[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 54 (Wednesday, April 30, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H2068-H2075]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EDUCATION EXCELLENCE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, tonight I am joined by a number of my
colleagues to talk about what my other colleagues were talking about in
the previous hour, and that is education. And rather than going through
a long introduction, I want to start right off with a quote that the
President of the United States made on March 27, 1996. This was in a
response to the Governors Summit on Education: Education Excellence.
And the President said, and I cannot agree with him more, ``We cannot
ask the American people to spend more on education until we do a better
job with the money we have got now.''
This is the President of the United States about a year ago. That
remark, along with some of the debate in Congress in 1996, led the
committee that I chair, the Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations, to begin a project, which we call education at a
crossroads, to ask and to find out what are we accomplishing and
achieving with the money that we are spending today.
We started with a very basic question. We said, how many education
programs are there?
{time} 1745
Went to the Education Department because, of course, in Washington we
coordinate all of the education programs through one department. Wrong.
We found out that they go through 39 different agencies. We have over
760 different programs, and we are spending over or in the neighborhood
of $100 billion per year on education today.
That is a very appropriate question to ask. It is the question that
we must answer before we expand the 760. Actually, I think as we have
worked on this, it is now over 780 programs, we now have to take a look
at the 780 programs, the $100 billion that we are spending, the 39
different agencies that this money is flowing through, because the
focus here should not be on an education bureaucracy. Our focus needs
to be on the kids. Before we have 10 new programs with $50 billion of
more spending, we need to take a look at whether and where this money
is going and whether we are having an impact with it or not. We do not
want to pour $50 billion through a broken system.
Mr. Speaker, I have got some of my colleagues with me tonight to talk
about this very issue. I would like to have one of my colleagues from
Pennsylvania just briefly explain to us, we will have a dialogue, more
of a dialogue tonight so that we can build off each other's comments
about what is going on in education because we all have our own
perspectives and our own learning about what is going on and we have
got six of us here tonight. We will be able to share perspectives and
learn from each other.
Tomorrow my colleague from Pennsylvania is going to be introducing or
announcing a resolution that I think gets at the very issue about doing
some important work to find out the kind of impact that we are having
with the dollars today.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Pitts].
Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak really on behalf of
millions of students, teachers, administrators and many Members of
Congress to discuss one of the most important components of our
American society, and that is our education system. I would like to
talk about what can and should become an American initiative, sending
more dollars to our Nation's classrooms.
Every citizen of this Nation agrees that children deserve an
opportunity to excel. But this opportunity is inhibited when teachers
and administrators are hampered by paperwork, time constraints and
financial hindrances just to apply for Federal education grants.
Tomorrow, as my colleague said, I will introduce a resolution entitled
the dollars to the classroom resolution, calling for the Department of
Education to provide more elementary and secondary dollars to the
classrooms of our Nation's children.
My resolution calls for a change in the way we spend our Federal
education dollars. For too long, Americans' hard-earned tax dollars
have gone to bureaucracy and have churned through the Washington
labyrinth instead of rightfully being placed into the classrooms, into
the hands of someone who knows the name of your child.
Of the $15.4 billion which goes to elementary and secondary programs,
in the Federal Department of Education, the classroom may be lucky to
see 65 percent. That means about $5.4 billion is lost in the abyss of
department studies, publications and grant administration.
To apply for a Department of Education grant, it takes nearly 216
steps, an average of 21 weeks. That is over 5 months of work for
someone on the local level just to apply for a Federal grant.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, is that 21 weeks before they may ever get
an answer from the Education Department as to whether they are going to
receive a grant?
Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, that is correct.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that the Education
Department very recently highlighted this as a significant
accomplishment, getting it down to 21 weeks and 216 steps. I think
until the Vice President became involved in this process, it took 26
weeks and over 400 steps. But this is what the Education Department
calls significant progress and moving towards education excellence by
shortening the process of finding out whether a school district is
actually going to have a grant accepted after they go through 216 steps
and after 21 weeks.
Mr. PITTS. That is correct.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, that is improvement. It may be
improvement, but it is still not very good.
Mr. PITTS. As a former classroom teacher myself, I know that it would
not be very encouraging to me to have to spend hours upon hours to
apply for something that I had no guarantee of receiving.
But I think Americans would rather see their tax dollars at work
providing more teachers, teacher aides, purchasing materials, supplies,
updated software, calculators, textbooks, and even seeing the American
classroom connected to the Internet brought into the new information
age. The classroom is where the action is. The classroom is where
knowledge grows and learning takes place.
This dollars to the classroom initiative would call upon the Federal
Department of Education and State and local agencies to see that 95
cents of every Federal dollar would get to the local school district.
And of those Federal dollars that get to the local school district, 95
cents of every Federal dollar would get into the classroom, into the
hands of someone that knows your child's name. If this actually
happened, roughly $1,800 more could be available in each classroom
across the United States.
We heard the quote from President Clinton that we cannot ask
Americans to spend more on education until we do a better job with the
money that we have got now. And for $10 to purchase flash cards, a
student could practice her timetables with a friend. For $50 for a
globe or a set of maps, children improve their geography, their
knowledge of nations across the seas. For $1,500, we can buy a computer
with enough desk top space and Internet access to allow every student
access to a vast amount of information available at their fingertips.
So this really is about kids, about practical ways to see that they
benefit from Federal education tax dollars. I think for the sake of our
Nation's kids, we should all put our children first.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman has taken kind of a
revolutionary approach. He is focusing getting dollars to the
classroom, getting them to the kids, getting them to the teachers, to
the local administration where they can actually make an impact.
The other visual that we use frequently here, this is a picture of
Washington, DC. I know my colleague is a freshman but I know that he is
very well aware that when we walk across this street over here and we
walk to the Capitol to vote, we call it Independence Avenue. That is
what the
[[Page H2069]]
street is called. But along this road are what, all of the
bureaucracies that now are controlling so much of what goes on in our
local neighborhoods. We think we ought to rename the street Dependence
Avenue until we change that culture.
