[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 21 (Tuesday, February 25, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H605-H612]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE ISSUE OF EDUCATION AND THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we are again quite pleased to observe that
the bipartisan consensus on education is rolling forward. I heard this
morning a colleague speak of a new initiative to get Congressmen to go
into the classrooms.
We have had such initiatives in New York, where they want you to be a
principal or teacher for a day, for some time. These kinds of
initiatives are minuscule in terms of the overall problem of improving
education, but they are important. It is important to have as much
contact as possible.
I understand over the weekend there was a special conference held in
Chicago on education as it impacts upon the black community. Nowhere is
it more important than in the black community that we take a close look
at what is happening with education. The crisis in education is very
much the number one crisis in the African-American community.
[[Page H606]]
Anybody who takes any look at what is happening there, any proposals
that are put forward, any new initiatives related to the mobilization
of the institutions within the African-American community to deal with
education, is doing a great service. It ought to be a priority for all
of our churches, it ought to be a priority for all of our civil rights
institutions, our fraternities, our local community-based
organizations.
Nothing is more important in the African-American community than
education. Nothing is more important in America as a whole right now
than education, but there is a particular crisis in the African-
American community, because the great majority of African-American
children live in the inner city communities of America.
The inner city communities have had a situation where the education
effort has been devastated over and over again. I speak of the
education effort in New York City, I speak of the education effort in
Chicago and Philadelphia, in Los Angeles. All over, where you have the
greatest concentration of African-Americans and minorities, you are
going to have a major crisis, and it is related to power and politics.
The people who have the power, the people who make the decisions
about education funding, have moved out of the cities. They live in the
suburbs. They live outside of cities. They run the State government and
they run the municipal government. Even when they live outside of
municipal areas or city areas, they control the institutions. They are
the heads of the organizations. They have the political action funding.
They are in charge of cities.
Cities are not ruled by the people who live there, they are ruled by
people that have power, and the people who have power have residency in
the suburbs, but they have the power base still, they control the power
base in the city.
Of course, State governments are primarily responsible for the
funding of education. State governments have the primary responsibility
for education. City governments only exist at the pleasure of State
governments. The role of city governments, municipal governments, in
education is a role that is worked out with the State. The State has
the last word. State governments are primarily controlled by people who
are concerned about suburban and other than urban communities.
Right across the country we have had for years a situation where
State governments have systematically swindled city governments out of
education money. Education funding has been based on a formula that has
been repeated from one place to another. In the city of Chicago, in the
city of New York, in the city of Philadelphia they are confronted by a
situation where the State government rules that money for education
shall be distributed on the basis of attendance.
A simple formula like that swindles the city, because large numbers
of youngsters in the inner city communities come from poor homes, and
people in poverty, wherever they are, regardless of what group they are
in, go to school less. They are likely to be absent for one reason or
another: The kid did not have a decent pair of shoes, the mother was
sick and he had to stay home to take care of the mother, the little
brother was sick and the mother wanted him to stay home because she had
to go somewhere; all kinds of problems happen in families that are
under pressure.
There is a correlation between attendance at school and poverty, a
direct correlation. The States know this but they take advantage of it
by insisting that the formula for the distribution of dollars is based
on attendance, not enrollment. If you changed that little formula, and
the distribution of money to the school systems in the States was based
on enrollment instead of attendance, you would automatically get an
increase in the replacement of funds available from State governments
to city governments. But that is a swindle well known. That is why it
has been a pattern right across the country. They all do it.
So the power lies somewhere else. Unfortunately, and it is a bit of a
barbaric observation, the concern with children goes with the power.
They are not as concerned with the children who are not theirs. The
people making the decisions are not as concerned, and you have a
distribution of resources that follows this pattern.
The schools in the surrounding suburbs in New York City are schools
of tomorrow. You can find some of the best schools in the country in
the suburbs of New York City. But just across the border in the city
limits you will find the worst schools in the Nation in New York City.
Probably the pattern is repeated in California, too.
I have two examples I would like to discuss briefly here this
morning, or this afternoon. I want to do this because, despite the fact
that we have a great deal of agreement that education should be a high
priority, despite the fact that I am optimistic about both Republicans
and Democrats going forward in this session of Congress to grapple with
problems related to education as we have never done before, Federal aid
is not the answer, of course, but Federal aid is an important part of
the problem. Federal involvement, Federal advice, Federal influence, is
very important.
Federal influence will never dominate the process. We do not have to
worry about that. Education in America is local. Right now the Federal
Government's total expenditure on education is about 8 percent of the
total, 8 percent. A large part of that 8 percent of the expenditure by
the Federal Government goes to higher education, higher education. So
local education gets a very small percentage of its funds from the
Federal Government. Education is primarily a State and local function.
There is no danger that the Federal Government is ever going to take
over education.
There is a need that they participate more. Let us move from the 8
percent funding to at least 25 percent. If we had 25 percent funding,
giving help to States and cities that are distressed and stretched out,
they cannot find anymore sources for education funding, if we had that
kind of funding it would not result in more Federal control. Or if you
measure control by dollars, OK, maybe we would have 25 percent of
control if we give them 25 percent of the funding, but they still have
75 percent of the control. State government would still have 75 percent
of the control.
