[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 49 (Wednesday, April 17, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3496-S3498]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      HONORING BRIAN PALMER HAFLER

 Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would like to take a few moments 
to acknowledge a very talented and promising resident of Massachusetts, 
Brian Palmer Hafler. Brian was chosen as a seventh place winner in the 
prestigious Westinghouse Science Talent Search, a national competition 
that recognizes the outstanding math and science achievements of high 
school students aged 16 to 18. Brian was recognized for his research 
involving T cells, research that may be instrumental in the future 
treatment of autoimmune diseases.
  After graduation from the Roxbury Latin School, West Roxbury, MA, 
Brian intends to continue his scientific research as a molecular 
biology student at Princeton University. In addition to his scholarly 
accomplishments, Brian has won varsity letters in wrestling and cross 
country, numerous academic awards, and a service award for his work in 
tutoring inner-city students.
  I applaud Brian on receiving the Westinghouse Science Award, and wish 
him success in his future endeavors.

[[Page S3497]]



                      TESTIMONY OF JONATHAN KOZOL

  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I had a chance to read the testimony of 
Jonathan Kozol, an author who prods our conscience, before the House 
Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, which I ask to be 
printed in the Record after my remarks.
  It is a summary of where we are, as he points out, on this year that 
celebrates the 100th anniversary of the unfortunate Plessy v. Ferguson 
decision.
  The need to do a better job, the need to show care, the need to 
create opportunity for everyone is here. The question is whether we 
will pay attention to this obvious need or whether we will ignore it, 
ultimately at our own peril.
  The article follows:

  Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities--U.S. House of 
                     Representatives, March 5, 1996