What would the gentleman's legislation, what kind of impact would it
have on the people that work here on Dependence Avenue?
Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, it would limit the amount of money they could
take of our Federal education dollars that we put in the budget and
consume on the bureaucracy. As we know, most funding for our local
schools comes from the State and local levels, only about 7 percent
comes from the Federal Government. But we need to be more efficient as
to how we utilize those Federal dollars. This would in effect drive
those dollars through the bureaucracy, Federal, State bureaucracy into
the classroom. It would deny them access to that.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think what many of us have seen as we have met with
school administrators and around in our districts, we constantly hear
that these buildings and these people here in Washington, all with good
intentions but who control about 7 percent of the flow of the dollars
to our local classrooms, generate 50 percent of the paperwork. For
every dollar that we give them, they keep somewhere in the neighborhood
of 30 to 40 cents and they send 60 to 70 cents to our kids.
What we are saying is we agree with the President. We ought to take a
look at where the dollars are going, and before we pour another dollar
into this building and only get 60 cents out, we ought to see exactly
the bang that we are getting. If we can get that up to 90 cents, we do
not have to increase taxes, the tax burden; we will just be helping our
kids.
I know that my colleague from Kentucky would like to participate, and
I yield to the gentlewoman from Kentucky [Mrs. Northup].
Mrs. NORTHUP. Mr. Speaker, I would. I have been very interested in
education myself as a mother of six children, as a member of the
Kentucky State legislature, on the education and the Committee on
Appropriations. I have had a long-standing involvement with the
education. Kentucky had the courage and worked very hard in 1990,
enacted in fact one of the largest taxes in their history in order to
fund their schools. It is often pointed to as the example of school
reform that we ought to look to on the Federal level.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman actually believes school
reform can happen at the local and the State level better than at the
Federal level.
Mrs. NORTHUP. Actually the whole key to Kentucky's education reform
act is that children learn one child at a time, one classroom at a
time, one school at a time, and one district at a time. The closer the
effective education occurs and the decisions are made to that child and
that teacher and that classroom, the more effective schools will be and
the more effective the learning decisions that are made will be.
Mr. Speaker, I particularly was interested in the President's America
Reads program. First of all, one of the first weeks of the Committee on
Appropriations on education, we had before us the National Institutes
of Health. This is the research arm that the Federal Government spends
so many billions of dollars on. They have done a great deal of research
in the last couple of years on how children read and what the problems
are with reading. They have come to the conclusion that children who
have trouble learning to read, there are some children that will learn
in any system, but children who have trouble need intensive phonics
instruction. And yet this America Reads, one of the problems is we have
so many teachers who have not come through a phonics-based system. So
retraining them is a big issue.
This America Reads program is almost as though the people that
originated this idea did not read our own government's research. It is
out of context of any phonics. It is out of context of understanding
that very structured phonics is the way these children can best learn.
They, in particular, found that if you mix it with whole language or
not stylized instruction that it confuses the child so we are not only
wasting money we are chancing that we are going to undo the very thing
that our research shows is the most effective way of teaching children
to read.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, we have also had the opportunity to go
around the country and have hearings. One of the first hearings we had
was in California, where we had a number of the chief administrators
from a lot of the colleges in California come and testify.
What they told us is, do not cut remedial education. You are sitting
there and you are thinking, this is higher ed, what are we teaching
remedial education at higher ed for?
And so we asked and we said, what are you teaching? They said, well,
25 percent of the students that we get coming into our universities, 25
percent, one out of four, cannot read or write at an eighth grade
level.
It is kind of like, the President is proposing America Reads, which
is the tutors and all of that, and the, you take, you peal away a
little bit in California and what you found is they left phonics, they
went to whole language. Did not work. Got a generation of kids now that
are scoring some of the lowest scores in the country. Nobody is taking
a look at what is going on in the classroom where the kids are spending
6 to 8 hours per day, and we should be focusing on them.
The message of the college administrators was, get back into the
classroom. Do not ask for more remedial education money. Your job is to
get back into the classroom and find out why those teachers that you
have trained are giving such disappointing results with the kids that
they are teaching all day. It is kind of like, get to the basics, get
dollars in the classroom and local control.
Mrs. NORTHUP. I think it goes back to the theme, Mr. Speaker, that
the gentleman talked about, about why spend more of our tax dollars if
we cannot make effective the tax dollars we already spend on education.
Mr. Speaker, I believe that Americans are committed to education, and
I believe that they care deeply about children learning, particularly
learning to read. So let us look at the proven ways. Let us leave
education where it can be changed, according to the research, and that
is with local control and local efforts.
Let us not add a program that is unproven, untested, where the
research shows there essentially would be no effect on kids learning.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Let us listen to the President and understand what
works and what does not before we add any new programs and ask the
American taxpayer to spend more money.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Norwood] who
may have a comment.
Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
We are in the process of a lot of things going on at once and there
are a couple of things that I felt would be important for me to say to
the gentleman.
Number one, I am very pleased with the gentleman's Crossroads at
Education program, because I know that the gentleman is trying to find
out and we are as a committee trying to find out what works and what
does not.
Secondly, I would like to thank the gentleman for providing us the
opportunity to have a hearing on this just last week in Milledgeville,
GA. I know that the gentleman could not be there because of a death in
his family, but I wanted to come, on behalf of the people of Georgia,
and my colleague, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Deal], who was also
there, and say that people I talked to in Georgia said thanks.
{time} 1800
This is the first time in their memory or their knowledge that
Congress has ever had an education hearing in Georgia. It is the first
time they know of, that anybody from Congress ever came and asked them
what they think.
We were talking to some people who are very, very involved in
education in Georgia, and I wanted to come and tell the gentleman a few
things they have said during the hearing so that the gentleman is able
to respond to them.
Our superintendent, our State superintendent of schools, for example,
said, and I quote, ``The most frequent message I have heard is that no
one can
[[Page H2070]]
make better decisions about local education than parents, teachers, and
students in the local communities.'' Now this is our State school
superintendent.
