[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 148 (Wednesday, November 30, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: November 30, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        TRIBUTE TO JACK JENNINGS

                                 ______


                          HON. DALE E. KILDEE

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, November 29, 1994

  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Speaker, during my years of service in the House of 
Representatives I have had the opportunity to work with many fine and 
dedicated staff people. One of the best has been John F. ``Jack'' 
Jennings who is retiring at the end of this Congress. First as counsel 
for the Subcommittee on Elementary, Secondary and Vocational 
Educational, and later as general counsel for education for the full 
Education and Labor Committee, Jack's advice has been highly regarded 
by myself and many other members of both the subcommittee and full 
committee.
  The following article on Jack's distinguished career with the 
Education and Labor Committee appeared in the September 28, 1994, issue 
of Education Week. I bring it to my colleagues' attention as a tribute 
to Jack's many accomplishments.

        Education Aide Leaves 27-Year Legacy of Quiet Influence

                            (By Mark Pitsch)

       When Congress adjourns this fall, a revised Elementary and 
     Secondary Education Act will have given the major federal 
     education programs a new emphasis.
       The end of the session will also signal a new chapter in 
     the career of John F. Jennings, who has been instrumental in 
     shaping that legislation--more so than most of the lawmakers 
     he has served as an aide on the House Education and Labor 
     Committee.
       Mr. Jennings, whose choirboy looks betray his 51 years, is 
     retiring after an unparalleled 27 years on the committee's 
     staff.
       Only its chairman, Rep. William D. Ford, D-Mich.--who is 
     also leaving Congress at the end of the year--has served the 
     panel longer. And when it comes to education issues, perhaps 
     only the influence of a committee chairman exceeds that of 
     the unflappable Mr. Jennings.
       ``Nobody is irreplaceable around here, but the fact is, I 
     look at the committee and I don't see anybody ready to step 
     in with his kind of qualifications,'' Mr. Ford said. ``He's 
     got a scholar's mind with a lot of pragmatic experience.''
       ``When all of us arrive here, we feel we bring the ideas 
     that never got to Washington before,'' Mr. Ford continued. 
     ``Jennings has been able, with one after another new member 
     of the committee, to walk them through where this 
     evolutionary process is taking us.''
       Mr. Jennings's withdrawal from Capitol Hill comes at a time 
     when lawmakers and the Clinton Administration are making the 
     most dramatic changes in policy that Congress has 
     contemplated since it first took an active role in education 
     with the enactment of the original E.S.E.A. in 1965.


                        from access to standards

       At that time, access to education for minorities and low-
     income children was the key objective of the law and its 
     cornerstone, the Chapter 1 compensatory-education program. 
     But the law that will be enacted this fall will prod states 
     and districts to improve the quality of schools by requiring 
     them to set high curricular standards.
       It is a transformation that corresponds with Mr. Jennings's 
     own evolving beliefs as the committee's chief education 
     counsel.
       ``I do believe in standards now; I didn't a few years 
     ago,'' he said in an interview. ``It does a kid no good to be 
     in a program that isn't any good.''
       ``I think I have learned, which I knew intellectually but 
     have seen anew, that just because things were done a certain 
     way in the past doesn't mean they should be done that way in 
     the future,'' he said.
       Mr. Jennings, who is universally known as Jack, describes 
     his early years as ``the typical ethnic Catholic 
     background.'' His father was a policeman, his mother was a 
     housewife, and they had five children.
       ``If you were an Irish Catholic boy growing up in the 50's 
     in Chicago, you became one of the three P's--priest, 
     politician, or policeman,'' Mr. Jennings said. ``My mother 
     wouldn't let me become a policeman, and I tried the 
     seminary.''
       After five years at the local diocesan seminary, which 
     served as a high school and earned him some college credits, 
     Mr. Jennings turned to more secular pursuits. He enrolled in 
     Loyola University, where he became active in the Illinois 
     College Young Democrats.
       As a law student at Northwestern University, Mr. Jennings 
     was asked by the local Democratic ward committeeman, Rep. 
     Roman Pucinski, to be the precinct captain for his 
     neighborhood of about 500 voters. Mr. Jennings was able to 
     turn out a Democratic majority in most major elections, even 
     though the precinct had previously had a Republican tilt.
       In 1967, Mr. Pucinski became chairman of the Education and 
     Labor Committee's Subcommittee on Elementary, Secondary, and 
     Vocational Education. He lost his first subcommittee vote and 
     promptly called Chicago.


