ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF MATH AND SCIENCE, AND THE 

RESPECTIVE HIGH SCHOOL REFORM AND NATIONAL SECURITY LANGUAGE INITIATIVES

FEBRUARY 9, 2006

Printed for the use of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming, Chairman

JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire 

BILL FRIST, Tennessee 

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee 

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina 

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia 

MIKE DEWINE, Ohio 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah 

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama 

PAT ROBERTS, Kansas 

EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts 

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut 

TOM HARKIN, Iowa 

BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland 

JAMES M. JEFFORDS (I), Vermont 

JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico 

PATTY MURRAY, Washington 

JACK REED, Rhode Island 

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York

KATHERINE BRUNETT MCGUIRE, Staff Director 

J. MICHAEL MYERS, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

STATEMENTS

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2006

Page 

Enzi, Hon. Michael B., Chairman, Committee on Health, Education, Labor, 

and Pensions, opening statement ....................................................................... 1

Kennedy, Hon. Edward M., a U.S. Senator from the State of Massachusetts, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 3

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 4

Spellings, Hon. Margaret, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education ................. 6

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 32

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL 

Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.: 

Senator Ensign ................................................................................................. 39

Senator Dodd .................................................................................................... 40

Senator Murray ................................................................................................ 42

Response to questions of Senator Enzi by Secretary Spellings .................... 44

Response to questions of Senator Ensign by Secretary Spellings ................ 49

Response to questions of Senator Hatch by Secretary Spellings .................. 51

Response to questions of Senator Sessions by Secretary Spellings .............. 52

Questions of Senator Murray to Secretary Spellings .................................... 55

(1)

THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN GLOBAL 

COMPETITIVENESS 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2006

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 

SD-106, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Mike Enzi, chairman 

of the committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Enzi, Gregg, Alexander, Burr, Isakson, Sessions, Kennedy, Bingaman, Murray, Reed and Clinton. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ENZI

The CHAIRMAN. I will call to order the hearing on The Role of 

Education in Global Competitiveness. 

It is my pleasure today to welcome the Secretary of Education, 

Margaret Spellings, to discuss the President’s recently announced 

Global Competitiveness Initiative, and other administration education priorities that will be the cornerstone of the national strategy to address these challenges of a global economy. 

We do have the unique opportunity to strengthen and focus our 

education training to ensure that as individuals, and as a Nation, 

we have the knowledge and skills that we need. We must ensure 

that America’s students are the best in the world, that they speak 

the language of success, and that as a country we get more than 

a passing grade. 

In April of 2005, Secretary Spellings appeared before this committee and testified with Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Labor, and 

it was on this same topic, the topic of global competitiveness. At 

that hearing, the committee’s goal was to find out how we can provide our children with an education today for tomorrow’s jobs. 

In addition, we held a roundtable on higher education with college presidents and corporate executives, where they cited a need 

for a well-educated and skilled workforce. Without an educated 

workforce we are certain to lose our preeminence in the world to 

developing nations that are quickly growing and innovating at a 

much faster rate than we are. If our students and workers are to 

have the best chance to succeed in life, we need to focus all of our 

Federal education and training programs from pre-kindergarten 

through postsecondary education to on-the-job training and continuing education. To be competitive in a global economy we must 

ensure coordination and accountability in our education and workforce programs across all agencies, departments and levels of GovVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:07 Jul 17, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\DOCS\26056.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
2

ernment. To stay in the competitiveness race, and to win it, we 

must ensure that school is never out and learning is never over. 

In reading ‘‘The Jobs Revolution,’’ I was particularly drawn to a 

passage about knowledge and job skills. Knowledge, it began, is 

being outdated at rates that are still escalating. Even knowledge 

that is current when students graduate is soon outdated. While the 

number of new careers is increasing, the life span of applicable 

knowledge is decreasing. Two-thirds of the 7-million worker gap in 

2010 will be a skilled worker shortage. That’s unacceptable. Today, 

tomorrow and for the foreseeable future, knowledge is king, especially knowledge obtained and updated on a regular basis through 

a lifetime of learning and a constant upgrading of skills of our 

workforce. College degrees do not have the shelf life they once did. 

In 2004, China graduated about 500,000 engineers, India graduated 200,000. We graduated 70,000. In less than 5 years, China 

has more than doubled the number of their engineering students 

who graduated from college. Only 6 percent of the bachelor level 

engineering degrees granted world wide were earned in the United 

States. 

More staggering are the results from national and international 

tests showing that American elementary and secondary students 

are falling behind and will not be prepared for the demands of 

global competitiveness. Only 7 percent of America’s 4th and 8th 

graders in 2003 reached the advanced level on the International 

Math and Science Study. By contrast, 38 percent of Singapore’s 4th 

graders and 44 percent of their 8th graders did, compared to our 

7 percent. In addition, American 15-year-olds ranked 24th out of 

the 29 developed nations in mathematics, literacy and problem 

solving on the most recent International Assessment Test. We are 

losing the race. 

A student who takes just one remedial reading course in college 

is 8 times less likely to graduate than a student who is fully prepared for college. At a time when most jobs will require some postsecondary education, we must focus on who is fully prepared for 

college. With less need for basic reading and math courses and a 

greater likelihood of success in college or the workplace, a good 

education will always be the golden key that will unlock the door 

to a brighter future for all of us as individuals, and together as a 

Nation. 

Often when there are challenges, there are opportunities. By taking this opportunity to strengthen and focus our education and 

training systems on ensuring the knowledge and skills that we as 

individuals and the Nation need, we are ensuring that America’s 

students are the best in the world and they speak the language of 

success, and that as a country we will get more than a passing 

grade. 

I really appreciate Secretary Spellings being with us today. We 

look forward to your remarks regarding what the President is proposing for the U.S. Department of Education to meet these challenges. On January 5th, you jointly announced with the Secretary 

of State, the National Security Language Initiative to Advance National Security and Global Competitiveness. 

The President proposed almost $400 million as part of the American Competitiveness Initiative to strengthen the capacity of our 

3

schools to improve elementary and secondary instruction in math 

and science. These are critical first steps. 

Thank you for being here and for sharing that vision with us 

today. The purpose of today’s hearing is to discuss the Competitiveness Initiative. I recognize that there are many important education topics existing today. However, I respectfully request that 

the committee stay focused on this most important topic. 

Senator Kennedy. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR KENNEDY

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you very much, Senator Enzi, for having this hearing. 

Welcome, Secretary Spellings. Our committee always enjoys 

working with you. You have been available and accessible to us on 

this committee on our side of the aisle. We have not always agreed, 

but we have always had a high regard, and deep respect for your 

strong commitment to education, and we want to try and continue 

to make progress. 

I want to thank the chair for having this hearing. I want to acknowledge the leadership of our colleague and friend, Senator 

Bingaman, and Republicans as well, in giving life to this whole 

challenge that we are facing here at home in terms of being able 

to compete in the international and the global market, and understanding the importance of education. The excellent report released 

by the National Academy of Sciences included a series of excellent 

recommendations. Hopefully, we will have an opportunity to consider those recommendations and the Administration’s recommendations. 

I welcome the chairman’s statement, and he really captured it 

very, very well. I would like to have my full statement printed in 

the record. This issue requires a comprehensive plan—one that begins with early education, K through 12, continuing education, and 

training. We also have to look at our graduate schools. 

Senator Enzi outlined the progress that is being made in the 

other countries, in China and Japan, and the fact that we have 

seen about 70,000 graduate students in engineering. About half of 

those are foreign students. 

My sense is as a Nation we have to make a commitment that we 

are going to equip every individual in our society to be able to deal 

with the global challenge. That ought to be our national challenge. 

Then we have to be able to equip our industries, so that they are 

going to be the innovative industries for the next century so that 

they can compete internationally. I think it is as simple as that. 

We cannot just have some winners and some losers and think that 

we are meeting our total responsibility. Our principal concern—and 

we will get into it in the questions—is whether in some of these 

areas which I think are commendable, whether we have closed 

down some programs which have been very, very useful and valuable, in the name of introducing others. 

For example, we have seen the math and science teacher training 

program in the National Science Foundation cut back significantly. 

In a program that I thought had great merit, the math and science 

partnership program under the No Child Left Behind has been virtually flat funded now for the past 2 years, and even the No Child 

4

Left Behind teacher quality program has been diminished in terms 

of flat funding, which has meant a reduction in real terms. 

We want to make sure, when we are moving off on new initiatives, that we are also meeting our responsibility on initiatives that 

have been tried and tested in the past, that are working, and which 

our communities are really relying on in terms of advancing math 

and science as well. 

We look forward to a number of very valuable ideas put in the 

President’s State of the Union, and which are expanded on in your 

testimony. There are a lot of very good ideas from both sides of the 

aisle here. We hope to have a real working partnership with you 

to try to get it done in the best interest of the children and of this 

country. Also recognizing that continuing education and training is 

going to be a key to our future competitiveness as well. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, and with unanimous consent, your full statement will appear in the record, as will any 

statements by members of the committee that wish to put it in 

there. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Kennedy follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR KENNEDY

Thank you, Senator Enzi, for scheduling today’s hearing on the 

role of education in keeping our Nation globally competitive. It’s a 

privilege to join in welcoming Secretary Spellings back to our committee to discuss this important topic. 

Globalization is one of the most important and far-reaching challenges facing our country and our economy today, and it’s already 

leading to massive transformations of our industries and our workforce. 

There is no quick fix to this challenge. But we have a choice. We 

can continue to allow the swift currents of globalization to sweep 

us away. Or we define America’s own destiny with policies that create new opportunities for our people. 

I believe that America can rise to the challenge. We can do it not 

by lowering our wages, but by raising our skills and equipping 

every American to compete and win in the new global economy. 

And we can do it by creating in America a new culture of innovation and creativity that keeps our Nation in the lead in the global 

market place. Only then will our economy continue to grow and 

prosper, and only then will the good jobs of the future be made in 

the U.S.A. 

That must be our goal. Surely education is one of the major keys 

for doing so. More than ever, we must begin at the beginning—by 

ensuring that each and every young person receives a high quality 

early childhood education, from the very earliest years. We’ve long 

focused on K–12 and college and post-graduate education, but we 

need to give comparable attention to the earlier years as well, because they have such a profound impact on each child’s later performance in school and in life. 

That means standing behind our commitment to leave no child 

behind, so that public education works for every single child. Five 

years ago, we acknowledged that reforms and resources were the 

right formula for improving our public schools. High standards, 

5

well-qualified teachers, smaller classes, and extra help for students 

who fall behind are undoubtedly the right reforms. But we also 

need the resources to get the job done, and to guarantee the financial support they need for college or for workforce training programs. 

I welcome President Bush’s call to focus on math and science. We 

need to strengthen the teaching of math and science at every 

level—from public schools on through colleges and universities—

not only to produce more scientists and engineers, but to guarantee 

that America continues at the cutting edge of innovation and 

progress. 

In order to accomplish this, Congress and the Administration 

must help the States to align their curriculums in these critical 

subjects with the needs of the economy and the workforce. With 

adequate incentives, we can recruit and retain excellent math and 

science teachers in high-poverty schools. We can encourage investments to adapt state-of-the-art technology for classroom use. We 

can enable more of our best students to pursue college degrees in 

math, science, technology, and engineering. 

Each of these investments is an investment in America’s future. 

Anything less will shortchange the Nation and its future. 

Perhaps the best greatest obstacle is the current fiscal climate. 

Frankly, we simply cannot win in the global economy and create 

the good new jobs of tomorrow on the budget that the President 

presented this week. The budget cuts that the President proposes 

compromise the quality and availability of education that is so key 

to our progress. 

The fiscal year 2007 budget announced on Monday underfunds the No Child Left Behind Act by $15 billion. It would leave behind 

nearly 4 million students who need essential services under the 

Federal title I program of aid to disadvantaged students. It would 

leave behind 2 million children who could benefit from after-school 

programs. Twenty-nine States would have reduced title I funding. 

It eliminates 42 education programs currently funded at a level 

totaling $3.5 billion, even though many of those programs on this 

blunderbuss chopping block are important investments in America’s future. 

It seems particularly shortsighted for the President to further reduce funding by 27 percent for the Math and Science Partnerships 

program at the National Science Foundation at a time when we 

need the best possible training for math and science teachers. Also, 

the budget should not have proposed again to eliminate our current 

investments in technology education under the No Child Left Behind Act. 

It’s impossible to justify such reductions. We need to do more—

not less—to advance these priorities in education. I hope that we 

can work together this year with this Administration to re-think 

the budget and provide the funding needed to these critical programs. 

Secretary Spellings, thank you for being here today. We look forward to hearing from you about the President’s plan for Global 

Competitiveness. All of us on the committee want to work with you 

to see that the Nation’s students, schools, and colleges can adapt 

to this new age of global competitiveness and rise to new heights. 

6

The CHAIRMAN. Without further ado though, we will go directly 

to the statement by the Secretary of Education. 

STATEMENT OF HON. MARGARET SPELLINGS, SECRETARY, 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, 

Senator Kennedy, and thank you, members, for inviting me here 

before you today. 

I am glad to hear that everything was okay last night after the 

false alarm, and Senator Enzi, I understand you had the opportunity to spend some real high-quality time with your 2-1/2-yearold grandson down there for a few hours in the garage. 

Senator GREGG. We all did. 

[Laughter.] 

Secretary SPELLINGS. And you too, Senator Gregg. 

You and I, Senator Enzi, have been working closely in our freshman year on the job here, and I want to thank you and this entire 

committee for your support and for all you have done together this 

year, including providing relief to the victims of Hurricanes 

Katrina and Rita, and I want to especially thank you for your recent work to increase the resources available to help low-income 

students afford college. 

The academic competitiveness and SMART Grant Programs 

build on the successful Pell Grant Program, and they will encourage students to take more challenging courses and pursue subjects 

that are critical in the global economy, science, technology, engineering and math. So thank you for that effort last year that the 

President just signed yesterday and I think it really sets the table 

for the work that is before us. 

I am sure most of you have probably seen the cover of Time Magazine, which asks: Is America Flunking Science? Or the Business 

Week Magazine from a few weeks ago, that says: ‘‘Math Will Rock 

Your World.’’ And we cannot, any of us, pick up a newspaper or 

magazine these days without reading about global competitiveness, 

especially in math and science. As you all well know, our children 

are not growing up in the same world we did, and in the last century this country led a communications revolution that connected 

people around the world like never before. And as a result, today, 

what you know means far more than where you live. 

Last week President Bush laid out a bold vision for keeping 

American competitive, and of course, we all agree it begins with 

education. His initiative will double the Federal investment in 

science over the next decade to make sure that we continue to lead 

the world in Nobel prize winners, and it will encourage the private 

sector to make bold investments in research and innovation to 

produce the next big breakthroughs. But to do all of this, we must 

give our students the skills to compete and lead in the global economy. 

As President Bush said in the State of the Union, ‘‘We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity.’’ And the 

good news is, is that there are certain things that we cannot teach 

in classrooms that our country already has: creativity and entrepreneurial spirit, which means to me that we actually have the 

7

easier job. What we need to do is give our children the skills to 

compete. 

Unfortunately, we are not where we need to be, as you all have 

recognized. Wherever I go, I hear from Governors, business people, 

educators and parents, that our students are not adequately prepared, and there is a wide and growing consensus externally as 

well as in this chamber and around our country that we must address this issue. 

I have heard from you all and I have seen the legislation that 

you have introduced, the National Academies, the Business Roundtable, the National Governors’ Association, are all giving us the 

same message: we must make our high schools more rigorous and 

encourage students to take more advanced math and science classes. 

Employers today need workers with pocket-protector skills, creative problem solvers with strong math and science background. 

Whether children want to be auto mechanics or cancer researchers, 

they must have these skills. 

Last week I held parent roundtables in Orlando and Birmingham. The parents all said we need to help students see why 

math and science are relevant to their lives. I met one teacher in 

Birmingham who had that problem solved. Her students were comparing hair strands under a microscope as part of a mock crime investigation. It was CSI Birmingham, and I did not see many students looking at the clock or asking why they had to learn math 

and science. Math is becoming essential in fields ranging from advertising to consulting, to media, to policymaking. In my job I like 

to say, in God we trust, all others bring data. 

This fast-changing economic landscape means that our education 

system must keep pace, and on that front we have a lot of work 

to do. Just one State, Alabama, requires students to take 4 years 

of math and science to complete high school, and as much as I hate 

to admit it, that gives Senator Sessions bragging rights over each 

and every one of us. 

Meanwhile, 90 percent of the fastest-growing jobs require postsecondary education, and fewer than half of our students graduate 

from high school fully ready for college-level math and science. Our 

15-year-olds, as you said, Senator Enzi, rank 24th out of 29 developed nations in math literacy and problem solving, and half of our 

17-year-old do not have the math skills to work as a production associate at a modern auto plant. That is simply unacceptable, and 

we cannot wait until students are 17 to address these problems. 

The competition starts in elementary school. 

The President’s Initiative will devote $380 million to strengthen 

K–12 math and science. Overall, the Department of Education will 

increase funding for our programs in these critical fields by 51 percent. We must improve the way we teach math in our elementary 

schools. It is not just about helping younger students develop 

strong arithmetic skills, it is about planing the seeds of higher 

order thinking. We need to do for math what we have done for 

reading, by building a scientific research base of classroom practices that are proven to work. The President has asked me to form 

a new National Math Panel that will bring together top experts in 

the field to do this work, and the President’s Math Now Program 

8

for elementary school and middle school students will help bring 

this research to the classroom where it can help teachers and students. 

This is urgent work, and we only have time to do what works, 

and I know some of you have expressed concern about resources, 

but the reality is, the resources are there, but we must invest them 

wisely. Currently, 13 different Government agencies spend about $2.8 

billion on 207 different programs for math and science education. 

These programs are all in their own little silos and there is almost 

no coordination between them. It is a thousand flowers blooming 

and maybe a few weeks. We should align these efforts with the 

principles of No Child Left Behind by continuing to hold schools accountable for getting all students to grade level in reading and 

math by 2014, and by giving local policymakers and educators the 

power and the research base to do what is best for their students. 

Four years ago, this committee helped drive the passage of No 

Child Left Behind, and thanks to your hard work, today we have 

policy levers and relationships with States that are working. No 

Child Left Behind is making a real difference, especially in the 

early grades. As you know, for example, in reading for 9-year-olds, 

their progress has increased more over the last 5 years than in the 

previous 28. Now we must build on the law’s foundations to prepare students for more rigorous math and science course work in 

high school. 

A key component of that is expanding the Advanced Placement 

Initiative program, which tells us that just taking one or two AP 

courses increases a student’s chance of graduating from college in 

4 years. The College Board tells us that based on PSAT scores, 

there are nearly half a million students who are ready for AP Calculus last year, but did not take it, or have access to it. Unfortunately, many students, especially in lower-income communities, 

still do not have the opportunity to take these classes. More than 

a third of high schools across the country offer no AP. 

There is something wrong when right here in the Nation’s capital, suburban Langley High School in Fairfax County offers 21 AP 

courses—which is great, fantastic, and we commend them—while 

inner city Ballou High School here in the District offers but four. 

