[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 28 (Tuesday, March 5, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H1687-H1688]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  PROMOTING GREATER EDUCATIONAL CHOICE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. RIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to focus on a very serious 
debate that has been going on back here in Washington over the last 
several weeks. In fact, it is a debate that reminds me, the longer I 
serve in Congress, the more convinced I become that Washington just 
does not get it.
  Mr. Speaker, I am referring to the fact that the District of Columbia 
appropriations spending bill is now held up in the other body under the 
threat of a filibuster, and for one simple reason. That is because 
Senate Democrats are opposed to the notion of giving low-income 
students, those students who come from low-income families here in the 
District of Columbia, educational choice.
  The House version of the District of Columbia appropriations bill 
contains language that appropriates funds for a

[[Page H1688]]

demonstration program, the idea being to grant scholarships or 
educational vouchers to these particular students.
  Bear in mind a couple of facts: One, the District of Columbia schools 
have the worst performance record of any inner-city school district in 
the country in terms of test scores and graduation rate. Only 56 
percent of the students in the District of Columbia public schools 
graduate from those particular schools. Yet, our political opponents 
here in the Congress remain vehemently opposed to the notion of even 
trying or experimenting with school choice right here in our backyard 
in the District of Columbia public schools through the partnership that 
we are trying to create between the Congress and the District of 
Columbia public schools.
  Despite their adamant opposition, we have a message, those of us who 
believe in real educational reform, we have a message for those in the 
other body and here in the House who have been fighting our plans to 
try to reform and improve the District of Columbia public schools, and 
for that matter, public education across the lands.
  That is that voucher programs, the idea of promoting educational 
competition through a greater choice and the idea of giving parents the 
full range of choice across all competing institutions, that is an idea 
whose time has come. Voucher programs are moving ahead around the 
country, certainly in Wisconsin, where Milwaukee public schools have 
now expanded their particular educational choice or voucher program to 
include 15,000 inner-city students, and in my home State of California, 
which will have a statewide initiative on the November ballot providing 
for educational choice through a voucher system.
  This is a terribly important debate going on back here in Washington. 
Let me tell the Members what is at stake here is nothing less than the 
success of the U.S. economy. According to a James Glassman article in 
last Tuesdays Washington Post, languishing wages, which is obviously an 
issue that keeps cropping up in the Republican Presidential primary, 
languishing wages, this idea of income stagnation in America, can be 
linked directly to a poor education and training system.
  That deficiency begins in our primary and secondary schools, 
especially in our high schools, where high school test scores and a 
high school diploma have been watered down to the point of almost 
becoming meaningless in terms of predicting a student's ability to go 
on to a higher education institution, or to obtain a good-paying job in 
the workplace.
  Therefore, we are trying to promote greater educational choice. We 
realize private schools cannot replace public schools, but we believe 
that the model for U.S. secondary education should be the U.S. higher 
education system, which is the best in the world. One of the reasons it 
is the best in the world is because we have robust competition between 
private and public universities, and that has raised the quality of 
both. How ironic that we have educational choice in preschool and in 
higher education. The only place we do not have it is in our primary 
and secondary schools.
  Why is that? Really, U.S. News & World Report last week, I think, 
points up the reason why we do not have greater educational choice in 
this country. That is the militant opposition of the teachers unions, 
which have become the campaign arm of the national Democratic Party, 
and which are still operating based on an old-fashioned 1940's and 
1950's industrial union model.
  The largest union is the National Education Association, the NEA. The 
other union is the American Federation of Teachers. Both of these 
unions, according to U.S. News & World Report, are ``driving out good 
teachers, coddling bad ones, and putting bureaucracy in the way of 
quality education.'' Both of these unions are fiercely opposed to the 
idea of educational choice and promoting greater competition in 
education.
  They also, of course, donate millions of dollars to the Democratic 
Party and their candidates. In fact, a second article in the Washington 
Post last week pointed out that the NEA, the National Education 
Association, is the largest union in the country, with 2.2 million 
members. They are the richest, with a nearly $800 million budget. They 
are also intertwined in Democratic politics, really the campaign arm of 
the National Democratic Party.
  I will conclude, Mr. Speaker. I want to talk more about this in later 
special orders. I just want to conclude by quoting Stephen Jobs, the 
founder of Apple Computers, who said he has probably spearheaded giving 
away more computer equipment to the schools than anybody on the planet, 
but he has come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not 
one technology can solve, it is a political problem. The problems are 
unions. You plot the growth of the NEA and the dropping of test scores, 
and they are inversely proportional. He concludes: ``I am one of those 
people who believe the best thing we could ever do is go to the full 
voucher system.''

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