[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 17, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H7494-H7496]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1800
                          EDUCATION IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Coble). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New Jersey, [Mr. Pallone] 
will be recognized for the balance of the minority leader's hour and 
for the gentleman's information, that is 16 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut.
  Ms. DeLAURO. I thank my colleague. I just want to say, I find that we 
are looking at another tool in the arsenal of some of my Republican 
colleagues when they are talking about education issues today. I think 
this is worth pointing out. The kind of new catch phrases and code 
words to hide some of this effort to try to, if you go back when we 
were talking about school lunch and we were talking about the whole 
variety of educational programs, the single biggest cuts in education 
in the history of the country were initiated in the last session of 
Congress by the majority. So they were unable, and thank God, really 
unable to succeed in that effort, mainly because the American public 
spoke out loud and clear.
  But there is kind of a new tool in this arsenal, the catch phrases 
and code words. I just want to call my colleagues' attention to 
something that was produced by Frank Luntz, who is a Republican 
pollster, as part of a series of materials. This one is called 
Education: A Smarter American.
  If I can just mention a couple of things here, it says ``overview.'' 
This was put together to present to the Republican majority as a 
communications tool, how to talk about specific issues, not what to do 
about them but how to talk about the issue.
  Education: A Smarter America. Overview. ``We have been able to 
isolate specific words, sentences and ideas that may help Republicans 
sell their education legislation and undercut the President.''
  I mean, that is the first item of this document. If I can give you 
some examples, what Luntz is trying to do is teach people, as I said, 
how to talk about destroying America's public schools in a way that 
makes it sound as if they are doing the opposite. Again, as I say, a 
few examples. He recommends that Members, ``talk about children in 
almost every sentence.'' If you listen closely to the debate on this 
floor, you can hear it loud and clear. Yet when it comes to putting 
money where their mouth is, sometimes the majority is leaving America's 
kids out in the cold.
  As I pointed out before, it was the Republican majority, and this is 
not all, believe me, this is not everyone, because there are reasonable 
people on the other side of the aisle who in fact do believe that we 
need to foster a good, solid and strong education system.
  They try to eliminate the Department of Education. They insist that 
the bipartisan budget agreement not include any money for school 
construction, and they have been pushing a voucher program that my 
colleague from New Jersey mentioned before that would siphon off needed 
funds for public schools.
  I think one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle brought 
up a New York situation with regard to the voucher program and said 
well, you know there has been a commitment to assist 1,000 youngsters 
in being able to go to the school of their choice.
  I applaud that effort. I do. I think that is a good thing. But that 
is 1,000 youngsters. We have hundreds of thousands of youngsters. If we 
begin to pull out money and resources from the public school system to 
only help a few, we then go back to what we dealt with years and years 
ago, which is education is the purview of the privileged and of the 
few, that is not what it is about. It is what public education has 
stood for, is to be there for everyone to take and get that opportunity 
that my colleague from North Carolina talked about before.
  Mr. PALLONE. Just briefly, just to give you an example, I know for 
example in my local schools how difficult it is for them just to 
provide the curriculum that they would like to provide. In other words, 
if they do not have enough money to hire a teacher at the end of the 
year, they may not be able to have an advanced placement course or have 
a program for the disadvantaged or a sports program. You talk about 
starting to take the money away from vouchers from the public schools, 
even in a small way, even if it impacts 5 or 10 or 1 percent of their 
budget, that is going to mean no advanced placement classes, no 
tutorials for kids having a problem reading. They may have to abolish 
one of their sports programs, because they are on tight budgets. It is 
not pie in the sky where they have the opportunity to spend all kinds 
of money. Everything they do is watched. Most of it is subject to an 
annual referendum about how much they spend.
  Ms. DeLAURO. I wanted to make one comment, because I think this 
voucher program, which is going to be the subject of great debate here, 
in his documents Frank Luntz goes so far as to

[[Page H7495]]

admit that the American people are against the Republican voucher 
program, so he advises Members to call their program, a direct quote, 
``opportunity scholarships.''
  Opportunity scholarships. I mean, that is how far we have come here, 
where we are changing the nature of words to describe a way in which we 
want to wreck havoc on the public school system, and in fact take this 
money, taxpayer funds, out of public schools into private and religious 
schools. That is not the direction we should be going.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, the point is what you are talking about 
is truly taking money, not putting additional money in for anything. I 
was in a school just this past Monday, and schools have changed. I 
think a lot of folks forget how much they have changed. And this is 
just not in an upscale neighborhood or in a poor neighborhood, or even 
in a middle class neighborhood. This is in all neighborhoods, by and 
large.
  These were two-parent households. They are dropping their children 
off at school at 6:15 in the morning. They have the gym open, where the 
parents were paying for prior to school opening at 8 o'clock. They were 
picking the children up at 6 p.m.
  These folks work in textile plants. Some of them work in the Research 
Triangle in North Carolina, in which they make good money, so they pay 
the full cost of the before and after school child care.
  My point in making this is a point you just made. Schools have 
changed dramatically. We are asking people in education to do more than 
just educate children.
  There are a lot of folks who would like for schools to continue to 
have custodial care. That means you take care of them during the day 
and teach them when you can, but just take care of them.
  It is about more than that. It is about education, it is about 
opportunity, and it is about giving that child a vision of where he or 
she can go, what he or she can be, and what the future holds.
  Go visit most any school today and you will see bankers, you will see 
astronauts in the schools, you will see a lot of business people, 
because in most communities now they are starting to form those 
partnerships. That is why when you talk about the polling data, it says 
we are not in favor of vouchers, we are really in favor of the public 
schools. We realize they are working hard to change.
  Our friend from Massachusetts talked a while ago, and I must get this 
personal point in, about how hard teachers work. Teachers, by and 
large, and I think this would be true anywhere in this country, put in 
50 to 60 hours every week when school is in session. I believe that. I 
have a wife who works in the public school system. I have two children, 
one who is teaching the second grade and the other who will start. I 
know how hard they work. I have seen them work, because their day does 
not end when they leave.
  They are a little bit like legislators. They carry work home with 
them, but they have to bring it back the next day prepared for the 
student, they have to prepare the lesson plan and grade those papers.
  That is why I think it is so important that at the highest level, in 
this Congress, and I am glad the President has made it a high priority 
and raised that vision, and I think he has given educators an awful lot 
of hope and the American people a lot of hope, that we are going to pay 
attention to education. Even though we do not put the bulk of the money 
to the K-12 level, we can do a lot toward raising the vision and the 
hope.