She goes on to say, and I quote, ``Administrators in Washington will
never meet the needs of individual children. I cast my vote for
returning as many dollars directly to the local schools as we are able
to do.''
Now, I think what we are doing is trying to have an adult
conversation about improving education. Everybody in the 10th District
of Georgia believes in that. We all believe that that is the future for
the 21st century, but we all do not necessarily agree on how to get
there.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, I think the gentleman
clearly points out that we all do care about education.
We have developed a kind of a monthly brochure or briefer here which
we call A Tale of Two Visions, because there are at least two very
different beliefs on how to move education forward in our country. I
think we believe that moving decision-making and dollars back to the
children, back to the parents, and back to the teachers is the way to
go.
There is another whole group of people here in Washington that
believe in moving more power, authority, money into the buildings here
in Washington, so that they can issue rules and regulations on ``how
to'' to the local levels, and saying that parents and teachers and
principals can be good teachers and good principals and good parents by
reading manuals and saying this is what Washington wants you to do.
That is not the vision that we have in mind, and I do not think that
is the vision the gentleman heard in Georgia.
Mr. NORWOOD. No, I did not. But we are in the discovery process. We
are trying to hear from all sides and everybody to determine what kind
of recommendations we might make to Congress.
In the 104th Congress, or certainly in 1996, we basically did not
reform education. We are still number 13 on the planet in math. We will
not win in the 21st century if we continue to do that. We still have at
least 50 percent of the children who are graduating with a high school
degree that are illiterate or cannot read their diploma. We will not
win with China if we continue to do that.
It does not help, in this time when we are trying to discover what to
do and hear all sides, when groups of people stand up and politicize
and demagogue the issue. That is why nothing happened in the last
Congress.
Let me just point out that during our hearing, the very time we were
having a hearing trying to discover what works and what does not, we
had a gentleman from Texas sending news releases down into our district
saying, ``Oh, we cannot do any of that because they want to simply shut
down the Department of Education.'' That does not lead to an
intelligent dialogue that will lead to solutions where we can reform
education and improve our lot in this country.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for his comments. He points out
some statistics that tell us we need a meaningful dialogue on education
because our kids are not getting the kind of results that we would like
them to be achieving and the kind of results that we need for them to
be able to be successful in a world economy.
I think my colleague from Colorado had a few statistics of his own,
and we will get to our colleague from North Carolina, because I know
what he wants to talk about and we will get there. But I think my
colleague from Colorado had some statistics, again, that talk about the
less than satisfactory results we are getting out of our educational
system today.
Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Georgia mentioned where we rank nationally with
respect to mathematics. Actually, that number has been upgraded, or
renewed. I should not say upgraded, because it was not like that at
all.
The Third International Mathematics and Science Study came out
recently. This is a comparison of how our students here in the United
States compare with 41 other industrialized countries. This is the same
report our President, right up here at the top podium during the State
of the Union address, referred to and spoke of our great need to
improve by it.
I want to tell my colleagues what this says because it is quite
disturbing, and I do not think many Americans have any idea where we
are headed as a country.
In this international comparison, again this is the third time this
has been done, 41 industrialized countries, out of those 41 countries
in mathematics we rank 28th. In science we do a little better. In
science the United States ranks 17th.
Now, let me just read some of the names of the countries that
outperform us in math and science. First, there is Denmark, Norway;
there is Sweden, Israel, Thailand, Belgium, Australia, Russia, Hungary.
Hungary is at No. 14. Remember, we are at No. 28. Bulgaria, Austria,
Slovenia outperform us in math. Slovakia. The Czech Republic is No. 6
in math. Again, we are at 28 out of 41 countries. Belgium, Hong Kong,
Japan, South Korea. The No. one country performing in mathematics for
their elementary aged students is Singapore.
In science, again I mentioned we are a little bit better. Slovakia is
still better than us. Belgium is better than us. Hungary, Austria,
Slovenia, Bulgaria, South Korea, Japan, Czech Republic. And again
number one in science is Singapore. Of course, this is the land of
caning, which I do not know if there is any correlation between one and
the other, but it seems with respect to academic performance caning may
work.
I do want to, in all seriousness, though, talk about what Secretary
Riley, the Secretary of Education, had said when he observed this
report. Very similar to what our President had mentioned as well. He
says the content of U.S. 8th grade mathematics classes is not as
challenging as that of other countries and topic coverage is not as
focused.
He also observed one explanation for our poor performance
internationally may be that most U.S. mathematics teachers report
familiarity with reform recommendations, although only a few apply the
key points in their classrooms.
And the final point the Secretary mentioned, and again I quote from
his observations on this report, evidence suggests that the United
States teachers do not receive as much practical training and daily
support as their colleagues in Japan and Germany and other countries as
well.
I tend to agree, frankly, with the gentlewoman from Kentucky in her
observation that if we want to be serious about improving these
numbers, the last place we want to look is to Washington, DC and to our
Government here in Washington to try to do something about these
numbers.
We should do something in support of our States, and that is focus on
the freedom to teach and the liberty to learn. I have to tell my
colleagues that when my State board of education members came to visit
me just a few weeks ago and came to my office, their No. 1 plea to me
as a Member of Congress was for the Federal Government to leave
Colorado alone, to let Colorado educate their children on their own
terms, to let Colorado begin to design programs that try to turn these
numbers around.
We have this picture up here that the gentleman showed earlier. If
one wants to see what happens when the Federal Government takes over an
educational system, look right there. Because in only one spot in this
country does the Federal Government have direct and constitutional
authority to manage the education system in a community, and it is
Washington, DC, which I would submit and challenge anyone to defy the
real result that this is one of the worst places in the country when it
comes to educating children.
Children are trapped in this city, Washington, DC, in an educational
system that treats every child as though they are identically the same.
This is the city that many of us, if we read the newspapers just a
couple weeks ago, we saw the headline stories of the teacher who put
nine 4th grade children in a room off to the side of a classroom where
these children, unobserved and uncontrolled by the teacher, forgotten
there for all intents and purposes for over a half-hour, began playing
some kind of game where they disrobed and began to have sex. These are
4th grade children.
