Inspiring a New Generation of American Innovation Through Education and Job Training

Republican National Committee ^ | April 26, 2004

[RWR8189]

President Bush has a proven track record of supporting America's innovation economy, including:

• Helping Community Colleges Train 100,000 Additional Workers: The President's Jobs for the 21st Century Initiative includes a $250 million proposal to help America's community colleges train 100,000 additional workers for the industries that are creating the most new jobs.
• Doubling the Number of Workers Receiving Federal Job Training Assistance: The President has proposed to give governors more flexibility to get Federal training funds into the hands of workers in the form of Innovation Training Accounts (ITAs). These accounts give workers access to a range of training options that will help them compete for high-skill, high-demand jobs.
• Increasing Federal R&D Funding: With President Bush's FY 2005 budget proposal, total Federal R&D investment during the first term will be increased 44 percent, to a record $132 billion in FY 2005, compared to $91 billion in FY 2001. Federal R&D spending in the FY 2005 budget represents the greatest share of GDP in over ten years.
• Supporting Nanotechnology Research: Since 2001, funding for nanotechnology R&D has more than doubled to $1 billion and funding for information technology R&D is up to $2 billion.
• Ensuring Better Health Care for All Americans: President Bush fulfilled a commitment by completing the historic doubling of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget by 2003, dramatically increasing medical research funded by NIH to speed cures and treatments for the diseases that plague our Nation and the world. The President's FY 2005 budget provides $28.6 billion for NIH, a $729 million increase, which will allow NIH to support a record total of nearly 40,000 research project grants.

Better Education for Better Jobs

America's growing economy is a changing economy, and we must respond to these changes by helping more Americans gain the skills to find good jobs in our 21st Century economy.

President Bush has announced a plan to better prepare students for success in higher education and the job market - including $33 million for expanded Pell Grants for low-income students who complete rigorous coursework in high school and scholarships for low-income students who pursue degrees in math and science.

The President's plan will improve the quality of education at our Nation's high schools - including $100 million to help striving readers and $120 million to improve math education.

No Child Left Behind

To help the youngest Americans receive a quality education and learn the basic skills they will need to succeed in the future, President Bush proposed and signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act. All skills begin with the basics of reading and math, which should be learned in the early grades. Yet for too long, for too many children, those skills were never mastered. With the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act, we are making progress toward educational excellence for every child.

• Requiring states to set clear standards for what every child should learn - and taking steps to help each child learn.
• Holding schools accountable for student progress by regularly testing in the fundamental subjects of reading and math.
• Reporting results to parents and ensuring they have better options when schools are not performing.
• Providing more funding - a 49% increase in Federal support for elementary and secondary education since 2001.

The Next Steps in Helping Young Americans Get the Skills They Need to Succeed in the 21st Century

The No Child Left Behind Act is providing accountability and resources to improve the achievement of America's elementary and secondary students. These reforms are already beginning to show results in elementary reading and math scores, but President Bush also wants to ensure that all high school students will be better prepared to pursue higher education or enter the workforce. Unfortunately, recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) demonstrate that, while achievement for our Nation's 4th and 8th graders is on the rise, scores for twelfth graders have declined in both reading and mathematics.

• Only 24 states require at least three years of math, and only 21 states require at least three years of science.
• Because their math and science education is lacking, young Americans stand to miss out on job opportunities, will lack the necessary skills for post-secondary study, or will not complete post-secondary study in a timely manner.
• Students who fall behind in reading have a greater chance of dropping out of high school altogether. Nationally, of one-hundred ninth-graders, only 67 will graduate from high school on time, only 38 will directly enter college, only 26 are still enrolled their sophomore year, and only 18 will end up graduating from college.
• U.S. 12th graders performed among the lowest of the 21 countries assessed in both math and science on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study.

The President's Solution

High School

• Striving Readers: The Administration is proposing a new $100 million Striving Readers Initiative that would make competitive grants to develop, implement, and evaluate effective reading interventions for middle or high school students reading significantly below grade level. This program would complement the Reading First State Grants program, which provides comprehensive reading instruction for children in kindergarten through third grade that is grounded in scientifically-based reading research.
  
• Math: The Administration is proposing a $120 million increase for the Mathematics and Science Partnership program authorized in the No Child Left Behind Act. The increase would support direct Federal competitive grants to partnerships to increase achievement in mathematics for secondary students. The new 3-year competitive grants would support projects that have significant potential to accelerate the mathematics achievement of all secondary students, but especially low-achieving students.
  
