Following are proposed education initiatives from President Clinton’s State of the Union Address last week:
- Require that school districts receiving federal funding: end social promotion of students not yet academically ready to advance to the next grade; turn around or close their lowest-performing schools; take steps to guarantee teacher quality; issue school and district report cards; and implement “sensible” discipline policies.
- Triple federal funding-to $600 million-for summer school and after-school programs.
- Spend $200 million to help states turn around failing schools.
- Increase federal scholarships for students who commit to teaching in inner cities, rural areas, or American Indian communities. Last week, the Clinton administration unveiled proposals to spend $35 million—up from $7.5 million this fiscal year—to recruit 7,000 teachers for “high need” public schools and $10 million to train and recruit 1,000 new teachers for areas with high concentrations of American Indian and Native Alaskan students.
- Boost spending on charter schools to support 3,000 such schools by early in the 21st century.
- Continue support for an Initiative to hire 100,000 new teachers over seven years. The program was launched in the current fiscal year with a $1.2 billion budget.
- Provide funding to help communities build or modernize 5,000 schools.
- Strengthen the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Act.