With the way we ration these course, you would think we do not 

want students to take them, and that needs to change, especially 

when we know that our students are going to need these skills to 

succeed not only in higher education, but in the world of work. 

Think about the disconnect and the implications for our country, 

when 90 percent of the fastest-growing jobs require postsecondary 

education while about 50 percent of our minority high school students are graduating from high school on time. 

Of course, schools cannot offer advanced classes without qualified 

teachers to teach them. If you went to a hospital, you would not 

ask an eye surgeon to set a broken bone. But right now, many 

teachers, especially in lower-income schools, are being asked to 

teach courses outside their fields of expertise. That is not fair to 

them, and it is not fair to their students. 

That is why President Bush has called for preparing an additional 70,000 teachers to lead Advanced Placement in International 

9

Baccalaureate classes in math and science. We also want to recruit 

30,000 math and science professionals to become adjunct high 

school teachers. Imagine a NASA scientist teaching high school 

physics. As a mom with a 13-year-old child struggling in 8th grade 

algebra, I have heard all of the excuses for why things cannot be 

done, parents who say math is too stressful for children, teachers 

who say students are not ready for advanced course work, and 13-

year-olds who are happy to agree and look for the easiest course 

of study. We must raise the bar. 

A few weeks ago, Senator Isakson and I visited a math class in 

Atlanta. From the lesson plan, I thought it must have been a 5th 

or 6th grade class, but it was 3rd graders doing higher level critical 

thinking. And earlier this week there was an article in the Washington Post about how more and more students in the D.C. suburbs 

are taking multivariable calculus in high school because they are 

learning algebra at a younger age. 

If we raise our expectations, our students will rise to the challenge. As the President said in the State of the Union, if we ensure 

that America’s children succeed in life, they will ensure that America succeeds in the world. As leaders and policymakers, it is our job 

to look down the road and make sure our kids are prepared to succeed in the future. We have always been the most innovative society in the world, and together we will make sure that we always 

are. 

Thank you for your attention. I will be glad to answer any questions you might have. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much for your testimony, a lot 

of good information there, some phrases that we will need to use 

in the future as well. 

Yesterday at the White House we got to watch the President sign 

the Deficit Reduction Bill, which had a new program for college to 

emphasize science and math with some new grants, and I have to 

say from your testimony, that Alabama is going to be best prepared 

to take advantage of that, because if they do not take math in high 

school, they will not be able to specialize in it in college, and maybe 

that will encourage more of the States to follow that same path. 

I was caught by your comment that there are 13 Government 

agencies that handle 207 education programs. With the various 

agencies involved in the President’s Competitiveness Initiative, 

what steps are you taking to coordinate all the pieces so they will 

align with the goal of No Child Left Behind and proficiency in reading and math by 2014? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Well, Senator, you all took a great step in 

the reconciliation that creates a council that would do just that. It 

calls on me to chair a working group, a task force, a commission, 

that would include representatives from the National Science 

Foundation, the Department of Commerce, all the various agencies 

who are involved in these endeavors, and link up and coordinate 

and inventory what it is exactly that we do with those programs 

and what the effects are. As I said, we have literally thousands of 

grants. Some of them are highly effective, I am sure, but we do not 

have agreement on results or outcomes or measures within those 

programs, and I think if they were fully effective, we probably 

10

would not be here having this hearing about the dearth of math 

and science capability in our schools. 

The CHAIRMAN. We will look forward with you on that coordination. You also mentioned the AP classes. Now, in order for high 

school students to succeed in Advanced Placement in International 

Baccalaureate math and science courses, they need to enter high 

school prepared for and interested in pursuing those subjects. That 

means that their elementary and middle school teachers will play 

a crucial role. How do we make sure that all the elementary students are exposed to a variety of science experiences, and what 

steps can be taken to guarantee that elementary students especially have teachers who are skilled in these crucial areas of math 

and science? You touched on that a little bit in your statement. 

Could you expand a little bit on that? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. I think one of the things begins with looking at a research base and what the issues are with respect to curricula and standards in elementary schools. We find, and what I 

hear from mathematicians and experts in this area, is that while 

we are doing a lot of arithmetic, a lot of computation, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, we are not adequately seeding 

higher order thinking. When I say that, I mean multistep processes, the ability to add together an equation, and then subtract it 

from something else, and come up with an answer. Those are the 

sorts of things that students need practice and facility on if they 

are going to make it in algebra in 7th, 8th or 9th grade. So just 

as one example, I think there is curriculum work to do. 

Likewise, I think we are called upon to establish and look at 

what are the most effective practices, what are the most effective 

teacher training initiatives and elementary school investments that 

seem to be having the greatest effects? Because they are out there 

around the country. We are just not doing them widely enough, 

and that does get back to this coordination of resources and alignment of programs. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Another thing that you mentioned in 

your speech was the need for pocket-protector skills. As an accountant, I remember once saying to my kids that I was looking forward 

to the time when pocket protectors would come back into fashion. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Well, it is here. 

The CHAIRMAN. And they assured me that they never had been 

in fashion. 

[Laughter.] 

But I will keep hoping. 

I do know that improving literacy among the adolescent population is critical if we expect students to succeed, to graduate on 

time, to enter postsecondary institutions without the need for remediation. How can the Department of Education work to improve 

reading skills for all students beyond the first four grades? How do 

you envision involving high school principals and the teachers in 

high school in all the subjects of this task? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. I think it is a variety of ways. One, we 

know that we must find ways to extend the very valuable research 

base that was developed at NIH, the National Institutes of Child 

Health and Development, that tells us how young children acquire 

reading skills, and that is becoming a way of life in our elementary 

11

schools. We need to figure out how to extend those same strategies 

and principles into our middle schools, because, absolutely, when 

students do not have facility in reading, they are going to have a 

hard time mastering a 9th grade textbook. We think we can do 

that. There is some very encouraging work going around the country. In Kansas, Don Deschler is working on how to take these principles with older learners. 

We must make sure that our middle school teachers have some 

capacity and understanding of how to teach reading, if you will. We 

have expected—and rightly so, obviously—our elementary school 

teachers to be primarily reading teachers, but we also expect our 

middle and high school teachers to be content area experts and not 

reading teachers, and we are going to have to embed some of those 

skills likewise in the higher grade levels until students get caught 

up. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. That has been very helpful. 

Senator Kennedy. 

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Part of the concern that I have is whether this program is going 

to be of general benefit to all children and provide opportunity for 

all children in terms of the math and science AP program, to move 

a whole generation of children forward, which I think is the central 

challenge. Amd President Bush’s proposal is sort of against a background where the Administration is cutting back on a number of 

programs. For example, the TRIO programs. We find out that students in Upward Bound are four times more likely to earn an undergraduate degree than students in similar backgrounds who were 

not in TRIO. The students in TRIO support service programs are 

more than twice likely to remain in college than those of similar 

background who do not participate in the program. 

We have some in my own State, 52 projects, 21,000 students that 

are in those programs. It has had a remarkable success in opening 

up opportunities for children that come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Administration is attempting to eliminate those, 

which is troublesome. 

I am concerned about the students that are in community colleges. Forty-five percent of all college students are in community 

colleges, and better than half of those are working. They have to 

work. We have seen the explosion of loans that are going to students. These kids all have to work, and they are going to have difficulty in participating in these programs because they come, generally speaking, from schools that do not have a rigorous curriculum. We are going to try to work on that. But their chances of 

moving along in terms of accessing AP courses, and later college. 

Their opportunities are going to be extremely limited. As I understand it, only about 10 percent of the total Pell grant recipients are 

going to be eligible for grants under the Administration’s new 

standards. 

So that is the first time that we have ever had the Pell grant 

program where rather than raising all of the children who qualify 

academically and are able to get into the schools, we are discriminating on the high school they attended. By weighting it towards 

a small group, it is only going to reach about 10 percent of poor 

students—-at least that is my information. 

12

I think what I am saying is how are we going to try and recognize we have to deal with this as a country, as society, a total education system. It looks like we may very well be in a shell game 

here of robbing Peter to pay Paul in terms of some of these programs, where we ought to be trying to lift opportunities for the entire generation of students that are going on into the school, and 

getting them into math and science. I agree with you that the earlier the intervention in terms of math and science, the better. But, 

whether this program is skewed toward the later, rather than the 

earlier, is something that we are concerned with. 

In my own State of Massachusetts we have 72,000 jobs waiting 

there, and 170,000 people unemployed. So job training and skills 

is a major challenge. You have important reductions in the WIA 

program and other work training programs, continuing education 

programs. I am just trying to see where these all sort of connect. 

We can find some programs that have a lot of appeal, but how they 

sort of connect to make sure that we as a society, and as a country, 

and as this next generation, have to sort of move along together. 

I know it is a general statement. But maybe you could help us by 

how you view it, how the President views it, make sure that we are 

not going to find greater kinds of disparities now, greater advantages for some kids. Obviously, some will have ability, but we do 

not guarantee an equal society. We try and offer at least opportunity for these kids to move along. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Absolutely, and I completely share your 

concern, Senator. I think one of the things that will get us off to 

at least some information that may help us all do this work is to 

figure out, what are we doing? How much is then allocated to high 

schools versus elementary schools, versus community colleges in 

our $2.8 billion investment, and frankly, we do not really know 

that at the moment. 

You have said a mouthful on resources, and I think we need 

more information, and we have some challenges about how to allocate our priorities. Should we be paying more attention at the high 

end or at the low end or at the middle, or all of those sorts of 

things that are at issue. 

Let me speak to the TRIO, GEAR UP, vocational education matter. What has been presented in the President’s budget is essentially a gathering up of those resources and some additional resources to create a high school initiative, which says to States, 

‘‘Here is a larger block grant, if you will, a $1.5 billion high school 

initiative, and please go out and do effective programs.’’ So rather 

than have various isolated silos that are competitive grants that 

some States get, some States do not get, they are allocated within 

States, that we are trying to be more comprehensive and more discretionary with States and localities about what the specific programs and needs are in your area. We have said, all of us together, 

that we expect proficiency by 2014, and I think one of the things 

that certainly was at issue in No Child Left Behind and is the 

President’s budgetary philosophy is that we be very clear about the 

result, but have some discretion about how States allocate those 

programs. 

13

I am confident when TRIO, GEAR UP, vocational education programs like that work effectively, they will be embraced by States, 

and they will continue. 

With respect to the community college issue that you raise, this, 

obviously, is over in the Department of Labor, but he has asked for 

$150 million to enhance dual enrollment programs so we can make 

sure that the articulation between high school and community college is strong, and that those students, as I said, if you are going 

to be an auto mechanic or a cancer researcher, the currency is the 

same, more technical capability. Whether we find that in advanced 

placement or we find that in dual enrollment programs in community colleges, the job is the same, the skills are the same irrespective of what your pathway might be. 

Senator KENNEDY. My time is up, but I appreciate your explanation. These are the things we will certainly want to work with 

you on. 

Thank you, Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. We are very fortunate on this committee to also 

have the Budget Chairman, as the most senior member. Senator 

Gregg. 

Senator GREGG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be 

here. I usually ask a lot of questions, but I want to get into this 

philosophy for a moment and talk about it for a second, because 

Senator Kennedy has touched on what I think is the core issue that 

we as the Federal Government must address, and that is where we 

put our resources. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. I agree. 

Senator GREGG. No Child Left Behind, the theory of it was that 

we would set up a standard where we asked States to set their own 

standards in local communities as to how much a child should 

learn in the areas of reading and math. We did not go into subjective subjects, or social or political courses, or Government courses, 

but rather we just stayed with core courses, math and reading, because we felt you could evaluate them, and you could set bars. The 

Federal Government I think has now agreed, and there is a consensus that we should play a major role in the area of math-science 

education. 

The question becomes, how do we do that? Do we attempt to 

raise the entire world of math-science education, or do we attempt 

to address those who we think can succeed and give them the opportunity to participate in the success? 

Senator Kennedy is representing—and it is a legitimate position—that we should try to raise all the boats at the same time. 

There is an argument, however, that AP course, by definition, expect students who excel in those fields to participate in them, and 

that everybody is not going to take an AP courses, just like everybody is not going to be a star athlete, everybody is not going to be 

an artist, and everybody is not going to be a writer. 

But if we as a Government are going to choose to try to pursue 

a course of competing in the world, and we have decided that the 

best thing that we can do is promote math-science as a Government in order to accomplish that, then I think we have to choose 

an approach to that that finds the people who are going to succeed 

in that area, and gives them the opportunity to succeed. What is 

14

the Federal role in that? Does it enter at the elementary school 

level, at the junior high school level, at the high school level, or at 

the college level? 

Traditionally the Federal role has entered at the college level 

where we have subsidized dramatically research. Now, the Administration is suggesting, no, let us step back and take it to lower levels of education or to our entry levels of education. How do we do 

that? 

You threw out a number which I find to be the most startling, 

and unfortunately, the most difficult number we deal with, which 

is that at Langley High School there are 41 AP courses, while in 

an inner city Washington high school there are two or three. At 

Langley High School I suspect you will find a 98 percent graduation rate. At the inner city school, 50 percent of the kids are not 

even finishing in 5 years, and if you looked at the young male population at those schools, it is probably 80 percent. It is a huge cultural problem. How do we get a program that supports a child in 

that atmosphere, where basically education has been disregarded, 

regrettably, by their peers, to participate and to see it as an avenue 

of opportunity? Because there are a lot of kids at that school who 

start out who have the ability to participate. There are going to be 

a lot that maybe do not, as there are also at any other school. 

But how do we structure this program so that to the extent the 

Federal Government plays a role here—and obviously, the majority 

of this has to be played at the local level and the State level and 

the community level—we can answer the question of the child who 

comes into that school with a huge disadvantage and that the peer 

pressure is basically the opposite of being a participant in academic 

success, actually is able to participate in academic success. And we 

have tried this for years, and we have not made any success at all 

in this exercise. 

I participated at a Governor’s conference which the first President Bush called at Charlottesville, and this was the issue we discussed. We were going to improve our math-science scores for students by the year 2000 and be, instead of 13 out of 15 industrialized nations, our target was to be like 5th or 6th, and we are still 

probably 13th. 

I do not see us addressing this issue with just dollars, and I am 

not sure how we address it, but I would be interested if you 

thought about it at all in these terms. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. I absolutely have. I thank you, Senator 

Gregg, and Senator Kennedy, you have exactly hit on the right 

issue, which is, are we talking about opportunity for everybody or 

the high-end innovators, the Bill Gates’s of the world, or both? I 

think the answer is both. I would respectfully disagree and I would 

respectfully give you credit that we are seeing changes. Because of 

No Child Left Behind, because of focusing on each and every subgroup, because of our focus on math, we see places like Senator 

Isakson and I visited in Georgia, a very high poverty school, where 

those kids are knocking the top off the Georgia math standards, 

and doing very high-level work. We can do this. 

Part of the problem—and I hate to be a broken record—starts 

with we have not really looked at what is the effective strategy? 

How do we do it? It is what I call the ‘‘tell us what to do and we 

15

will do it’’ phenomenon, and obviously, that is overstated, but we 

have done a poor job, despite our $3 billion annual investment, of 

really informing the education community, you know, what works, 

what are the strategies, what are the kinds of conditions that have 

to be at place for students to be effective like in the place that Senator Isakson and I visited. 

I think we can do it. I think it is also important to note, and obviously, I am here to talk about, but one aspect of the American 

Competitiveness Initiative, that there is a $900 million call for additional resources in investment in research and development. That 

is largely going to be in our higher education community. It is 

going to be partnerships of ‘‘brainiacs’’ who do these sorts of things, 

and as well, the extension of the Research and Development Tax 

Credit. Most of our innovation is coming from the private sector. 

So that is the incubator, if you will, for that kind of talent. But I 

think it is our job, as a major part of this American Competitiveness Initiative to make sure that we have, and we expect, and we 

can do, and believe we can do, more rigor for more kids. 

I agree completely, it starts in elementary school with seeding interest, and creating a culture of interest, engagement and setting 

the table for the capabilities that will allow this successful demand 

for more rigor. 

Senator GREGG. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Bingaman. 

Senator BINGAMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Secretary, thank you for coming. Let me State what I think is 

obvious to everybody here, and that is that I am disappointed that 

the Department of Education budget is slated for nearly a 4 percent cut this next year. I think that is too bad. I think it reflects 

misguided priorities within the Federal budget. 

However, even with the smaller budget, there are some things 

the President has endorsed, the Administration has endorsed that 

I strongly support. The proposal to provide additional funds for AP 

instruction is a very good proposal, one I have urged on the President, and I know you are a strong supporter of that. It is part of 

what the National Academy of Science has recommended. They recommended two things though with regard to advanced placement 

instruction. They recommend that funding for advanced placement, 

training of advanced placement teachers, but also funding of preadvanced placement teachers. And I think you found in Texas that 

you cannot do an effective job of providing advanced placement opportunities unless you prepare those students ahead of time, and 

that means upgrading the skills of the teachers in those middle 

school and earlier grades. 

Why is that not something that the Federal Government ought 

to be trying to put some resources into also? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. The initiative the President has called for 

could include pre-AP, and we do not mean to limit it just to high 

schools, per se, but to pre-AP or AP classes. 

One of the things that I think is very important—and Senator, 

I know you have seen this with your own two eyes at Townview 

and some of the things that are going on in Dallas that the President visited about a week ago—is when teachers are taught to 

teach AP calculus or AP anything, they also have a course load of 

16

nonAP subjects. So the teaching is upgraded throughout their 

course load, and so I do think that we do not mean to limit this 

just to high school only, that these resources ought to be available 

as well for pre-AP. 

Senator BINGAMAN. One other area that this National Academy 

report emphasized was the need to put funding into training of current and future teachers to be better qualified to teach math and 

science. As I understand your Math Now Initiative, you are proposing 260 million for curricula development, essentially, but nothing that would go to upgrading the skills of current and future 

teachers in math and science. Am I missing something in there? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Yes, sir. The $260 million could be used either for ingraining or embedding this higher-order thinking, as I 

keep calling it, in elementary schools, and as well, making sure 

that those teachers that are teaching elementary school are prepared to do it. So we do not need to limit to exclude teacher training as part of that initiative. 

Senator BINGAMAN. So that $260 million would be available for 

teacher training? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Yes, sir. 

Senator BINGAMAN. Because the National Science Foundation, as 

I understand it, has already published information, and identified 

information about what they believe are effective math and science 

curricula. At least in my State I do not hear instructors or teachers 

or school administrators coming back and saying, ‘‘We do not know 

what the right curricula is.’’ They have a good idea what it is, they 

just do not have enough people that know how to teach it. The 

teachers do not have the content training that they need. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. I think that is certainly part of the problem, and we also know that the results—I mean if that were true, 

I assume we would see better results for more kids at the elementary grades. I think there are—we do have a research based lack 

of information about how we teach struggling kids to facility in 

mathematics. We are not doing that very well now, and I think 

there are questions about how to do that. 