I would again suggest that if we want to see this activity taking
place
[[Page H2071]]
throughout the country, just put the Federal Government in control of
school districts. But the advice I get from the people who really care
about children, who really know what works, they say that the Federal
Government needs to play less and less of a role in how we manage our
local schools. We need to focus on the freedom to teach and the liberty
to learn, and treating teachers like professionals and parents like
customers, and that is how we will turn these appalling numbers around
and improve these statistics internationally.
Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will show the other
poster, please. We know we have about 760 educational programs spread
over 39 agencies in Washington that spend over $100 billion a year on
education. Yet the gentleman has just read out some statistics in math
and science and reading that frankly scare me to death.
Now, does my colleague agree with the President that we cannot ask
the American people to spend more money on education?
Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, can the
gentleman repeat his question?
Mr. NORWOOD. The question is, does the gentleman agree with the
President when he says since we do spend $120 billion a year over 760
programs, over 39 different agencies of Government, does the gentleman
agree with the President that we cannot ask the American people to
spend more money on education, in view of the numbers and statistics
that the gentleman just read a few minutes ago?
Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. I would agree wholeheartedly. In fact,
the other portion of that report has another graph showing that the
amount of money we spend in the United States has no bearing whatsoever
on our ability to teach better; that, in fact, the more and more we
spend, the worse we seem to do when compared to national standards.
Here is the quote from the report. We spend, on average, about $6,500
per pupil. That is nationally. Only one country spends more than we do,
and that is Switzerland. Yet these countries that outperform us,
Hungary, the Czech Republic, South Korea, Japan, England, France,
Denmark, Germany, and so on, all spend fewer dollars per pupil than we
do here in the United States, yet we rank so poorly in comparison with
those countries.
Mr. NORWOOD. Well, how should we rank before we start saying that the
American people should spend more money on education? Should we come in
second in math before we do the rest of what the President says?
We are not going to ask the American people to spend more money on
education until we do better with the money we are spending now. So
should we be second in math or third in math around the globe? Where
should the cutoff point be?
Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, I do not think anybody in
this Chamber will be satisfied until we score No. 1. The evidence our
colleague from Colorado has pointed out shows the issue is not money.
We are spending more than most people around the globe and we are
getting mediocre, unacceptable results.
So the answer is not to pour more money into the system, but it is
taking a look at where the money is going and taking a look at the
system and how we make the system more effective.
I want to yield to my other colleague from Georgia, and I appreciate
his being here. This is wonderful tonight.
Mr. DEAL of Georgia. First of all I want to join with my colleague
from Georgia, Mr. Norwood, in his compliments to the gentleman from
Michigan, Mr. Hoekstra, for holding the hearing in Georgia. We do
regret the gentleman was unable to be there with us, but we appreciate
his scheduling this Special Order.
I want to share with my colleagues some of the comments, as my
colleague from Georgia began doing a few minutes ago, as we listen to
people at every level of the delivery system in our State.
Even though we have a lot of progress to be made in Georgia, there
are many things we are indeed proud of. One is we have a HOPE
scholarship program. And unlike the fact that the President is
borrowing and adopting the name of it for his proposal, the uniqueness
of ours is that we have a funding source that is separate and distinct
from the taxpayers' normal revenue stream. The lottery proceeds from
our State fund it and it is a very successful program. Would it not be
nice if there could be an alternative funding source to fund the
President's proposal?
I want to say to the gentleman that both my parents were public
school teachers. They were classroom teachers. My wife is presently a
6th grade middle school teacher in our home county. So I have a genetic
as well as a spousal bias toward where I think education dollars should
flow, and that is to the classroom.
There are three things that stood out in my mind as to what we heard
last week. The first is that our schools are faced with greater social
problems than they have ever been faced with before, and in order to
overcome those social problems we need greater parental support as well
as parental participation.
The second thing was that discipline is a major problem in our school
system, and all of us want to do what will help rather than what will
hurt. As the gentleman knows, we are considering in the reauthorization
of the IDEA program the issue of removing some of the Federal
impediments to discipline that have put mandates and restraints that
interfere with teachers and administrators in terms of discipline.
Third is the flexibility in the use of Federal funds, the ability to
design programs that meet local needs rather than having to meet a
Federal mandate.
{time} 1815
Let me share just a few quotes with the gentleman of people who have
made some observations about it. One was from Dr. Craig Dowling, a
principal of an elementary school down in Valdosta, GA, when he said,
``Federal programs come with guidelines and strings that choke school
improvement. Guidelines for a program such as Title I may help a school
in Atlanta or Washington, DC, and totally disturb a school in south
Georgia or the central plains.''
In terms of flexibility, I think the chairman of our State school
board said it best, Mr. Johnny Isakson. He said this: ``There are far
too many dollars scattered in far too many programs managed by far too
many agencies.''
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Does the gentleman mean 39 agencies dealing with
education is too many in Washington?
Mr. DEAL of Georgia. I am afraid so. Mr. Isakson is a businessman and
he looks at it from that point of view. He said, if the dollars spent
could be concentrated, there would be less disturbance and that more of
the money would actually flow into education and out of administration.
Let me give a classic example that we heard from, from a lady who was
a director of an adult literacy services center in Dublin, GA. She said
this, speaking of the grant process. In other words, when applying for
a Federal grant for education, this is what she observed: ``The process
is cumbersome and labor intensive. Writing the 1997 proposal consumed
nearly two months of the literacy director's time. Measuring
accountability in terms of performance rather than volume of paperwork
is the best solution to the problem.''
We heard some very common sense, practical observations from people
who have hands-on daily experience in delivering education to children
in the classroom.
Once again, I thank the gentleman for affording us this opportunity,
and I thank the gentleman for allowing me to share these comments
today.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague from Georgia. I do express my
regrets that I was unable to be at the hearing. I think the gentleman
has got some wonderful testimony. I find it interesting. It has been
one of the most exciting projects I have worked on because we have been
able to go around the country. We have been in California, we have been
in Arizona, we were in Georgia, we are going to New York, we have done
some things in Michigan, Milwaukee, Chicago, and we are learning about
what is working on education. From what my colleague has told me, I did
not catch the full impact, there are some that are blasting or taking
some pot shots at a discovery process, finding out what is working when
we obviously know that what we are doing today is not working, but
there are some that are taking a real critical look at that.