                         a call from washington

       ``I was sworn into the Illinois bar one day and into the 
     D.C. bar the next,'' recalled Mr. Jennings, who became the 
     subcomittee's staff director.
       In 1973, Rep. Carl Perkins, D-Ky.--who began a 17-year 
     reign over the full committee in 1967--took over the 
     elementary and secondary education subcommittee and took the 
     unusual step of announcing publicly that he would retain Mr. 
     Jennings as staff director. Mr. Jennings also joined the full 
     committee as associate counsel.
       Over the next 11 years the lawyer and the chairman cemented 
     a bond that grew stronger the longer they worked together. 
     Mr. Jennings said he was attracted by Mr. Perkins's 
     ``constancy of purpose'' in trying to help the poor people in 
     his district and across the country.
       ``A number of other politicians are buffeted by publicity 
     or are very inconsistent,'' Mr. Jennings said.
       Among the few decorations in Mr. Jennings's office in the 
     Rayburn Office Building are two that recall his time with Mr. 
     Perkins. One is a photo of the chairman shortly before his 
     death in 1984; the other, a gift from Rep. Bill Goodling, R-
     Pa., is a watercolor of Mr. Perkins's Kentucky home.
       ``This job and what I do,'' Mr. Jennings said, taking note 
     of the souvenirs, ``is never very far from my mind.
       Upon Mr. Perkins's death, the new chairman, Rep. Augustus 
     F. Hawkins, D-Calif., asked Mr. Jennings to remain in his 
     post. When Mr. Ford succeeded Mr. Hawkins in 1990, Mr. 
     Jennings thought about leaving, but did not. He dropped his 
     subcommittee title, as Mr. Ford opted to chair a different 
     subcommittee, but stayed on as counsel to the full committee.
       in 1992, he again contemplated leaving. But with the 
     reauthorization of the E.S.E.A on the Horizon, Rep. Dale E. 
     Kildee, D-Mich., the subcommittee chairman, asked him to stay 
     on another two years.
       ``It made sense to help rethink what I started with,'' Mr. 
     Jennings said.


                             `a key player'

       He said he was also swayed by the opportunity--for the 
     first time in 13 years--to work with a Democratic 
     administration, and one with an education agenda he 
     personally agrees with.
       ``I like to use my interest in politics to further good 
     policy,'' Mr. Jennings said in explaining why he has not left 
     Congress for a more lucrative and less stressful occupation.
       While Mr. Jennings may be little known outside of 
     Washington, his impact on policy has been considerable, and 
     has grown over the years.
       At the time he began his work here, House members were more 
     directly involved in decisionmaking and writing legislation. 
     As Congress has taken on a broader array of issues, and 
     committees have proliferated, elected officials have come to 
     rely much more on their aides to work with constituents, 
     develop expertise in a particular field, and draft 
     legislation.
       And Mr. Jennings has become the dominant figure in 
     education.
       ``There probably isn't an important [education] issue on 
     which Jack hasn't been a key player,'' said Michael Edwards, 
     the manager of Congressional relations for the National 
     Education Association. ``He is the one person who really ties 
     the creation of these [education] programs to today's 
     intellectual and political reality.''
       Colleagues and lobbyists describe Mr. Jennings as at once 
     disarming and demanding, a consensus-builder and a partisan.
       His low-key demeanor, they say, enables him to deal 
     effectively with a 25-year old junior staffer as well as 20-
     year Congressional veterans. But his intellectual standards 
     mean he rarely suffers fools and that arguments must be well 
     reasoned before they go beyond his desk.