Senator BINGAMAN. One issue that I have focused on repeatedly, 

and with very little success, unfortunately, here in the Senate, is 

this problem of more and more of our kids leaving school before 

they graduate, dropping out of school. Senator Gregg talked about 

that. It seems to me that there are bound to be some strategies 

that work in trying to retain people in school, and try to keep them 

engaged, and educate them. Particularly this is a problem throughout the Southwest with the Hispanic community, which is a very 

large community in my State and in Texas as well, but it is true 

for all groups in society. We have a very serious dropout problem. 

We have authorized, as part of No Child Left Behind, funding to 

try to assist schools that want to adopt policies that reduce the 

dropout rate. 

The Administration, every year, requests zero funding for that, 

and that has been the case since No Child Left Behind was enacted. Is there any way we could get some support from the Administration in coming to grips with that dropout problem? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Certainly, Senator. I think it is all in the 

matter of how you do it, and I think there are three things that 

17

I would say about that. One is we do not really fully understand 

why that is, why do students drop out? We think sometimes it is 

a lack of reading skills. We think it is boredom, disengagement, 

lack of relevance. But until we have some accountability and measurement in high school, it is going to be hard for us to fully know 

that I think. 

One of the things—and Senator Murray is very keen on this as 

well—is this sort of individualization, this notion that we need to—

in fact, I was very heartened to see Governor Perdue in Georgia 

talk about a counselor, a State initiative that says how are we 

going to get each and every kid out of high school? What are the 

conditions? What are the interventions and so forth? So that sort 

of notion. And as well, I think we need to promote reading instruction in middle and high school that can make sure that kids can 

do more rigorous work. 

Senator BINGAMAN. My time is up, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. After a couple of full committee hearings to kind 

of set the stage, we will be turning a lot of the work over to Senator Alexander and his subcommittee to pursue the global competitiveness, and we thank you for all the effort that you put into setting the stage for that and working with the National Academy of 

Sciences. 

Senator Alexander. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would first like to congratulate Secretary Spellings and the 

President for the President’s American Competitiveness agenda. 

The most important thing a President can do is set the agenda. He 

is the Nation’s agenda setter. And the second most important thing 

he can do is fund it to make sure it works, and we are off to a good 

start in that. 

I also want to call attention to the work that Senator Enzi, especially, with Senator Frist, Senator Gregg, Senator Kennedy, was involved in December in the SMART Grants. That is a big program. 

It affects 500,000 students. It is $3.7 billion over 5 years, which is 

more money than we are talking about in all these new programs 

here. So that is a part of what we are talking about. It is already 

done, and deserves a lot of attention. 

Following up on what the chairman said, we are going to begin 

hearings later this month, I hope, in our subcommittee, on K–12 

recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences and other 

related ideas, so that we can make our recommendations to the full 

committee. We will be looking at the suggestions that are in the 

President’s proposal as well for K–12 on math and science. We will 

have to look at the situation of all of these programs, 13 agencies, 

207 programs. What occurs to me then is assessment is needed. It 

does not always equal the need for consolidation. Sometimes letting 

a lot of flowers bloom is the best way in a complicated country to 

let good things continue to work. But we will begin the process of 

continuing to look at all of that. 

I wanted to specifically ask you if when we get to those hearings, 

which will be at the end of this month, early next month, if your 

Department would be prepared to give us your opinion about the 

proposals for K–12 that were in the proposal of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering? You have specifically recVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:07 Jul 17, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\26056.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
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ommended one, the President has, which is the advanced placement courses in math and science, which Senator Bingaman, Senator Hutchison and others have worked on for a long time. There 

are five others that are not in your proposals, and I know that the 

Academies went through their process of weighing lots of different 

models, lots of different programs, and they came up with six recommendations in K–12. 

They include a model, which is the UTEACH program, which you 

are familiar with at the University of Texas at Austin, which 

would, over 10 years, identify 100,000 teachers who are already 

taking the sciences in college, give them up to $20,000 a year scholarships, and then give them $10,000 a year if they will stay teaching for 5 years, getting at that differential pay problem which is 

such an obstacle to everything we try to do. That is not in yours. 

You do not talk about residential high schools, of which North 

Carolina has had for 20 years. It is a very appealing idea. It does 

not reach many students, but it is a great symbol of importance, 

and that was one of the Academies’ recommendations. 

It does not get into the idea of summer internships that the 

Academies recommended, both for teachers and students, using our 

17 national labs. We found in Tennessee that we could not afford 

that residential summer high school, but we had great success with 

what we called Governor Schools for Teaches and Governor Schools 

for Students. This recommends such schools to upgrade teaching 

and identify talented students in the hundreds of thousands. 

You may want to say something about those now, especially 

about the UTEACH program, which I thought was a tremendous 

model for the country. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Absolutely, and we will certainly get you 

more information about this going forward, but let me address the 

three things you mentioned. 

With respect to UTEACH, clearly, we are strong supporters of 

that notion, no doubt about it. The Teacher Incentive Fund that 

you all are looking at as part of your higher education reauthorization, and that I have gotten some resources for, I think can help 

us seed some of those sorts of things. 

So I guess the reason that the President picked some of these 

particular strategies is that we are already seeding some of these 

activities in other ways, and the Teacher Incentive Fund is one of 

the ways that we would seed more UTEACH. Likewise, loan forgiveness and some of the other programs like that. 

With respect to residential high schools, I think the President’s 

philosophy is that those sort of how schools are organized, whether 

they are charters or small or residential or whatever, have typically been in the purview of Governors and States, and that we 

would not prescribe kind of particular sorts of settings and 

groupings. 

With respect to the internships at labs, one of the things that I 

have observed—and certainly they are great programs—but first of 

all, the labs, obviously, are not necessarily nationally available to 

schools all around the country, and that frequently in summer institutes and internships and these kind of lighthouse programs, it 

is our very best, most proficient, the teacher who is teaching four 

AP classes already that attend and participate, and that is fabuVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:07 Jul 17, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\26056.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
19

lous for them, but I think, again, we are back to this issue of what 

kind of investments, for whom and to what end? And one of the 

things that I think is at issue with the President’s initiative is to 

try to seed and bring to scale more broadly, more rigor and more 

capacity in the system generally. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Reed. 

Senator REED. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Madam Secretary, not only for your testimony today, 

but for your leadership and your cooperation. I appreciate it very 

much. 

Your Department is creating both a Teacher Incentive Fund and 

an Adjunct Teacher Core Program, but this is in addition to the No 

Child Left Behind Title II Teacher Quality Block Grant. Can you 

describe the thinking behind these new programs and whether they 

could have been accommodated through the block grant? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Well, certainly they could. I think what we 

believe is that there are some early adapters, some pioneers, some 

places around the country that we might want to partner with to 

test some theories before we make them available more widely. We 

are unsure, I think, in some of these cases how this would work. 

Let us work the design kinks out on how we best bring experts 

from the field, how we best devise compensation systems that recognize subject area expertise. So let us try these things on a more 

pilot-limited basis with people who are most willing before we take 

them to scale. 

Senator REED. And they would be taken to scale through the 

Title II Block Grant Program? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Yes, sir. 

Senator REED. We have all spent a lot of time on the committee, 

as have you and the Department of Education, trying to improve 

teacher quality with induction in mentoring programs, with scholarships for teachers who teach a particular subject or go to a particular area of the country, and with loan forgiveness. We went 

through, I think, a very valuable exercise in No Child Left Behind 

Act, talking about highly qualified teacher provisions, and the 

States are doing that. But it seems that in the Administration’s 

budget, they are proposing to zero out the Higher Education Act’s 

Teacher Quality Enhancement Program, which I think would be 

another component of this effort to increase the quality of teaching. 

Can you talk about the rationale for proposing no funding for this 

program? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. As I said, Senator—and this is true with 

respect to that or any number of programs—that the President’s 

budgetary philosophy is, let us be clear about expectations and 

goals, and then provide ways for more latitude through title II, 

through title I, through a high school initiative, as opposed to very 

specific stipulated programs such as that. 

Senator REED. Thank you. You are talking about math, which is 

essential, but the criticism usually includes another dimension, 

math and science. Can you comment a bit about the issue of 

science in your plans? Do you assume that is just so closely related 

to math, that it will be done sort of automatically? 

20

Secretary SPELLINGS. No. And thank you for asking me that. I 

think we see it as math now, because those skills are so embedded 

in science, and then sort of science next. One of the President’s proposals is—and as you know, No Child Left Behind calls for science 

assessments beginning in the 2007-08 school year—that those two 

would be part of the accountability system. I am a firm believer, 

as you know, in what gets measured gets done, and that we ought 

to place a high priority on science. So I think it is a matter of what 

do we do first and what do we do next? And the President believes 

math first, science next, and that we ought to measure and hold 

people accountable for proficiencies in science. 

Senator REED. Very good. A final question if I may. Can you 

elaborate on the Advanced Placement International Baccalaureate 

Incentive Program, and essentially, how will it help train 70,000 

teachers? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. That is a 5-year goal that the President 

has laid out. We currently have about 35,000 teachers, by the way, 

who teach math, science or English, so 35,000 nationally in those 

key subject areas. This is, obviously, a huge and needed ramp up. 

We have talked about some of the course rationing and so forth. 

I think what we would envision in this is a competitive grant 

program that would imply basically a matching sort of commitment 

on behalf of the private sector, State Governments, and the Federal 

Government, so that we could leverage a lot of support for advanced placement teachers. We would be very open minded with 

States about the kinds of things that they would want to design 

into those programs, be they pay incentives for teachers, incentives 

for students, paying students for the cost of taking those sometimes 

burdensome exams with respect to cst for poor kids. So I think we 

would envision kind of an array of thinking for States, and would 

be open minded as to how they would want to design these programs to help us reach these training goals an bringing AP to scale 

more broadly. 

Senator REED. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Senator Isakson. 

Senator ISAKSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Secretary Spellings, thank you for coming to Atlanta. I want to 

try to address what Senator Kennedy and Senator Gregg talked 

about somewhat in the context of our meeting. It is not a secret 

why Gideon’s Elementary School—and for everybody listening, the 

school we visited was in the midst of inner-city Atlanta, almost 

total minority, almost total title I abject poverty school, that is testing and assessing competitively and better in many cases than 

schools with far different socioeconomics. And it is not a secret. 

They have a great principal who is a great leader, who attracts 

good teachers because he backs them up and he insists on excellence, and that was his 25th year. 

No Child Left Behind has removed some of the veil of what administrations hid under in America for so long in education. Many 

of our administrators hid under the average performance of students by test scores. By disaggregating, like was done with No 

Child Left Behind, and having the term ‘‘needs improvement,’’ adVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:07 Jul 17, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\26056.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
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ministrations could no longer hide under averaging. So it has 

raised the level of administrative support for student achievement 

to teachers. I think that is No. 1, and that is to the credit of No 

Child Left Behind. 

Second, and I support the initiative of the Administration in 

math and science, but I will submit to you there is only one way 

we are going to be able to do this—we have trouble, as a Federal 

Government, accelerate advanced placement to our schools where 

we do not have it, inner city schools, rural schools, because you 

cannot either get the teachers to teach there, or because rural communities in distance and accommodations are not necessarily attractive. The only way we are going to do it is through broadband 

Internet classrooms. South Dakota was a pioneer of that. 

I was in Egypt a few years ago with Save the Children, and saw 

an Egyptian teacher teaching English to Egyptian children with 

download from a satellite, broadband satellite over Egypt. Well, the 

same thing could be true here. With all due respect, we can train 

all the teachers in the world, but to get them then to move to a 

lot of areas that may be rural or distant—wonderful areas, places 

all of us that live in metropolitan areas would long for—but it is 

tough for them to recruit. It is tough for them to recruit in the 

inner city. But it is not tough if you can deliver the quality content 

via the Internet and have a support teacher, who may not be an 

AP teacher, but they could support the quality of content coming 

and the instruction that is coming from the teacher over the Internet. That is what we really ought to accelerate. 

Then my last point—and I am supposed to be asking questions 

and I am making statements. I apologize for that. But also, we 

need—I have said this for years, and when I chaired the State 

Board of Education in Georgia and we dealt with teacher shortages—our colleges of education, by and large, still think Wally and 

the Beaver go to school, and Ozzie and Harriet are their parents. 

And our schools now have Jose and Maria, and a totally different 

type of student. We need a re-engagement with our colleges of education in what the real classroom is like today, so that as they are 

preparing our teachers theoretically, they also have some idea for 

what the environment they are going to teach in. 

I proposed in Georgia that every professor of education in the 

country ought to have to teach at least 1 out of every 5 years in 

a public school. That caused more uproar than I bargained for, but 

the truth of the matter is, the more time and distance and space 

you put between the 21st century reality of the classroom and 

those that are instructing the teachers that are going to teach, the 

more you are going to have losing teachers in the first 3 years, the 

less you are going to have of teachers wanting to teach in advanced 

placement and all that. 

I have sat here and wasted 4 minutes by making statements, but 

we need to understand what No Child Left Behind has done to remove the veil from the Administration and really motivate administrators to support teachers. That is to the greatest credit of that 

particular legislation. I think we need to work on broadband expansion and accessibility to our rural and inner city schools at every 

level we can, federally, title III would maybe be the right title in 

the ESEA, I am not sure. And then last, work with our colleges of 

22

education to be supportive of our teachers in the environment we 

are sending them into today. 

So that was a statement. I apologize, but I will end by thanking 

Secretary Spellings for coming to Atlanta and coming to Gideon’s. 

That was a great day. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. It was. Thank you, and I agree very much 

on the technology in rural environments. Also, I think that is a 

place where we can look at adjunct teachers. I mean maybe the extension agent, who has a strong degree in agriculture and math 

and science and chemistry, maybe that person ought to have some 

sort of role to bring that competency to schools. 

Anyway, I enjoyed it very much, and it shows the world at Gideon what can be done more broadly, and must. 

Senator ISAKSON. Thank you, Secretary. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Murray. 

Senator MURRAY. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for having this hearing. I think this is really an important topic about 

global competitiveness and the role of education. I have said before 

that when I was growing up, my parents always used to say, 

‘‘Clean your plate because there is some kid in China or India who 

is starving,’’ and I think what parents should be saying to their 

kids now is, ‘‘Do your homework. There is someone in India or 

China who is doing theirs.’’ We face that competitiveness, and I believe we have to invest in our education system. Our people will be 

our ability to compete in a global economy, and I think it is absolutely critical that we face this. 

I was delighted to hear the President talk about this new competitiveness initiative, and I have to say it was good to hear that 

he recognizes the need for our country needs to focus on this. 

I serve on the Budget Committee, and I was really surprised 

when we got the budget for education, and it was cut by over $2 

billion, because we want our kids to do well in math and science. 

That is absolutely critical, but it does not happen in a vacuum. If 

kids cannot read or if they do not get the kind of attention they 

need, they are not going to be able to achieve in math and science 

no matter how much we focus on that. 

There is also the additional fact that we just cut $12.7 billion 

from student loan program. If you have a student who is in 10th 

grade and they do not think they can ever afford college, you can 

focus on math all you want to, but they are going to say, ‘‘I am 

never going to be able to afford to go to college.’’

I am concerned about the overall budget for education and want 

to hear from you how the President proposes to make gains in 

math and science while all the rest of the education budget is so 

neglected and so seriously cut back. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Senator, I will be glad to. Thank you. I 

think the first thing we must do is make sure that what we are 

investing our resources in is working effectively and wisely and 

well. I have talked about the very disparate efforts that are going 

on all around the Government and so forth, and that we need to 

channel those and hitch them up and align them to the principles 

of No Child Left Behind and so forth. These, granted, are tough 

budget times, no doubt about it. I do think if we focus on those parVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:07 Jul 17, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\26056.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
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ticular things as our priorities, and hold ourselves accountable, and 

know what works, then we can be effective even in these tight 

budget times. 

I do want to mention a few things about Pell, and as I said, I 

commend you all for the STEM grants, academic competitiveness 

grants beginning at $750 and going up to $4,000, literally nearly 

doubling Pell as a way to start to seed the kind of talent that we 

want and need so desperately. 

I will say that the savings—and, Senator Enzi, thank you for 

your leadership on this—really was in the lender community and 

not at the expense of students. There will be 59,000 more students 

who will be accessing and eligible for Pell this year, and the fact 

that we are strategically investing our resources and saying as a 

Nation it is more of a priority for us to have math and science——

Senator MURRAY. I hope that what you are predicting is true, but 

I am hearing a lot on the other side, and I am certainly hearing 

from 10th graders out there that they are giving up on the thought 

of going to college, which is not what we want to hear. 

Let me follow up. Senator Reed asked you a question about 

teachers and their role in all this. I think you can put money into 

schools, but if you do not have teachers who can teach, that is a 

serious concern. I share his concern. Under No Child Left Behind, 

teachers have to be highly qualified. We have set that standard. I 

think that is absolutely critical. But yet we see a number of the 

programs that have been in place that are working—from Improving Teacher Quality State Grants, to the Teacher Incentive Fund, 

Troops to Teachers, Transition to Teaching, Advance 

Credentialing—all cut back or zeroed out. So I share his concern 

that unless we as a Nation focus attention on making sure we have 

a good teaching role, you can put kids in a classroom and tell them 

math is important, but if there is not somebody that can impart 

that information, it does no good. 

So let me ask you about the Adjunct Teacher Core Program that 

is being proposed, which I think is great. Getting more people into 

teaching with those kinds of skills is important. But I have been 

a teacher, and I am concerned that just putting somebody who 

knows math in front of 30 kids does not a teacher make. So how 

is your program going to work so we make sure they understand 

how to teach, as well as to have the knowledge about the class they 

are teaching? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Thank you for that question. I think we 

would use models like Troops to Teachers, Teach for America, the 

New Teacher Project, programs that have shown us how to take 

qualified individuals and make them teachers. So we will build on 

those sorts of successes and find ways that we would bring parttime professionals into our classrooms, as well as those who want 

to be there full time. 

Senator MURRAY. I do not understand, because I hear you saying 

those programs are a success, yet the budget that we are getting 

is cutting them back or zeroing them out. Is the Federal Government, under this Administration, stepping away from those programs, or——

Secretary SPELLINGS. I think what we believe is that those programs have taken hold in local communities and States. The States 

24

and localities have invested in them. They have seen the productivity in them. We are focused on these results in No Child Left 

Behind, and those are strategies to get them there, and we are 

strongly supportive of Troops to Teachers and Teach for America. 

Senator MURRAY. I know you are from a vocal point of view, but 

when the school districts all of a sudden see the rug pulled out 

from under them because the funding is no longer there, then they 

have a hard time understanding what the goal is. I think we just 

have a disparity between the rhetoric and the dollars to back it up, 

and that is a challenge that we are going to continue to be talking 

about, so thank you. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Thank you. 

Senator MURRAY. My time has run out, but I do appreciate your 

focus on high schools, and I hope that we can have another conversation about that as well. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Sessions. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

These are important issues indeed. We are making significant 

progress, and I appreciate the Administration’s commitment to focusing more Pell grant type support for math and science for college students, which has been walled off in a way that cannot be 

raided according to the legislation. I have some difficulty philosophically with these almost entitlement programs, but you insisted on that, and we passed it, and I think we will actually see 

that happen. So the money will be walled off for college students 

for scholarship help for math and science in a $3 billion program, 

big deal. 