[[Page H2072]]
Mr. NORWOOD. If the gentleman will yield, if we do not stop doing
that, if we do not stop politicizing this issue, we are never going to
get to the point where we can resolve the problem. I would point out
that the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Deal] mentioned a constituent of
mine in Dublin, GA. She is from my district and I was very proud of her
for her commentary, but I also want to remind the gentleman that Dr.
Dowling from Valdosta, GA, yes, he is a principal of a school but he is
also a father of five or six children, and one of his quotes that has
stuck with me since the day we were down there is that he said, and I
quote, ``I firmly believe that school improvement can only be achieved
in the classroom.''
I think many of us come to this discovery process with that bias. It
is true. I believe that we ought to send back the responsibility for
education, not just the classroom but the parents and the teachers. I
will conclude to go to another meeting, Mr. Speaker, but one of the
very fine things that was said in our hearing was said by Mr. Kelly
McCutchen, executive director of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.
I think he almost sums the whole thing up in this quote: ``Education in
America is the constitutional responsibility of the States, the social
responsibility of communities, and the moral responsibility of families
and except when the civil rights of individuals are menaced, the
Federal Government should never impede the capacity of families,
communities and States to decide how best to provide education for
their children.''
I do not know of a better statement that sums up exactly how I feel
about it.
Quotations for Special Orders, April 30 From Georgia Crossroads Hearing
quotations
Dr. Linda Shrenko, State Superintendent: ``The most
frequent message I have heard is that no one can make better
decisions about local education than the parents, teachers,
and students in those local communities.''
Dr. Linda Shrenko, State Superintendent: ``Administrators
from Washington will never meet the needs of individual
children * * * I cast my vote for returning as many dollars
directly to local schools as we are able. * * *''
Mr. Kelly McCutchen, Executive Director, Georgia Public
Policy Foundation: (quoting Chester Finn) ``Education in
America is the `constitutional responsibility of the states,
the social responsibility of communities, and the moral
responsibility of families' and `except when the civil rights
of individuals are menaced * * * [the federal government
should] never impede the capacity of families, communities
and states to decide how best to provide education to their
children.' ''
Dr. Craig Dowling, Principal, West Gordon Elementary
School, Valdosta, GA: ``I firmly believe that school
improvement can only be achieved in the classroom.''
Dr. Craig Dowling, Principal, West Gordon Elementary
School, Valdosta, GA: ``[Federal programs] come with
guidelines and strings that choke school improvement * * *
Guidelines for a program such as Title I may help a school in
Atlanta or Washington, D.C., and totally disturb a school in
south Georgia or the central plains.''
Dr. Craig Dowling, Principal, West Gordon Elementary
School, Valdosta, GA: ``Welfare sets up a downward spiral of
hopelessness and despair where children rarely see an adult
working * * * social issues can not be resolved through our
schools.''
Dr. Laura Frederick, Assistant Professor, Georgia State
University: ``What's wasted in schools is time, money, and a
great deal of student potential when we adopt unproven
instructional programs because they should good, because the
publisher is offering free supplementary materials with
the purchase of the programs, or because the sales
representatives are wining and dining the textbook
selection committee.''
Mr. Johnny Isakson, Chairman, State Board of Education:
``There are far too many dollars scattered in far too many
programs managed by far too many agencies. If the dollars
spent could be concentrated, the management less disbursed,
then more of the money would actually flow into education and
out of administration.''
Mr. Johnny Isakson, Chairman of the State Board of
Education: (speaking about Mr. Clinton's suggestion of
increased federal funding of school construction) ``While
this is a laudable recommendation, it really should be the
responsibility of local boards of education and their
taxpayers to fund and pay for the school facilities
improvements they want . . . On March 17th, 63 Georgia public
school systems ratified local option sales taxes which, over
the next five years, will raise $3.5 billion for school
construction.''
Ms. Dahlia Wren, Director, Adult Literacy Services, Heart
of Georgia Technical Institute, Dublin, GA: (speaking of the
federal grant process) ``The process is cumbersome and labor
intensive. . . Writing the [1997] proposal consumed nearly
two months of the literacy director's time . . . measuring
accountability in terms of performance rather than volume of
paperwork is the best solution to the problem.''
anecdotes
Dr. Linda Schrenko, Georgia State Superintendent of
Schools: Dr. Shrenko reported that Georgia taxpayers send 35
billion dollars to Washington. They receive back 454 million
dollars for education. This is less than a 1.3% return on
their tax dollar for education.
Mr. John Roddy, Director of Federal Programs for Georgia:
Mr. Roddy reported a conversation he had with a researcher
who had done a study evaluating the effectiveness of the Safe
and Drug-Free Schools federal program. According to Mr.
Roddy, the researcher reported that children who had not
received the Safe and Drug-Free Schools training actually had
a lower incidence of drug use than the children who did
receive the training.
Dr. Elizabeth Lyons, Principal, C.W. Hill Elementary
School, Atlanta, GA: Dr. Lyons described a reading program,
``Readaerobics,'' that she and her staff developed in
response to their students' poor achievements in reading. The
program is conducted on Saturday mornings to teach basic
phonics skills in a fun way. Parents are required to donate
one Saturday morning each month in order for their children
to participate, so parental involvement is mandatory. J.C.
Penney's has taken note of the program and is offering its
financial support to the Readaerobics program.
Mr. Buster Evans, Superintendent, Bleckley County School
District, Cochran, GA: Mr. Evans told of a school system that
turned around its students' poor reading achievements with
the implementation of two complimentary reading programs.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the vice chairman of the subcommittee for
participating and sharing those comments with me and chairing the
hearing in Georgia last week.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. HOEKSTRA. I yield to the gentleman from South Dakota.
