U.S. Pupils ‘Ill Prepared’--Cavazos : Education Secretary Forecasts $353-Billion 1989-90 Cost

The U.S. educational system continues to soak up huge amounts of money--projected at a record $353 billion for the new school year--while churning out students “ill-prepared for a changing world,” Education Secretary Lauro F. Cavazos said today.

Cavazos, in releasing the Education Department’s annual statistical forecast for the 1989-90 school year, said education expenditures will amount to 6.8% of the gross national product and even exceed the Bush Administration’s proposed 1990 national defense budget of $303 billion.

He said all levels of public and private education will spend about $353 billion in state, federal and local dollars, compared with last year’s overall spending of $330 billion.

“Our nation continues to make a tremendous financial investment in education but the education deficit continues to grow,” Cavazos said, and “too many Americans remain ill-prepared for a changing world.”

Education officials point to the dismal performance of American young people on academic achievement tests, particularly in areas such as math and science that are considered critical in a fast-changing technical society.

In most instances, Americans scored near the bottom in both math and science when compared with students of dozens of other industrial nations.

President Bush has called an “education summit” Sept. 27-28 in Charlottesville, Va., with the nation’s governors, and Cavazos said the meeting was a “historic step . . . to address this national crisis.”

“Such leadership is critical,” Cavazos said, “but parents, teachers--indeed, all Americans--must become involved if we are to ensure that each student has an opportunity to be educated to his or her fullest potential.”

Mary Futrell, outgoing president of the National Education Assn., attributed the increasing costs of education to a rapid rise in the number of children living in poverty and children of immigrants.

“As you get more children who are poor into the school systems, you get more deficiencies, and students whose needs are different and greater,” said Futrell, explaining that the report fails to “accurately reflect the diversity of students”--children of recent immigrants who do not speak English and those from poor or single-parent families.

“So it costs more to educate those children,” she added.