[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 23, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3701-H3702]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Collins of Georgia). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica] is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening to address my 
colleagues in the House on the subject of education. Everywhere you 
turn, in fact I just read this recent article in U.S. News and World 
Report, there is criticism about United States education. This U.S. 
News and World Report article and cover story is entitled Dumb and 
Dumber. It talks about the failure of the United States education.
  Part of the debate here before Congress has been the question of how 
much money we throw at different programs. One of the questions I have 
always raised is, are we paying more and getting less?
  One of the criticisms of the new Republican majority is that they 
were cutting ``education.'' In fact, that really is not the case. If 
you just took a few minutes, Mr. Speaker, to look at the initial budget 
that we proposed for the House of Representatives and

[[Page H3702]]

spending for education over the next 7 years, you will find that we 
proposed an increase over those 7 years of $24 billion in additional 
education spending.
  The question, Mr. Speaker, is not just how much money that we throw 
at these problems, because we have increased the expenditures in almost 
every educational field over the past decade by tremendous sums of 
money. Then we get these headlines on our magazines, Dumb and Dumber. 
We find the results, the SAT scores have dropped, total average of, 
from 1972, a score of 937 to 902 in 1994. We find our 17-year-olds 
scored 17 points worse in science than in 1970. We find reading also at 
proficient levels, the scores have fallen since 1992. In math, U.S. 
students scored worse in math than all other large countries except for 
Spain. Thirty percent of college freshmen must take remedial education 
courses. This is nationwide. And my community college, the president of 
our local community college said it is up to 70 percent of his entering 
freshmen need remedial education. So we must look at how we are 
spending these tremendous sums of dollars and the amounts.
  That is part of what this debate is about here, whether it is 
education or whether it is environment.
  Let me give you two more examples. Here is an article, I brought this 
to the House before but it is absolutely astounding. It talks about job 
training programs and education programs, job education programs in the 
state of Florida.
  This is just out in the last month, a State study. Florida, in 
Florida, State, local and Federal expenditures for these training 
programs were $1 billion. Listen to this: Most students who entered the 
program never graduated. In all, 37 percent of 347 training and 
vocational programs performed poorly according to this report and only 
20 percent of those enrolled in high school vocational programs 
completed that. The report found, and listen to this, of that figure 
only 19 percent found a full-time job after graduating and then were 
employed in just above a minimum wage, at a minimum wage level and out 
of that position in less than six months.
  The examples go on and on. Here is another story that was in the 
Washington Post. Department of Labor spent about $305,000 for each 
participant in a job program in Puerto Rico. The problem is, we are 
paying more and we are getting less. Part of it deals with the 
Department of Education, which now has 4,786 employees, of which 3,322 
are in Washington, D.C., just a few blocks from here.
  So part of this argument is paying more, getting less. Part of it is 
command and control in Washington. Part of it is giving these 3,322 
bureaucrats down the street in the Federal Department of Education 
something to do. They do that. It is time that we brought that to a 
halt.

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