President’s Budget Shortchanges Latino Students

With less than 60 percent of Latino students receiving a high school diploma and less than 10 percent a college degree, President George W. Bush is proposing severe budget cuts for educational programs. These cuts will be extremely harmful to the Latino community. They will affect thousands of students from preschool through college, making it more difficult for our youth to graduate and succeed in a high-tech, information society. Despite the rhetoric, the President’s budget will leave many children behind by eliminating or cutting funding for programs that assist parents and students in their quest for an excellent education, the foundation of the American dream. The President’s budget cuts Education Department funding below this year’s level. Furthermore, he shortchanges his signature legislative accomplishment, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) by $12 billion. Since NCLB was signed into law, President Bush has underfunded it by $39 billion. Consider the programs slated for elimination in the President’s budget:

• Dropout Prevention: The President has recommended zero funding for dropout prevention every year since taking office.
  
• GEAR-UP, Upward Bound and Talent Search: These programs ensure that high-risk students succeed in high school and move on to college. 1.3 million students — 70 percent of whom are minorities — will lose the support they need to make it to college.
  
• Safe and Drug-Free Schools: No federal funds will be allocated to ensure safety and to reduce drug abuse in our schools.
  
• The Carl Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act: The President has proposed to dismantle the primary federal education program that supports secondary schools and connects education to careers.
  
• Perkins Loans: The President’s budget eliminates the nation’s first student financial aid program.
  
• Even Start: This program integrates early childhood education, adult literacy, and parenting education into a unified family literacy program. Currently, 50,000 families are served under Even Start — 23,000 of these families are Latino. [more]
• CA: Nearly Half of Blacks, Latinos Drop Out, School Study Shows [more]