Report Title:

Title 1; Elementary and Secondary School Act

RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 signaled the first major federal involvement in local education, establishing a precedent concerning the interaction among levels of government in the delivery of education services; and

WHEREAS, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a part of President Lyndon Johnson's proclaimed "War on Poverty", with a focus on mechanisms to supplement local educational practices in response to social concern about poverty; and

WHEREAS, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act contained eight significant components that had an impact on later educational legislation, such as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975; and

WHEREAS, these eight components were: (1) a focus on a disadvantaged population; (2) a focus on individual needs; (3) a focus on systems planning; (4) a focus on consumer participation; (5) a focus on personnel development; (6) a focus on public/nonpublic cooperation; (7) a focus on supplementing regular school services; and (8) a focus on evaluation and accountability; and

WHEREAS, in 1967, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was amended to extend provisions for the coverage of services for handicapped students. In 1981, the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act was passed in place of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; and

WHEREAS, the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act consolidated many of the separate discretionary programs that had been authorized under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act into block grants to the states;

WHEREAS, Chapter 1 of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act, which replaced Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is a federally funded program in the form of block grants to states for the purpose of compensatory education programs for low-income and at-risk students;

WHEREAS, compensatory education programs are designed specifically to compensate or make up for student academic shortcomings owing to lack of opportunity in the home environment. For example, compensatory programs in reading target students whose progress has been negatively affected because they come from homes where reading is seldom modeled or seriously encouraged; and

WHEREAS, recent efforts to make Chapter 1 a "portable" benefit by having federal funds "follow the child", rather than target schools and communities with the greatest need, have been opposed by the National Education Association on the grounds that these efforts represent an attempt to diffuse and dilute the effectiveness of Chapter 1 by shifting the focus away from the needs of low-income students in poor schools and communities; and

WHEREAS, recent efforts to "block grant" Chapter 1 by repealing a number of education programs, including Chapter 1, and combining the dollars into a single federal grant, have been opposed by the National Education Association on the grounds that these efforts would undermine the standards, accountability, and targeting of funds that have proven successful; and

WHEREAS, in the thirty-two-year history of the Title I/Chapter 1 program, the federal government has conducted two major longitudinal studies on the program's effectiveness. Some of the key findings outlined in a 1984 article by the study's director were:

WHEREAS, among the findings from the final report issued in 1997 were:

WHEREAS, these two studies have concluded that well over $100,000,000,000 has been spent across three decades for a program that research says does not reach its goal of helping children overcome poverty's negative impact on their school achievement; and

WHEREAS, federal involvement in local education ties the hands of the states by linking the availability of funds to certain program activities, specific reporting requirements, and prescribed organizational structures. It is widely recognized that programs will organize themselves according to the activities, requirements, and structures required by the source of their funds rather than according to the needs of their customers; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-first Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2001, the Senate concurring, that the United States Congress is urged to allow the states to make Chapter 1 a "portable" benefit by having federal funds "follow the child", rather than target schools and communities with the greatest need; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the President pro tempore of the United States Senate, the Vice-President of the United States, and the members of Hawaii's congressional delegation.