Thank you for your kind comments about Alabama. I am so 

proud of what they are doing. I am proud that Massachusetts is following up on our reading initiative. We also have a math and 

science and technology initiative. 

I would just like to share a few thoughts with you, and we may 

be on something that is very important. I believe in the reading initiative and the math and science initiative that is now coming on 

board following some of the same principles in the State of Alabama. Our program is designed to help teachers. What we have 

been doing over and over again, Mr. Chairman, is we have been demanding that teachers get better results, you have got to have better reading scores, better math scores, better science scores, you 

must do that. But we have not really helped them figure out how 

it is that children learn and helped them teach better. 

The President of Harvard was before this committee a number 

of years ago, and I asked him, ‘‘Do you have any thoughts on education?’’ He said, ‘‘Senator, one of the things that I think we lack 

is a proper understanding of how children learn. If we knew that 

better, we could get better results.’’

What they are doing on reading is having some fabulous results—I have visited at least 15 Alabama schools with the reading 

initiative. It is a scientific-based program. It does not cost a lot of 

money. Teachers go for a week of training in the summer before 

the year starts, and they become trained in how to teach in this 

program. There is a coach involved in each school that helps coach 

the teachers in the program, and they identify from true evaluation 

tools, testing on a weekly basis how children are doing, not just at 

25

the end of the year. No Child Left Behind said we want to have 

evaluation. The Alabama Reading Initiative is done on a constant 

evaluative basis. If children are falling behind in any technique of 

reading, the testing will tell you what their weakness is, and you 

can give them added emphasis in the area in which they are weak. 

You visited some of Alabama’s ARI schools not long after you 

took office. Do you see potential in that for around the country to 

actually help teachers in the techniques that are scientifically proven to get better results? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Absolutely, Senator, and that is why we 

need, as I said in my statement, to do for math what we have done 

for reading. We do have a sound and solid research base. We know 

how to do this work, and we need to share it more broadly. Alabama is one of the Nation’s leaders in embracing those concepts 

and tenets, and you have the results to show for it, I would say, 

and we need to do that, have that same philosophy with mathematics as well. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, Alabama is doing that, and let me tell 

you a few things that they are doing that will change the way we 

teach math and science in the State. They are trained for 2 weeks 

in the summers, two different summers, but just 2 weeks each 

summer. All training is grade and subject specific, tailored to what 

they will be teaching in that math or science class in that grade. 

Equipment and materials are provided to the teachers in the form 

of kits that arrive every 6 weeks. 

My grandmother used to be a teacher, and I found she was quite 

a good teacher, I think, in these scrapbooks. I thought they were 

her personal scrapbooks, but I have come to realize those were clippings from newspaper articles and things that she utilized to teach 

with. That is all she had as resources to bring to class. So teachers 

have to find their own materials today for the most part. You are 

expected to go in a classroom in an elementary school. You put up 

your bulletin boards, you do all this from your own personal stocks, 

and you can buy some of it. But the point is, if teaching is done 

in a scientific way and the teacher can obtain materials that actually help them convey complex concepts to the students, I think 

that would be helpful. 

Then you have specialists that come to those classes and support 

the teachers. Lessons are taught in small-group discussions with 

real life problems, as you mentioned earlier, and results so far are 

showing up to a 20 point gain on the percentile ratings of the Stanford Achievement Test for those schools that have become Alabama 

Math, Science, Technology Schools. done the math and science. I 

have been so excited about that. We are not going to remove every 

teacher that is not the greatest scientist in the world. They are 

going to remain in that classroom teaching as best they can. If we 

can help them with our technology and equipment and some basic 

training, do you not think that would be a good investment for us? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. I absolutely do, and I think that is what we 

are talking about here with the President’s Competitiveness Initiative. 

Senator SESSIONS. We are certainly looking in those classes now, 

and test scores do expose classes that are failing and not making 

progress, and maybe these kind of ideas, as we study them around 

26

the country—and I hope that you will study them, because if they 

are as good as initial results show—sometimes you hear reports 

that say they are better than they really are, but good objective 

analysis of these kind of programs can help us a lot, I believe. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Senator Clinton. 

Senator CLINTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Welcome, Madam Secretary. I appreciate you being here, and 

your commitment, along with the President’s initiative on competition. I also enjoyed the article about you and your daughters that 

ran in the papers sometime ago. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. They are still not speaking to me. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator CLINTON. I know. You will live through it and so will 

they. I can attest to that. 

[Laughter.] 

Yesterday, my staff tole me about a blog entry in the Education 

Gadfly, which is run by the conservative Fordham Foundation. 

Checker Finn and Michael Petrilli, who are known to a lot of us 

who have been involved in education reform for years, wrote an 

entry with the heading, and I quote, ‘‘Bush’s first and second-term 

policies don’t harmonize.’’ The piece basically argues that No Child 

Left Behind is actually undermining an agenda to improve math 

and science achievement by creating an inventive for States to hae 

low standards. Let me just read what they said in brief. 

‘‘No Child Left Behind creates perverse incentives for States to 

set low standards and dumbed down tests. In a review of State 

math standards that the Fordham Foundation published last year, 

a panel of mathematicians found that only six States had standards that were clear, coherent, and relatively rigorous. Of these, 

just three, California, Massachusetts’’—Senator Kennedy—‘‘and 

New Mexico, set passing scores on their 8th grade tests anywhere 

near the gold standard of proficiency as determined by the NAEP. 

These flaws in No Child Left Behind undermine the President’s big 

new idea, training an additional 70,000 teachers to lead AP courses 

in high-poverty high schools, because if nobody gets challenged in 

math beyond a middling notion of proficiency, how can they succeed in rigorous AP classes?’’

The piece goes on to say that: As long as school accountability 

is pegged to low levels of achievement, these other efforts will be 

mainly symbolic. Incentives work, and the vast majority of schools 

will continue to teach precisely what is needed to pass the test that 

acutally count. 

This comes on the heel of the publication of the NAEP results, 

which certainly raised a lot of issues in the minds of many because 

NAEP, once again, showed that our proficiency levels were not sufficient, but at the same time we have all these States reporting 

these miraculous increases in student achievement. Because we do 

not have national standards and because we have left the decisionmaking about standards to the States, many States have slowly, 

but inexorably, lowered their standards, and everybody knows that. 

No State wants to be embarrassed and so States give in to the 

pressure, and the standards go down. 

27

I would ask, will the Department be recommending changes 

when we reauthorize No Child Left Behind, I think next year, to 

help us improve math and science education, and to try to deal 

with this problem of States dumbing down and lowering standards? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. I think that is a good question. I have not 

seen that particular blog, but, obviously, clearly, I disagree with it. 

I think in No Child Left Behind we tried to harmonize the important role of those who are the primary investors in public education 

and State and local governments, with shining the bright light of 

the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the NAEP, on 

those. We have, I think, two tools here, a NAEP yardstick that exposes—I mean we now know who has the highest standards, who 

does not. I have talked to chiefs, I have talked to Governors, those 

tools are working. They are challenging their policies at the local 

level because of those two instruments. 

I think programs like Advanced Placement and International 

Baccalaureate that are widely regarded as high-quality, high 

standards, rigorous, and equivalent to college-level work will help 

us raise the bar, provide that additional rigor. I think that is one 

tool. But I do think it is important for us to harmonize and recognize the role of the Federal Government versus States. 

I would also say that even so, even with the low standards, if you 

will, we still have major, major work to do, especially with minority 

kids, on passage of State tests. And the NAEP proficiency standard 

is a very, very, tough, high standard, and there is discrepancy between State proficiency definitions and the NAEP, no doubt about 

it. 

Senator CLINTON. Madam Secretary, I would love to work with 

you, as I am sure many of us on the committee would, to try to 

further harmonize and to put even more incentives into the law so 

that States do not back pedal. 

Let me, if I can, just ask you another quick question. Last year 

the Department considered creating a nationwide database for 

every postsecondary student in the country, including detailed personally identifiable information like Social Security numbers, enrollment, attainment, and financial aid information. I support efforts to promote an accurate, useful, higher education accountability system, but I expressed concern at the time in a letter to 

your predecessor, Secretary Paige, that the proposal would risk violations of students’ privacy and increase the bureaucratic burdens 

imposed on higher education institutions. Last year the Department requested the authority to create a national database of students. Congress did not grant that authority, and the Department 

eventually dropped the proposal. 

However, it has come to my attention that last week you attended a conference in Florida with the National Governors Association, where you spoke about why States should care about student data systems including longitudinal data. And we all agree 

with that. You have to have data. You cannot track what people 

are doing or accomplishing unless you have those tools. Charles 

Miller, the Chairman of your Commission on the Future of Higher 

Education, also has stressed the need for a rich database. I guess 

I would like an update on what the Department’s efforts really are. 

Are you continuing to develop a national database that contains deVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:07 Jul 17, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\26056.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
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tailed personally identifiable information on every postsecondary 

student in the country? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. No, we are not, Senator. Thank you for 

asking that question. I have tasked this Higher Education Commission, that you spoke of, with looking at how best to use and collect 

information about higher education, and we are not currently—

they have not made any recommendations yet. I have given them 

to August to do their work. 

But I would also let you know, and I know you do know, that 

we have a giant database at the Department of Education called 

IPEDS, the Integrated Post Secondary Data System, and we can 

tell ia virtually everything you want to know about a first-time, 

full-time degree-seeking nontransfer student, which is fewer than 

half of our students these days. How are we to best use this $80 

billion investment in higher education, that we do at the Department of Education, to some good end without knowing who we are 

serving, to what degree and how well? I think that is our policy 

challenge. How we do that, I do not know yet. 

Senator CLINTON. It is something that is, obviously, of great concern, because there are issues of consent, there are issues of identification by name instead of by some assigned number, there are 

issues of educational performance. There are transcripts and financial data. So, obviously, this is a matter of some concern to many 

of my constituents and the institutions that I represent. I hope that 

we can continue to try to figure out what is appropriate and what 

is not. Thank you. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. I agree. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. I really appreciate your being here today, and I 

appreciate the succinct answers that you have given, a lot of good 

information. I know that Senator Kennedy and I both have some 

additional questions that we would like to ask. Several of the questions that I would ask, I will just submit to you in writing, so that 

I can get the answers to them because it will play a role in what 

we are going to be doing in future legislation, and I will have a few 

concluding statements here. 

Senator Kennedy. 

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you. 

I appreciate my friend from Alabama reminding us about the 

things we ought to be learning about from your State, and we will 

look forward to learning from them. We are very proud that Massachusetts is the number one State in the country in 4th grade and 

8th grade in reading,and tied for first in math. Part of it——

Senator SESSIONS. Senator Kennedy, I believe that Massachusetts has really driven the thing financially, the reading initiative 

even greater than Alabama has, so you deserve a lot of credit for 

that. 

Senator KENNEDY. I appreciate it. We do not want to keep complimenting each other. 

[Laughter.] 

We like the rigor of your challenge on it. 

It is basically, I believe, a combination of essential reforms, by 

the fact that prior to the time the No Child Left Behind was in effect, we had a major review on education policy there, and the 

State has initiated a number of different kinds of provisions that 

29

worked in concert with the No Child Left Behind. We still have a 

long way to go. 

I just want to ask, Madam Secretary, you are probably familiar 

with the Glenn Commission report. I was on the commission. John 

Glenn was the driving factor and force, and he had an excellent 

staff. Many of the recommendations that came out in the National 

Academy of Sciences report, comes from that commission, and a 

number of the aspects of the commission were actually brought in 

for the No Child Left Behind program, and you might just get a—

you have got a lot of reading, and we never do as much as we 

should—but you will see the recommendations that were in here in 

terms of math and science. 

We tried to include a number of those in the math and science 

partnership in the No Child Left Behind. It talked about the isolation of math teachers, science teachers, talked about partnerships, 

mentoring, and a number of other recommendations. We actually 

tried to include much of that in the math and science partnership 

in the No Child Left Behind, and also provisions in the teaching 

quality provisions. Those aspects have been virtually frozen in 

terms of finances. I do not want to take the time here about the 

funding levels, but those have actually been frozen. And the science 

partnership with the National Science Foundation, under the Administration, had a 27 percent cut. 

We found that that science partnership had a lot of useful recommendations and suggestions. I would just be interested in how 

to balance those out, why you made the judgments over the time 

not to increase teacher quality and the math-science partnership 

program, and why you think these other kinds of parts are going 

to achieve what you want, why those are not better, because that, 

I think, is at least something that we had been attempting to do 

in the No Child Left Behind provisions, and working with the National Science Foundation, and were pretty consistent. We want to 

certainly support those programs that are working, and the ones 

that are making a difference. We do not want to be supporting 

them if they are not. But I am interested in how you reached the 

conclusions that you did in terms of the budget, in not seeing the 

importance of increases in terms of this. Do you want to make a 

comment now or let us know later? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. I certainly will look at it. I think that is 

our shared challenge as to how we allocate resources. I would say 

that funds for that partnership are up from 12.5 million in 2002 

to $182 million in 2006, so it is not that it has not been a priority. 

It certainly has been, of this Congress and of the Administration. 

Senator KENNEDY. On the math-science partnerships, is that 

what—I have 179 million in 2005 and 182 in 2006. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Right, that is what I have. 

Senator KENNEDY. And Title II of No Child Left Behind is 1.48 

billion in 2005, and 2006 it is 1.45 billion, and the math-science 

partnership in the NSF has gone from 79 million in 2005 down to 

46 million this year in terms of requests, so that has been a dramatic kind of reduction. 

I would like to just know what is your assessment of what was 

working well in those and what was not. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. I will be glad to do that, thank you. 

30

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Burr. 

Senator BURR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My apologies. We have 

got more Secretaries on the Hill testifying on the budget today 

than we have rooms to house everybody. 

Madam Secretary, welcome. I think it is safe to say that all categories have deficiencies in math and science. Nevertheless, I believe they are particularly low as it relates to African-Americans. 

Historically Black Colleges and Universities are shining examples 

of institutions that really defy expectations for African-Americans 

in math, science, and engineering. While there are only 105 historically black colleges in the country, 11 of those reside in North 

Carolina, five public and six private. Their output of African-Americans that graduated in math and science is extraordinarily high. 

Some statistics: 38 percent of all bachelor’s degrees and 27 percent 

of all master’s degrees in math for African-Americans nationwide 

come out of historically black colleges. Thirty-eight percent of all 

bachelor’s degrees and 24 percent of all master’s degrees, 17 percent of all Ph.D.’s in biological science’s for African-Americans nationwide are awarded by historically black colleges. Forty percent 

of all bachelor’s degrees in physical sciences for African-Americans 

nationwide are awarded by historically black colleges. 

North Carolina A&T University, known for their engineering 

school, probably is the strongest in the country, and the College of 

Engineering has been the Nation’s leader at producing AfricanAmerican engineers, and also the leading producer of AfricanAmerican women engineers at the bachelor level, and it is currently the third largest of African-American master’s level engineers after Georgia Tech and Johns Hopkins, which I think is a remarkable accomplishment. 

They make an incredible contribution to the pipeline of AfricanAmerican students involved in math, science and engineering as 

majors and as professionals. How might we both work together to 

make sure that HBCUs are even more effective and more of a tool 

for us to reach a population that truly does not rise to the level 

that the rest of the population does? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Senator, I think that is a great comment, 

and as you know, you and I will be visiting one of those little gems 

next week, and that is exactly the question I intend to ask them, 

what can we learn of them about how to make sure that we have 

more of this sort of activity going on? 

I was in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago at Xavier. They have 

the distinction of leading the country in African-American health 

professionals, pharmacists, and those who pursue the medical profession. They tell me there is high expectations and a focus on 

those priorities. They do not try to have 400 different kinds of 

course offerings. They focus on what they do well, and they do a 

lot of it. So I think that is part of it, but I intend to ask them that 

question when we are there next week. 

Senator BURR. One last question. In 2005, IBM, recognizing the 

shortage of teachers in math and science specifically, started a very 

innovative program within IBM, challenging for 100 IBM employees to be certified for K through 12 education, and those 100 are 

31

targeted to come out of New York and North Carolina where IBM 

has a big presence. 

What else can we do to challenge other companies like IBM to 

come up with the same type of creative, innovative ways for their 

employees to help us with deficiencies that we have in the skills 

we need to teach our children? 

Secretary SPELLINGS. That is exactly what the President has in 

mind through the Adjunct Teacher Initiative, and I understand 

that IBM is about to try to provide even more teachers. 

Intel, the President was just in Albuquerque last week, and they 

are providing professionals into the schools. So I think through the 

Adjunct Teacher Corps we can seed and support more of that sort 

of initiative around the country. 

Senator BURR. I thank you for the work of the Education Department. 

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for not only the hearing today, but 

also the vigilance that this committee holds as it relates to education policy, and we are a partner with the Department to make 

this successful. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

I think this has been an extremely helpful hearing. I do need to 

make one slight correction. I did hear a comment earlier in one of 

the questionings, that we had cut 12-7/10ths billion dollars from 

Pell grants. There was not a dime cut from Pell grants. We did 

make some savings by eliminating some corporate subsidies, and 

that provided some money to put into the math and science emphasis that we did for college. 

I once made some comments, as Senator Isakson did, about professors in college needing to be in the classroom once every 5 years, 

or once every 10 years, and put that on my list of things not to 

bring up again for a while. 

[Laughter.] 

Got several things on that list, but maybe their time will come. 

I do know that, as you mentioned in your testimony, that a lot 

of education is expectations, expectations not just by the teacher, 

but expectations by the parents and expectations by the communities. There are some grand examples out there. The St. Labre Indian School has a reading program, and typically they had a lot of 

problem with literacy and dropouts and all kinds of things. In a 

single year they were able to raise kids in 4th grade from 38 percent being at grade level to 95 percent being at grade level. In 2nd 

grade it was even more dramatic. They went from 15 percent to 

100 percent at grade level. I asked what the core of the program 

was, and they said, ‘‘high expectations.’’

I am also interested and appreciative of your Commission on Future Higher Education, and know that we need to concentrate on 

emphasizing to kids the need to go there, and am fascinated by a 

program at, I think it is San Diego State, where they take 4th 

graders from the inner city, bus them to the college, show them the 

college, take a picture in front of the main building, and that is 

sent to the kid’s parents, and on the bottom of it, it says, ‘‘Future 

San Diego State Student.’’ When anybody visits the house, that is 

usually on the mantle or some other prominent place in the house. 

32

And they have a very high rate of kids who go on to college. Expectations, early. 

When my kids were in elementary school, the principal at that 

particular school instituted some new math, which, of course, shook 

everybody up because that was kind of a by-word of my generation. 