                            `a gloved fist'

       ``Jack and I get along fairly well, [and] Jack has never 
     been afraid to tell me I'm full of crap,'' said Bruce Hunter, 
     a senior associate executive director of the American 
     Association of School Administrators. ``You have to defend 
     and work your ideas.''
       ``He used a gloved fist, and the glove was information, 
     knowledge, and logic,'' said Andy Hartman, a former 
     Republican staff director on the committee who is now the 
     executive director of the National Institute for Literacy. 
     ``When a report would come out, instead of putting it in a 
     pile on his desk, he read it and would quote it.''
       Associates also say that Mr. Jennings is keenly aware of 
     how to most productively negotiate the nuances of 
     legislation. He is conscious of the institution's inherent 
     slowness, they say, and always tries to keep moving 
     negotiations along.
       ``If you've got an argument, he'll listen to it, but if 
     you're passive, he'll walk right by you and move the process 
     along,'' said Tom Wolanin, an official in the Education 
     Department's legislative-affairs office who used to work with 
     Mr. Jennings on the committee.
       Several colleagues cited an incident where Mr. Jennings 
     walked out of a staff conference after only few minutes, 
     effectively ending it.
       It was a demonstration of power, they said, and also a 
     statement of Mr. Jennings' disgust at the lack of progress on 
     the issue at hand, an education-reform bill that included 
     pieces of President Bush's America 2000 agenda. His silent 
     verdict turned out to be correct; the bill was rejected by 
     Congress several times, although portions of it resurfaced in 
     the Clinton Administration's Goals 2000: Educate America Act.


                        the intimidation factor

       While Mr. Jennings usually presents a genial and collected 
     persona, colleagues say he has been known to raise his voice.
       One former House aide recalls disparaging Goals 2000 at a 
     staff meeting.
       ``He called me a Nazi, commie, feminist, rattled off a 
     whole host of expletives about how I was so negative and how 
     we have to support the President,'' the former aide said.
       A current House aide said: ``I started out being really 
     scared of him. Then we had a few big shouting matches, and I 
     don't think I'm scared of him any more.''
       ``He's very intimidating, and that's part of his 
     effectiveness,'' the aide said. ``You hate it when you're 
     going through House negotiations, but you love it when you're 
     [bargaining] with the Senate.''
       Many aides recall Mr. Jennings as a consensus-builder, and 
     say he has often worked to secure some Republican support for 
     legislation, particularly Mr. Goodling's vote.
       But with lifelong Democrats for parents, it was hard not to 
     be partisan, said Mr. Jennings, who sees himself as following 
     the tradition of Presidents Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson.
       Mr. Jennings helped House Democrats ``play the gridlock 
     game,'' said Charles E.M. Kolb, who often engaged in 
     legislative negotiations as an Education Department and White 
     House official in the Bush Administration.
       The Democrats, Mr. Kolb noted, have been more receptive to 
     the Goals 2000 program than to Mr. Bush's America 2000, 
     despite their similar emphasis on standards.
       Lately, Mr. Jennings has been swamped preparing for his 
     last big negotiation, the House-Senate conference on the 
     e.s.e.a. reauthorization that began last week. (See related 
     story, page 23.)
       After the bill is passed and signed by the President, Mr. 
     Jennings plans to take some time off, and do some writing on 
     the-standards-setting movement in education.
       ``Since I've been in this position for so long, I want to 
     use what I've learned to help people understand the process 
     better and understand the issues better,'' he said.
       Despite offers from law firms, Mr. Jennings said he will 
     probably join a Washington-area think tank, where he can 
     continue writing on education issues.
       I've decided to turn down the big money,'' he said.

                          ____________________