Mr. THUNE. I thank my friend from Michigan for addressing what in my
view is a critical subject to many of us in this body. One of our
Founding Fathers, James Madison, once said that knowledge shall forever
govern ignorance. I do not think there are many of us who are more
concerned or there is any subject that is more of a priority for many
of the Members of this body than coming up with a system that provides
the absolute highest quality education at the least possible cost. I
commend my friend for the great work that he has done in drawing
attention to this important issue all over our country.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. I am not sure that we are even talking about the lowest
possible cost. I think everybody here is willing to take a look. If we
were getting exemplary results, we would not go through a cost
reduction effort, and that is not the focus here, is saving a penny.
The problem that we are facing today is the results that our kids are
getting is not good enough and that is the number one priority.
Mr. THUNE. The gentleman is exactly right. I think that is the thing
that sometimes gets lost in all this discussion because it becomes a
discussion about dollars and cents. Ultimately I think what we are
talking about here is quality. Are we getting results? Are we getting
the best possible bang for the dollars that we are investing?
I would submit that in my State of South Dakota, and I grew up in a
small town, went to a small school, and am the product of the
investment, the energies that a lot of people, teachers and
administrators poured into me that were very dedicated and very
committed, and I would look to our State and my two little girls, who
are 10 and 7, who were attending a public school system in South Dakota
as well. We are getting a wonderful education there. We now have them
in a public school system out here.
I have a very personal concern in this issue and where we are going
with it. I would say that if we look at the statistics around the
country and the dollars that are put into per pupil cost in different
States and the performance that we get, and my State of South Dakota I
think is a good example because we rank 45th in the amount of per pupil
spending and yet on SAT performance we rank seventh in the country.
There are a number of other states, Utah again is a good case in point,
the numbers that I have in front of me, which is 50th in terms of total
cost and yet ranks second in SAT performance. I think when we talk
about this issue, we cannot talk about it in terms of
[[Page H2073]]
necessarily an equation between more money and better quality. That
clearly is the case.
What I would suggest is that I have observed the education of my two
little girls, that there is no better laboratory I think to instill
knowledge and to instill values in our kids today, but one of the
things, missing ingredients is that we have along the way, I think,
tried to become so conscious of the governmental involvement that the
parents have stepped out of the equation in many cases, and we do need
in my judgement to put more controls in the hands of parents, school
boards, administrators and teachers, and we will get a better quality
product if we are willing to do that.
As I was growing up in a small school system, I on occasion, my third
grade teacher daily used to read to us Laura Ingalls Wilder books, I do
not know whether the gentleman is familiar with her or not but she is
someone who grew up on the prairies of the Midwest and spent much of
her growing-up years in South Dakota. My 9-year-old, 10-year-old now,
is currently reading those same books. One evening as she was reading
it I mentioned to her, ``Brittany, did you know that Laura Ingalls
Wilder spent a great deal of her growing up time right in the State of
South Dakota, in your home State?''
She said, ``I know, Dad, she was a conservative, committed to smaller
government and a better future.''
I thought, they are also very impressionable. It is clear to me she
had listened to some of the speeches I had made along the way. The
point being that when Laurel Ingalls Wilder was growing up, it was a
time at which we had a pioneer spirit, we were an independent self-
sufficient people and we did not look to big government for solutions
to a lot of our problems.
I think at the heart of this debate and this issue is the fact that
we need to focus that attention back on what we can do to put that
power, that control, that authority, that decision-making in the hands
of people at the local level. If in fact we will shift that model in
that direction, we will get the kind of results and the quality and the
performance that I think the gentleman has talked about and have drawn
attention to throughout this country.
I thank the gentleman for his good work and look forward to being a
part of this dialogue in what we can do to make ours the model and
really the example around the world of the highest quality education
that we can possibly have.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for his comments. We really are
going through a process where we are identifying what is working. We
actually have developed what we call lessons in education. Some of the
lessons we have learned as we have had hearings around the country are:
Parents care the most about their children's education. They actually
know the name of the teacher like the student does versus the
bureaucrat that may be here in Washington.
Good intentions do not equal good policy. We have seen that in
Washington. Every time there appears to be a problem, we create a new
program. The end result is 760 programs, 39 agencies.
More does not always equal better. More money through the same failed
system is not going to improve results.
Education must be child-centered.
Lesson number 5. When we spend more, we create more tax burden.
Somebody has to come up with the dollars. It is our responsibility to
make sure that we are getting the kind of results that we need.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to move to my colleague from North Carolina.
I cannot imagine what he wants to talk about, but he has been sitting
there so patiently. I believe he may want to talk about one of the
President's proposals.
Mr. BALLENGER. The gentleman and I attended a hearing in Oklahoma.
What I wanted to bring up, and we have discussed it here in one way or
another, but the idea of spending money wisely. I am here to express a
concern which our Democrat friends mentioned earlier on the condition
of the public schools today.
A recent ``Prime Time Live'' segment by Diane Sawyer documented the
deteriorating buildings and inadequate structures used to house our
children. To combat this appalling situation, President Clinton has
proposed a $5 billion mandatory appropriation to guarantee the interest
payments for the construction and renovation of elementary and
secondary schools.
That sounds like motherhood, apple pie, and the greatest thing since
sliced bread. But one of the problems that the gentleman and I both
know is that once the first dollar of Federal money is accepted, then
there is a little thing called the Davis-Bacon law that goes into
effect. What is the Davis-Bacon law? What it does is it mandates that
you pay higher wages for construction.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. My colleague from Kentucky may want to jump in. The
gentleman may want to just explain the hearing that we went to in
Oklahoma.
Mr. BALLENGER. Strangely enough, we had heard that there were strange
things going on in Oklahoma. Luckily for us, the Secretary of Labor out
there had investigated the actual operation of the Davis-Bacon law as
far as Oklahoma was concerned.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. What does Davis-Bacon do? Maybe our colleague from
Kentucky can explain exactly what Davis-Bacon does because it is
important that people understand this concept. Then we can go back into
what we found about paving machines doing concrete and all of these
kinds of things.