• Advanced Placement: Advanced Placement programs not only encourage the growth of Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses, but also serve as a mechanism for upgrading the entire high school curriculum for all students. The Administration is proposing a $28 million increase for the Advanced Placement program authorized in the No Child Left Behind Act bringing spending on it to nearly $52 million a year.
  
• Adjunct Teacher Corps: Many school districts need opportunities and the personnel to strengthen instruction in middle and high schools in the core academic subjects, especially mathematics and science. The Adjunct Teacher Corps would help alleviate this critical situation by bringing professionals with subject-matter knowledge and experience into the classroom. The Administration is proposing a new $40 million initiative to provide competitive grants to partnerships of school districts and public or private institutions to create opportunities for professionals to teach middle and high school courses in the core academic subjects, particularly in mathematics and science.
  
• State Scholars: The Administration proposes $12 million in funding for the State Scholars program to make grants available nationwide. In August 2002, President Bush announced the State Scholars Initiative, modeled on the successful Texas Scholars program, to encourage high school students to take more rigorous high school courses. Under the State Scholars Initiative, 12 States have already received assistance in developing and promoting strong courses of study, as well as providing special incentives for students enrolled in these programs.
  
• Strengthening and Modernizing Support for Vocational Education: The major federal program for vocational education, the Perkins Vocational Education program, has remained fundamentally unchanged since its founding in 1917; President Bush proposes to modernize this pre-World War I program to better serve the needs of the 21st century worker. The President's proposal redirects $1 billion in annual funding from the Perkins Vocational Education program into a new Secondary and Technical Education program (Sec Tech) and requires that schools participating in the program offer 4 years of English, 3 years of math and science, and 3½ years of social studies as part of their vocational education curriculum.
  
• Assessing Whether High Schools Are Producing Educated Graduates: To ensure that students graduating from high school have the skills they need to succeed in post-secondary education or careers, the President's plan would include 12th graders in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Currently, states are required to participate in the NAEP in 4th and 8th grades in reading and math every two years. Extending this requirement to 12th grade will enable educators to assess whether high schools are meeting the needs of students so they can learn the skills they will need to succeed.

Higher Education

• Enhanced Pell Grants: The Bush Administration proposes to establish a $33 million program to enhance Pell Grants to reward low-income students who participate in the State Scholars Program by taking a rigorous high school curriculum. This program would provide up to an additional $1,000 per year to students in the first two years of college who complete the rigorous State Scholars curriculum in high school, enroll in college full time, and are Pell Grant recipients. Next year, approximately 36,000 low-income graduating high school seniors would be eligible to receive an enhanced Pell Grant under this proposal.
  
• Presidential Math and Science Scholars Fund: To ensure that America remains the world leader in the innovation economy - and to ensure that America's graduates have the training they need to compete for the best jobs of the 21st century - President Bush wants to expand opportunities for math and science education in colleges and universities. The President proposes establishing a new public-private partnership to provide $100 million in grants to low-income students who study math or science. Under this plan, approximately 20,000 low-income students would receive up to $5,000 each to study math or science. Students would have to be eligible for Pell Grants to receive this additional $5,000, although this new fund would be run separately from the Pell Grant program.
  
• The cost of this new initiative would be offset by an important reform to the Pell Grant program. Currently, there is no limit on the number of years an individual can receive a Pell Grant to help pay for an undergraduate degree. The Administration proposes an 8-year equivalent time limit for a 4-year equivalent degree and a 4-year equivalent time limit for a 2-year equivalent degree. This reform would encourage students to finish sooner and eliminate abuse of the program where students extend their studies excessively.

Making Federal Job Training Work Better for America's Workers

• President Bush is committed to providing America's workers with better training for better jobs. Job training for American workers is more important than ever, and we need a new way of delivering job training in America.
  
• America's growing economy is a changing economy, and some workers need new skills to succeed. Today's economy is an innovation economy. Two-thirds of America's economic growth in the 1990s resulted from the introduction of new technologies - and 60% of the new jobs of the 21st century require skills held by only one-third of America's workforce. We need to close the skills gap in America. Not enough workers are being trained quickly enough to take advantage of many of the new jobs that are being created.
  
• President Bush has proposed significant reforms to Federal worker training programs to double the number of workers receiving job training, to ensure those programs work better for America's workers, and to close the skills gap so we fill every high growth job with a well-trained American worker. The President has proposed reforming major Federal job training programs to put strict limits on overhead to ensure tax dollars support training for workers who need it. And, he has called for giving workers personal job training accounts called Innovation Training Accounts (ITAs).

Background on the President's Job Training Initiative

• The Problem: Currently, the Federal government spends almost $23 billion for more than 30 programs spread across 10 departments and agencies. The result is a confusing hodgepodge of programs, some of which have remained fundamentally unchanged for decades, and administrative costs that prevent too many dollars from getting to the workers who need training the most.
  