So this bogeyman that States and local governments are in some way
threatened by the Federal Government in this bipartisan session of
Congress, a Congress with a bipartisan spirit, let us get rid of that
bogeyman and understand that the local school systems for the State
control of education will not in any way be harmed by more Federal
dollars or more Federal participation, more Federal advice, more
Federal research, shared by the Federal Government with the States and
with the local governments. It is not a problem. We must understand
that as we go forward in our bipartisan effort, that we need to stick
to substance and not be content with photo opportunities and headlines.
I started by saying that initiatives in Chicago on the African-
American heritage this weekend, initiatives proposed by my colleague on
the floor that Congressmen go to classrooms and any other initiative
that you might take--and each fall, in October or November, I belong to
an organization called the National Commission for African-American
Education, and we sponsor an education funding support day. It is a
major initiative to get laymen involved, to get public officials
involved, so we cannot have too much of that. We cannot have too much
involvement.
However, if we allow the involvement on a surface level, the photo
opportunities, the headlines, the teacher for a day, the principal for
a day, to go forward without any substance underneath it, then we are
doing a great disservice. We are corrupting a process.
It is important that we have finally gotten the attention of the
elected officials, from the President on down. Hurrah. The President is
proposing an increase in education which is about a 20-percent
increase. That is getting close to the Congressional Black Caucus
budget, which last year proposed a 25 percent increase, so hurrah. We
are going in the right direction.
But let us not just propose it and then not fight for it in the
budget. Let us deliver on those funds. Let us not let the public think
they are going to get a 20-percent increase and it never happens. It is
just announced and it is headlines, but it is not delivered. We want to
deliver. Let us not get involved with photo opportunities and headlines
[[Page H607]]
and forget that there are concrete problems that are still unresolved.
The two examples that I want to give, in California and New York we
have a problem where headlines are predominating over substance. In New
York we had a situation where the State did its assessment of all the
schools in the State and they announced that New York City schools have
declined drastically in the last 10 years. Whereas the problem in New
York City used to be its low-income neighborhoods, New York City is a
city of 8 million people, there are 60,000 teachers, there are a
million children in schools. So you are talking about a lot of
different situations when you talk about education in New York.
{time} 1515
The problem has always been the portion of the youngsters attending
school in low income communities. It has always been related to
poverty, where the scores of the youngsters in the poverty, the schools
that have the greatest amount of poverty, were the lowest scores. And
they were struggling to get up to the average.
We have always had high performing schools in the other parts of the
city. Some of the highest performing schools in the State have been in
New York City. Some of the best performing schools, high schools in the
country have been in New York City in terms of the Westinghouse science
projects, anything related to national competition. We have schools
traditionally in New York that have excelled across the Nation and beat
out their competitors across the entire Nation.
What they found in the last evaluation is that the quality of all of
the schools in New York City have dropped. It is not poverty related
anymore. The decline in the performance is not poverty related. All of
the schools in New York City were beginning to perform at a rate, at a
level below the schools in the suburbs and the rest of the State. Let
me repeat that. All of the schools, the high performing schools in the
higher income areas were also lower than their counterparts in the rest
of the State.
Now, what happened? While you have lip service being given to the
effort to improve education, in New York you had a dastardly plot to
drain funds out of education and put them somewhere else. It was not
such a secretive plot because the elements were clear as to what was
going on all the time. We had a chancellor named Cortinez who proposed
a number of reforms and had the schools moving in the positive
direction. But one of the reforms he proposed was not necessarily
reform. It was a basic foundation item. He proposed that we have a
building plan which would renovate the schools that are unsafe, and it
could be renovated and build new schools because the statistics showed
that there would be a population jump in the school system in the next
5, 6 years.
He laid it all out in a multi-billion-dollar plan, the multi-billion-
dollar plan went all the way from putting gas heat in coal-burning
schools. We have some schools in New York that burn coal. In spite of
all the environmental regulations, all the knowledge we have about what
it does to the lungs of people especially children, we still have coal-
burning schools. Let us not talk about industry polluting the air. We
still have schools that pollute the air right near where the children
are attending school. Is it any wonder that we also have one of the
highest asthma rates in the Nation? Children with asthma problems are
higher in New York City than anywhere else in the Nation. There is a
correlation.
But Cortinez proposed a building plan that would get rid of the
safety hazards like coal-burning furnaces. It would get rid of the last
asbestos problem. We still have problems with asbestos. Three years ago
we had a photo opportunity, headline-grabbing effort to get rid of all
asbestos. The schools opened 2 weeks late. They opened 2 weeks late
because of asbestos contamination problems.
All the schools were just about closed down because so many had
problems. They just closed the whole system down, and it opened 2 weeks
late. They declared that the asbestos problem was resolved, but the
asbestos problem is still there because the Governor announced
September 21, 1996, just this past fall, that there would be a NetDay.
Many of you heard the NetDay across the country. NetDay is a day the
Clinton administration developed, the whole approach to volunteers,
wiring schools for telecommunications so that there is a NetDay
operation which is nationally operating.
They get the equipment, the wires and the gadgets, and they buy them
in bulk. And you can get for $500 enough of what you need in terms of
equipment and supplies to wire a school. The definition of wiring a
school is you have to wire five classrooms and the library of the
school. Then we consider the school wired according to the NetDay
definition. This all started in California.
