The passage today of a stopgap measure by the U.S. Senate, that cuts $4 billion in federal spending and allows the government to continue functioning through March 18, while a victory for Republicans and Democrats who supported the bill, could be considered a disaster for literacy and learning in America.
The two-week budget measure abolished several literacy programs–$250 million Striving Readers program, the $66 million Even Start family-literacy program, the $25 million Reading is Fundamental program and the $26 million National Writing Project.
In addition to eliminating these programs, the bill also guts the $40 million Arts in Education program, the $88 million Smaller Learning Communities program, and the $64 million Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships (LEAP) program.
The Obama administration had proposed eliminating these discrete educational programs and replacing them with a single pool of competitive funds called the Effective Teaching and Learning: Literacy Fund. Nonetheless, the measure passed both the House and Senate without any pot of money to help increase literacy among children, youths and adults.
While a recent 2009 study, undertaken by the federal government, revealed that 32 million adults in the U.S.–about one in seven–are saddled with low literacy skills, the chopping today of millions of dollars from literacy and learning programs in America, is certainly not the way to race to the top, or win the future.
