Issue Position: Education

Issue Position

Issue Position: Education

When anyone talks about the future of this great nation, we all quickly realize that providing a strong education for our children is essential.

When we talk about how dramatically the world has changed - how everything is driven by new technologies and how all the growing job fields involve technology - we focus immediately on the need to provide a strong education base for our children. When we talk about the skills that our workforce needs in order to keep America's economy ahead of our global competition, we focus on the need for education.

It's tragic that we, the federal government, are failing in education. And what I find even more tragic is that the reason we can't fulfill these promises is not because of terrorism or international threats - it's because we cut taxes, draining from needed programs. I assure you that I'll keep working to restore education funding, but unfortunately, the tax cuts have greatly expanded the deficit, and with terrorism, war and the hurricane-recovery, I'm not optimistic that we'll restore all the cuts made in critical education programs.

I have continuously supported public education and my legislative record speaks for itself. In 2004, I announced a new program, "Adventure of the American Mind." This program enables educators and librarians to incorporate the Library of Congress digital collections into school curricula and will provide access to an incredible wealth of information and knowledge for various school projects. The funding I was able to provide to California University of Pennsylvania and Waynesburg College enables these schools to educate the educators on how to access the program.

As a part the Technology Literacy Initiative I supported, more than 1,500 computers have been given to students within 26 school districts in Southwestern Pennsylvania since the program's inception in 2002. The overall mission of the program is to enhance the educational competitiveness of the emerging workforce, by increasing teachers' abilities to deliver technology literacy skills through new teaching methods.

I also support programs that bring educators together with economic-development organizations to support workforce development initiates, including initiatives to make sure graduates have the skills our employers need and to educate students about exciting job opportunities that are available in our area in industries we've attracted and grown here as we've diversified our economy.

I realize these programs and initiatives are just the tip of the education iceberg, but I also recognize that we've left educators to struggle, because without adequate funding, they are left without the proper tools. As I've done in the past, I will continue to listen to educators and parents about what's wrong and what's right with our nation's public education system and other education initiatives, and together we'll work to improve our schools.

"Adventure of the American Mind" to Help Schools

I am excited that we will be starting a new initiative through which the Library of Congress that will make many of the library's vast primary sources readily available to motivated students in Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District.

This program, called "Adventure of the American Mind," will enable educators and librarians to incorporate the Library's digital collections into school curricula and will provide access to an incredible wealth of information and knowledge for various school projects.

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, and our goal is to make many of its resources directly available to our teachers and our students.

The program takes an "educate the educators" approach to providing equipment, training and other resources to teachers so that they, and through them their students, can access the primary sources at the Library of Congress.

I am especially pleased that Pennsylvania's 12th District will be one of only a handful of areas in the nation to be included in this exciting program.

The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, and it serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with more than 126 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include nearly 19 million books, 2.6 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 56 million manuscripts.

The Library's mission is to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations. Among other things, the Library is undertaking a major effort to digitize many of its collections, which will make resources more readily available through the World Wide Web.

The program is very flexible in that it can provide laptops or other computers, modems, internet connections or other equipment, as well as training for teachers who can go to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, to see first hand what all's available. It's an exciting program that I'm sure will create many "adventures of the mind" for students in our area.

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