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ISTE Update
August 2002 Washington Notes Appropriations UpdatePresident Signs Supplemental AppropriationsLate last month, the Appropriations Conference Committee came to an agreement on the extremely contentious FY02 Supplemental Appropriations bill and the President signed this compromise version into law at the beginning of August. A deal on this bill was only concluded after the Administration threatened to veto the bill if Congress agreed to the Senate’s version, with its $31.6 billion price tag. A House-Senate Conference Committee haggled for weeks but ultimately reached a compromise, voting to spend $28.9 billion in supplemental funding. While the bulk of the supplemental funds will support defense, homeland security and disaster relief priorities, Congress did steer some funds to education programs. Among other things, the bill provides $1 billion for the Pell grant program and an additional $2.3 million for the Ready to Teach program, which is to be used for a new grant competition. Senate Appropriations Committee Moves Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations BillLast month’s approval by the Senate Appropriations Committee of the FY03 Labor, HHS and Education spending bill marks a significant reversal of fortune for federal education technology programs. The Senate’s bill includes funding, and funding increases in some cases, for all of the education technology programs—including the Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology, the Community Technology Centers, and the Star Schools programs—that the Administration proposed to eliminate in its proposed budget. Additionally, the Senate’s bill increased spending on federal education programs overall by $4.2 billion to $53.2 billion. The full Senate is expected to consider the bill in early September. The following is a list of programs and their appropriations levels in the Senate bill: Enhancing Education Through Technology-$700.5 million, level funding Meanwhile, the outlook in the House for education appropriations in general and education technology in particular is somewhat murkier. House appropriators, including the Chairman of the Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Ralph Regula (R-OH), have objected to the lack of money allotted to their appropriations bills by the House’s budget resolution. Even though House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) has announced his intention to move the Labor, HHS and Education bill as soon as the House returns from recess, it is not clear whether Chairman Regula will even hold a mark-up of this legislation without gaining extra funds for his bill. If House action on this appropriations bill does not occur before Congress leaves in early October, Congress can either pass a continuing resolution to keep all education programs operating and return after the fall elections to complete work on the education funding bill and other unfinished measures (known as a lame duck session); or pass a continuing resolution to assure funding of all federal programs until a new Congress convenes in January. Under a continuing resolution scenario, Congress could decide to: 1) fund all program at last year’s levels, thereby ensuring the survival of education technology programs that the Administration sought to eliminate but erasing increases approved by either of the chambers (e.g. PT3’s $5 million boost by the Senate); 2) fund all programs at the level of one chamber’s passed version or of a compromise between both chambers’ passed versions; or 3) fund all programs based on either last year’s appropriations or one of the chamber’s versions but reduced by a certain percentage across the board. OERI UpdateEducation Research Reauthorization on HoldThe slow movement towards reauthorization of the Office of Education Research and Improvement (OERI) picked up some steam in late June when, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, at long last, held a hearing on OERI. Now playing catch-up with the House, which has already passed its version of OERI reauthorization, the Senate is just now beginning to move forward on its own vision for OERI, with this hearing serving as the first step. During the hearing several Senators, including HELP Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), voiced strong support for increasing funding for research in education, especially in light of the new requirements concerning “scientifically based research” in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In addition, Senators supported regional applied research as well as development and technical assistance programs, and urged that these programs be continued. Over the August recess, the Senate will continue its efforts to draft its version of OERI reauthorization, which it expects to introduce in September. The Senate bill will likely include authorizations for the Regional Laboratories and the Comprehensive Regional Assistance Centers, but the fate of the Regional Technology in Education Consortia (RTECs) and Eisenhower Mathematics and Science Consortia remains unclear. Even if the Senate does introduce an OERI reauthorization bill, however, it is increasingly unlikely that action on it will be completed before the close of this Congress because of the shortness of this fall’s Congressional schedule and the likely major differences between the House and Senate bills. The House bill, H.R. 3801 can be accessed at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:h.r.03801: E-Rate UpdateLatest on Distribution of E-Rate FundsAs of July 24, the Schools and Libraries Division (SLD) of the Universal Service Administrative