Mrs. NORTHUP. It is important, and it is important because I think
the American people would be interested in how their tax dollars are
spent.
What the Federal Government says is that any school that is built
with a dollar of Federal money, that certain provisions in the bidding
process have to take place. One of those provisions is that
extraordinarily high wages have to be paid, higher wages than most of
the taxpayers will ever earn. What this does is push up the cost of
construction 11 to 20 percent.
This makes no sense. We are talking about the desperate need to build
more schools. What you do is you give the schools the opportunity to
help offset some of their interest payments, but by doing that, they
incur 11 to 20 percent higher costs in building every single school.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. My colleague from North Carolina can explain exactly
how this happens. The process is we try here in Washington, some
people, the gentleman and I have been to the building, I am not sure I
can find it on here, but I think it is somewhere in this neighborhood
over here. There is a person in a building over here, and a group of
about 60, 80 people that are trying to determine pay rates for 40, 50
job categories in every county in America.
What did we find in Oklahoma?
Mr. BALLENGER. For instance, a wage survey submitted to the
Department of Labor, this is in Oklahoma, showed a $20 million
renovation occurred at the University of Oklahoma football stadium
involving 28 workers. In reality no work was done on the football
stadium. Twenty million dollars sent in in the report to say they had
done this work and it never happened.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. The report was sent in, so on the report they outlined
the wage scales that are paid or were paid to these workers on this
project and for any Federal project or any project that had Federal
dollars on it, these were going to be the wages that were going to be
paid.
So this was bogus information coming into Washington from the State
of Oklahoma, and for any project now being constructed in Oklahoma that
is the wage rate that was going to have to be paid. They tried to do
the same thing in Kentucky.
Mr. BALLENGER. Let me give another one. The case showed that 7
asphalt machines, extremely large machines, as big as trucks, were used
to pave a parking lot for an Internal Revenue Service building in
Oklahoma. Workers supposedly were paid $15 an hour. In reality, the
parking lot had only room for 30 cars and it was made of concrete.
There was no way that you could use asphalt paving on it. The
Department of Labor said that the wages instead of being $15 an hour
should have been $8 an hour if it had occurred. But it did not happen.
{time} 1830
Mr. HOEKSTRA. So with the process the gentleman from North Carolina
has outlined, fraudulent data coming in is
[[Page H2074]]
what can lead to excessive costs for further Federal projects.
Mrs. NORTHUP. Actually there are two problems here. One is the
fraudulent data. When you have a building in Washington, DC that is
trying to determine construction projects and costs in Oklahoma, what
you are doing is removing the two so far apart that you make fraud a
very easy, very easily an occurrence. But furthermore, even if you have
no fraud, what you have are extraordinarily high wage rates in places
like Kentucky, places where if you were an individual, if you were a
taxpayer, if you were going to construct something, you would never pay
those construction wages. You would never pay those same level of
construction wages.
I might say that in Kentucky, when I looked over those wage scales,
there were $28 an hour, $26 an hour. We are a poor State. You know, we
have people that are working for minimum wage, that are working as
hairdressers, that are working in gas stations, that are driving school
buses, that are working on the assembly line at Ford Motor Co. None of
those people make $28 an hour. And for them to pay their taxes and have
their taxes pay people to build schools for their children at
extraordinarily high wage rates is an absolute abuse of their tax
dollars.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. The gentleman from North Carolina will explain why that
will happen with the school construction now.
I thought we were helping the schools to get more bang for their
buck.
Mr. BALLENGER. Well, the truth of the matter is you know as well as I
do that if you add this additional labor cost--I mean suppose the
President is going to guarantee your interest rate on your bonds that
you have. North Carolina sold a billion, $200 million worth of bonds.
My own county sold $50 million worth of bonds. Thank goodness I think
they are in such financial shape that they will not be desiring of
using this thing, but if they were, and those bonds cost 6 percent, and
the labor costs were 10 percent higher, you have lost 4 percent because
you use Federal assistance.
It is unbelievable.
Mrs. NORTHUP. I want to just remind you though that even though North
Carolina may not incur the higher school costs and may not borrow out
of this $5 billion, this $5 billion represents the tax dollars they
have paid to Washington, and they are just going to lose it for some
State that does not have the foresight to be able to afford this.
Mr. BALLENGER. If I might, I would like to quote from the Wall Street
Journal one statement here. An inspector general's report has blown
this whistle on the Davis-Bacon Act, and that 1931 law by which the
Labor Department drives up the cost of federally subsidized
construction by requiring what are in effect union wages. A Federal
audit of 800 wage survey forms used to calculate the local prevailing
or union wage found that nearly two out of three forms contained
significant errors and that deliberate misreporting activity may exist.
It is an ideal situation for fraud and abuse, and there is an
indictment out in Oklahoma for one of the fellows that our hearing
brought to the light of the law enforcement.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. If any of my colleagues could maybe answer the
question. I mean if Washington does not set the wages for these
projects, how would we actually find out the wages?
Mrs. NORTHUP. The best way to build a school for our children is for
each school district to do it as they do it right now. They say, what
do we need? We need this many classrooms, we need these certain
specifications, and they put it out for an open bid process, and then
all the companies that build can bid on those bid processes, and the
taxpayers know they get the best price for the school they are going to
build. That is what they deserve for the sacrifice they pay in their
taxes, and that is the best way, close to home, to make sure that each
school is built in accordance to specifications and at the cheapest
price.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is kind of interesting what the woman has outlined.
It is that would make the people in this building feel very
uncomfortable because they do not believe that competitive bidding
actually works in the construction industry. Even though we build huge
buildings, construction projects, and we use it every day, for some
reason the Federal Government does not believe that competitive bidding
would work for us.
Mrs. NORTHUP. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to challenge the
Department of Education and the President to rethink their proposal.
