James M. Jeffords: “I appreciate his willingness to work with me on this. The provisions for planning and administration of these…”

“I appreciate his willingness to work with me on this. The provisions for planning and administration of these school-to-work systems at the State levels must reflect the kind of collaboration and explicit agreement that is demonstrated in this bill between the Federal Departments of Labor and Education. That is key to the success of this initiative across the States. I would like to say, again, that this is a critically important bill, the importance of which we cannot overestimate. I want to give some reasons as to why that is the case. Let me run through first some of the goals that we have established and where we are. With respect to the first goal--by the year 2000 all children will start school ready to learn--we find that there are many, many children who are not in that capacity at this point. We have, for instance, only a small percentage of our young children attending preschool, especially with respect to the economically underprivileged. For instance, in 1991, only 37 percent of 2-year-olds had been fully immunized. Less than half of all 3- to 5-year-olds from families with incomes less than $30,000 were enrolled in preschool. Fully 70 percent of the children eligible for Head Start go unserved.”