                      testimony of jonathan kozol

       Mr. Chairman: As you know, this year commemorates the 100th 
     anniversary of Plessy versus Ferguson, but few of the poorest 
     children in our nation will find much to celebrate. Public 
     schools throughout the land, with rare exceptions, are still 
     separate and unequal.
       In New York City, to take only one example, public schools 
     for poor black and Hispanic children are nearly as segregated 
     as the schools of Mississippi 50 years ago. The city spends 
     less than half as much per-pupil as its richest suburbs--a 
     differential found, of course, all over the United States.
       For many years, the only force that helped consistently to 
     militate against these inequalities has been the Federal 
     government. Although Federal money represents only a tiny 
     fraction of the total education budget in our nation, it has 
     been targeted at schools and neighborhoods in greatest need; 
     and, while Federal aid may represent, on average, only 6 
     percent of local education budgets, it represents as much as 
     20 percent in our low-income districts.
       Now, as the dismantling of Federal aid is being 
     contemplated, as block grants are proposed as substitutes for 
     targeted assistance to the poor, the plight of children in 
     the most impoverished districts will inevitably worsen.
       I remind you also of the gross and cumulative deterioration 
     of schoolbuildings in low-income neighborhoods. ``Deferred 
     maintenance''--an antiseptic term which means that water 
     buckets must be scattered around classrooms to collect the 
     rain that penetrates a hundred-year-old roof, while hallways 
     stink of urine from the antiquated plumbing in the bathrooms 
     of a school--is well above $100 billion.
       Conditions like these do not just soil bodies. They also 
     dirty souls and spirits, and they give our children a clear 
     message. They tell them that, no matter what we say about 
     ``high expectations,'' no matter what exhaustive lists of 
     ``goals'' and ``standards'' we keep churning out for the 
     millennium, the deepdown truth is that we do not like them 
     very much, nor value their potential as Americans.
       Millions of children are going to class each day in 
     buildings none of you would be prepared to work in for one 
     hour. All the boosterism in the world, all the hype and all 
     the exhortation, all the upbeat speeches by a visiting 
     politician telling kids, ``You are somebody,'' has no 
     palpable effect if every single thing about the school 
     itself--its peeling paint, its rotting walls, its stinking 
     corridors, its crowded, makeshift classrooms in coat closets, 
     on stair-landings, and in squalid corners of the basement--
     tells our children, ``In the eyes of this society, you are 
     not anyone at all.''
       The notion of ``retrofitting'' schools like these for the 
     computer age has something of the quality of a Grimms fairy 
     tale. How will a school that can't repair the toilets or 
     afford to pay for toilet-paper find the money to buy IBM or 
     Microsoft? The gulf between the national ``goals'' and the 
     degrading day-to-day reality of life for children in these 
     schools has something about it that suggests delusionary 
     thinking. There is simply no connection between slogans and 
     realities.
       Despite all this, we face the strange phenomenon of being 
     asked repeatedly, by those who spend as much as $20,000 
     yearly to enroll their children in exclusive private schools, 
     whether money really matters when it comes to education of 
     the poor. ``Can you solve these kinds of problems,'' we are 
     asked, ``by throwing money at them?''
       I always find this a strange question, but especially when 
     it is asked by those who do precisely this for their own 
     children. Money cannot do everything in life. It can't buy 
     decency. It obviously does not buy honesty or generosity of 
     spirit. But, if the goal is to repair a roof or to install a 
     wiring system or remove lead poison or to pay for a computer, 
     or persuade a first-rate teacher to remain in a tough job, I 
     think money is a fine solution.
       A rhetorical devise used by some politicians points to 
     unusual districts such as Washington DC, or East St. Louis, 
     Illinois, that spend a bit more money than some of the nearby 
     districts but do poorly by comparison. This, we are told, is 
     proof that ``money does not matter.'' But, in most cases, 
     there are districts that also plagued by pediatric illness 
     like chronic asthma, by lead-poisoning, by astronomic rates 
     of AIDS, and joblessness, and drug-addiction, and a global 
     feeling of despair. Equality, as Dr. King reminded us, does 
     not mean equal funding for unequal needs. It means resources 
     commensurate with the conditions of existence.
       It is true that there has been anarchic inefficiency in 
     certain urban districts; this needs to be addressed. But even 
     where efficiency has been restored, as in Chicago for 
     example, funds are not forthcoming. Still we are told to 
     ``cut the fat'' from the administration. But in New York, as 
     in Chicago, there is no more fat to cut. We are now cutting 
     at the bone and at the hearts of children.
       And so we come at last to 1996 and to the present moment in 
     the U.S. Congress, where the forces of reaction tell us it is 
     time to ``get tough'' with poor children. How much tougher do 
     we dare to get? How cold, as a society, are we prepared to 
     be?
       New York City, as things stand right now, can barely eke 
     out $7,000 yearly for the education of a first grade child in 
     a school I've visited in the South Bronx, but is spending 
     $70,000 yearly on each child it incarcerates--$60,000 on 
     each adult. If Title I is slashed by Congress, it will 
     devastate the children in this school. In the 1980s, these 
     impoverished children lost the dental clinic in their 
     building. A year ago, they lost the afternoon program 
     where they could be safe in school while mothers worked or 
     looked for jobs. This June, their teen-age siblings will 
     lose summer jobs as Congress lets that program die as 
     well. Only 10 percent of these children are admitted into 
     Head Start programs. The one place to which they are sure 
     of being readily admitted is the city's prison island--now 
     the largest penal colony on earth.
       Beyond the cutbacks, there is one more shadow looming, and 
     that is the everpresent threat of education vouchers--a 
     modernized version of a hated memory from 40 years ago, when 
     Southern whites fled from the public schools after the Brown 
     decision, seeking often to get public funds to subsidize 
     their so-called ``white academies.'' They didn't succeed in 
     this attempt, but now another generation--more sophisticated 
     and more clever in concealing racial animus--is driving 
     toward the same objective by the instrument of vouchers.
       This time, they are smart enough to offer vouchers to black 
     children and poor children too, but the vouchers they propose 
     can never pay for full tuition at a first-rate private school 
     and, in effect, will simply filter off ``the least poor of 
     the poor'' who can enhance the voucher with sufficient funds 
     to flee into small private sanctuaries that exclude their 
     poorest neighbors. By filtering off these families from the 
     common areas of shared democracy, we will leave behind a 
     pedagogic wasteland in which no good teacher will desire to 
     teach but where the masses of poor children will remain in 
     buildings that are schools only in name. We are getting close 
     to that point even now. Vouchers, combined with further 
     fiscal cuts, will bring that day considerably nearer.
       Some of us who stand up to defend the public schools may 
     seem, at first, to be in an untenable position: We give the 
     appearance of not wanting to change while pointing to how bad 
     things are today. This is our fault, I think, because we tend 
     to speak defensively about the status quo, and fail to offer 
     a more sweeping vision for the future. We scramble to save 
     Title I--and so we should. But Title I, essential as it is, 
     is a remedial side-dish on the table of inequity. We should 
     be speaking of the main course, but have largely failed to do 
     so.
       Our vision ought to be to build a public system that is so 
     superb, so democratic, and well-run, that no responsible or 
     thoughtful parent would desire to abandon it. To bring this 
     vision to fruition, we would have to raise the banner of 
     efficiency as high as any voucher advocate has done. We 
     cannot defend dysfunction on the grounds that it is somehow 
     one of the inevitable corollaries of democracy. But simply to 
     support ``efficiency'' or to encourage innovations such as 
     charter schools is not nearly enough. Innovative and 
     efficient inequality is still unworthy of America. We also 
     need to raise a bolder banner, one that cries out for an end 
     to gross inequity, one that uses strong word for the savagery 
     of what we do today: providing college preparation for the 
     fortunate, bottom-level-labor preparation for the lower-
     middle class, and prison preparation for our outcasts.
       None of my respected friends here in the House of 
     Representatives believes that it is fair to rig the game of 
     life the way we do. We wouldn't play Little League like 
     this. We'd be ashamed. Our victories would seem 
     contaminated. Why aren't we saying this in words Americans 
     can hear?
       There is too much silence on this issue among Democrats. It 
     leaves the field to those who speak bombastically, with 
     violence of spirit, as they swiftly mount their juggernaut of 
     cutbacks, vouchers, and secession from the public realm. 
     Virulent racism, as we know too well, is often just beneath 
     the surface of discussion too. I heard few voices in the 
     Congress that address this boldly. There is a sense of quiet 
     abdication and surrender.
       Despite my feeling of discouragement, I would like to add 
     that I was reassured to see that Secretary Riley spoke out 
     clearly on the voucher issue recently. As always, he was 
     eloquence and fearless. The same eloquence and the same 
     fearlessness are needed now among the Democrats in Congress. 
     Some of those Democrats, whom I have had the privilege to 
     know for many years, will be retiring soon. Before they do, I 
     hope that

[[Page S3498]]

     they will find the opportunity to wage one final battle for 
     those children who cannot fight for themselves. I hope they 
     won't leave Congress quietly, but with an angry sword held 
     high. In that way, even if they lose this battle, they will 
     leave behind a legacy of courage that a future generation can 
     uphold with pride.

                          ____________________