Prime Minister, Pop Star Push for Global School Aid

For more than 72 million children around the globe, school is not yet an option. Advocates of universal schooling are in Washington this week hoping to persuade federal lawmakers to increase the United States’ contribution for an international effort to make basic education available for all the world’s primary-age children.

U.S. officials would have to double the nation’s pledge to the undertaking over the next year—to $1 billion—and boost it to $3 billion annually over the next five years to meet what is deemed to be its share of the cost of reaching the Education for All goal by 2015. Bills to do so were introduced in Congress last May. Measures introduced in previous years have not made it out of committee.

“The fact that the United States is giving one-fifteenth or one-sixteenth as much compared to our population and income as other countries is something we find very unsettling,” said Gene Sperling, who chairs the U.S. chapter of the Global Campaign for Education , an organization that promotes education as a human right. While the U.S. contribution has increased over the past several years, “we think the American people would support far more,” added Mr. Sperling, who served as national economic...