Senate Allocates $6 Billion to Train Teachers in Poor Areas

Endorsing a Democratic plan to add billions of dollars for teacher training, the Senate on Tuesday continued its drive to boost school spending while debating a bill that would reshape the federal role in education.

The 69-31 vote for an amendment sponsored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) showed again that the Senate’s appetite for school spending is large and bipartisan.

The Kennedy amendment, backed by all 50 Democrats and 19 Republicans, calls on Congress to appropriate $3 billion in the next fiscal year for teacher training and then authorize increases of $500 million each year for the next six years.

By fiscal 2008, if the amendment becomes law, the federal government would authorize an unprecedented $6 billion for training teachers who serve disadvantaged students.

The education reform bill, a high priority for President Bush, would seek better academic results from low-performing schools by creating a new federal framework for school accountability. Educators would get more money under the Bush plan, but they would have to show progress. Persistent failure would lead to sanctions up to shutting down a school and starting over.

Kennedy said his amendment would address a problem that has plagued many schools in low-income neighborhoods: the growing number of uncredentialed or barely credentialed teachers.

In California, for example, an initiative launched in 1996 to reduce class size in elementary grades, through a crash hiring program, drove up the number of teachers working on emergency credentials in Los Angeles and several other cities.

The dearth of qualified teachers poses a huge challenge for educators because the districts most in need of good teachers--those serving high numbers of disadvantaged students--are the ones most likely to have trouble hiring them.

Kennedy’s amendment was opposed by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi and other Republicans who argued that the education bill’s priority should be reformed accountability rules for public schools, not more money.

But that view is being tested by spending proposals that the Senate is finding irresistible during a debate expected to last several more days.

Last week, the chamber approved two measures that seek to add hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending over the next decade. One, which would require new special education funding for disabled students, passed on a voice vote. Another, to authorize more aid to disadvantaged students through the program known as Title I, was endorsed by more than two-thirds of the Senate.