• Bureaucracy: The programs in place to train workers are out-of-date, overlapping, and ineffective. Too often, red tape and administrative costs eat up job training money before it even gets to workers. President Bush believes that every dollar spent on unnecessary bureaucracy is a dollar taken out of the pocket of a worker who needs job training.
  
• Complexity: Job training programs are set up with so many rules that many workers, potential employers, and local community colleges do not participate. For example, 30 states have been granted temporary relief from these requirements so they don't lose their link with community colleges. However, there are limits to what we can do under the current law. President Bush recognizes that the best training is not filling out forms - it is learning on the job or at a community college.
  
• Limited Accountability: Currently, there is no clear standard or benchmark to measure the effectiveness of federal job training programs. Federal grants to states for job training have 17 different measurements of accountability. President Bush proposes to refocus these programs on the end results that matter most to America's workers - Did you get a job? How long did you keep it? And how much are you being paid?
  
• Failure to teach skills in demand: Remarkably, even though the law requires it, many job training programs do not assess what skills are in demand for jobs in the worker's area. Instead, workers are moved through the system with little regard for whether they will have a realistic chance at a job when they complete training. President Bush believes we should be training workers for jobs in sectors of the economy that are most likely to grow.

The President's Solution

• Less Red Tape and More Help for Workers: The President's plan establishes a clear goal that the vast majority of job training dollars should go to the workers who need them - rather than to bureaucratic overhead. Currently, administrative expenses are capped at 15%, but regulatory loopholes allow too many of our training dollars to be spent on bureaucracy and other non-training services. The President's goal is to double the number of workers receiving job training by maximizing the available Federal dollars going to workers and eliminating unnecessary overhead costs.
  
• New Innovation Training Accounts (ITAs): The President proposes new Innovation Training Accounts to provide workers with more flexible and responsive assistance. Workers would have more job training choices - they would be able to use community colleges, private-sector training providers, local businesses, or community organizations - to get the help they need in the most effective and efficient way possible. These ITAs would give states considerable flexibility to tailor training programs to the unique economic conditions of each state. ITAs would consolidate 4 major training and employment grant programs totaling $4 billion into a single grant, eliminating unnecessary overhead costs and making Federal support more effective and efficient.
  
• More Accountability: Under the President's plan, states would be given more flexibility to design their own workforce training programs. But they would also be required to set clear goals and outcomes focused on the number of workers placed in jobs, the duration of the job placement, and the earnings of the job. The President proposes consolidating the number of state performance goals of the Federal job training system from 17 to 3. Under the new goals, accountability will be determined by asking these questions: How many people are finding work? How much are workers earning in their new jobs? How long are they staying in these jobs?
  
• Jobs for the 21st Century Initiative: The President's Jobs for the 21st Century Initiative, announced in the State of the Union Address, includes a $250 million proposal to help America's community colleges train 100,000 additional workers for the industries that are creating the most new jobs. This expands the Department of Labor's successful High Growth Job Training Initiative, launched under President Bush in 2001, which has provided $71 million in 38 partnerships nationwide between community colleges, public workforce agencies, and employers. These initiatives help community colleges produce graduates with the skills most in demand by local employers.
  
• Personal Reemployment Accounts: The President has also proposed $50 million for a pilot program of accounts of up to $3,000 for those unemployed workers who have the most difficulty finding jobs to use toward job training, transportation, childcare, or other assistance in obtaining a new job. Workers who found a job quickly would be able to keep the balance of the account as a reemployment bonus.

[dead]

The GOP should stop reminding me about this sort of crap.

I'm trying to forget about them so I can vote for the guy again.

[Ed_in_NJ]

And $25 million for forced random drug testing of students, whether the parents want it for their kid or not.

[Willie Green]

So in conjunction with gobal policies that undermine our domestic industries and businesses
the RNC is now promoting Big Government social welfare programs to "retrain" the masses???

What a crock of globo-crapola!

[raybbr]

Helping Community Colleges Train 100,000 Additional Workers: The President's Jobs for the 21st Century Initiative includes a $250 million proposal to help America's community colleges train 100,000 additional workers for the industries that are creating the most new jobs.

Once again they fail to tell us what those new jobs will be.

[ladylib]

Maybe Bush should team up with Hillary of the Marc Tucker Letter to Hillary Clinton fame.

They deserve each other.

[ladylib]

That's because they don't know.

[LibTeeth]

This goes down really well with Kool-Aid. Yummm!

[MonroeDNA]

Retraining is bad.

Even if it is free.

Did I get that right?