They did a massive job in California. On a Saturday volunteers go
out, and they wire the schools using this $500 worth of equipment and
supplies. And we had NetDay in New York because many Governors across
the country picked up on what had been done in California, and they all
wanted the headlines and the photo opportunities. And some of course
seriously pursued the objective of wiring the schools. It was a photo
opportunity, headline-grabbing situation in New York because the
Governor, even before the day began, announced that 3000 schools in New
York State had been wired. I have not been able to get a count of what
the number of schools were wired outside of New York City. I have not
been able to get a count to find out how many were wired in the rural
parts of New York State or in the suburbs.
I cannot dispute part of that 3000, but New York City has 1000
schools, 1000 of the schools in New York State are in New York City. In
my district, I have 75 elementary schools and 10 high schools. Only one
of those schools was wired. Two were scheduled and one was supposedly
wired. The one that was not wired was not wired because it has asbestos
problems. The asbestos problem raises its head when you start drilling
holes. Simple holes to put the wires through will result in asbestos
contamination if the asbestos is still there in the walls and the
insulation, whatever.
I later learned that many of the schools in New York City that had
been scheduled to be wired on NetDay were stricken from the list
because they have an asbestos problem. We still have the need for the
plan that Mr. Cortinez developed which would get rid of the asbestos
contamination, the coal-burning furnaces. There is a lead problem in
some of the old school pipes. We are subjecting children to unsafe
conditions.
But what happened to Mr. Cortinez and his multi-billion-dollar plan
over a 5- to 7-year period? He conflicted with the mayor, and he was
driven out of town. I mean, he resigned but he was constantly put under
pressure by the mayor, ridiculed by the mayor. Finally he gave up. He
left town. The following fall, after Mr. Cortinez was driven out of
town, we had a situation where, on the opening of school, 91,000
children did not have a safe place to sit; 91,000, it said, were not
properly taken care of. That was the situation.
The mayor, pursuing his policy of headlines and photo opportunities,
immediately seized upon the need to have parochial schools and private
schools come to the aid of the city. And he is still doing that. There
is still a running discussion of the fact that the mayor is going to
find places for 1,000 youngsters in parochial schools. A foundation has
been set up to provide tuition for 1,000 youngsters at parochial
schools. The obvious question that any sophomore or even a kindergarten
kid would ask is, if you are taking care of 1,000, what is happening to
the other 90,000? What is happening to the other 90,000? What has
happened to the other 90,000?
In the schools which have been evaluated by the State board to be
going down, declining, what has happened to the safe place for 90,000
children? Well, when you go to inquire now as to what is happening with
90,000, you get an answer like this: That was just a statistical
formation. That was a statistical metaphor. We did not really have
seats for 91,000 youngsters. We merely looked at the capacity of our
schools, and we compared that with the total enrollment.
When you look at the capacity of the schools in bulk and you compare
that with the total enrollment, you find that you do not have a place
for 91,000. That was just a statistical analysis. Well, my question
then is, What is
[[Page H608]]
wrong with that statistical analysis? It is pretty sound. If your
overall system has a capacity and you have an enrollment, you compare
your enrollment with your capacity, and you conclude that you are over
capacity by 91,000. That is pretty sound reasoning. You do not have to
go into calculus or differential equations to figure that one out.
It is pretty simple. What you were saying was true. No, they said no,
school by school that is not the situation. If you go school by school,
you will not find that you can count up 90,000 that do not have seats.
All right, we said. Let us go look at the empirical evidence. Let us go
team by team to visit some schools. I belong to an organization. I
founded an organization which serves as my education advisory committee
called the Central Brooklyn Martin Luther King Commission. Members of
the Central Brooklyn Martin Luther King Commission went out to look at
some schools to talk to some principals.
One principal said, no, you have heard that my school has twice as
many youngsters as it was built for. The school has about 1,500
youngsters. It was really built for 800. He is right. It has twice as
many. He said, no, it has that, but we have places for all but 250. We
only have a problem with 250 kids. The same schools I visited before,
and I found out that the young people, the students go to lunch. They
have three lunch periods. Students are forced to go to lunch at 10:30,
that is the first lunch period. And then they are still in the lunch
room until 2:00. The last students are in the lunch room at 2:00. So
you have three lunch periods.
If you are not over capacity, Mr. Principal, I said, why do you have
three lunch periods? Obviously something is wrong here. Why do you make
children eat lunch at 10:30? I think that is child abuse, and I intend
to pursue that; but it is kind of hard to pursue because many schools
in New York City have regimens which make youngsters eat lunch at
10:30. They just had breakfast. I am not a health specialist, a
nutritionist specialist, but surely there is something wrong with
pouring everything into your system on top of each other and then there
is going to be this big gap between lunch and dinner at home.
How many children of Congressmen go to schools where they are forced
to eat lunch at 10:30 in the morning? Why is it that this condition
will be accepted by a principal as normal and he is saying, we do not
have a problem, we do not have an overcapacity problem except for 250
youngsters. That is a large number. If you are from the outside, you
know that many schools do not have 500 or 600 youngsters in elementary
schools. So a problem with 250 is still a large problem. That is the
admitted problem. But if you have lunch periods which started at 10:30,
you know there is another problem there.