  We have seen business people across this country come together and 
say ``we want to be your partner.'' I think that is why we are seeing 
such strong indications of their help. I am very committed to that.
  Mr. PALLONE. I just wanted to say it is interesting what you said 
about President Clinton, because I think he has done more to basically 
be an advocate for prioritizing education on the Federal level than 
really anybody else.
  I watch him, and I have watched over the years how he has approached 
it. I think a lot of it just comes from his own background, having 
grown up in not a wealthy background by any means. I think his father 
had actually died before he was born or when he was 6 months old, and 
he had a rough time.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Without the public schools, he would not have had the 
opportunities.
  Mr. PALLONE. Exactly. He went from public school to very good 
universities. He was a Rhodes Scholar. He is really sort of the example 
of how everything can open up and, given equal opportunity, that people 
really can achieve great things, can become the President of the United 
States.
  I think all the Democrats are saying is we want that to be true for 
the next generation and generations to come. We do not want that 
opportunity to be lost, because it may very well be if we do not 
continue to prioritize the public schools.
  I think that is really what may be the reason why so many of us in 
our party feel so strongly about these education initiatives, because 
we have seen it ourselves.
  You and I were talking earlier about how many Members of Congress 
went through public schools and how oftentimes we will see those very 
same Members get up, sometimes on the other side of the aisle, and talk 
about vouchers or ways that we think will actually drain public school 
resources.
  Sometimes I just wish they would look at themselves in the mirror as 
an example at how they got here to these hallowed halls, so-to-speak, 
and it was mostly through public education.
  So do not tear it apart. Try to come up with ways that will improve 
it. That is really all we are saying. I mean, we keep saying it over 
and over again. We worked on it a lot with the budget in terms of 
higher education and providing more opportunity and more money that is 
available, and now we are saying we have to do the same thing with the 
secondary schools, with preschool, all the way to high school 
graduation.
  Ms. DeLAURO. We have to give parents the sense and the confidence 
that the teachers are accountable, that their kids are learning, and 
they have a role and a responsibility. We can do that. That has been 
the way of the public school system in the past. We do not have to take 
the resources out and, again, as I said before, make education the 
purview of the few and not the many.
  Parents want to know there are standards that are being met. They 
want it better for their kids. It is what everybody's parents here 
wanted for their kids.
  My dad could not speak English when he came to this country and he 
suffered for that, because at that time he was in a school where his 
classmates and teachers laughed at him because he could not speak the 
language and he left school. Sure, he did fine and did OK. He worked 
very hard so that I could get an education and I could realize my 
dreams. But, my God, would it not have been an easier road if we had an 
understanding, like we try to do today with the great diversity of our 
public schools, which has made it as strong as it can possibly be.
  That is what we need to be about. That is what the great strength of 
this country is about; it is diversity. That is what its schools need 
to foster, and make each and every piece of that effort as strong as it 
can possibly be, and not leave a shell where the public school system 
used to be.
  As I said, this is not a partisan issue. This is a national issue, 
and we need to try to come together so that we can recognize where 
there are things that are wrong, agree that they need to be changed, 
and put our mind and our resources to making the change for the 
betterment of our country and for our kids.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. If the gentlewoman would yield, I could not agree 
more. One of the things we need to keep in mind as we are talking about 
our schools as they change, et cetera, is the public school system that 
we now see and that has served us well does not go to the founding of 
this country.
  Truthfully, in a lot of States, particularly the southern States, we 
are talking about the turn of the century. If you dropped out of 
school, there was a job in business, somewhere in industry, and a place 
you could be plugged in.
  Today we are asking the public schools to have 100 percent graduates,

[[Page H7496]]

we are asking them to be at a much higher level than they ever have 
been. So schools are changing. This is a tremendous challenge, and they 
need all the help to get there, because our economy changed, and as our 
schools change, they meet some very difficult tasks. All of us can cite 
some examples that why we made it was because of the public schools, 
and there are a lot of examples in the Halls of this Congress on both 
sides, and it is true all across the country.
  

                          ____________________