[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 4 (Tuesday, January 21, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E103-E104]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION IN AMERICA

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. GERALD B.H. SOLOMON

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 21, 1997

  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, let me commend to you the following article 
from an editorial in the Post Star newspaper in Glen Falls, NY. This 
article succinctly expresses my reasons for calling for the abolishment 
of the U.S. Education Department. While this Department was created 
with a noble eye toward protecting and advancing public education in 
this country, in reality it has only created dubious Federal mandates 
while siphoning scarce Federal dollars away from the students that 
truly need it. By creating an Office of Education to continue to 
represent public school interests and allowing more parental 
involvement, students will ultimately be much better served.

                  [From the Post Star, Glen Falls, NY]

              Education Department Needs to be Dismantled

       If you wonder what big idea Bill Clinton intends to ride 
     into history, consider this one: Education.
       Everybody agrees education is a wonderful thing, but 
     increasingly, Americans fret about the quality of public 
     schooling. The issue of instructional quality has split the 
     educational establishment. On one side stand votaries of the 
     National Education Association, which has worked long and 
     hard to define mediocrity down. On the other are devotees of 
     educational choice and home schooling, programs designed to 
     spare kids the travail of politically correct education.
       Enter President Clinton, promising to bridge the chasm. In 
     a recent speech to the Democratic Leadership Council, he 
     echoed Americans' apprehensions about the state of education: 
     ``We must dramatically reform our public schools, demanding 
     high standards and accountability from every teacher and 
     every student, promoting reforms like public choice, school 
     choice and charter schools in every state.
       At the same time, he staked out new ground for Uncle Sam: 
     ``I am not for federal government national standards. But I 
     am for national standards of excellence and a means of 
     measuring it so we know what our children are learning.''
       Here is Bill Clinton doing what he does best: bending a 
     conservative issue to liberal ends. He has made it clear in 
     subsequent talks that he wants to defend teachers unions, 
     while creating a larger federal role in determining what 
     students should and shouldn't learn.
       That's not an encouraging sign, given recent trends in 
     government-sponsored instruction. As Lynne Cheney has noted 
     to devastating effect, school textbooks today subject 
     students to politically correct nonsense. Some standard 
     history books, for instance, mention Harriet Tubman more 
     often than George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. 
     Lee combined!
       Meanwhile, self-esteem programs assure students that 
     accuracy isn't everything in mathematics: If you come close, 
     that's good enough. (Tell that to the Internal Revenue 
     Service.)
       The President's case for standards rests on the beguiling 
     but dubious notion that experts know enough to set ``proper'' 
     standards. There are no data to support that claim, and 
     considerable evidence that schools tend to thrive in direct 
     proportion to parental involvement in school. In other words, 
     mother and father know best.

[[Page E104]]

       Clinton's talk to the Democratic Leadership Council framed 
     the upcoming reform debate. If you want a larger federal 
     role, you're ``for'' education; if you want decentralized 
     control, you're ``against'' standards that could guarantee 
     excellence.
       Republicans ought to hop into the fray immediately. The 
     best way to protect the sovereignty of local systems is not 
     to hand more power to the Department of Education. Just the 
     opposite: The goals of excellence and local sovereignty would 
     best be served by dismantling the department, and spinning 
     off the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, which 
     provides important and useful educational research.
       Today, the federal government makes educators do everything 
     from diagnosing sexual abuse and distributing condoms to 
     serving as guardians for messed-up kids. At the same time it 
     has heaped new duties on educators, it has clamped down on 
     innovations Washington bureaucrats don't like. This happened 
     to Detroit when local authorities tried to set up all-boys 
     schools to deal with their very real problems.
       By shutting down the education department while saving its 
     research office, Congress could give Americans just what Bill 
     Clinton is promising--a revitalized sense of local control, 
     aided by a federal clearing-house that could offer useful 
     data about what does and doesn't work in the classroom.

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