FYI
From: Arnold Mitchem
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2011 11:47
AM
To: Arnold Mitchem
Subject: Huffington Post --
Putting Education on the Chopping Block
This was posted today on the Huffington Post.
Putting Education on the Chopping
Block
Over the past few weeks, President Obama has consistently shared his
vision for our nation's economic future while giving remarks about the federal
government's fiscal policy. Intense examination of the fiscal year (FY) 2011
budget agreement has been of particular interest and concern to us all,
including everyday Americans who wondered about a government shutdown, the
future of Medicare, and much more. Yet there's one critical component in the
agreement that has not received significant attention: College opportunity for
low-income Americans.
While White House officials hammered out a deal with Congress to reach
the magical $38.5 billion figure to demonstrate
The administration has offered up two education efforts with proven
success for the chopping block: A set of college opportunity initiatives called
TRIO and GEAR UP along with adult education programs. Those of us in higher
education are quite perplexed by the president's actions. President Obama has
volunteered cuts in his FY 2011 budget agreement that exceeded even those put
forth by the majority of Republicans. On one hand, the president points out
that his vision for long-term fiscal responsibility is based on "core values,"
but then he chooses to cut away important efforts that have contributed greatly
to
To begin with, the Obama Administration's decisions have harmed the
efforts of TRIO and GEAR UP -- with roots that stretch back to the Civil Rights
Movement. In crafting college opportunity policy in the last century, Democrats
acknowledged that students and families needed more than money; they needed
help to overcome other persistent obstacles that hamper students' social
mobility. Poor academic preparation, lack of good information, and an
adolescent culture that discouraged hard work in the present as prelude to
significant payoffs in the future all needed to be addressed. TRIO and GEAR UP
grew out of that recognition. Yet the Obama Administration proffered further
cuts here, cuts that will result in nearly over 100,000 of the country's most
vulnerable students being kicked out of these programs.
Another set of programs up for the taking by the Obama Administration
-- and not by the Republicans -- are adult education programs. These grants
provide workforce investment, GED preparation, and adult literacy support for
approximately 2.3 million low-income adults every year, ranging from high
school-age students through older, nontraditional students and English language
learners. If these funds do not reach the adult learners in which they were
intended to support, a brighter future may not be obtainable for these students
who deserve a second chance through education.
In my view, the Obama Administration's offering of TRIO, GEAR UP, and
adult education as places to make excessive cuts tells us a great deal about
its core values. Primarily, it suggests that high school students and young
adults from working-class and poor families have been pushed to the margins of
the administration's consciousness. The administration remained steadfast in
preserving efforts -- however minimized -- to ensure education reform and to
promote early childhood learning. But efforts to support the aspirations of the
less affluent for social mobility -- apart from preserving the maximum grant in
the Pell Grant program -- were given short shrift.
Before President Obama, his administration, and any other Democrat
offers up additional cuts to programs like TRIO, GEAR UP, and adult education,
they must ask themselves one crucial question: How fair is it to sacrifice the
needs of low-income families striving to achieve a better life for themselves
and their children? Indeed, the true test of the integrity of the
administration's fiscal approach is not what it proclaims it from the podium,
but rather, how it makes it operational in the back room.
Dr. Arnold L. Mitchem is president
of the Council for Opportunity in Education, the only national organization
dedicated to furthering the expansion of postsecondary opportunities for
low-income and first-generation students.
President
Council for
202-347-7430