The United Federation of Teachers brought a suit against the board of
education in the city on overcrowding in individual classrooms. They
had thousands of grievances where individual classrooms were
overcrowded, and they also have situations where young people, children
are being educated in closets, supply closets in hallways, in the
cafeteria and the auditorium. They do not have places to study which
are conducive to study, and in many cases they do not have places to
study, to learn, which are safe.
There is one thing, safety is what every child should be guaranteed.
Safety is what the New York City Department of Health, the fire
department, they should be concerned about the way we have conditions
in schools which would never be tolerated anywhere else. This is part
of the collapse, just a physical provision of safe space and space
conducive to learning. That is first.
Second, is that in the mayor's drive to cut the budget of the
Department of Education, at least 10,000 teachers and administrators
were seduced into taking early retirement. We provided incentives for
the most experienced people to take early retirement. That saves money,
and of course corporations downsize, but I doubt if any corporation in
the process of downsizing commits suicide. They do not leave it wide
open and tell everybody, here is the package, very attractive package
that you can retire and get this bonus if you just get out of the
system. We want you out of the system because you are making the
highest salaries. They wanted the teachers that have been in the
longest, who have, on the stairstep of increments, begun to make the
highest amount of money.
Corporations do not behave that way in private industry. The last
people to be downsized are the people who make the most money because
corporations attach value to people who make the most money. The CEO,
the CEO in every corporation has the greatest value attached to him.
Then his subordinates have great value attached to them. The CEO, we
know in America, we have the highest paid CEO's. In Germany, Japan, the
chief executive officers make something like one-tenth of the amount
paid to the average chief executive officer in America.
{time} 1530
We pay millions of dollars to CEO's. We give them stock options and
insurance and all kinds of benefits. So they are the last people that
get laid off. The officers of corporations are the last people laid
off. I imagine key people in the finance department, middle management,
they do not lay off people at random in corporations. If a downsizing
takes place, I assure you it has been carefully done to minimize the
harm done to the corporation's ability to function.
But in New York City, when we offer downsizing to the teachers and
the board of education, it was maximizing the benefits for the people
who had the most experience, the most know-how, the greatest skills in
teaching, and in many cases the most dedication.
So what did we do? We pulled them out of the system. Is it any wonder
that we would have a situation where the State evaluation now shows
that our schools have declined; that even the best schools are not up
to par? They are worse than their counterparts in the rest of the
State. Can you pull out the best teachers, your principals and
assistant principals, all the best, can you pull them out and expect
not to have a collapse in the system?
So what we have is a collapse. The efforts to improve the system in
New York City has collapsed because the political apparatus, the power
brokers, starting with the mayor, have decided the most important thing
is to save money.
If you have as your main objective to save money then are you
surprised when the collapse takes place? When the evaluators come in
and say the schools are declining, all of them, middle income
neighborhoods as well as low income neighborhoods, can you not see what
everybody else knew; that your best teachers were in your better income
neighborhoods?
Because teachers have seniority. After they get through their 3-year
periods and have tenure, they always want to transfer to the best
neighborhoods, with the least problems with the children and the
greatest benefits in terms of parking, in terms of less worry about
crime. So the best teachers were transferred into the highest income
neighborhoods. Is it any wonder that they would suffer great losses if
you pull out the best teachers, the best principals, the best assistant
principals? They are going to come out of the best schools in terms of
performance.
But the headline grabbing, photo opportunity politicians, the mayor
of the city, have accepted this collapse of the system by continuing to
emphasize the fact that he is going to find places for 1,000 youngsters
in parochial schools. And the newspapers, who love him, continue to
write up the stories about how they are getting it together, the
foundations have the money now and the children will get money and they
will start going to parochial schools in the fall.
The big question now is how do you select the children? They are
talking random lotteries and all kinds of things because they have many
more applicants for the 1,000 places than they have places.
The question is still what about the other 90,000 young people? What
about the other 90,000 students? The New York City school system has
collapsed and we have to put it back together again and we need the
President's initiatives, we need all the help we can get from every
level.
Across the country, in California, a similar situation has happened
also,
[[Page H609]]
and big city schools in California, of course, are the ones who suffer
the most. Always the inner city schools where you have the least amount
of power will get the most disadvantage out of policies and legislation
developed by people in power who do not live in those cities and do not
care about all the children in the State.
They make a great mistake. We have to care about all the children in
the State. We have to care about all the children in the Nation. We are
making a great mistake by continuing to pursue policies geared to those
who do come out and vote, those who do have involvement in the
political system. That is very good for those who needed rewards.
Some of the President's policies in terms of higher education funding
will go to middle class families that do need help and should get help,
but the greatest need is in the lower class families who need an
opportunity to get into college. Middle class families will get there.
They will get help in paying tuition and costs, and they should have
that, but at the same time we need to boost the amount of opportunity
available for low-income people because the whole Nation needs as much
education as possible.
The Nation has to understand the value-added theory of education.
Everybody who gets an education has value added to them and they add
value to the function of our Nation. It is not the airline pilot you
have to worry about when you get on a plane. The airline pilot gets the
best training in the world. They pay more to train airline pilots than
they do any other sector of the work force. Airline pilots get good
training, but we need to worry about the mechanic who tightened the
bolts and the nuts and the guy who put the fuel in and a whole lot of
other people who needed to have training and education so that they
will have value added to them and do their jobs very well.
In our complex society all those pieces have to be in place.
