Here are highlights of education initiatives mentioned in President Bush’s State of the Union Address on Jan. 20, with additional details provided by the White House. Funding amounts would be for the 2005 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Community-based job training: A new, $250 million grant program to strengthen the role of community colleges in workforce development.
Pell Grants: The establishment of a $33 million program to enlarge, by up to $1,000 per year, the federal college-tuition grants of low-income students who take part in the State Scholars curriculum in high school.
“Striving Readers” initiative: A $100 million proposal for competitive grants to promote effective reading help for middle or high school students reading significantly below grade level.
Adjunct Teachers Corps: A $40 million plan to foster opportunities for professionals from other fields to teach middle and high school courses in the core subjects, particularly mathematics and science.
Mathematics and science partnerships: A proposed increase of $120 million, nearly doubling the $150 million total for this program in fiscal 2004. The focus would be on grants to projects that accelerate math achievement for secondary students, especially low-achieving students.
Advanced Placement program: A proposal to more than double federal spending, to $52 million, to help make AP classes more widely available in high schools.
Abstinence education: A call to double federal funding, to more than $270 million, for programs promoting sexual abstinence.
Drug testing: A proposed dramatic increase in funding for schools that want to screen students for illicit drugs, from $2 million to $25 million.
SOURCE: The White House
