Clinton to Urge Tuition Aid for Teachers in Poor Areas

WASHINGTON â€”  Pressed to improve his record on race, President Clinton plans to propose a program to subsidize the tuition of 35,000 would-be teachers who agree to work for at least three years in troubled schools in high-poverty areas.

The initiative, which the president plans to outline today during a speech to the NAACP national convention in Pittsburgh, is similar to one he offered earlier in his administration for police officers-in-training to help cities fight crime.

The $350-million plan would provide scholarships to student teachers who would then go to work in urban and rural areas with the highest concentration of low-income families, where minority students are represented in disproportionately high numbers. Some of the funds would also be spent to improve teacher-training programs at colleges.

This is the first concrete program of its kind Clinton has offered since pledging recently to mount a broader effort to address the racial problems that afflict the nation.

Clinton has been criticized by some in the civil rights community for wielding more rhetoric than action on the problems of ethnic minorities.

The initiative seeks to flesh out the president’s pledge to confront the racial discrimination that continues to plague minorities. It would help “put all kids of all races on the same platform,� said Rahm Emanuel, assistant to the president. “Education has always been the key� to fostering equality and “making sure we don’t become two Americas,� he said.

The initiative also is part of the Clinton administration’s effort to boost academic performance and help American children compete in the global economy.

The proposal will be introduced in legislation covering federal programs for post-secondary education. White House officials said they were optimistic about its prospects, but the GOP-controlled Congress has typically balked at Clinton’s new efforts in education, considering this area the rightful domain of local and state governments.

The proposal also resembles Clinton’s signature AmeriCorps national service program, which pays some school costs for young people who do public service work. Republicans in Congress have repeatedly tried to kill that program, saying it costs far too much for the limited good it accomplishes.

The president’s proposed “police corps,� which offers scholarships to encourage young people to join police forces, was authorized as part of the 1994 Crime Act. It has been funded for two years, providing scholarships of up to $7,500 per year to students who pledge to become police officers after graduation.

White House officials said the president decided to direct the new program at schools in low-income areas because they are often ill-equipped to offer minority students what they need.

“There’s a very acute need for qualified teachers that must be addressed in the schools that serve large numbers of minority students,� said Mike Cohen, a special presidential advisor on education.

More students were enrolled in the nation’s schools this year than ever before, surpassing an earlier peak 25 years ago. The record is expected to be broken every year for the next 10. By 2006, that will amount to a 15% increase in enrollment, with California leading the surge.

The nation will need to prepare about 2 million new teachers over the next 10 years, Cohen said. Los Angeles Unified School District, which now has record-high enrollment, estimates that the number of students in its schools will steadily increase for the next five years, rising from 667,000 this year to 718,000 in the fall of 2001.

Under Clinton’s proposal, public school districts and colleges with teacher-training programs would be encouraged to submit joint proposals on how they would use the federal money to recruit a corps of future teachers and then prepare them for the challenges that await them in schools where most students come from low-income homes.

“The school system has to be strategic about what they need and what the best way to get this is,� Cohen said.

For instance, school systems like Los Angeles with large percentages of students who have first languages other than English may set as a priority the training of more teachers in bilingual education. Other school districts, anticipating the growing need for computer science teachers, may focus on that goal.

The $350 million in federal funds over five years would be divided between the scholarship programs and more general funding to upgrade the quality of teacher training.

“The challenge is to make sure we don’t just fill the classrooms with anybodies, but get good teachers in the classrooms where they are most needed--namely those in high-poverty areas,� Cohen said.