Unfortunately, we have some news recently about the people who design
airplanes and we have a major design flaw in the 737's. It is quietly
kept, but it is out there. The 737's have a design flaw in the rudder
system. We probably would have avoided that if we had more engineers,
more geniuses, even at that level of people who design these complex
aircraft who do the work. If there were more of them, maybe we would
have fewer mistakes in these complex aircraft.
We should stake our future as a civilization on the people who are
educated. The number of people who are educated will drive our
civilization. A nation that will be predominant will be the nation that
decides it wants to educate all of its citizens to the maximum and also
finds ways to do that, to implement it.
We just had a discovery in Australia, I think it is, Australia or New
Zealand, anyway a discovery which for years has been debated and
discussed and many scientists concluded was impossible: Cloning, where
you can clone, take a part of a living being, a living thing, and you
can clone from that part, from that part you can clone an individual, a
thing which is the same as the thing you cloned it from. That was
science fiction stuff 50 years ago, 25 years ago, even 10 years ago
when the discussion was a little more advanced and people who had the
right kind of degrees and credentials were willing to discuss it. But
now it is a reality. They have cloned a sheep. A sheep has been cloned
in Australia or New Zealand, wherever, by a scientist, and the sheep is
exactly the same as the pieces of the sheep from which the pieces of
living matter were taken.
What are the implications of that? We know it is a reality. It is
like the discovery of electricity took place a long time before we ever
had the light bulb. It was discovered you had these magnetic forces
that could generate electricity. It took thousands of years to work it
all out to the point where you could get a light bulb and you could
transmit energy, electrical energy, over long distances. All that took
a long time because at that time the information was not being passed
around rapidly about electricity and you did not have a place, an
organized educated society, that could pick up on a discovery like that
and go in terms of the application of it.
Nowadays we have the possibility of taking a discovery and picking up
on it and working through all of the possible positive applications,
and some negative applications, too. Nuclear energy and Einstein's
formula, all that was very theoretical until it was decided it had a
function in war, it could be used in war, and we raced to beat the
Germans to the point where we could implement the theories of Einstein
through the explosion of a bomb. Because we were worried about them and
because we wanted to maximize our weaponry, we put the people to work
to do it. Oppenheimer and all the best scientists in the country were
supported by technicians who were supported by people under them who
had education. All kinds of educated people were brought together to
make the atom bomb happen rapidly.
And that is the way the world should go from now on. Whenever we want
to make something happen, hopefully positive, then the people ought to
be there and available to do it. But we need educated people to do it.
We do not know exactly when or where we will need them, but assume that
everybody ought to be educated who can be educated. Our maximum
resource on the face of the Earth are human beings. Before we start
exploring space, before we put colonists in space, which is almost
inevitable, too, let us get the maximum resources moving on Earth. We
have a job to do on Earth before we get to outer space.
The cloning of a sheep means that we can clone maybe parts of the
body. We can take a piece of somebody's heart and clone it so that we
can replace a defective heart with a heart that will not be rejected by
the rest of the body because it came from the same body. The cloning of
the sheep means that maybe we can clone an arm of a person that loses
an arm and you can clone the part and put it back on them. All kinds of
possibilities are opened up in terms of the reality that cloning is
possible. They did not just clone a bacteria, they did not just clone a
mouse, they cloned a mammal. They cloned a sheep.
The step from a sheep to a human is inevitable. Do not let anybody
say God will never permit that. We do not know what God has designed.
God likes to play with us and likes to see what we can do. I think he
enjoys watching us fulfill our potential. If we are made in his image,
then he knows so much more he does not have to worry about our knowing
more than he does, but he must rejoice in our discovery of all there is
to be discovered. I am sure God is not unhappy if we learn how to clone
human beings. He will not be unhappy. He is unhappy because we are so
far behind in our social sciences, in our relationships with each other
and our ability to make laws and our ability to be merciful and
compassionate toward each other.
I am sure God must spend a lot of days weeping when he looks down on
us, especially Americans. In America we have a nation which for the
first time has full stomachs basically. We have a little piece of
heaven on this continent. America is as close to heaven as you will
ever get on Earth. We have all kinds of luxuries, all kinds of
benefits. Even poor people live better than most of the people in the
rest of the world. But we still have this insistence that we are going
to hate each other, we will put barriers in people's places, we will
oppress welfare mothers while we let the people in the CIA continue to
earn high salaries while they steal secrets from us.
We cut the budget of welfare when the CIA has a budget of $28 billion
or more, and we knew nothing about that. We add $13 million to the
President's military budget while we try to cut the budget for school
lunches. Our social sciences, our welfare is way behind our physical
science and our understanding of the universe. So God must spend a lot
of time weeping when he beholds the way we behave.
God will not be afraid of cloning, but if we are going to go forward
and take advantage of cloning or any other scientific advances, and
genetics is already into a situation where it is only a matter of time
and work. My daughter is a geneticist. She is in the field of genetics
and works for a firm, and the process they are going through is almost
routine. They know the outcome that they are going to discover more and
more. They will have an opportunity to apply the benefits of genetic
[[Page H610]]
engineering to more and more situations. It is just inevitable. It is
going forward by leaps and bounds.
It is possible for some people to begin to live almost forever. It is
possible that they will reach that point in my lifetime where we will
have the facilities, the tools available to almost guarantee some
people can live together or live far beyond the kinds of time span
expected. They can stop the aging of our organs. All that is possible.
