Vocational education cuts not backed by Congress

WASHINGTON -- Congress is standing by the vocational education programs President Bush wants to scrap, and that could cost him more than $1 billion he wanted for his own ideas about high school.

Career education has emerged as a political issue as Congress and the president try to figure out how to help struggling high schools and how to pay for it.

No high school effort gets more federal money than vocational and technical education, which trains students for college work and careers in fields from auto repair to health care. Almost one-half of high school students make vocational classes a major part of their studies.

Bush wants to end federal funding of vocational education and shift the $1.3 billion savings into a high school initiative of more annual testing and flexible state spending. His administration contends the programs have not been shown to increase academic success.

Yet Congress made clear on Wednesday it will not support his plan, raising doubts about where Bush will get enough money for his high school proposals, estimated to cost $1.5 billion.

Both the House and Senate education committees unanimously approved plans to renew the vocational programs. Final action is expected in the coming months.

The moves underscored the resistance Bush is facing from the GOP-led Congress over his second-term education agenda.

"Clearly, the administration is entitled to its opinion, but it's up to Congress about which programs we're going to authorize," said John Boehner, chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. He said the House bill "is a very clear statement of the intentions of Congress with regard to vocational education."

Boehner, R-Ohio, announced he will hold high school hearings, saying his committee shares Bush's broad goals.

But Boehner, a loyal defender of Bush's No Child Left Behind law, said the time is not right to expand that law's reach in high schools. The testing Bush wants, he said, is like "adding more cars to the train. I think it could stop the train."

Members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee said the vocational programs an essential part of keeping students in school and helping the nation train its work force.

The committee chairman, Sen. Mike Enzi, said committee leaders are working with the White House on Bush's high school goals.

"We think there's some responsible ways of meeting the president's goals of getting the budget deficit reduced in half in five years," Enzi said. Then, referring to the proposed vocational cuts, he said: "This is not one of them."

In letters to Boehner and Enzi, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings opposed the vocational bills. Citing a series of test scores and other high school measures, Spellings said that the federal programs were not giving students a strong enough academic foundation.

"It would be irresponsible to continue an investment in a program that does not improve the education of students at the high school level," Spellings wrote.

The House and Senate bills are similar, and their sponsors say they accomplish administration goals of demanding more rigor and results from schools that receive money.

In both bills, states would have to create model sequences of courses that involve both high school and college. Schools would have to offer at least one of those sequences.

States could withhold money from schools that do not meet performance goals for at least two straight years, similar to an approach used for many schools under No Child Left Behind.