Company has committed $686.3 million to E-Rate applicants. To date, no E-Rate funds have been committed for internal connections as SLD continues its efforts to determine whether sufficient funds exist to provide full funding to all applicants in the 90% bracket. Over the past several months, SLD has indicated that it was likely that the lack of funds available to fund even the 90% bracket would lead to pro rated reductions for all 90% eligible internal connections applicants. However, with SLD having already rejected a number of internal connections applications or portions of their applications for a variety of program rule breaches, there may be sufficient funds to fully fund all eligible internal connections requests at the 90% level. A decision on this issue is not expected until early fall. The SLD has also been busy over the past month implementing policy solutions to some new and old problems. On August 6, SLD posted detailed guidelines on how schools and consortia must comply with the certification requirements of the Children’s Internet Protection Act. Last month, the SLD posted new guidelines on an issue that has been pending for years: how applicants can receive payments when their original service provider has gone out of business or has filed for bankruptcy protection before processing their BEAR payments. Under the new rules, the SLD may now assist applicants in obtaining such BEAR payments through a "Good Samaritan" service provider, one that merely acts as a pass through for the BEAR payments. RulemakingsThe FCC continues to work on the issues in the large scale E-Rate proceeding that remain to be resolved. In June, the Commission resolved one of the largest issues in the passel of issues on which it sought comment in its spring Notice of Proposed Rulemaking; what to do with unused funds from previous years. In its decision, the Commission allowed unused E-Rate funds to be used to compensate for a shortfall in provider contributions to the universal service fund but, in exchange, limited this drain on unused E-Rate funds to the next three fiscal quarters and pledged to devote future unused funds to funding eligible applications. Despite completing work on this issue, Commission decisions on a host of other E-Rate issues, ranging from whether to allow applicants to only apply for pre-approved services to establishing sanctions for program rule violations, may not arrive before applications for the new funding year become available. Another issue of significance to the E-Rate community also is pending at the Commission: whether to alter the universal service contribution mechanism to ensure its stability (and prevent further raids on unused E-Rate funds). The universal service fund, which supports not only E-Rate but also high-cost (mostly rural) and low-income telephone users, is paid for by a fee imposed by the FCC on the interstate and international revenues of telecommunications carriers. As a result of the economic downturn and stiff competition in the long distance market, contributing providers have sustained a significant drop in their interstate and international revenues, leading to less funds flowing into the universal service fund under the current contributions system. While the Commission avoided raising the assessment on carriers, thereby averting higher phone bills, it was forced to take unused funds from the E-Rate program to prop-up the fund. Understanding the need for a long-term solution to ensure the solvency of the fund, the Commission is engaged in a rulemaking to consider alternatives to the current contribution system. The Commission has offered a proposal for comment that would change the current system, where the universal service fund is filled by assessments on the interstate and international revenues of telecommunications providers, with a system that is based on connections. Under the Commission’s proposal, interstate telecommunications providers would contribute $1 per month for each residential, single-line business, and mobile wireless connection (excluding pagers), and $.25 per month for each pager connection. After the collection from those users is completed, the remaining funds needed to fill the universal service fund’s coffers would be collected from multi-line businesses based upon the maximum available capacity or bandwidth of their connections. Since this proposal, created and supported by the long distance industry, shifts the burden of universal service fund collection from the long distance carriers to local and wireless providers, some of the major incumbent local exchange carriers have come up with their own proposals. BellSouth and SBC, filing jointly, submitted a proposal under which all providers of telecommunications, including common carriers, private carriers, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other content providers, regardless of technology platform or facilities ownership, would contribute based on their retail relationships with customers. Thus, all providers would contribute something for every customer that they serve. Two other proposals were also offered during the comment period – one from Verizon and the other from Sprint. Verizon suggested that all broadband information providers be required to contribute to the E-Rate portion of the universal service fund, since these providers draw subsidies from only that portion of the fund. Sprint, a dissident from the main long distance group, offered a proposal to fund all of universal service by assigning all providers to particular market segments (wireless, local, long distance) and assigning responsibility for portions of the overall fund to each segment based on market share. Actual payments by providers would be contingent on the number of connections that they serve. While it is far from clear which proposal, if any, will be adopted, FCC Chairman Michael Powell has committed to complete action on a new universal service fund contribution mechanism by April 2003. CIPA UpdateAction Needed Immediately: NTIA CIPA StudyAs schools begin the second full year of compliance with the Children’s Internet Protection Act, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is part of the Department of Commerce, is conducting a study of whether and how filtering software and Internet safety policies are working in educational institutions. Formal comments to NTIA are due by August 27, 2002. The study seeks to gather information from respondents in three main areas:
ISTE and COSN both plan to file formal comments as organizations but both need input from members. For those members interested in commenting directly to NTIA, the ISTE Home Page includes a link to a special NTIA CIPA Study Web page that allows members to input information pertaining to these three priority questions and to send e-mail responses to the NTIA and to ISTE. For those members that would like to provide data to ISTE but desire to remain anonymous, ISTE’s Web site is designed to provide members with the option of submitting answers only to ISTE, which will be used only to inform ISTE’s formal comments to NTIA. Participation in this study is key – no other study has focused on how Internet filtering and blocking tools are actually working in schools and libraries, nor on how Acceptable Use/Internet Safety policies are actually being used and working in the field. TEACH Act UpdateTEACH Act Moves a Step Closer to EnactmentAfter months of delay, the House is on the brink of passing the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act of 2001 (TEACH), something the Senate accomplished more than a year ago. With House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner agreeing to release the bill, which he was holding up for reasons unrelated to its substance, the TEACH Act sailed through its July 17 full Judiciary Committee mark-up without any changes, passing out of the Committee by voice vote. It is anticipated that the House will take up and pass this bill when it returns from its August recess. If the House passes the TEACH Act without amendment, it will go directly to the President without a House-Senate conference, because the versions of the bill passed by the Senate and the House will be identical. The TEACH Act updates the existing distance learning exception to the Copyright Act to accommodate the growth of digital age distance learning. It will enable educational institutions to develop the full potential of online distance education, expand educational opportunity, and enrich educational content for traditional and nontraditional students alike. The TEACH Act accomplishes these goals by allowing the distance learning exception to apply to “anytime, anywhere” learning and by expanding the categories of work that can be used in online distance education. Enactment of the TEACH Act will permit multi-media educational content to be delivered digitally to locations where students can use an Internet-accessible computer. The TEACH Act also incorporates safeguards to respond to the concerns of copyright owners about distribution of digital content, including limiting distribution of online course material to enrolled students only, and requiring the use of technological measures to reasonably prevent the unauthorized retention and redistribution of such material. The TEACH Act has broad bipartisan support. It was initially drafted after the United States Copyright Office completed an extensive study in May 1999, concluding that current copyright exceptions are not adequate to support digital distance learning. Since being introduced in 2001, TEACH has been the subject of serious negotiation, and has the full support of both the education and content communities. It also has strong support in Congress. In the Senate, the bill was originally sponsored by Senators Hatch & Leahy. It also passed unanimously in the full Senate. DO IT UpdateSenators Dodd and Jeffords Introduce Digital Opportunity Investment Trust ActThis month saw an increase in momentum for the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust concept with the introduction in the Senate of the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust Act (S. 2603). A companion bill to H.R. 4641, S. 2603 would establish a trust funded by 50% of the federal revenue resulting from the auctions of the publicly owned electromagnetic spectrum and licensing fees derived from that spectrum. Senators Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and James Jeffords (I-VT) are its chief sponsors. According to bill S. 2603, the purpose of the fund is to
Grants and contracts would be awarded by the Director of the Trust (appointed by the chairman of the National Science Board), advised by an Advisory Board. Those entities eligible for grants, nonprofit public institutions with or without private partners, could use trust funds for innovative and experimental ideas and techniques that --
Senators Dodd and Jeffords testified in front of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Communications on June 12 in reference to this legislation. While action on this legislation is considered unlikely this year, it is expected that this bill will be reintroduced in the next Congress. The full text of this legislation is available at: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?
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