[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.

                          ____________________