During its mark-up of the Senate bill to reauthorize NSF (S.
2817), the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP)
Committee approved an amendment that would consolidate the two
existing Math and Science Partnership programs into a single
program within NSF.
As readers may recall, in FY 2002 similar but not identical Math
and Science Partnership programs were funded within both the
Department of Education and NSF. The purpose of both programs is
to improve science and math education through partnerships among
states, school districts, university science or math departments,
and other eligible partners. The NSF Partnerships were intended
to be merit-based grants to develop model programs and best
practices; the Education Department program was intended to
provide funding to states by formula grant, to be distributed to
partnerships that include high-need school districts. However,
because the Education Department Partnerships received only
minimal funding ($12.5 million compared to $160 million for the
NSF Partnerships) in FY 2002, NSF is currently administering the
grants for both Partnership programs.
The HELP Committee, which in the Senate has jurisdiction over the Department
of Education as well as partial jurisdiction over NSF, approved its
version of the NSF reauthorization bill on September 5. In addition
to authorizing a doubling of the NSF budget by FY 2007 (see FYI
#97 for additional details of the bill), the HELP Committee's bill
would authorize the Math and Science Partnership program in NSF but
eliminate the Education Department's Partnership program.
According to reports, under the HELP Committee's version of S.
2817, NSF would operate the Math and Science Partnership program
as a competitive grant program for three years (fiscal years 2003
to 2005), at which time the program - still administered by NSF -
would transition to a formula grant program for fiscal years 2006
and 2007, with the funds going to State Education Agencies for
distribution. It appears that at this point NSF might no longer
have control over which partnership proposals received funding.
Since the Eisenhower Professional Development program was
terminated in FY 2002, repeal of the Education Department's Math
and Science Partnership program would mean the end of all
targeted Education Department funding for improving science and
math education. (There is, however, generic Teacher Quality
money that may be used for improving science and math as well as
other types of instruction.)
S. 2817 was marked up by the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday,
but no change was made to the Math and Science Partnerships
provision. The House version of the NSF reauthorization bill
does not include the same provision to eliminate the Education
Department's Partnership program and consolidate the Partnerships
within NSF, and there are indications that key House members
oppose this provision. If the provision is not deleted when the
bill goes before the full Senate, this issue will need to be
reconciled during the House-Senate conference on the bill. The
conference has not yet been scheduled and conferees have yet to
be named.
Enlarge text
Shrink text
Print
E-mail
Digg this
Del.icio.us
Furl