Election Outcome: Impact on Education
Considering the effects of a Bush or Kerry White House on school libraries
By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 9/1/2004
Before casting your vote on Election Day, consider the effect it'll have on your job—a White House led by George W. Bush or John Kerry will certainly have an impact on education and school library funding.
Indeed, President Bush is credited with No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the ambitious education reform plan that calls for adequate yearly progress in schools and penalizes those that fail to close the achievement gap. But since securing bipartisan support for the law in 2001, the program has never been fully funded.
In 2002, Congress authorized $26.4 billion for the program, but Bush proposed only $19.1 billion. NCLB was eventually appropriated at $22.2 billion. Three years later, nothing much has changed—Bush has asked that the program be funded at $24.9 billion for FY 2005, even though Congress has authorized $34.3 billion.
While Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has yet to prove himself in the White House, his track record gives voters an indication about where he stands on education, says Emily Sheketoff, the executive director of the American Library Association's Washington office. Kerry, who voted for NCLB, advocates its full funding, meaning that Improving Literacy Through School Libraries—which falls under NCLB—would be fully backed at $250 million, rather than at its current $19.8 million, says Josh Farrelman, ALA's assistant director of government relations. His organization has been urging Congress to fund the library program at $100 million, which would turn it from a competitive grant for high-poverty school districts into a grant that would be available to each state department of education. The library grant is the first program since 1965 to specifically target school libraries.
While Bush may have run as the education president during his first term, that's no longer the case, Sheketoff says. The president's 2005 budget proposes killing 38 education programs next year—including most small literacy programs—totaling $1.4 billion in projected savings, a relatively small portion of this year's record $521 billion deficit.
But thanks to former librarian Laura Bush, the president has been kind to librarians. Bush's FY 2005 budget called for $220 million, or an 11 percent increase in funding for the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) and maintained 2004 levels for Improving Literacy Through Library grants. The First Lady is also credited with securing $20 million in LSTA money to recruit and train a new generation of librarians. While this is a good start, "we need tuition reimbursement and tax credits especially if we're going to attract more diversity to the field," Sheketoff adds.
Can librarians expect the same kind of support from Kerry? Although he hasn't said so directly, the answer is likely yes. Kerry cosponsored a Senate version of the LSTA bill, and has voted in favor of legislation regarding libraries. And let's not forget that he and his running mate John Edwards propose creating a $200 billion National Education Trust Fund that would be paid for by rolling back tax cuts for families earning more than $200,000 a year. "Overall, Kerry is proposing to put a significant amount of money into education, and that's good," says Edward Kealy, executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, which advocates for more federal investment in education.