It was based on binary math, and so to get over some of the tension 

that would be caused by that, he had the parents come to the 

school and showed us what they would be teaching. It made a dramatic difference to the parents. There were many who had not 

done well in math, who understood in a single evening some of 

these math concepts, and were very sold on the kids doing it. This 

was a 2nd grade program. One of the things that happened at the 

end of the year was that the kids would go to McDonald’s, and they 

would all order off of the menu, and all the kids in the class would 

keep track of what the total bill was going to be before sales tax—

that is always another problem—almost every kid in the class was 

able to add it in their head and get it right. Math can be done. 

Incidentally, one of the things they do in that kind of math is 

they also add from left to right, so that you are dealing with the 

biggest numbers first, which would be a good thing here in Washington, probably. 

[Laughter.] 

They discontinued the program though, because it was a boom 

town and a lot of kids were coming in and out, and they were not 

sure all the kids could keep up. It was a huge disappointment to 

me. 

I would remind everybody that in most of the questions here 

today we talked about high school. Next week we are having a high 

school roundtable as a follow up to this hearing, and I would mention that IBM will be a part of that high school roundtable as well. 

I would also mention that we do have a Web site, and people 

that might be listening, if they have ideas on how we can improve 

education, we are certainly open to that, and would appreciate 

them utilizing that Web site. It is one of the ways that we collect 

ideas so that we can hopefully get it right. 

I would like to congratulate the Secretary on all of her efforts 

and the way that she gets it right. You do provide a lot of leadership for us, and a very forceful advocacy, and I do appreciate your 

high expectations of what you are working on, as well as this committee, and your ability to answer the questions. You have really 

stimulated a lot of ideas today. Thank you for being here. 

Secretary SPELLINGS. Thank you, Senator. 

[The prepared statement of Secretary Spellings follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MARGARET SPELLINGS

Mr. Chairman, Senator Kennedy, and members of the committee, thank you for 

the opportunity to speak with you today about the importance of education to maintaining our global leadership, and the President’s proposed serious and innovative 

reforms that will prepare our children to become leaders themselves. 

The Challenge: To Innovate Education 

America has long been innovation’s home. When faced with a challenge, we invent 

the answer: from the first telephone to global satellite communications; from the 

first computer to the World Wide Web; from the Wright Brothers to Neil Armstrong. 

To Americans, innovation means much more than the latest gadget. It means creating a more productive, prosperous, mobile and healthy society. Innovation fuels 

our way of life and improves our quality of life. And its wellspring is education. 

33

Throughout his Administration, President Bush has made innovation and education top priorities. The President worked with you, other members of this committee and your colleagues in the House, to pass the most far-reaching education 

reform in decades, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). NCLB has brought high 

standards and accountability to public schools and sparked a mathematics and reading revival in the early grades. 

While the United States is leading the world in science and technology and making strong reforms to its education system, the rest of the world is not standing still. 

America no longer holds the sole patent on innovation. Inspired by our example, 

countries such as China, India and South Korea have invested heavily in education, 

technology, and research and development. America now has billions of competitors 

throughout the world, challenging us to set our sights even higher. 

Our educational leadership has been challenged as well, with many developed nations’ students outperforming ours in international tests, particularly in math and 

science, an ominous sign for many American schools. These test scores are linked 

to a lack of challenging coursework, an ominous sign for many American schools. 

The impact may be felt well into the future. According to some estimates, America’s 

share of the world’s science and engineering doctorates is predicted to fall to 15 percent by 2010. 

This global challenge requires bold action and leadership. America has done it before. Following the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik, the world’s first satellite, 

Congress passed and President Eisenhower signed into law the National Defense 

Education Act of 1958 (NDEA). NDEA encouraged more college and university students to pursue degrees in engineering and it brought the public and private sectors 

together as partners to capture the interest, imagination and dedication of American 

students. And it worked. Within a decade, the number of science and engineering 

doctorates awarded in the United States annually had tripled, accounting for more 

than half the world’s total by 1970. 

Today, America faces challenges more difficult and complex than a single streaking satellite. The spread of freedom is spurring technological innovation and global 

competition at a pace never before seen. This trend makes it increasingly important 

that our economy be more flexible and responsive, to make sure that we continue 

to lead in innovation and technological development and to make sure we have a 

workforce that has the skill sets necessary to do so. 

Education is the gateway to opportunity and the foundation of a knowledge-based, 

innovation-driven economy. Employers are increasingly looking for workers who 

have analytical, technical and problem-solving skills. 

We have to run to keep up. A high school diploma, once desirable, is now essential, and, increasingly, insufficient. About 90 percent of the fastest-growing occupations of the future will generally require some postsecondary education. It is therefore unacceptable that among all 9th graders, about three in ten do not graduate 

on time; or that for black and Hispanic students the figure is about five in ten. If 

current trends continue, by 2012, over 40 percent of factory jobs will require postsecondary education, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. And yet, 

almost half of our 17-year-olds do not have the basic understanding of math needed 

to qualify for a production associate’s job at a modern auto plant. 

Improving education is critical not only to America’s economic security, but also 

to our national security. Today, not one but 3,000 satellites circle the earth. U.S. 

soldiers use the latest communications and surveillance technology to fight the global war on terrorism. Advanced math skills are used to identify and undermine terrorist networks. Government and the private sector engineer new ways to protect 

lives and infrastructure from harm. And the effort to spread freedom to other nations and cultures demands speakers fluent in languages such as Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, and Russian. Addressing these challenges will advance opportunity and entrepreneurship at home and promote democracy and understanding abroad. 

Rigorous instruction, high standards and accountability are helping to raise 

achievement levels among American students, particularly in the early grades. As 

all students work to achieve proficiency in math and reading by 2014, an innovative 

education reform effort is needed. 

America’s civic, political and business leaders agree: To sustain our quality and 

way of life, we must act now. And President Bush is leading the charge by proposing 

investments and reforms through a number of key initiatives that I would like to 

outline today. 

The Answer: President Bush’s Education Agenda 

President Bush’s answer to America’s challenge begins with the American Competitiveness Initiative. This multi-agency Initiative will commit $5.9 billion in fiscal 

year 2007, and more than $137 billion over the next 10 years, to strengthen eduVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:07 Jul 17, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\DOCS\26056.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
34

cation, promote research and development and encourage entrepreneurship. In the 

research arena, it will increase our investment in physical science and engineering 

research, the results of which will fuel technological innovation for decades to come. 

In the education arena, the initiative will bring together leaders from the public sector, private sector and education community to better prepare our students for the 

21st century. The initiative will place a greater emphasis on math instruction from 

the earliest grade levels. It will ensure that high schools offer more rigorous 

coursework, including Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses 

in math, science and critical-need foreign languages. It will inform teachers of the 

most effective, research-based approaches to teaching math. It will encourage professionals in those fields to become teachers themselves. And it will evaluate all federally funded math and science education programs to ensure the most effective use 

of the taxpayers’ dollars. 

The President’s High School Reform initiative will help ensure that a diploma becomes a ticket to success for all graduates, whether they enter the workforce or go 

on to higher education. It will bring high standards and accountability to high 

schools by aligning their academic goals and performance with the No Child Left 

Behind Act. Through assessments and targeted interventions, it will help educators 

raise achievement levels and close the achievement gap. It will also help alleviate 

the dropout problem by focusing more attention on at-risk students struggling to 

reach grade level in reading or math. 

Finally, the President’s National Security Language Initiative, announced on January 5, 2006, will help more American students master critical-need foreign languages to advance global competitiveness and national security. This joint project, 

in collaboration with the Department of State, Department of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence, will train teachers and aid students in those fields. 

The Challenge: Knowledge of Math and Science 

In this changed world, knowledge of math and science is paramount. In the words 

of BusinessWeek, ‘‘It’s a magnificent time to know math.’’ ‘‘Math entrepreneurs’’ are 

translating the world into numbers—which translates into big salaries. According 

to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, new and replacement job openings requiring 

science, engineering or technical training will increase by more than 24 percent, to 

6.3 million, between 2004 and 2014. 

Of all of the recommendations contained in the National Academies’ report, Rising 

Above the Gathering Storm, the highest priority is to vastly improve K–12 math and 

science education. Schools must help students develop the skills they will need to 

compete and succeed in higher education and the workforce, which are increasingly 

connected in this changed world. All Americans must be technically adept and numerically literate—regardless of their chosen occupation—so that they can make informed decisions and enjoy advancement in their careers. And this technically and 

numerically literate population must also yield additional practitioners of math, 

science, and engineering to meet the needs of academia and industry well into the 

future. Industry must do its part to ensure that career opportunities provided to 

those with training in math, science and engineering are as stable and financially 

rewarding as other jobs, such as medicine, law and finance. 

We clearly have a long way to go. High school test scores in math have barely 

budged since the early 1970s. And less than half of high school graduates in 2005 

were ready for college-level math and science coursework, according to ACT. 

In 1983, the landmark A Nation at Risk report recommended that high school students be required to take a minimum of 3 years of math and 3 years of science to 

graduate. Yet today, only 22 States and the District of Columbia require at least 

this amount to graduate in the class of 2006. Even fewer require high school exit 

exams (which are often administered in 10th or 11th grade, leading many employers 

and universities to discount the results). Just one State—Alabama—calls for current 

students to take 4 years of both science and math to graduate. 

A major part of the answer is teacher training. When we compare the U.S. education system with that of the top performing countries, we find several significant 

differences, most notably that a much lower proportion of U.S. math and science 

teachers actually have a degree in the area in which they are teaching. Because our 

elementary schools employ generalist teachers who are required to teach all academic subjects, most have degrees in education and have completed little or no 

coursework in math or science. Three out of four 4th-grade math and science teachers in the United States do not have a specialization in those subjects. And students 

from low-income communities are far less likely than their more affluent peers to 

have teachers certified in the subject they teach. With two-thirds of our math and 

science teachers expected to retire by 2010, we have a challenge to produce new 

teachers to fill that gap, but we also have an opportunity to change the way in 

35

which new teachers are trained so that future teachers will have greater content 

knowledge in math and science. 

Strengthening math and science standards is an economic imperative, for the Nation and for individual citizens. According to Department statistics, students who 

take advanced math courses in high school (such as trigonometry, precalculus and 

calculus) are far more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree. Additionally, students from 

low-income families who acquire strong math skills by the 8th grade are 10 times 

more likely to finish college than peers of the same socioeconomic background who 

do not. 

Still, old attitudes about math die hard. A recent survey commissioned by the 

Raytheon Company found that 84 percent of middle school students would rather 

clean their rooms, take out the garbage or go to the dentist than do their math 

homework. According to the Business Roundtable, just 5 percent of parents say they 

would ‘‘try to persuade their child toward careers in science, technology, mathematics or engineering.’’ Many people still view math and science as ‘‘nerdy’’ subjects 

with little relevance to the ‘‘real world.’’ Like it or not, that world has changed forever. 

The Answer: American Competitiveness Initiative 

President Bush’s American Competitiveness Initiative seeks to improve learning 

and instruction in mathematics and science. The Department of Education’s proposals within this Initiative are as follows:

• National Math Panel: Based on the influential National Reading Panel, the National Math Panel would convene experts to empirically evaluate the effectiveness 

of various approaches to teaching math, creating a research base to improve instructional methods for teachers. It would lay the groundwork for the Math Now program 

for grades K–7 to prepare every student to take and pass algebra; 

• Math Now for Elementary School Students: Like the successful and popular 

Reading First program, Math Now for Elementary School Students would promote 

promising, research-based practices in mathematics instruction and prepare students for more rigorous math coursework in middle and high school; 

• Math Now for Middle School Students: Similar to the current Striving Readers 

Initiative, Math Now for Middle School Students would diagnose students’ deficiencies in math proficiency and provide intensive and systematic instruction to enable them to take and pass algebra; 

• Advanced Placement-International Baccalaureate (AP-IB) Incentive Program: 

The AP-IB Incentive Program would train 70,000 additional teachers to lead AP-IB 

math and science courses. It would increase the number of students taking AP-IB 

tests to 1.5 million over the next 5 years with the goal of tripling the number of 

passing test-takers to approximately 700,000; 

• Adjunct Teacher Corps: The Adjunct Teacher Corps would provide funding to 

match contributions from States and the private sector to train 30,000 qualified 

math and science professionals to become adjunct high school teachers by 2015; and 

• Evaluating the Effectiveness of Federal Science, Technology, Engineering and 

Math (STEM) programs: An administration-wide effort would be undertaken to determine which Federal education programs are most effective in raising achievement in math and science, which deserve more funding and which should be consolidated to save taxpayer money. The initiative would also align these education programs with the goals and aims of the No Child Left Behind Act. According to the 

Government Accountability Office, thirteen agencies reported spending $2.8 billion 

on 207 education programs in fiscal year 2004. About half of the programs dedicated 

to math and science received less than $1 million in funding, with most targeted 

to postsecondary education. 

• Including Science Assessments in NCLB: NCLB requires every State to develop 

and administer science assessments once in each of three grade spans by the 2007–

08 school year, and including these assessments in the accountability system will 

ensure students are learning the necessary content and skills to be successful in the 

21st century workforce. 

Other Math and Science Initiatives 

• Academic Competitiveness grants and SMART Grant Program: This higher education grant program was a key component of the Higher Education Reconciliation 

Act. I know that members of this committee, particularly Chairman Enzi and Senator Frist, worked very hard to get this important program into the legislation that 

was just signed by the President. 

• This program will build on the success of the Pell Grant program and benefit 

more than 500,000 students in need. 

36

• Academic Competitiveness grants will provide increased funds for low-income 

students who take a rigorous academic curriculum in high school. Grants in the 

amount of $750 will be awarded to qualified first-year college students who 

completed a rigorous high school program; grants in the amount of $1,300 will 

be awarded to second-year students who completed a rigorous program and who 

maintain a 3.0 average in college. 

• SMART grants will go to college juniors and seniors studying math, science 

or critical-need foreign languages who also maintain a 3.0 GPA. This will encourage more students to go into fields that improve America’s security and 

competitiveness. 

• Mathematics and Science Partnerships: This program supports the American 

Competitiveness Initiative by providing State formula grants to help improve students’ academic achievement in rigorous math and science courses. It also assists 

teachers by integrating proven, research-based teaching methods into the curricula. 

• Expanded Teacher Loan Forgiveness: This popular program offers up to $17,500 

(up from $5,000) in loan forgiveness for highly qualified math, science and special 

education teachers serving challenging, low-income schools and communities. 

The Challenge: Accelerating Our Schools’ Progress 

Innovating and improving America’s schools will not occur overnight. It took time 

for eight other developed nations to surpass America’s high school graduation rate 

among adults aged 25 to 34; and it will take time for the United States to regain 

its leadership. We must start by accelerating our progress. 

A comprehensive problem demands a comprehensive solution, extending from kindergarten through high school graduation. The good news is that educators and policymakers are learning more and more about what works. A half-century ago, the 

United States turned the threat of Soviet competition into proof of our ability to improve our schools and quality of life. Just 4 years ago, the United States turned a 

growing achievement gap into the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act. 

The law set a course for proficiency for all students in the core subjects of reading 

and math by the year 2014. Students in grades 3 through 8 are now learning under 

high standards. Teachers are using proven instructional methods in reading. 

Schools are being held accountable for results. Parents have more information and 

choices. And States have more flexibility to spend Federal K–12 education resources, 

which have increased by 41 percent since 2001. 

The early results are in. Across the country, academic achievement has risen significantly in the earliest grades, with math scores at all-time highs, including 

among African-American and Hispanic students. In the last 2 years, the number of 

4th graders who learned their fundamental math skills increased by 127,000 according to Department data. Long-term trends show that more reading progress was 

made among 9-year-olds over the last 5 years than in the previous 28 years combined. Meanwhile, according to the Nation’s Report Card, the achievement gaps in 

reading and math between white and African-American 9-year-olds and between 

white and Hispanic 9-year-olds are at all-time lows. Educators use terms like 

‘‘amazing,’’ ‘‘stunning’’ and ‘‘remarkable’’ to describe the progress on long-term 

NAEP. 

No Child Left Behind has set the goal of every child achieving, but the States and 

schools themselves have done the heavy lifting to implement curriculum standards 

and assessment protocols that they will use to meet these standards. For the first 

time, all 50 States have unique accountability plans in place, with real consequences 

attached. The results can be seen in schools like Maryland’s North Glen Elementary. In 2003, just 57 percent of North Glen’s students were proficient in reading, 

while 46 percent were proficient in math. Those numbers have skyrocketed to 82 

percent and 84 percent, respectively. 

Another example is Charles L. Gideons Elementary School in Atlanta. The number of its students meeting Georgia’s standards in reading has increased by 23 percentage points since 2003. For math the news is even better: a 34 percentage-point 

improvement during the same period. The National Math Panel will examine 

schools like this one that have made significant progress to determine ‘‘what 

worked’’ in improving mathematics education and performance. If we better understand what worked at these model schools, we can then use programs like the new 

Math Now program to disseminate these principles and practices to teachers across 

the country. 

A districtwide success occurred in Garden Grove, California. Three-fourths of the 

Garden Grove Unified School District’s students do not speak English. Nearly 60 

percent are from low-income families. Nevertheless, all but two of the district’s 67 

schools met or exceeded their Adequate Yearly Progress goals under the law. 

37

The No Child Left Behind Act was designed to improve achievement. But it has 

also shown us what is achievable as a Nation. Educators, administrators and public 

officials are working together, united behind a worthy goal. Now it’s time to apply 

the act’s successful principles to our Nation’s high schools. 

There is not a moment to waste. Governors and business leaders are united in 

calling for urgent reform. Every year approximately 1 million students drop out of 

high school, costing the Nation more than $260 billion dollars in lost wages, taxes 

and productivity over the students’ lifetimes. A high school graduate can expect to 

earn about $275,000 more over the course of his or her lifetime than a student who 

doesn’t finish high school; a college graduate with a bachelor’s degree can expect to 

earn about $1 million more. Dropouts are also 31⁄2 times more likely to be arrested, 

according to reports. A key goal of the President’s High School Reform Initiative is 

to address the academic needs of at-risk students so that they stay in school, improving their quality of life and that of their fellow Americans. 

The Answer: The President’s High School Reform Initiative 

The President’s High School Reform Initiative would hold high schools accountable for providing high-quality education to all students. And it would help educators implement strategies to meet the needs of at-risk high school students. The 

proposed program would make formula grants to States to support:

• The development, implementation and evaluation of targeted interventions designed to improve the academic performance of students most at risk of failing to 

meet State academic standards; and • Expanded high school assessments that would assist educators in increasing accountability and meeting the needs of at-risk students. 

Interventions would be designed to increase the achievement of high school students; eliminate achievement gaps between students from different ethnic and racial 

groups and income levels; and help ensure that students graduate with the education, skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in postsecondary education and 

in the technology-based global economy. 

A key strategy would be the development of individual performance plans for students entering high school, using 8th grade assessment data in consultation with 

parents, teachers and counselors. Specific interventions could include programs that 

combine rigorous academic courses with vocational and technical training, researchbased dropout prevention activities, and the use of technology-based assessment systems to closely monitor student progress. In addition, programs that identify at-risk 

middle school students for assistance would help prepare them to succeed in high 

school and enter postsecondary education. This includes college preparation and 

awareness activities for students from low-income families. 