All that is possible, but it will not happen unless we have a vast
array of educated people involved.
In addition to the scientists and the technicians who are involved
directly in that, we need a vast array of people who are lawyers,
lawmakers, who can keep our society from exploding in upon itself. Look
at the Soviet Union and how they were way ahead in science. There was
no problem in science in the Soviet Union, science, engineering,
astronomy. They put a person in space long before we did. They were way
ahead in many ways, but the system, the political system, the stupidity
of a control and command system, where they thought a group of people
who had all power could run the society, was stupid. It was monumental
stupidity, and the monumental stupidity came crashing down on them so
that all their science systems have been rendered a bit ridiculous.
The head of the nuclear energy program in Russia recently committed
suicide. A couple months ago he got a gun and shot himself because the
system has collapsed and the people in his institute were not paid for
3 months, and when the money came for their pay it was only a month's
pay. It was the last straw. He took a gun and shot himself. But that is
symbolic of where Russia is. Not Russia, but the former Soviet Union,
where science and scientists, highly educated people are in that
society. Because the social science infrastructure, the political
science infrastructure, economic infrastructure was based on stupid
assumptions and they failed. So we need educated people right across
the board.
{time} 1545
I have talked a little bit about New York's collapse, how our system
collapsed in New York.
Let me just mention California. I am reading from a publication
called Editorial Notebook. It is opinion on the editorial page by Brent
Staples of the New York Times.
Staples on Monday, February 10 wrote this article which I submit in
its entirety for the Record, Mr. Speaker.
[From the New York Times, Feb. 10, 1997]
How California Betrayed Its Schools--Starved Them of Cash, Then Fed
Them Fads
(By Brent Staples)
Through most of this century, California served as a symbol
of boundless promise and possibility. At the close of the
1960's, a breathless Time magazine described it as ``El
Dorado'' and a ``mirror of America as it will become.'' The
promise turned dismal with the tax revolt of the 70's. It
fractured the civic structure and savaged support for
California's universities, libraries, children's programs
and, most tragically, its public schools.
Teeming with new Immigrants, California's classrooms were
suddenly among the most crowded and neediest in the country.
States with similar problems increased spending, but
California stood pat. It now ranks 43d nationally in
education spending--well behind such states as Texas, New
York and Pennsylvania--and spends about $30,000 less per
classroom per year than the national average.
Penury has taken a toll. In 1995, the United States
Department of Education ranked California's fourth graders at
the very bottom, tied with Louisiana's, in reading skills.
Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature have pushed through laws
aimed at easing overcrowding and strengthening both teacher
training and reading instruction. Still, it could take 25
years or more to reverse the damage of the tax revolt--if it
can be done at all. Governor Wilson's reading initiatives are
for the most part excellent. But the class-size measure lacks
money and was poorly thought out.
In April of 1995, the federally sponsored National
Assessment of Educational Progress painted a distressing
portrait. Reading scores were stagnant in the lower grades
and had declined for high school seniors nationwide. In
California, about 60 percent of fourth graders fell below the
minimum reading level, compared with 44 percent nationally.
Typical were the fourth graders at Abraham Lincoln Elementary
School in Sacramento, some of whom could not decode even the
instructions to a simple vocabulary test. The instructions
read: ``Write a definition for each term.'' For these
children, reading a book is out of the question.
Many Californians sought to blame Mexican immigrants for
the poor test scores. But Asians, Latinos, blacks and whites
all scored near the bottom when compared with the same
groups nationally. Even the children of college
graduates--a group that generally scores well--placed near
the bottom when compared with the same students in other
states.
Funding cuts set the stage for this tragedy, but
educational fads played a role as well. In the 1980's, most
California schools ceased to issue grades in primary school
and gave up on standardized tests. These were replaced by
touchy-feely performance descriptions that avoided the
question of whether or not the children were learning. Most
destructive of all was a reading curriculum that abandoned
the phonics, spelling and vocabulary development that many
children need, turning to fashionable but unproven methods
like ``creative spelling.'' After a politically tinged feud
known as ``the Reading Wars,'' the state revamped reading
guidelines. Teachers are being retrained, and the colleges
that educate them are being prodded toward change. The
colleges are resisting and the state may eventually force the
issue.
The new training and reading strategies are long overdue.
But California's plan for reducing class size is likely to
backfire. The law encourages schools to shrink classes in the
early grades, but makes no provisions for new classrooms.
Classes are being held two to a room. Computer labs and
libraries are being sacrificed. To create smaller classes in
the lower grades, the schools must strip money from the upper
grades, where victims of the past are struggling to catch up.
The new initiative has increased the demand for teachers
without increasing the teacher supply. Inner-city systems
that have trouble attracting qualified teachers are likely to
suffer more as applicants flock to jobs in affluent
districts. Some even suspect Governor Wilson of wanting
public schools to fail--to make way for a voucher system that
would offer private school education at public expense.
California offers a warning for states that would bleed
public education for short-term gain. The schools are easy to
destroy, but costly and devilishly difficult to rebuild.
In addition, I will read some parts of it. It begins as follows: How
California Betrayed Its Schools, Starved Them of Cash, Then Fed Them
Fads.