Since they believe that schools construction is so important, since
they believe the need is so great that we cannot afford it, I am going
to ask them to resubmit their proposal and take out the Davis-Bacon
provision, say that they will be excepted from this so that those
projects that they say we need so badly will be built, there will be an
opportunity for more schools for our children, and they can prove how
dedicated they are to our kids by removing this very costly provision.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. If we put in the prevailing wage provision without the
people here in Washington determining the wages, we will lose, I say to
the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Ballenger], anywhere from 10 to
20 percent, maybe more of the purchasing power. So this $5 billion, and
it is going--I mean we will lose more than that because this is just a
partial contribution to these projects, but the whole project will then
be subject to Davis or to the prevailing wage law.
My colleague from Colorado.
Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. That is the perfect point that I think
the American people need to understand in this particular proposal
because what the $5 billion that the Clinton administration wants us to
believe is going to go toward school construction is only a fraction of
the total cost of the project.
What I mean by that is that $5 billion is targeted toward buying down
the interest that a school district would incur in financing a
construction project. But even though a tiny fraction of the dollars
that would be available to those school districts seems small, the fact
that it is Federal funds and has a Davis-Bacon Act attached to them,
when those funds are commingled with the State or local dollars that
are involved in a project, it really spoils the buying power of all of
the dollars that should be going toward bricks and mortar to build
viable schools and schools that promote learning for our children.
But instead what the Clinton administration design is, is to have a
greater portion, the 11, 20, 30 percent I have heard in many cases
depending on what area of the country; to have that percentage of the
dollars go away from construction, away from children, and toward some
other purpose.
Now that other purpose may be useful to some people, but it is not
useful to children. It is not useful to our goals to try to educate
children, and this is the real conflict and vision, I think,
between our Republican vision for schooling and the Democrat vision of
schooling where we really want to get those dollars to kids. We really
want to put them toward learning, not toward some union satisfaction
that is a payback on a political promise.
Mr. BALLENGER. The saddest thing of all is the only people that will
have to use this are the poorest school districts in the country. In
other words, they do not have the taxing power to back up the bond
issues they could sell, so they are going to have to use this 5 percent
underwriting of their interest to sell the bonds which means the
poorest people in the country will get the worst deal on building
schools.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. The poorest districts in the country will end up paying
a premium for all of their construction costs and will actually end up,
may end up, getting less bang for their dollar than if they had never
gotten involved with the Federal Government in the first place. But
sometimes the stuff looks just so enticing, and it makes great
rhetoric.
I think the gentleman from Colorado is absolutely right. We are not
talking about the quality of education. We are talking about designing
the best system of getting the financial resources to the child and to
the classroom and the school construction program, and as with many of
the other programs, one of our colleagues pointed out earlier, some of
these programs take 21 weeks, not some, most of them on the average
take 21 weeks, 216 steps, and even then you get an inflated price.
[[Page H2075]]
Mrs. NORTHUP. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to realize that
there will be a lot of rhetoric about this. I know that I have heard
the debate that what you get is more efficiency when you use higher-
price labor, but the true effect is if you got more efficiency, those
companies that used the $28-an-hour workers would be able to bid on the
job and get it without prevailing wage. If you actually save money by
using higher price labor, then you could come in with lower bids, you
would win the bid contract. So I think that you are going to hear some
misinformation.
The other question is that if you do not set those wages high, that
you are going to take advantage of people who are very poor. The truth
is the people who are very poor, the people who have modest incomes,
middle-income America, are going to subsidize with their tax dollars
extraordinarily high pay rates for those people that work on the
schools. It is not the workers who are talking advantage of on the
schools, but all the other workers in our States and across this
country that are going to pay higher taxes in order to get school
projects they could get at a cheaper price.
Mr. BALLENGER. Suppose all the money they could save went into buying
computers. This is capital outlay, the same deal. In other words, the
money that they have to spend on higher construction costs could go
into computers, all kinds of equipment that would make the school a
better place.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. This is all about using the taxpayers' dollars more
effectively.
Mr. BALLENGER. Right.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. My colleague from Colorado.
Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. I wanted to just give you one more
example on this Davis-Bacon Act and what the impact is on public
projects and construction projects.
I returned from a couple weeks in, over the Easter break, doing town
meetings throughout eastern Colorado; I went to a town called Trinidad
which is in the southern part of Colorado, and the mayor, a Democrat I
might add, came to me, and he talked about the Davis-Bacon Act as the
No. 1 problem they are facing in Trinidad, CO. And they want to repair
their library there, repair the library, not replace it, just repair
it. In the process of repairing their town library they accepted
$17,500 of Federal funds that they received in a rural redevelopment
and construction grant, which was a small portion of the overall costs
of this repair project. They concluded that by the time they calculated
the cost of accepting $17,000 of Federal funds, costs attributable
directly to the Davis-Bacon Act, that they would have been better off
to replace the entire building than to make the small repairs that they
had in mind.
Now I ask you to think about that when President Clinton and the
Democrats come here and talk about this $5 billion as though it somehow
is going to help our children and help our schools, and I assure you it
will not. Before we came here tonight, one of our friends on the other
side of the aisle, Democrat side of the aisle, said would it not be
trying to paint a bleak picture for our children, said would it not be
a shame if the children and the teachers returned this fall to
crumbling schools.
Let me ask a more direct question: Would it not be a shame if those
children and teachers returned in the fall to crumbling schools that
are still crumbling, even after spending $5 billion of Federal funds?
Our States, as a matter of fact, are better off unencumbered by Federal
intrusion in the efforts of trying to repair schools and taking care of
children. That is where our confidence ought to be placed, not here in
Washington.
Mr. BALLENGER. We thank the kind gentleman. I would like to
congratulate you on first of all your hearings throughout the country,
but second of all, bringing this to, I hope, our TV audience to let
them better understand what this is all about.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleagues for participating tonight. We are
going to continue this dialogue on education. It is a very important
one. We are going to continue hearings. This President in many cases
has the same vision of quality education for our children, the best
educated kids in the world. We share that vision. I think where we
separate and go down different paths is he believes the answer perhaps
too often lies here in Washington where we believe the answer lies with
parents, with teachers and a local classroom.
I thank my colleagues for being here tonight.
____________________