The President’s proposal also would require States to develop and implement 

reading and mathematics assessments in two additional grade levels in high school, 

building on the current NCLB requirement for testing once in grades 10–12. The 

new assessments would inform strategies to strengthen school accountability and 

meet the needs of at-risk students. 

Additional Support 

• Striving Readers: First funded in 2005, this program would be expanded significantly to reach more secondary students reading below grade level, which puts them 

at risk of dropping out. Students would benefit from research-based interventions 

coupled with rigorous evaluations. Schools would benefit from activities and programs designed to improve the overall quality of literacy instruction across the entire curriculum. 

The Challenge: Promoting Freedom and Understanding 

America faces a severe shortage of people who speak languages that are critical 

to its national security and global competitiveness:

• According to the Center for Applied Linguistics, less than 1⁄4 of public elementary schools report teaching foreign languages, even though a child’s early years are 

the best years in which to learn a new language. 

• Less than 1 percent of American high school students study Arabic, Chinese, 

Farsi, Japanese, Korean, Russian or Urdu—combined. 

• Less than 8 percent of undergraduates in American universities take foreign 

language courses, and less than 2 percent study abroad in any given year.

While only 44 percent of U.S. high school students were studying a foreign language in 2002, learning a second or even a third foreign language is compulsory for 

students in the European Union, China, Thailand and elsewhere. 

More than 200 million children in China study English. By comparison, only 

about 24,000 elementary and secondary school children in the United States study 

38

Chinese. Many students in other nations begin learning another language before 

they’re even 10 years old. They will have an edge over monolingual Americans and 

others in developing new relationships and business connections in countries other 

than their own. 

The Answer: The President’s National Security Language Initiative 

Critical-need foreign language skills are necessary to advance the twin goals of 

national security and global competitiveness. Together with the Department of 

State, Department of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Education proposes to offer grants and training for teachers under President Bush’s National Security Language Initiative. 

The Initiative would increase the number of Americans who speak and teach foreign languages, with an emphasis on critical-need languages. It will strengthen and 

refocus the Foreign Language Assistance Program, and will initially enable 24 

school districts across the country to create partnerships with colleges and universities to develop critical-need language programs. Among the critical-need languages 

targeted under the initiative are Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Russian, 

as well as languages in the Indic, Iranian and Turkic families. 

The National Security Language Initiative will also provide funding to create a 

Language Teacher Corps, with the goal of having 1,000 new critical foreign language teachers in U.S. schools by the end of the decade. And it will enable the creation of an ‘‘e-Learning Language Clearinghouse’’ and expanded Teacher-to-Teacher 

seminars to assist foreign language teachers anytime, anywhere. 

Conclusion 

Our schools helped make the 20th century the ‘‘American Century.’’ The 21st century remains to be claimed. But Americans have never backed down from a challenge. This changing world offers another opportunity for Americans to shine, and 

the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative and the rest of his education 

agenda will help set the course. 

America’s schools have made great progress in improving academic achievement 

in the early grades. But like athletes or musicians, children of all ages must work 

hard each and every day if they wish to compete, perform and succeed, and their 

schools must show them the way. The President’s education agenda will help prepare the students of today to become the successful leaders—the pioneers, discoverers and Nobel Prize winners—of the next American Century. 

I look forward to working with Congress on implementing these bold initiatives. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning. I am happy to answer any 

questions you have.

The CHAIRMAN. That concludes the hearing. 

[Additional material follows.]

39

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR ENSIGN

I would like to thank Secretary Spellings for testifying before the 

Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee this 

morning to discuss President Bush’s ‘‘American Competitiveness 

Initiative.’’ I would also like to thank Chairman Enzi for holding 

a hearing on this very important issue. 

As Chairman of the Senate Republican High Tech Task Force, I 

know very well the important roles that competitiveness and innovation play in maintaining our position in the world economy. We 

must be proactive in continuing to nurture competitiveness and innovation—traits that have historically fueled our economy and our 

success. 

Every year I meet with the CEO’s of Fortune 500 Technology 

companies. They are gravely concerned about the education of our 

Nation’s children, especially in the areas of math, science, and engineering. If we fail to engage our students in these subjects, and 

if our students therefore fail to excel, we are laying the groundwork 

for an American economy that is left behind in the global landscape. 

In an effort to address these challenges, I have introduced S. 

2109, the National Innovation Act, along with Senator Lieberman. 

This legislation is based on the recommendations of the National 

Innovation Initiative and builds on and expands existing programs 

within the National Science Foundation (NSF). This includes expansion of both the Graduate Research Fellowship Program and 

the Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program. My 

legislation encourages additional higher education institutions to 

develop Professional Science Master’s Degree Programs to increase 

the number of highly skilled graduates entering the science and 

technology workforce. My legislation also strengthens the Federal 

Governments’ commitment to science education by expanding the 

Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Talent expansion program. The Tech Talent expansion program encourages 

American universities to increase the number of graduates with degrees in mathematics and science. Finally, the National Innovation 

Act provides funding for the Director of NSF to award grants to 

local educational agencies to implement innovation-based experiential learning in 500 secondary schools and 500 elementary or middle schools. 

The President’s American Competitiveness Initiative compliments many of the proposals put forth in the National Innovation Act. The focus on mathematics education programs in elementary and middle schools is crucial. In fact, I am working on legislation that would create a math and science middle school program 

that is very similar to the Math Now for Middle School Students 

proposal. It is imperative that we keep our students on par with 

other leading industrial nations in math and science education. 

I was particularly pleased to see the Department’s new Adjunct 

Teacher Corps proposal. With teacher shortages in key subject 

areas reaching critical heights in many areas, it is necessary to 

find new avenues for professionals to enter into the teaching profession. I believe that a retired physicist, with some additional 

40

training in pedagogy, could make an excellent high school physics 

teacher. 

The most compelling piece of the President’s initiative was the 

America’s Opportunity Scholarships for Kids proposal. I have always supported student vouchers as a way of injecting competition 

into our education system. An article by Maurice McTigue was 

brought to my attention a few years ago that explained the decentralization of the New Zealand government. As part of that transformation, each school, whether it was public, private, or parochial, 

received a per pupil amount of funding from the government. Some 

adjustments in funding were made for children with disabilities 

and a few other factors. In the first few years of the program, public school attendance did drop by 2–3 percentage points. However, 

since that time, public school participation is at a higher level than 

ever before. More importantly, student performance improved significantly. Why? Competition. 

The Federal Government has taken on the role of assisting those 

schools that are the most in need of assistance. Vouchers go a step 

further and help those children who are most in need of a helping 

hand to succeed in school. The President’s proposal does just that. 

It is my hope that the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative will provide the spark needed to begin serious consideration 

of math and science education programs as well as reignite the innovation and competitiveness that must be at the heart of our education systems. I believe that it is important to build on what the 

Federal Government is already doing and to fill in the gaps from 

there. During this time of extreme budget restraints it is important 

to review and monitor the programs we currently have and expand 

slowly and appropriately from there. 

I look forward to working with you, Secretary Spellings, and 

other members of the Senate to move this important agenda forward.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR DODD

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Spellings, welcome, and 

thank you for coming today to talk about the President’s American 

Competitiveness Initiative. I look forward to hearing more about 

this program as well as asking additional questions about how it 

might work. 

Last fall, the National Academy of Sciences released a report entitled, Rising Above the Gathering Storm. This report examined 

America’s competitiveness in the global economy specifically as it 

relates to math and science. What the Academy found was startling. 

In a 2003 international assessment of 15-year-olds, American 

students placed 16th in reading, 19th in science, and 24th in math. 

On the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 

in math, only 36 percent of 4th graders and 30 percent of 8th graders performed at or above proficiency. The vast majority of students 

in our high schools will never take an advanced science or mathematics course. About 30 percent of high school math students have 

teachers who did not major in math in college or who are not certified to teach it. And, at the college level, fewer than half of underVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:07 Jul 17, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\26056.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
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graduates entering college in the 1990’s with a science or engineering major complete those degrees. 

China graduates twice as many students as the United States 

with bachelors degrees and has six times as many graduates majoring in engineering. In 2001, India graduated almost a million more 

students from college than the United States did. And researchers 

in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea now account for more than 1⁄4

of all U.S. industrial patents awarded each year. We need to turn 

this tide. 

When the Academy released their findings, they recommended 

specific steps Congress could take to ensure the pre-eminence of 

America’s science and technology expertise. 

Just a few weeks ago, Senators Bingaman and Alexander introduced legislation in the Senate designed to carry out the report’s 

recommendations—the Protecting America’s Competitive Edge 

(PACE) Acts. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of this bill. 

Educationally, PACE’s primary focus is to find young men and 

women who are interested in science and math, provide them with 

highly qualified teachers to help them pursue their interests, and 

assist them in making their dreams of a math/science degree at a 

4-year university come true. 

In many ways, the American Competitiveness Initiative would 

appear to share the same goals as the PACE Acts. I am not sure, 

however, that it will achieve the same ends. 

I applaud your efforts to review the existing research in math instruction and your desire to disseminate these practices. I also applaud your efforts to increase access to advanced placement 

courses, which effectively translates to access to a rigorous curriculum. I do, however, question the instruction of an adjunct high 

school faculty corps. 

It appears that members of this corps could circumvent the 

teacher certification process, resulting in teachers who are not 

highly qualified teaching in our schools. I am also concerned that, 

unlike PACE, there is no emphasis on the professional development 

of existing teachers. In addition, I am concerned that at a time 

when NCLB is woefully underfunded, an additional measure will 

be added to the adequate yearly progress calculation of NCLB. I 

propose that first we provide our schools with what is needed to 

successfully implement NCLB as it currently stands. 

I realize that the point of today’s hearing is to discuss the President’s math-science initiative but I would be remiss if I did not 

take the time to reflect on the President’s most recent budget proposal. At a time when more is demanded of our schools, especially 

in relation to NCLB, the education budget of this country is woefully underfunded once again. 

This year, 42 education programs are eliminated in the President’s budget. These eliminations include programs that prepare 

low-income kids for college, provide drug and alcohol education in 

elementary and secondary schools, and provide funding for the Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Program the largest 

source of Federal funding for high schools. 

Aside from eliminations, NCLB is underfunded by $15.4 billion 

and Title I, NCLB’s signature program for low-income students, is 

underfunded by $12.3 billion. 

42

IDEA is funded at just 17 percent of the cost of providing services—1 percent less than was provided last year and less than half 

of the 40 percent full funding we set as our goal 31 years ago. Once 

again, school boards will be passing these costs on to taxpayers. 

After-school initiatives will be level-funded, leaving behind 2 million students who could and should be served. And, at a time when 

we are talking about access to the next generation of scholars and 

scientists, the maximum Pell Grant is frozen for the 4th year in a 

row at $4,050. 

In addition, I find it egregious that amidst these harsh cuts, the Administration has introduced a $100 million voucher program. I 

ask you, in a time of accountability, will these schools be required 

to educate all children, administer subject matter tests to measure 

proficiency, and be subject to penalties if their students don’t perform well? 

Mrs. Secretary, this budget is insufficiently committed to helping 

students. If we fail to adequately fund No Child Left Behind, if we 

wipe out a whole host of education programs, our States, our localities, our school districts, local taxpayers, and most importantly, 

our children, will suffer. 

Budgets are about priorities. What priority could be more important than ensuring the future of our children by providing them 

with a first class education? How do we get to a first class math 

and science education if we don’t have resources to fund the basics? 

Thank you.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR MURRAY

Secretary Spellings, thank you for coming today to talk with us 

about the role of education in global competitiveness. Growing up 

in a small town in Washington, my parents always admonished me 

to clean my plate at dinnertime. There were starving children in 

India and China who would happily change places with me, they 

often said. Well, the message from today’s parents to their children 

is that they had better attend to their homework after dinner, because children in India and China are doing just that. Times certainly have changed and America can no longer take for granted 

its role as a world leader in science and technology. Accordingly, 

I share the President’s commitment to strengthening our educational competencies in math and science. Many of the elements 

of the American Competitiveness Initiative, including efforts to increase the number of math and science teachers and grow the number of Advanced Placement programs, are part of the Protecting 

America’s Competitive Edge through Education and Research Act 

of 2006, which I cosponsored. 

That being said, I want to stress that I view the components of 

the PACE Education Act as a complement to, and not a substitution for, the other Federal education investments we have made 

over the past 40 years. While science and math competence are undoubtedly a critical piece of what our students need to compete 

globally, it cannot come at the expense of training our Nation’s 

teaching workforce, helping disadvantaged students succeed academically, and ensuring that our high school students graduate 

and have the financial means to attend postsecondary education. 

Global competition demands that we do more, not less, to help our 

43

students succeed. President Bush released his budget request earlier this week. As a document of our values and priorities, the Federal budget should reflect our commitment to educating the Nation’s youth. Yet the President’s fiscal year 2007 budget request 

proposes the deepest cuts to Federal education funding in the 26-

year history of the Department, which leads me to question the priorities and values of this Administration. Actions speak louder 

than words. A few examples: 

Even though provisions of No Child Left Behind require our 

teachers to be highly qualified, the President has elected not to increase any of the established programs that help current and future teachers meet these requirements. His fiscal year 2007 budget 

proposes level-funding, among others, the Teacher Incentive Fund, 

Troops-to-Teachers and the Transition to Teaching programs. In 

addition, he has requested eliminating the Higher Education Act’s 

Teacher Quality Enhancement Program. While developing state-ofthe-art math and science curricula and attracting high-quality 

teachers are important, so too is ensuring that our teachers have 

the pedagogical tools to effectively engage students in the classroom. A Nobel Prize winner may be the world’s foremost expert in 

quantum physics, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he can adequately and appropriately convey his knowledge in a way that is 

beneficial for student learning. Teacher training is an important 

component of global preparedness, and I am disheartened to see 

this underfunded in the President’s budget. 

To compete globally, we must ensure that all our students have 

the tools and skills to succeed in the world economy. Preparation 

for this challenge begins in the early years. That is why programs 

such as Head Start, which prepares low-income children to enter 

kindergarten ready to learn, are so critical. Yet the President’s 

budget does not include a funding increase for this important program. Choosing to forego a cost-of-living adjustment, his budget effectively ensures that fewer children will receive Head Start’s valuable education, health and nutrition services. The President’s failure to dedicate Federal resources to close the achievement gap 

abounds in his budget request, from inadequate support for title I 

grants to shortchanging after-school programs to scaling back Federal support to special education. This is not the comprehensive approach we should be taking to prepare our Nation’s youth. 

Sixty percent of new jobs in the 21st century will require a college education. Given that only one out of three members of the 

U.S. workforce has attended a postsecondary institution, our commitment to education must extend into colleges and universities. 

One of the best ways we can open the door to college is to help 

America’s teenagers graduate from high school. With our national 

high school graduation rate hovering at an abysmal 69 percent, I 

believe we must empower schools to offer the best possible support 

for students and teachers. That is why I introduced my Pathways 

for all Students to Succeed Act. The PASS Act would provide resources to target academic tutoring and counseling to students 

most in need of help. With 3,000 secondary students dropping out 

of school each day, we must redouble our efforts to make our high 

schools places where all students can learn. 

44

In addition to boosting high school graduation rates, we must assist students in the transition from high school to college by providing financial resources to facilitate access to higher education. 

Yet recently the Federal Government cut $12.7 billion from student 

loans that help low- and middle-income families pay for college. 

This decision, during a year in which tuition and fees increased by 

7.1 percent for 4-year public universities and 5.9 percent for private universities, does not reflect our national priorities. In the 

same vein, the value the President purports to place on higher education is not reflected in his budget, which level-funds the Pell 

Grant program for the 4th year in a row. 

The Bush Administration rightly is concerned about our children’s math and science proficiencies. But American competitiveness demands a more comprehensive approach to education, one 

that necessitates an obligation to train our Nation’s teachers, close 

the achievement gap, and promote educational opportunities 

throughout the K–16 pipeline. Today’s children should be reminded 

that their counterparts in China and India are making quick gains 

in math and science. But our students need more than warnings 

about finishing their homework. They also need the Federal Government to support their efforts and provide opportunities for them 

to learn and progress academically. Our Nation and our children 

deserve nothing less.

RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS OF SENATOR ENZI BY SECRETARY SPELLINGS

Question 1. The National Foreign Language Initiative announced by the President 

on January 5, 2006 involves cooperation between the U.S. Department of State and 

the Department of Education. Could you please describe the Department of Education’s role in this initiative, how grants such as the Foreign Language Assistance 

Program (FLAP) will be focused, and the steps you will be taking to attract teachers 

to this high need area? 

Answer 1. The Department of Education worked with the Departments of State 

and Defense and the Director of National Intelligence in creating the National Language Security Initiative to coordinate critical foreign language instruction among 

agencies and ensure that each agency is maximizing resources to create a pool of 

critical language speakers. The Department of Education’s role in the National Security Language Initiative is to improve the K–16 pipeline so that more students 

are studying and becoming proficient in critical needs languages. The Department’s 

current Foreign Language Assistance Program will prioritize those grantees who 

focus on critical needs languages, especially those programs that start before high 

school and can provide an articulated program of critical needs foreign language instruction. In addition, the Advancing America Through Foreign Language Partnerships program, for which we have requested $24 million in the fiscal year 2007 

budget, will connect institutions of higher education with school districts to create 

critical needs foreign language programs that lead students to proficiency in these 

languages. This model, which was started by the Department of Defense, shows 

promise in linking colleges, which already have critical needs language programs, 

with schools that would like to start these programs. 

In addition, the Department of Education has placed a priority on training teachers to teach critical needs languages. The Department has proposed $5 million for 

the Language Teacher Corps, which would train college graduates with critical foreign language skills to become teachers in the classroom. In addition, the Department proposes $3 million for the Teacher-to-Teacher initiative to fund intensive 

summer training sessions for foreign language teachers.

Question 2. Career and technical education programs have demonstrated their 

success in keeping students in high school. To maintain America’s competitiveness, 

it is important that more high school students graduate with the knowledge and 

skills necessary to provide them with an increased number of high quality opportunities after graduation. In that capacity, Perkins is part of the competitiveness pipeVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:07 Jul 17, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\DOCS\26056.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
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line. What suggestions would you make so that we clearly connect the Perkins to 

the American Competitiveness Initiative? 

Answer 2. If the Congress reauthorizes the Perkins Act, it should support strong 

career and technical education (CTE) programs that are linked to a rigorous academic curriculum and to postsecondary education programs that lead to a postsecondary degree or certificate. We know that all high school students need to learn 

rigorous academic content and skills, whether they expect to enter the workforce immediately after graduation or to pursue postsecondary education. Our economy increasingly demands workers who have a high level of knowledge and skills, and the 

fastest-growing jobs require some education beyond high school. Most high-paying, 

high-demand, technical occupations now require completion of some training or education beyond high school, and most workers will need to upgrade their skills 

throughout their lifetime. However, less than 10 percent of vocational students 

scored at or above proficiency in 2000 National Assessment of Education Program 

(NAEP) in mathematics and only 29 percent scored at or above proficiency in the 

1998 NAEP for reading. 

As another mechanism for ensuring that vocational education students are prepared to compete in the global economy, any new Perkins legislation should also incorporate strong accountability requirements. In order to ensure that States implement strong accountability measures and that Federal funds are directed to activities that will improve student achievement and graduation rates for CTE students, 

the Perkins program should require that States’ accountability systems use valid 

and reliable measures of the core indicators of performance at both the secondary 

and postsecondary levels, and apply these measures to all categories of students 

served by CTE programs. Furthermore, States should not be permitted to use their 

existing indicators of performance to measure the achievement of CTE students, 

when those indicators would otherwise be in conflict with statutory requirements. 

