President'S Budget Does Little To Close Achievement Gap In Education
Mr. Speaker, President Bush recently announced his opposition to the affirmative action plan used by the University of Michigan in admissions. It is troubling that the academic achievements of white students and African American students…
Mr. Speaker, President Bush recently announced his opposition to the affirmative action plan used by the University of Michigan in admissions. It is troubling that the academic achievements of white students and African American students at Michigan are markedly different, but it is troubling for a reason that President Bush apparently did not consider. It is troubling that almost a half century after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education there remain such disparities in the academic achievements of white students and African American students.
Mr. Speaker, the public schools are where we deliver on the promise of equality of opportunity. The public schools must deliver on that promise to white children; to black children; to children whose parents do not speak English in their homes; to the children of parents who care passionately about their children, who read to them every night, who join the PTA and volunteer at their children's schools; to the children of parents who are themselves children and are as little prepared to be parents as their parents were before them.
Just days after President Bush announced his opposition to the University of Michigan's affirmative action plan, he announced his proposed budget. We see from that budget what he would do to close the achievement gap so that universities can achieve a diversity in population without affirmative action plans like Michigan's. Mr. Speaker, he would do very little.
The very programs that are most effective in closing the achievement gap and delivering on the promise of equality of opportunity for every child are hardest hit. The proposed budget cuts No Child Left Behind by $9 billion. The act gives a nod to the promise of equality of opportunity, but the budget breaks that promise.
The budget cuts after-school programs by more than 40 percent, teacher training by almost $200 million. It cuts individualized instruction in math and reading for disadvantaged children. President Bush's budget guts Head Start, our effort to reach disadvantaged children who now arrive for kindergarten so far behind they can never catch up.
I sat in a first grade class in my State and had one child after another read out loud to me. Some children read effortlessly in a sing- song voice because the material lacked such challenge. Other children read laboriously, sounding out every word, getting every third or fourth word wrong.
When those children apply for college 13 years later, I fear there will be the same differences in their academic achievement, and we will still need affirmative action plans like Michigan to achieve diverse populations in our colleges.
Mr. Speaker, it is not acceptable to me that our children's chances in life depend so greatly on the circumstances into which they were born. President Bush's budget shows that he is not bothered by that.