[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 35 (Tuesday, March 18, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1076-H1077]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       EDUCATION AT A CROSSROADS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, over the last few months we have been 
engaged in a process which we call Education at a Crossroads, visiting 
different parts of the country, visiting different school districts 
within my congressional district, getting feedback on the 
effectiveness, the quality, and the impact that Federal education 
programs have had.
  There has been some dispute about some of the findings that we may 
have received, but what we have been hearing consistently is that there 
is significant room for improvement in how the Washington 
establishment, how the Federal bureaucracy delivers programs to the 
classroom, how we help kids at the local level.
  A couple of weeks ago in Delaware, Bill Manning, the local 
superintendent of the Red Clay School District in Wilmington, DE, said 
he would rather see safe and drug free schools money go to academic 
programs of the district's choosing, asking for district flexibility. 
``It is time to ask ourselves whether the time we take out of the 
classroom for drug awareness programs is time well spent,'' he said.
  He is looking for more flexibility to do for the kids in Wilmington, 
Delaware what they believe is most needed.
  Mr. Carper, the Democratic Governor of Delaware, said, We must free 
the schools of regulations.
  In California, Arizona, Delaware, we have heard time and time again 
that there are too many regulations associated with the hundreds of 
Federal programs that we have for education in America today. Marian 
Berguson, representative of Governor Wilson in California said, Federal 
requirements and dictates are stifling. That is not what we want in 
education at the local level. We want innovation; we want creativity, 
and we want results.
  Lisa Graham Keegan, Arizona State Superintendent, noted that 8 
percent of Arizona's education money comes from the Federal Government 
and that easily more than 50 percent of the work in the State 
Department and in the school district is a result of receiving this 8 
percent of their money. Ten percent funds versus 50 percent of the 
paperwork? It does not make sense to me.
  We are going to continue these hearings to get a better idea of 
exactly whether Federal programs are helping or whether they are 
hurting.

                              {time}  1900

  What is working and what is wasted in education in America today.
  We are also engaged in another process. We are taking a look at 
somewhere in the neighborhood of 700, 800, maybe 900 Federal programs. 
There are some people who ask where do we come up with the number, and 
it is pretty tough because when we ask the executive branch they cannot 
give us one. But we went to a document which is called the Catalog of 
Federal and Domestic Assistance. For short, and this is about the only 
short thing there is associated with it, it is called the CFDA.
  It is, very simply, if we go to the section marked education and go 
through the pages we find out that this document, which lists all 
Federal grant programs, take a look at this, all Federal grant 
programs, and the title under education lists about 660 programs.
  We then went to the Congressional Research Service and said, ``They 
tell us there are 660 programs. What do you think?'' They went out and 
they came back and they said, ``There are probably more. We have 
identified a total of 116 programs that might be added to the 661 
programs that you already have identified.'' That puts us well over 750 
programs.
  They went on to say that we do not claim to have identified all 
Federal programs related to education, it is virtually impossible that 
this will be exhaustive, but we are aware of no better source of this 
information than the CFDA. So we know that there are the hundreds of 
programs. This is as we take a look and ask Federal agencies to 
identify it.
  We then go out and we take a look at outside sources. What do outside 
sources say that we have in Federal education programs? This is an 
independent, outside, small little cottage

[[Page H1077]]

industry, the Guide to Federal Funding for Education, volume one and 
volume two. They mark it as saying there are over 500 programs 
receiving funding that approach education.
  As we begin a debate on who cares more about education and the impact 
that the Federal Government has on education, the most important 
question that we can ask before we do additional funding is what works 
and what is wasted. Is there not some money in these 700-plus programs, 
that go through 39 different agencies, that spend $120 billion, to fund 
some of the President's new initiatives?
  We do not need a new layer of programs. If we want some additional 
programs, now is the time to dig through these two binders, to go 
through this binder and say enough is enough, let us get reasonable, 
let us find out what works and what is wasted before we create any more 
programs.

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