Allowing a State to use its current measures of performance where these measures 

are weak, invalid, or unreliable would perpetuate a weak accountability system that 

is unable to track, or create incentives for, real improvements in performance.

Question 3. It seems that we are on the right track with including science as a 

part of testing in NCLB, but is testing enough? There is a lack of support, especially 

at the elementary level, for science in the Department’s 2007 budget. Do you have 

additional ideas that would help get more science into elementary classrooms? 

Answer 3. Yes, NCLB requires every State to develop and administer science assessments once in each of three grade spans by the 2007–08 school year. States are 

well on their way to completing this requirement. Our proposal would include these 

assessments in the accountability system to ensure students are learning the necessary content and skills to be successful in the 21st century workforce. As I’ve said 

many times, what gets tested gets taught. By including science in the accountability 

program, teachers, principals, students, and parents will focus on ensuring students 

learn this content.

Question 4. In the future, just about everyone will need postsecondary education 

in order to get a good job. To be prepared for postsecondary, students need to graduate from high school on time and without the need for remediation. Please describe 

some models that support successful transitions from high school to postsecondary 

education and how you plan to spread the word of their successes in order to 

strengthen high schools across the Nation. 

Answer 4. There are numerous studies that suggest different programs and approaches can be effective in assisting low-income and disadvantaged students make 

the transition from high school to college, but there has not been enough rigorous, 

scientifically-based research to determine the best methods for helping all students 

prepare for and succeed in college. Our current, disjointed approach has not served 

all students well. That is why we believe a targeted and comprehensive effort is 

needed. We believe our proposed $1.5 billion High School Reform initiative will do 

a better job of improving high school education and preparing students to succeed 

in college. Our High School Reform initiative would focus resources at the State and 

local levels, with a strong emphasis on scientifically-based research to determine 

what works. The initiative also deepens the national knowledge base on what is effective in improving high schools and secondary school student achievement by supporting and disseminating scientifically based research on specific interventions that 

have promise for improving outcomes. 

Over the last decade, we have made great strides in raising the educational aspirations of young people. More than 90 percent of students who were in 10th grade 

in 2002, for example, reported that they expected to earn a postsecondary credential. Our challenge now is ensuring that students leave high school with the prepaVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:07 Jul 17, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\DOCS\26056.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
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1 I was unable to determine what portion of the $850 million was reserved for AC grants, and 

what was reserved for SMART. These numbers need to be revised to include only the funds allocated for the AC grants.

ration they will need to realize these ambitious goals. The Department’s fiscal year 

2007 budget request includes a comprehensive set of initiatives to address that challenge. 

Completing a rigorous academic program in high school is essential to making a 

successful transition to postsecondary education. The Toolbox Revisited: Paths to Degree Completion from High School through College, a recently released Department 

study, concluded that completing academically challenging course work in high 

school, including Advanced Placement (AP) courses and mathematics coursework beyond the level of algebra II, dramatically increased the likelihood of a student earning a bachelor’s degree. Courses Count: Preparing Students for Postsecondary Suc- cess, a report issued by ACT last year, also found that completing at least one mathematics course beyond algebra II, as well as biology, chemistry, and physics, improved student success in the first year of college. 

However, not all high schools offer the rigorous coursework students need for 

postsecondary success. Toolbox Revisited found that nearly half of African-American 

students and 55 percent of Hispanic students attended high schools that did not 

even offer calculus. A recent National Center for Education Statistics survey found 

that one-third of U.S. public high schools do not offer any AP courses. Moreover, 

even when high schools do offer a full complement of rigorous courses, too many students are unable to access them because they enter high school with reading and 

mathematical skills that are significantly below grade level. 

High schools also can help more students transition successfully to postsecondary 

education by providing comprehensive college transition services and supports, such 

as tutoring and academic enrichment activities, and counseling and information 

about college options, testing and admission requirements, and financial aid. These 

are particularly important for students whose parents have never attended college, 

but are useful for all students. Unfortunately, too often these services are offered 

as part of an ‘‘add-on’’ outreach program that serves only a small number of students, rather than delivered comprehensively to all students and integrated into the 

daily work of the school. The President’s $1.5 billion High School Reform initiative would help States better prepare students for postsecondary education by supporting the development 

and implementation of interventions to equip all high school students with the rigorous academic preparation and transition supports they need to enter and succeed 

in higher education. A key strategy would be the use of 8th-grade assessment data, 

in consultation with parents, teachers, and counselors, to develop individual performance plans for students entering high school. The President’s initiative also 

would give States the flexibility to target Federal resources to address the most 

pressing needs of their high schools. While some States, for example, may wish to 

use Federal dollars to improve their vocational education programs, others may decide that improving the quality of their algebra II and chemistry offerings are a 

greater priority. Similarly, instead of distributing Federal dollars for college transition services and supports in discretionary grants that serve small numbers of students, the President’s proposal would enable States to use these resources to support more comprehensive strategies that serve all students, giving particular attention to the needs of at-risk students and those whose parents never attended college. 

The proposal also would require all States to develop and implement reading and 

mathematics assessments at two additional grades in high school, building on the 

current NCLB requirement for annual testing once in grades 10–12. The new assessments would strengthen school accountability and help school administrators, 

teachers, and parents keep students on track for graduation and success in postsecondary education. 

The President is proposing to complement the High School Reform initiative with another $1.1 billion 1 in targeted investments in fiscal year 2007 to improve the academic preparation of high school students for postsecondary success. These investments include: 

• $122 million for the AP program, including a $90 million increase to support 

a multi-year initiative to expand access to AP coursework by training an additional 

70,000 teachers to deliver AP math, science, and critical language courses, while 

helping an additional 700,000 students pass the AP/IB exams in these subjects; • $25 million for the Adjunct Teacher Corps to create opportunities for qualified 

professionals from outside the K–12 educational system to teach secondary school 

courses in the core academic subjects, with an emphasis on mathematics and 

science;

47

Question 5. With reconciliation, we have dealt with the mandatory programs in 

the Higher Education Act, but we have yet to deal with the discretionary programs 

many of which focus on supporting low-income and minority students. What recommendations do you have for us as we move the remainder of the higher education 

reauthorization forward? 

Answer 5. Our priorities in higher education are to improve and increase access 

and strengthen institutions. The administration’s reauthorization proposals include 

a number of initiatives to increase access to postsecondary education for low-income 

students and support institutions. These changes include: redirecting funding for 

high-school related programs in the Higher Education Programs to the proposed 

High School Reform initiative; simplifying the grant application process for Tribally 

Controlled Colleges and Universities and Tribally Controlled Postsecondary Vocational and Technical Institutions; and continuing the President’s commitment to 

graduate fellowships and strengthening American education in the areas of foreign 

language and international studies through the National Foreign Language Initiative. 

We also think a strong effort needs to be made to bring transparency and accountability to the accreditation process. For such an extensive process, very little useful 

information is provided to students and families at the end of the process. Better 

defined standards and significantly improved data reporting needs to be a priority 

of the reauthorization of the HEA.

Question 6a. High school students need a better understanding of the requirements to enter college and how to afford it. What is the role of the Commission on 

the Future of Higher Education as related to the alignment of high school to postsecondary education? In what way will the commission be addressing issues such 

as the transition from high school to postsecondary institutions and reducing the 

need for remediation? 

Answer 6a. The Commission was established by the Secretary of Education to 

begin a national dialogue about the future of higher education in this country. The 

purpose of this Commission is to consider how best to improve our system of higher 

education to ensure that our graduates are well prepared to meet our future workforce needs and to participate fully in the changing economy. The Commission 

brings together members of the business, academic, and non-profit communities to 

address two main issues: the effectiveness of institutions of higher education in preparing our students to compete in the new global economy and ensuring that college 

is affordable and accessible. These issues are directly related to the transition from 

high school to postsecondary education.

Question 6b. In what way will the Commission be addressing issues such as the 

transition from high school to postsecondary institutions and reducing the need for 

remediation? 

Answer 6b. Questions surrounding the transition to postsecondary education and 

reducing the need for remediation are a part of the overall discussions the Commission is undertaking. There have been two meetings to discuss college preparation 

and access issues, and the Commission is tasked with developing a national strategy 

on this issue. The Commission will submit its final report with specific findings and 

recommendations by August 1, 2006.

Question 7. You have said that you hope States will put more pre-algebra into 

their elementary schools so that 8th graders will be able to complete algebra before 

entering high school. Could you please describe how Math Now aims to achieve this 

goal and how this can support No Child Left Behind’s goal of proficiency by 2014? 

Answer 7. The National Math Panel will be advising the Department on key practices, principles, and components of sound math instruction (similar to those found 

in Reading First) for the proposed Math Now for Elementary School Students program. The Panel will also be recommending practices, principles, and components 

to guide intervention through the proposed Math Now for Middle School Students 

program to help prepare every student to take and pass algebra. The goal of preparing every student to take and pass algebra in order to be better prepared for rigorous middle and high school coursework strongly supports NCLB’s 2014 proficiency 

goal.

Question 8. With the increasing emphasis of scientifically based research in education, how can you assist States in learning what interventions work, especially at 

the high school level, to increase achievement? What can be done to better disseminate this information so teachers can take advantage of best practices within their 

classrooms? 

48

Answer 8. The Department of Education provides information to teachers and others about promising education practices and disseminates it widely on the Agency’s 

Web site (www.ed.gov) and through ED Pubs. The Department has been encouraging and financially supporting more scientifically-based research about various 

education interventions. The What Works Clearinghouse was established in 2002 by 

the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to provide educators, 

policymakers and the public with a central, independent and trusted source of scientific evidence of what works in education. Each WWC Report examines the effects 

of replicable programs, practices, products, and policies that are designed to improve 

student outcomes within a topic area. The review process for WWC Evidence Reports is thorough, scientific, and objective. The studies reviewed for each topic are 

determined by an exhaustive search of published and unpublished research literature, including submissions from program and product developers.

Question 9. Our competitiveness relies as much on rural students succeeding as 

it does with urban students. In September 2004, the General Accountability Office 

released a study that I requested, together with Senators Conrad, Collins, and Johnson, suggesting the Department of Education could do more to provide specific assistance to rural districts to help them comply with the No Child Left Behind Act. 

What plans do you have to follow up on the recommendations of this report, beyond 

what’s already been done? 

Answer 9. On January 11, 2005, the Department provided a response to the recommendations made in the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, ‘‘No 

Child Left Behind Act: Additional Assistance and Research on Effective Strategies 

Would Help Small Rural Districts’’ (GAO-04-909). There were two recommendations 

in this report, both of which the Department agreed to implement. Since that time, 

the Department has taken steps to improve communications, outreach, and assistance to the rural community to help them to comply with the No Child Left Behind 

Act. Listed below are excerpts from the recommendations given by GAO at the time, 

along with the action steps taken by the Department. 

Recommendation (1): ‘‘. . . provide additional assistance to States on approaches 

small rural districts can use to implement student proficiency provisions and teacher qualification requirements, including the application of new flexibilities.’’

The Department has implemented this recommendation. The Department’s Rural 

Education Task Force has continued to work with key program staff to examine 

ways to improve the Department’s outreach to rural school districts. Secretary 

Spellings has re-invigorated the task force, realigning its membership to reflect the 

organization structure that she has put in place. The current Task Force has regularly scheduled meetings and has increased its outreach to organizations and educators interested in rural education. In December 2005, for example, the Task Force 

Chairman, Acting Assistant Secretary Beto Gonzalez, and the Task Force Executive 

Director, Linda Hall, met with the rural forum of the Council of Chief State Schools 

Officers to discuss issues relating to No Child Left Behind and its implementation 

in the rural education community. 

In support of the Rural Education Task Force, the Department has established 

a Center for Rural Education. The Center’s Director, Dr. William Smith and staff 

members have held several meetings with members of the rural education community, including focus groups with rural teachers, administrators, and organizations. 

Recommendation (2): ‘‘. . . focus on effective scientifically based methods to improve student performance, and . . . conduct studies on the services that can help 

small rural districts meet student proficiency provisions in light of the unique challenges that these districts face.’’

As stated in the original response, the National Research and Development Center on Rural Education has received an award to conduct rigorous research to identify effective education practices for increasing student achievement and improving 

the teaching and learning environment for rural students. Secretary Spellings recognized the strong tie between this research effort and the focus on rural issues within 

the Department. To ensure that these initiatives remain coordinated, she included 

the newly confirmed Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics 

on the Rural Education Task Force.

Question 10. A number of reports by various groups, in business, Government, 

and private research entities, place a great deal of emphasis on technology literacy 

in the growing economy. As you know, No Child Left Behind authorizes funding designed to help schools integrate educational technology to improve student performance. In recent years, this has received declining support from the administration. 

If Congress were to eliminate funding for this program, as suggested by the PresiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:07 Jul 17, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00052 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\DOCS\26056.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
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dent, are there competing programs that would be able to support the improved 

technology literacy of students? 

Answer 10. Districts seeking funds to integrate technology into teaching and 

learning can use other Federal program funds to accomplish this goal. Integrating 

technology in the classroom through these means, rather than through a separate 

authority, will help and ensure that students are exposed to technology in all areas 

of education and encourage better coordination across programs, rather than making technology a separate, somewhat isolated concern. 

Activities to support technology-based professional development as well as technology activities related to school-based reform efforts are allowable activities under 

the State Grants for Innovative Programs authority. For example, a district may 

wish to spend their State Grants for Innovative Programs funds to integrate technology into a reading curriculum, in order to increase student achievement in reading as well as expose students to useful technological skills. Also, programs such as 

Improving Teacher Quality State Grants and Title I Grants to Local Educational 

Agencies support many local, school- or district-based activities that make use of 

technology in student instruction or teacher professional development. 

Further, flexibility provisions under the NCLB Act permit districts, if they choose 

to do so, to transfer or consolidate certain Federal funds in order to carry out activities, including technology programs, that meet specific local needs. For example, 

under the State and Local Transferability Act, most LEAs may transfer up to 50 

percent of their formula allocations under certain State formula grant programs to 

their allocations under: (1) any of the other authorized programs; or (2) Part A of 

Title I. Therefore, an LEA that wants to implement technology programs may transfer funds from its allocations received under the authorized programs to its State 

Grants for Innovative Programs allocation, without having to go through a separate 

grant application process.

Question 11. Under the American Competitiveness Initiative, there are a number 

of proposals to increase math and science skills for our Nation’s students. Would you 

share with us a description on advancing the education of students with disabilities 

and how to increase their access to postsecondary education and to be competitive 

in the global economy?

[Editor’s Note: The response to this question was not available at time of 

print.]

RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS OF SENATOR ENSIGN BY SECRETARY SPELLINGS

Question 1. In your statement you mentioned that 13 different Federal Agencies 

are currently overseeing 207 different math and science programs that are funded 

by the Federal Government. While I agree that these programs most likely represent, as you said, a lot of flowers and very few weeds, I would like to know what 

is being done to coordinate the math and science programs that are funded by the 

Federal Government. Is it anticipated that the proposed National Math Panel would 

take a role in the coordination of these programs? Is there an entity that determines 

the overall effectiveness of the 207 current Federal programs? 

Answer 1. The recently signed Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 established the Academic Competitiveness Council. This Council is to be chaired by the Secretary of 

Education with membership from the agencies responsible for managing existing 

Federal programs that promote math and science. The Academic Competitiveness 

Council will map out the current landscape of Federal math and science education 

programs to determine where programs are duplicative and where there might be 

opportunities for new programs to address currently unmet needs. The Council will 

also set principles for guiding and metrics for measuring programs on an ongoing 

basis. For elementary and secondary programs, we want to extend agencywide the 

principles of No Child Left Behind—using the best available evidence to help those 

who need it most, providing flexibility and local control, and using assessment to 

measure the increase in student achievement. It is our intention to convene this 

Council as soon as practicable.

Question 2. Many proposals related to math and science programs mention the 

importance of teacher access to curriculum, especially scientifically-based and effective curriculum. What role is the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse playing in this 

effort? Are teachers using this source to access classroom curriculum? What could 

be done to make the efforts of the Clearinghouse more widespread? 

Answer 2. The Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC) for Mathematics and 

Science Education was not reauthorized through NCLB. This administration did not 

seek its reauthorization nor did it request funding. When the authorization for it 

50

expired, Congress extended the Clearinghouse with appropriations language 

through fiscal year 2004. The Clearinghouse was discontinued by the Department 

on September 29, 2005. While many teachers and administrators actively used the 

Clearinghouse as a resource, the administration was not comfortable disseminating 

resources that were not necessarily based upon proven scientific evidence. 

Note: The ENC materials are still available on the Internet as a subscription 

service that offers math and science resources on professional development, lesson 

plans, web resources, and other topics. The Web site, goENC.com, is run by ENC 

Learning Inc. at Ohio State University.

Question 3. While I believe that parental involvement is the most important factor 

of student success, a successful and well-qualified teacher in the classroom is a close 

second. What initiatives are currently underway in the Department of Education to 

enhance science and math teachers’ knowledge and preparation for the classroom? 

What kind of partnership could be fostered within the proposed Adjunct Teacher 

Corps with businesses like IBM and Intel that are already encouraging employees 

to get their teaching certificate? 

Answer 3. This initiative will be consistent with the principles of NCLB’s highly 

qualified teacher requirement—teachers must know the subject they teach. The Department already provides $2.8 billion through Title II the Improving Teacher Quality State Grants program. This new initiative would create an Adjunct Teacher 

Corps that would draw on the skills of well-qualified individuals outside the public 

education system to meet specialized teaching needs in secondary schools. The initiative would concentrate on helping schools find experienced professionals who 

would be able to provide real-world applications for some abstract mathematical 

concepts being taught in the classroom and, in some cases, provide individuals to 

teach temporarily in hard-to-fill positions. 

Funds would be used to make competitive grants to partnerships of school districts and States (or of school districts and appropriate public or private institutions) 

to create opportunities for professionals with subject-matter expertise to teach secondary-school courses in core academic subjects, particularly in mathematics and 

science. Adjunct teachers might teach one or more courses on the school site on a 

part-time basis, teach full-time in secondary schools while on leave from their jobs, 

or teach courses that would be available online or through other distance learning 

arrangements.

Question 4. How does the Department envision the America’s Opportunity Scholarships for Kids fitting into the American Competitiveness Initiative? How would 

they help breed competitiveness in our Nation’s schools and benefit our children 

most in need of assistance with academic assistance? 

