l. Legislative Branch Appropriations Mark-up
2. No Dates Set for Markups for Archives and NEH Appropriations Bills
3. Panels to Review and Make Recommendations on History Standards
1. Legislative Branch Appropriations Mark-Up - On June 8 the
House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch,
chaired by Representative Ron Packard (R-CA), marked up their
FY'96 appropriations bill. Although the text of the bill is
embargoed until the full committee considers the bill on June 15,
the committee did make available a summary. The bill includes a
number of provisions for privatizing, reducing, and even
eliminating government programs. The bill calls for the
elimination of the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) with its
responsibilities folded into the Congressional Research Service,
the General Accounting Office, and the National Science
Foundation.
The legislative branch bill calls for major cuts in
Congressional printing. The result would be a policy shift in
how the public gains access to government information. Without
hearings to consider the effects of such a policy, the
subcommittee has recommended a 50 percent cut in funding for the
Depository Library Program. There are 1400 depository libraries,
with over half located in colleges and universities. These form a
partnership between the federal government and libraries to
provide free public access to government information. The
summary statement of the subcommittee's bill stresses the
importance of moving toward increased use of electronic records;
however, many Depository Libraries are not equipped to provide
access to electronic records. This policy shift raises major
questions about how electronic records, many of which have a
relatively short life span, will be maintained and preserved. The
American Library Association is urging all users to let both the
House and Senate Appropriations Committees know of the importance
of full funding for the Depository Library Program and the
continued publication of key Congressional publication like the
bound Congressional Record and the bound serial set. They stress
that until a larger proportion of the American public has access
to electronic records, there is a need for key Congressional
records to be available in both paper and electronic formats.
The Library of Congress has fared relatively well in the markup.
Representative Packard noted that the Library of Congress is the
only agency within the legislative branch appropriations which
will receive an increase over current funding. Although the
Library of Congress will not receive the amount they requested to
cover pay increases and will have to absorb these costs from
current funds, the House subcommittee provided $3 million
additional funds for the Library of Congress' National Digital
Library . In hearings earlier this year, Librarian James
Billington had argued persuasively that this money could be used
to leverage significant sums of private money to expand the
National Digital Library.
2. No Dates Set for Markups of Archives and NEH Appropriations
Bills --Neither the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee
(which has responsibility for NEH, the National Parks, and
historic preservation) nor the Treasury, Postal Service and
General Government Subcommittee (which has responsibility for the
National Archives and the National Historical Publications and
Records Commission's grants program) have set dates for the
markups of their appropriations bills. These markups could,
however, be held on short notice.
3. Panels to Review and Make Recommendations on History
Standards -- The Council for Basic Education has just announced
that they have established two independent panels to review the
history standards. The Pew, MacArthur, and Ford Foundations have
provided funding for the project. Each panel includes respected
public figures, teachers, and academic historians. The panels
will hold their first meeting at the end June and expect to
complete their work in October, at which time they will issue a
final report. Christopher Cross, the President of the Council
for Basic Education, noted that the task of the panels "will be
to review the standards, to evaluate their scholarly merit,
balance, and feasibility for practitioners, and recommend the
types of changes they agree should be incorporated in revised
editions of the standards."
The panel on U.S. History will be chaired by Albert H. Quie,
former governor of Minnesota and the former ranking Republican on
the Committee on Education and Labor of the U.S. House of
Representatives. The World History standards panel will be
chaired by Dr. Steven Muller, president emeritus of The Johns
Hopkins University. In addition to the chair, other members of
the U.S. panel are Cary Carson, Vice President for Research at
Colonial Williamsburg; Evelyn Brooks Higginbothan of Harvard
University, David Hollinger of the University of California at
Berkeley; Jeanette LaFors, a Social Studies teacher at Carlmont
High School in Belmont, California; Diane Ravitch of New York
University; Rex Shepard, a supervisor for curriculum development
in Catonsville, Maryland; Stephan Thernstrom, Harvard University;
Reed Ueda of Tufts University; and Maris Vinovskis of the
University of Michigan. (I did not have a list of the world
history panel when preparing this report.)
The establishment of these prestigious panels holds the promise
of a thoughtful and constructive review of the national history
teaching standards which have been the focus of sharp attacks,
especially from former chair of NEH, Lynne Cheney.
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