Krista Kafer, Heritage Foundation, October 2001
There's no shortage of advice being directed toward House and Senate conferees charged with hashing out the details of legislation to reauthorize ESEA. Two recent mini-papers in the Heritage Foundation's Backgrounder series - both authored by senior education policy analyst Krista Kafer - offer policy prescriptions that conferees would do well to heed. The first paper, "Target Education Dollars to Children with the Greatest Need," (October 2, 2001) makes the case for program consolidation, arguing that local flexibility to target funds is far likelier to aid low-income and disadvantaged students than scattered, well-intentioned programs mandated from Washington. (Included are lists of all the education programs funded under current law, those contained in the President's proposed FY 2002 budget, and the far larger number of programs contained in the House and Senate versions of the ESEA bill.) The second paper, "Wasting Education Dollars: The Women's Educational Equity Act," spotlights one program that Kafer believes should go the way of the dinosaur - the Women's Educational Equity Act (WEEA). Born 27 years ago on the premise that teaching and learning practices were inherently biased against girls, the program seeks to cure a problem that no longer exists; it is boys, not girls, who today fall short on most measures of achievement. We can no longer afford to waste precious resources on outdated and ineffectual programs, Kafer writes; instead, we must focus our dollars and efforts on those who most need our help - poor kids. Both papers are easily accessible online at http://www.heritage.org/library/backgrounder/bg1481.html ("Target Education Dollars to Children with the Greatest Need," October 2, 2001) and http://www.heritage.org/library/backgrounder/bg1490.html ("Wasting Education Dollars: The Women's Educational Equity Act," October 11, 2001).