Answer 4. America’s Opportunity Scholarships for Kids builds on the commitment 

made under NCLB to help all students reach academic proficiency by 2013–14 by 

empowering parents with educational choices, enabling students to participate in 

high quality educational environments, and making schools more competitive by 

strengthening schools in need of improvement. The program recognizes that students who attend schools undergoing restructuring should have educational options, 

and to that end, the program provides scholarships for these students to transfer 

to a public or private school of their choice or receive supplemental educational services (SES). 

The American Competitiveness Initiative is a comprehensive strategy to keep the 

United States the most innovative country in the world by helping struggling students gain math expertise, expanding students’ access to AP and IB courses, encouraging more individuals to become math and science teachers, and improving research into math education. 

While America’s Opportunity Scholarships for Kids and the American Competitiveness Initiative are distinct programs, they both contribute to competitiveness in 

our schools and benefit children who need academic assistance. 

We know that increased choices for parents mean better academic results for students. Students who are scholarship recipients will be able to participate in a higher 

quality educational program than they would have in absence of the scholarships, 

and because of that, these students are more likely to succeed in the critical areas 

of math and science. We expect these students to be better prepared for their postsecondary years. 

As students transfer to new public or private schools or take advantage of SES, 

this will also breed competitiveness among schools undergoing restructuring. As the 

restructuring schools lose students, they face an incentive to revamp their curriculum and strengthen the quality of their teachers. Thus, America’s Opportunity 

Scholarships for Kids may also enhance the academic program offered at schools unVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:07 Jul 17, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00054 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\DOCS\26056.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
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dergoing restructuring and encourage these schools to implement rigorous math and 

science courses, as well as recruit teachers who are highly qualified to teach in 

these subjects.

RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS OF SENATOR HATCH BY SECRETARY SPELLINGS

Question 1. Thank you for testifying before the committee, Secretary Spellings, 

and laying out the President’s ambitious education initiative. Recently, Utah has 

been laying out its own plans to increase emphasis on math and science and to prepare students to compete globally. This effort is being led by our Governor, the Utah 

State Legislature, and the Utah State Board of Education. Specific to math and 

science instruction: Utah is among the top five States in the numbers of students 

who take rigorous math courses.

• Utah ranks third in Advanced Placement participation and success. The State 

has some International Baccalaureate programs in place and is expanding these 

programs to other high schools. • Still Utah has far too many students struggling through math, as early as the 

4th grade. Therefore, the Utah State Board of Education has an initiative currently 

before the State legislature that, if funded, would provide intensive and personalized help to students who struggle in math in grades 4 through 6. This initiative 

would also require elementary math endorsement, with an emphasis in math content, for all teachers in grades 4 through 6. • Utah is continuing to emphasize greater achievement among minority populations at all ages and is pleased to note that data suggest these students are beginning to improve.

Secretary Spellings, Utah leaders have informed me that they do not wish to see 

an increase in Federal coordination of math and science programs. Utah leaders 

continue to strongly urge that control of public education needs to remain in State 

hands. Utah leaders believe that education is best managed at the local levels. 

Overall, do you think the President’s initiative allows for State control and flexibility? How do you envision that would be accomplished under the plan? 

Answer 1. Within the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI), the States will 

continue to control the expectations for what students learn in mathematics, how 

such achievement is measured, and what interventions are taken to help those students who are struggling in mathematics. These decisions are made by and will remain with the States. The thrust of this initiative is to improve the quality of mathematics instruction by providing clear, research-based guidance to States and by inserting accountability into the many numerous mathematics and science programs 

funded throughout the Federal Government. To be clear, this initiative is designed 

to address a looming national concern—the fact that too few students are well prepared for college in a world where postsecondary education is essential to future 

jobs and a quality of life. I am pleased to hear that Utah has begun to address this 

concern by ensuring that elementary teachers have the necessary subject matter 

knowledge to teach mathematics to the highest levels possible. These Federal initiatives will complement that work. 

First, the work of the National Math Panel will help States answer the question 

about ‘‘what works’’ to help students learn math. These individuals will review the 

research to understand the critical components and principles of mathematics instruction, thus taking the guesswork out of instruction for teachers, principals, and 

other educators. Second, building on that analysis, States will have an opportunity 

to participate in two programs designed to improve the math knowledge of elementary and middle school students. In no case will the Federal Government prescribe 

a curriculum or direct a particular approach to teaching mathematics. Instead, this 

initiative will provide clear, research-based guidance to teachers about what works 

best in teaching mathematics and will also provide funding for initiatives designed 

around that information at both the elementary and middle school level. 

The ACI will also invest in two key activities that will help ensure many more 

students get access to high quality and rigorous mathematics, science, and foreign 

language instruction. The first will provide funds to State and local education agencies to increase the number of teachers who are qualified to teach the Advanced 

Placement and International Baccalaureate programs. The second sparks local innovation to find and place adjunct teachers who have experience and knowledge in 

critical areas such as mathematics, science, and foreign language instruction.

Question 2. Secretary Spellings, I am very appreciative of your leadership over the 

last several months and am particularly grateful for the time you have personally 

devoted to Utah’s concerns. As you are well aware, State leaders continue to ask 

for changes to the No Child Left Behind Act and have expressed reservations about 

52

expanding it to the high school level. As Secretary of Education, I believe it is your 

duty to regularly consult with State representatives in order to ensure that any national education plan honors the role of State leadership in public education. 

Please outline for me how you plan to expand NCLB to high schools and still preserve State leadership and control over education. 

Answer 2. I continue to listen to State and local leaders regarding the concerns, 

challenges, and successes they are experiencing as they educate students. This role, 

as you point out, is a fundamental one to my position as Secretary of Education, 

and a priority as I move into my second year as secretary. I meet regularly with 

local and State educators, business leaders, elected officials, and parents to understand how the Federal Government can work with States to encourage innovation 

and reduce the achievement gap. Here is some of what I am learning and hearing. 

Based on one recent study, more than three-quarters of Americans believe that if 

our high schools don’t change soon, our country will be less able to compete in the 

global marketplace. About 90 percent of the fastest-growing jobs of the future will 

require some postsecondary education. About three in ten 9th graders do not graduate on time, or that for black and Hispanic students the figure is about 5 in 10. 

We cannot ignore those facts but instead must find a way to improve the high school 

experience and work with States to do so. 

The high school initiative as proposed preserves State leadership in education 

while ensuring that the focus remains on improving rigor in high school, identifying 

where students are struggling, and helping them graduate from high school with a 

meaningful diploma. The President’s High School Reform Initiative would hold high 

schools accountable for providing high-quality education to all students. And it 

would help educators implement strategies to meet the needs of at-risk high school 

students. The proposed program would make formula grants to States to support:

• The development, implementation and evaluation of targeted interventions designed to improve the academic performance of students most at risk of failing to 

meet State academic standards; and 

• Expanded high school assessments that would assist educators in increasing accountability and meeting the needs of at-risk students.

This initiative has two main roles: a focus on students who are struggling in high 

school and a means of identifying which students are struggling with the addition 

of State assessments. Utah already assesses high school students in three high 

school grades, and in that respect, is a leader for the Nation. This is exactly where 

we hope the rest of the States will soon follow.

RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS OF SENATOR SESSIONS BY SECRETARY SPELLINGS

Question 1. Is the Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative one that 

other States should employ? How can you help achieve this? 

Answer 1. We are certainly pleased that Alabama is placing a focus on increasing 

student achievement in Math and Science. In general, the Department is supportive 

of programs that are proven to raise the quality of Math and Science education for 

our children. For other States, we believe they can achieve gains in student achievement through programs outlined in the American Competitiveness Initiative. The 

AP/IB Incentive program will help encourage our children to make greater strides 

in math and science, and the Math Now programs will ensure that children get the 

support they need along the way. We aim to help States increase student achievement by working together to implement these programs successfully.

Question 2. I am concerned about the shortages that have arisen in the American 

workforce, particularly in the medical field. Because we don’t have enough American 

doctors, we are forced to bring foreign doctors in, and many American students are 

attending foreign medical schools and then returning to practice medicine in the 

United States. This is especially true in rural areas. The problem is a complex one, 

including issues with medical school enrollment. There are not enough spaces in 

American medical schools to produce the number of doctors we need.

a. There has been a 39 percent increase over the past decade in the number of 

U.S. citizens with foreign medical degrees seeking to participate in the National 

Resident Matching Program. 

b. 17 percent fewer of these students pass their Licensing Exam on the first try 

than citizens of other countries who attended medical school outside of the United 

States and their clinical training can be much less intense. 

c. International Medical Graduates make up 25 percent of practicing physicians 

in the United States.

53

1The Weekly Standard, January 2–9, 2006; Where the Boys Aren’t: The Gender Gap on College Campuses by Melana Zyla Vickers. 

What do you think needs to change in order to both fully supply our need 

for physicians, and equip American students for the medical profession? 

Are you aware of the declaration of the Association of American Medical 

Colleges that we need to raise medical school capacity by 15 percent, and 

that AAMC President Cohen states we need to expand medical school capacity by 30 percent? 

Answer 2. Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, it was generally believed that there 

would be an oversupply or surplus of medical professionals. More recently, this view 

has changed with the AMA expressing skepticism about the surplus of physicians, 

and the Council on Graduate Medical Education reversing its policy to promote restricting the supply of doctors. Its most recent study (January 2005) recommends 

training more doctors. To some extent, the shift in views has already begun to have 

an impact. The Association of American Medical Colleges, for example, has reported 

recent increases in U.S. medical school enrollment. First-time enrollees in medical 

school increased by 2.1 percent over the past year. Of the 125 allopathic schools, 

22 expanded their class size by 5 percent or more and 7 of these 22 schools boosted 

first-year enrollment by more than 10 percent. 

The administration believes that we need to address at an early age and through 

postsecondary education the importance of innovation and scientific inquiry. The 

President has introduced the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI), a multiagency strategy focused on increasing our innovation and competitiveness in science 

and research. 

Maintaining our leadership in science begins with encouraging students to take 

more rigorous secondary school programs and to major in mathematics and science 

fields at the postsecondary level. As part of the ACI, the administration is implementing two need-based programs to address this issue. At the postsecondary level, 

the President proposes increasing aid to first- and second-year college students who 

complete a rigorous high school program ($750 for first-year students and $1,300 for 

second-year students) through Academic Competitiveness grants. National Science 

and Mathematics to Retain Talent (SMART) grants will provide an additional 

$4,000 to third- and fourth-year college students who major in math, science, and 

critical foreign languages. These two new grants will provide $4.5 billion in new 

funding for students over the next 5 years. We believe these initiatives, along with 

No Child Left Behind at the elementary and secondary levels, will better prepare 

students for entry into the medical professions. 

In the short run, one way to address the shortage is to ensure that restrictions 

are not placed on U.S. students’ ability to enroll in foreign medical schools. The current requirements of the HEA impose safeguards that should be retained to ensure 

that those trained are adequately prepared to practice in the United States. Until 

capacity at our Nation’s medical colleges has increased, we need to be careful not 

to impose new restrictions. This will allow students attending foreign institutions, 

as well as domestic medical colleges, to take full advantage of the Federal student 

loan programs in which loan limits for graduate and professional students will increase next year. 

What can we do to help fill this domestic need? 

We need to encourage students from an early age to pursue medicine. We can accomplish this goal by hiring more teachers to teach higher-level science courses; offering a strong science curriculum with an emphasis on experiential learning in 

medicine; and recruiting persons from the medical community to mentor younger 

students. Once students are interested in the field, we need to offer financial incentives through our student aid programs that allow them to complete their studies 

and not incur overwhelming debt. Finally, we need to recruit more minorities and 

women to pursue medicine for a diverse physician pool. By having a long-range 

strategy that starts in elementary and extends through postsecondary education, we 

can increase the number of students interested in the medical field.

Question 3. Reports show that male enrollment in higher education continues to 

decline. A recent article in the Weekly Standard 1 points out that at colleges across 

the country this fall, 58 women will enroll as freshmen for every 42 men. There has 

been tremendous success in ensuring that girls take advantage of educational opportunities, but boys are clearly falling behind. 

a. Only a few fields like math, computers, engineering and the physical sciences 

continue to have more males than females, and the total number of graduates in 

these areas is stagnant or declining. 

54

2 According to a study of the gender gap in education by the Business Roundtable in Washington, D.C. 

Response a. That is correct, and that is why the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative is so important. This is a nationwide initiative that will better 

prepare all elementary, middle, and high school students in math and science, regardless of gender, so that they will be able to compete in the workforce or in higher 

education. 

b. The number of bachelor’s degrees is growing, while the number of engineering 

degrees is declining (in California between 1992 and 2002, the public university system experienced 11 percent more bachelor’s degrees, but 8 percent less engineering 

bachelor’s degrees). 

Response b. Through SMART grants, students obtaining science, technology, engineering, and mathematics degrees will be eligible for additional student aid. With 

more students being exposed and challenged with rigorous math and science 

coursework in elementary, middle, and high school, more interest in those subject 

areas will be eventually seen in higher education as well. 

c. American companies are now turning to foreigners because there aren’t enough 

graduates in quantitative fields. A shocking 40 percent of all master’s degrees 

awarded by American institutions in science, engineering, and information technology go to foreign students, as do 45 percent of all Ph.D.s in those fields.2 Some 

have said that our reliance on foreign sources for math, science, and technology may 

be due to the lack of attention to boys in education. 

Response c. To ensure a strong and prosperous America in the 21st century, our 

students must possess the mathematics knowledge that is the foundation of our Nation’s long dominance in science, technology, and innovation; graduate from high 

school prepared to enter college or the globally competitive workforce, and master 

critical foreign language needed both for success in the global business arena and 

to ensure our national security. The President’s budget request addresses each of 

these challenges. 

What suggestions do you have on reaching males at a young age and ensuring that they realize their full potential? Do you have any plans in place 

to deal with this problem? 

Answer 3. While the Department does not specifically target males in its programs, many of our programs are focused on helping young people meet their educational goals. The High School Reform initiative will help ensure that the services 

of GEAR UP, Upward Bound, Talent Search, and Educational Opportunities Centers, of which approximately 40–45 percent are males, are part of a broader effort 

to provide States and localities with the resources to address retention, access, and 

the transition to college for all students. 

Laura Bush’s Helping America’s Youth Initiative has been able to highlight atrisk youth, especially boys, by educating parents, communities, and schools. 

In addition to No Child Left Behind at the elementary level, the President’s High 

School Reform initiative will help educators implement strategies designed to meet 

the needs of at-risk high school students and hold high schools accountable for providing high-quality education to their students. Interventions will be designed to increase the achievement of high school students, eliminate gaps in achievement between students from different ethnic and racial groups, and help ensure that students graduate with the education, skills, and knowledge necessary to succeed in 

postsecondary education and in a technology-based, globally competitive economy. 

Specific interventions could include programs that combine rigorous academic 

courses with vocational and technical training, research-based dropout prevention 

programs, the use of technology-based assessment systems to closely monitor student progress, and programs that identify at-risk middle school students for assistance that will prepare them to succeed in high school and enter postsecondary education, including college preparation and awareness activities for students from lowincome families.

Question 4. The idea to attract professionals working in high-need fields into 

teaching is a great one, indeed. As a parent, I would love to know that my child 

was being taught science by a former engineer, or learning about math from a 

former accountant. I have been impressed with organizations such as Teach for 

America, which has trained 14,000 individuals since 1990, and the American Board 

for Certification of Teacher Excellence, in which over 700 individuals have earned 

or are pursuing alternative teacher certification. 

a. There is, however, opposition and resistance to alternative teaching routes from 

those who assert that teaching can only be fully understood by going through a traditional education-degree program. 

55

b. How do you answer these challenges, and are there any particular organizations you have seen that show quality results in bringing professionals into the teaching field, equipping them to teach effectively, and 

providing continued support for those new teachers? 

c. What unique skills can professionals bring from their fields that you 

believe will benefit students?

[Editor’s Note: The response to this question was not available at time of 

print.]

QUESTIONS OF SENATOR MURRAY TO SECRETARY SPELLINGS

Question 1. The President’s budget again proposes school vouchers through the 

America’s Opportunity Scholarships for Kids program. The President’s education 

budget also eliminates 42 programs. We often hear that the programs are proposed 

for elimination because they are ineffective. However, there is no evidence that private school vouchers do anything to improve achievement for any students. Further, 

we still have yet to see any real evaluation of achievement under the DC voucher 

program. 

In such a tight budget, how does the Administration justify spending $100 million 

on a program that has yet to be found effective?

Question 2. Secretary Spellings, you and I have previously discussed our mutual 

interest in improving our Nation’s high schools and I hope we can continue that conversation. As you know, I have my own bill on high school reform called the Pathways For All Students to Succeed Act. My bill focuses on improving literacy and 

math skills, academic counseling including creating graduation plans with students 

and their families, accurate calculations and data collection on high school graduation rates, and funding to turn around low performing schools using best practices. 

The President’s budget eliminates the Perkins program, GEAR UP, and part of 

the TRIO program and effectively creates a block grant and would require more 

testing at the high school level. You and the President have said that the idea would 

be to allow States to determine how to spend that block grant—if they determine 

career and technical education to be most needed to fund that, if it’s GEAR UP, 

fund that. The problem with that theory is that all of these programs are needed 

along with new ways and investment to improve our high schools. Further, the overall funding for the high school initiative and the cuts to programs that go to high 

schools don’t add up. 

Considering that the President is proposing a high school block grant to States, 

how does he think that will improve problems in high schools such as high dropout 

rates amongst poor and minority students or a lack of academic preparedness for 

postsecondary education?

Question 3. One of my constituents, Bill Gates, is doing critical work with our Nation’s high schools through the Gates Foundation. He speaks about our Nation’s 

high schools as a question of morals and values and I couldn’t agree more. The Federal role in education has traditionally been to ensure that disadvantaged students 

are receiving an equal education but it is exactly those students, poor and minority 

students, who are dropping out at the highest rates. 

What is the Department of Education doing at the high school level to target improving education for those students?

Question 4. Only one-in-three 18 year olds is even minimally prepared for college 

and the picture is bleaker for poor and minority students. High school students—

especially those most at risk of dropping out of school—need sound advice, strong 

support and an advocate to ensure they are getting all the support and services they 

need to take rigorous courses and have a plan in place for graduation and life after 

high school. Every student must have a clear graduation plan that assesses their 

needs and identifies coursework, additional learning opportunities and other supports to make their goals a reality. The President’s budget includes $1.475 billion 

for high school reform highlights the use of individual performance plans for students entering high schools as a key strategy to ensure all students graduate with 

the skills necessary to succeed in postsecondary education or careers. My bill, the 

PASS Act, contains a similar proposal. 

Does the Department agree that this sort of individualized attention is critical to 

both preventing students from dropping out and succeeding through high school and 

beyond?

56

Question 5. The fiscal year 2006 Budget Reconciliation bill created SMART grants. 

To receive the grants, students must have completed a rigorous secondary-school 

program of study. 

How do you anticipate judging what constitutes a rigorous secondary-school curriculum?

[Editor’s Note: The responses to Senator Murray’s questions were not 

available at time of print.]

[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

Æ