Through most of this century, California served as a symbol of
boundless promise and possibility. At the close of the 1960's, a
breathless Time magazine described it as ``El Dorado'' and a ``mirror
of America as it will become.'' The promise turned dismal with the tax
revolt of the seventies. It fractured the civic structure and savaged
support for California's universities, libraries, children's programs,
and, most tragically, its public schools.
Let me just read one part of that: ``It fractured the civic
structure.'' The tax revolt of the seventies fractured the civic
structure. It did not affect the physics professors or the chemistry
professors or the laws of nature, but the civic structure was
fractured. They took a wrong turn. As a result they have wrecked the
schools, the public schools of California.
I resume quoting from the article:
Teeming with new immigrants, California's classrooms were suddenly
among the most crowded and neediest in the country. States with similar
problems increased spending, but California stood pat. It now ranks
43rd nationally in education spending, well behind such states as
Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania, and spends about $30,000 less per
classroom per year than the national average.
This is California, that was described in the 1960's as being in the
leadership in America in areas related to education.
Resuming the quote from the article:
Penury has taken a toll. In 1995, the United States Department of
Education ranked California's fourth graders at the very bottom, tied
with Louisiana's, in reading skills. Governor Pete Wilson and the
Legislature have pushed through laws aimed at easing overcrowding and
strengthening both teacher training and reading instruction. Still, it
could take 25 years or more to reverse the damage of the tax revolt, if
it can be done at all. Governor Wilson's reading initiatives are for
the most part excellent. But the class-size measure lacks money and was
poorly thought out.
In April 1995, the federally sponsored National Assessment of
Educational Progress painted a distressing portrait. Readers scores
were stagnant in the lower grades and had declined for high school
seniors nationwide. In California, about 60 percent of fourth graders
fell below the minimum reading level, compared with 44 percent
nationally.
[[Page H611]]
Typical were the fourth graders at Abraham Lincoln Elementary School
in Sacramento, some of whom could not decode even the instructions to a
simple vocabulary test. The instructions read: ``Write a definition for
each term.'' For these children, reading a book is out of the question.
Many Californians sought to blame Mexican immigrants for the poor
test scores. But Asians, Latinos, blacks, and whites all scored near
the bottom when compared with the same groups nationally.
Resuming the quotes from the article:
Even the children of college graduates, a group that generally scores
well, placed near the bottom when compared with the same students in
other States.
If you are shortsighted, if you are mean-spirited, if you are
powermongers who are determined to help only those that can keep you in
power, here is the kind of society you create. You bring it down for
everybody. No man is an island and this applies in particular to your
children. Your children cannot exist in a society which is based on
elitist assumptions that you can take care of a small part of the
population of a certain age and not take care of the rest.
Resuming the quotes from the article:
Funding cuts set the stage for this tragedy, but educational fads
played a role as well. Funding cuts set the stage for this tragedy, but
educational fads played a role as well. In the 1980's, most California
schools ceased to issue grades in primary school and gave up on
standardized tests. These were replaced by touchy-feely performance
descriptions that avoided the question of whether or not the children
were learning. Most destructive of all was a reading curriculum that
abandoned the phonics, spelling, and vocabulary development that many
children need, turning to fashionable but unproven methods like
creative spelling. After a politically tinged feud known as the Reading
Wars, the State revamped reading guidelines. Teachers are being
retrained, and the colleges that educate them are being prodded toward
change. The colleges are resisting and the State may eventually force
the issue.
The new training and reading strategies are long overdue. But
California's plan for reducing class size is likely to backfire. The
law encourages schools to shrink classes in the early grades, but makes
no provisions for new classrooms. Classes are being held two to a room.
Computer labs and libraries are being sacrificed. To create smaller
classes in the lower grades, the schools must strip money from the
upper grades, where victims of the past are struggling to catch up.
Let me repeat: ``To create smaller classes in the lower grades, the
schools must strip money from the upper grades, where victims of the
past are struggling to catch up.''
One of the findings in New York City when they did a review of the
budget of schools, school by school, one of the findings was that the
expenditure for high schools was lower than expenditures for elementary
schools. We have had our attempts at photo opportunities and headlines
by doing certain things at the lower grade levels. We have also had a
situation where the decentralization of the school system in New York
means that every community has a community school board. There are 32
community school boards. The community school boards have fought budget
cuts with more zeal than the central board which controls all high
schools. The central board which controls high schools has acquiesced
to the mayor's demands for budget cuts so you have less expenditures
for high school students per pupil than you have for elementary
schools.
Everywhere else in the country, in places where high school students
are graduating at a high rate, with a better education, they spend more
on high school students per pupil than they spend on elementary school
students. California follows the same pattern. When you turn it loose,
the politicians, the demagogues, the tax cut in California was not the
product of the politicians. It was a product of lay demagogues. Laymen
took over. People who were not politicians, had no experience, took
advantage, and they whipped up mass hysteria and they cut the budget.
So what you are doing is destroying institutions in the process. The
public schools are not the only institution being destroyed, but the
public schools probably are the most vital institution and they are
being destroyed as a result of political decisions.
Who were the voters who went out and voted for the proposition? Many
different, confused reasons resulted in that vote but nobody has had
the guts to turn it around. Everybody in New York City thinks it is a
great idea that we are reducing taxes. They think the Board of
Education should have less funding. But the result is that in every
neighborhood, low income, high income, everywhere, there is a decline
in the performance of the students. You cannot take away the best
teachers, you cannot take away the best administrators, downsizing,
saving money, you cannot refuse to build decent classrooms, safe
classrooms, and it not have an impact on education.
Finally, I want to read the last paragraph: ``The new initiative has
increased the demand for teachers.''
This is called the Band-Aid approach, patching. The problem with
President Clinton's plan is that we are glad we got his attention, we
are glad the public opinion polls showing that education was a high
priority got his attention and got the attention of the Republican
leadership, it got the attention of the Democrat leadership. All the
politicians are focused on education, but if you have this approach,
where you are going to have a great reading program here, every kid is
goings to learn to read by the third grade and over here you are going
to give tax cuts, tax credits to people going to college, patching it
up is better than nothing, but unless you have an all-out effort to
improve the schools, the new initiatives are going to create problems
in other places.
There are people in the education area, there are people on the
Education Committee here in this Congress who know what a
comprehensive, broad approach is like and what is needed. If the
headlines push them out, then you are going to have a lot of photo
opportunities and headlines but no progress.
Continuing the quotes from the article:
The new initiative has increased the demand for teachers without
increasing the teacher supply. Inner-city systems in California that
have trouble attracting qualified teachers are likely to suffer more as
applicants flock to jobs in affluent districts. Some even suspect
Governor Wilson of wanting public schools to fail. I am quoting from
the New York Times op-ed piece on Monday, February 10, 1997. Some even
suspect Governor Wilson of wanting public schools to fail, to make way
for a voucher system that would offer private school education at
public expense.
California offers a warning for States that would bleed public
education for short-term gain. The schools are easy to destroy, but
costly and devilishly difficult to rebuild. The schools are easy to
destroy, but costly and devilishly difficult to rebuild.
I am in favor of experimentation, with charter schools and a number
of other initiatives. I think we should try a variety of approaches,
but beware. If we go the route of headlines and photo opportunities, we
will destroy schools that we cannot rebuild. We will destroy systems
that we cannot rebuild, and the entire society is going to suffer, not
just the people on the bottom.
I want to end by paying tribute to Albert Shanker who died a few
years ago at age 68. Mr. Shanker was the leader of the American
Federation of Teachers. Before that he was the leader of the United
Federation of Teachers in New York City. Mr. Shanker and I had some
great disagreements in the early part of his career, and there were
disagreements on methods, style, not the ultimate goal. Mr. Shanker was
a dedicated educator who wanted the schools to educate all the
children. Mr. Shanker was a dedicated educator who knew you cannot have
teachers in an oppressive atmosphere where dictatorial administrators
and managers disregard the priorities and imperatives of education. Mr.
Shanker knew that school power, teacher power, meant getting the
balance where you force the whole system, the policymakers and the
administrators, to listen, to work out situations. Mr. Shanker got the
first union contract in the country for teachers. There are many
teachers who
[[Page H612]]
still do not like the idea of unions. They belong to an association
which acts just like a union. The American Federation of Teachers, the
National Education Association, they are pretty much similar right now
in terms of they are the leading advocates for children. They are the
leading advocates for education. Their interests are closest to the
interests of children and parents. It is to their credit that they were
singled out for criticism by the Republican candidate for President
because he felt the power that they are beginning to exert and the
influence. It will all balance out. Shanker made it possible. Albert
Shanker made it possible for the teachers union to be recognized on a
national level as a force. Most of us feel it is a force for good. It
is a force for education and a force for children. The United
Federation of Teachers in New York City, founded by Albert Shanker,
brought a court case against the Board of Education and the city
recently to force them to reduce class sizes and deal with overcrowding
in schools. Some of the facts that they have discovered, some of the
cases that they brought have been very enlightening as to how bad the
situation is. But it is a union operating on behalf of the children for
education.
The United Federation of Teachers has nurtured power professionals,
people out of the low-income areas who go into the classrooms as
assistants without a college education and later on, after a long
period of going to college part-time, become teachers. That is a
program that has been nurtured by the United Federation of Teachers.
There are numerous things that they are doing and have been doing that
puts education in the city of New York in a better position. But they,
like the rest of us, are now under great pressure from a Governor and a
mayor that have indicated that they are not particularly concerned
about doing all that has to be done to educate the children of New York
City.
{time} 1600
At the national level, the American Federation of Teachers,
certainly, that also was captained by Albert Shanker during his last
years, has also been a very vital force. They have done all kinds of
positive things pushing to get education reform that is meaningful.
I think teachers and teachers' unions will be the first to tell you
that there is a danger in having a great deal of attention focused on
education if the people who are supplying that attention have a great
deal of power and they are only concerned about headlines and photo
opportunities. They can make a mess. Things can get worse.
It is our hope that things will not get worse, that we will not have
fads substituting for substance, as there will be a real attempt to
move forward and grapple with the need to improve education in America
all across-the-board: suburbs, rural areas, inner cities; but most of
all, education improvement has to come to the aid of the desperate
children of the inner cities of America and do it soon.
It is a desperate situation. We need opportunities to learn. Across-
the-board we need a commitment, we need the resources, we need
politicians, decisionmakers, powerful people who care about children
because only in caring about children will you improve America and
guarantee that our society will live up to its full potential. There is
an unlimited world out there, and we need educated people to go forward
to realize that world of unlimited possibilities.
____________________