[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 137 (Monday, October 6, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H8423-H8430]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EDUCATION REFORMS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Redmond). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr.
Etheridge] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend, the gentleman
from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone], for joining me this evening. I have a
few opening remarks and then I will ask him, if he would like, to join
me. I want to thank him for being here this evening and for helping to
organize this special opportunity to talk about a very important issue
involved in the Democratic effort to reform, to improve and to
strengthen public schools in this country.
We have held this series of after hours speeches to engage the
American people in a dialogue about the policy choices that are being
made that will have a profound impact on the way our children are
educated in every community all across this great country. We simply
must put the maximum effort we can into improving of our public schools
for our children. By that, I mean all the children of this country, not
just a select few that we can give vouchers or something else and give
a lot of lip service, but I am talking about every child, no matter
where they live in this country.
We have a lot of work to do. Some of these things certainly are local
responsibilities, no question about that. But we at the Federal level
cannot walk away from our responsibility to help every child in this
country.
Mr. Speaker, before I became a Member of the people's House, I spent
8 years as the superintendent of public schools in the State of North
Carolina. I am proud of the record that we have established in our
State in improving education. I had the privilege during those years to
spend a good deal of my time in the classrooms, on the front line in
the struggle of our schools in the battle against ignorance.
I am here this evening to talk about those North Carolina values that
I think have made a difference in our State and certainly can make a
difference across this country.
In all the time that I spent in those classrooms, and I still go in
them now at least once a week since I have been elected to Congress, no
student has ever asked me who paid for the textbooks, who built the
building, who paid the power bill, who paid the electrical bill or who
bought the school buses they rode to school on. The child does not care
who provides them the opportunity to learn. A child only knows what
that opportunity is, whether or not they have been provided one and, in
many cases, unfortunately an opportunity denied. And once you deny an
opportunity for an education, you deny a child an opportunity to have a
level playing field to compete and develop their God-given ability.
I think sometimes those of us in public office get too carried away
by whose responsibility it is and forget that it is all of our
responsibility. It is not just the responsibility of the Federal
Government or the State government or local government or parents and
children. All of us share a responsibility. That is why public schools
in this country are asking parents to be engaged, asking the business
communities to be engaged, because all of us share a responsibility for
our children.
One issue that we must make a top priority is the issue of school
facilities and school construction and, yes, the repairing of those
buildings in many cases. All across this country we have crumbling
schools, some in our inner cities as well as in rural areas of this
country. And we have major overcrowding in schools where areas are
growing and growing very rapidly. And in some cases they are adjacent
to urban centers where those areas are poor and do not have the
resources to match it. I know because my district contains areas,
directs spending and faces all of these problems.
My State just passed last November the largest bond issue in the
history of our State, $1.9 billion for school construction, by the
largest majority of any bond issue in the history of our State. That
tells me people care about children. They care about them having
quality facilities, and people want action on this important issue. We
have to get beyond the dialogue and the rhetoric of whose
responsibility it is and just say it is our responsibility, it is our
country, and these are our children. We have to deal with all of them.
There are some communities that cannot do it without help, without
some leveraging. I think that is an issue that we have to grapple with,
and we have to grapple with it at the Federal level. There was a time
when it was not our responsibility at the Federal level to determine
whether or not people had electric power. But in the 1930's we decided
we ought to do that and we put a policy in place that every citizen of
this country would have electric power and we put in the REA. We also
made the same decision as related to telephones and, shock of all
things, we decided that water and sewer was important. It was not a
national priority before that.
And I happen to believe if there is anything important to this
country beyond the defense of our borders, it is education for the
young children of this country, making sure that they have the minds to
be able to compete in the 21st century. And, yes, education is all of
our responsibilities so that children can develop their God-given
ability.
The President made a very sound school construction proposal during
the budget talks but, unfortunately, the Republican leadership refused
to allow it to be included in the final budget package. That was very
disappointing. It was a very disappointing decision by the Republican
leadership because the American people need some help to repair their
local schools, and this Congress should do more to provide that help.
Sure, we have balanced the budget. I am proud of that. And now that we
have balanced the budget, we should not shirk our responsibilities to
help our children.
While Washington often bickers over what role the Federal Government
should and should not take on these issues, our focus should really be
on the needs of our local communities and making sure that our children
have the best opportunity.
You can walk into a school in any community in America and
immediately know where education ranks in that community. As a matter
of fact, you do not have to walk into a school. You can drive into a
community and find out where the nicest buildings are and you will know
what the priority is in that community. We have to change attitudes and
support public schools and public education.
Many poor communities do not have the resources to build the quality
facilities that they need. We should help them. We must help them. Many
growing communities cannot keep up with the pace of expansion that they
have to meet the needs of all the children in the school system. We
should help them.
I speak to many chambers of commerce, as I know other Members of this
Congress do, to business leaders, community leaders and other groups.
Sometimes someone will say to me that the quality of buildings really
does not make a difference. I have a ready answer for those folks. I
say, when you go out and recruit new business and bring jobs to your
community, why do you not take them down to the side of town where you
have the old run-down warehouses or old run-
[[Page H8424]]
down buildings and say the quality of the building really does not make
any difference? Why do you not put your business in that old building?
It is the quality of the people you put in it that makes the
difference.
And yes, it is important, the quality of people you put in it, but
the quality of that facility says a lot about what you care about. It
also says to your employees that you care about their environment. It
also says to children that you care about education when you improve
the quality of the facility.
The town fathers always wanted to show off the shiny new facilities
that attracted those new buildings. That is why today we are seeing
communities all across America and parents and others raise the issue
of school facilities and the quality of education, because that is what
business interests are asking about. It is their pride and joy. And the
quality of the opportunities for our children will be the thing that
will make a difference in the 21st century.
I say our schools should be our pride and joy also, because it is
important that children see the quality and that we do care about their
schools and that we do have the quality of facility they need, because
it does have a significant impact. I know. I have seen it. I have been
there, as the gentleman has.
It makes all the difference in the world. It has an impact on their
attitudes, and it certainly translates into a better learning
environment and we see the difference. It also has an impact on
discipline, and we see a drop in the number of problems that children
have. If you have a nice facility, it is amazing what happens to your
attendance rate. It goes up. Children want to be in a nice environment.
That should be our top priority. There are a lot of other things we can
be doing.
I am working on legislation that will be drafted to help rebuild our
schools in our run-down areas and build new schools in areas that are
growing. This bill will help direct resources to areas where they are
needed most, where school populations are projected to explode in the
next several years, and we know what is happening.
We have the largest enrollment in our public schools today that we
have ever had in our history. It is projected to increase dramatically
over the next 10 years. We have areas of the country that are growing
by 10, 15, 20 and some as much as 35 and 40 percent. Those areas can
absolutely not meet the needs that they have.
I am very pleased to have my colleague from New Jersey join me this
evening, and other colleagues will be joining us later. I know, to the
gentleman from New Jersey, this is an an issue of interest to him. I
see we have another colleague joining us to talk about this issue of
not only facility that is important but the quality of the academic
offering and how important it is to have accountability.
{time} 2145
And, hopefully, before we finish, we will have time to talk about the
proposal the President has made for us to deal with this issue, of how
to have accountability in our schools and assure the American public
that the schools in North Carolina, in every corner of our State, and
in New Jersey and in Texas, as people are mobile and move about, that
their children have a quality education.
I yield to my colleague from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone].
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from North
Carolina for initiating this special order tonight. I know he is
probably the most knowledgeable person in the House of Representatives
on education issues, primarily because he has lived through it and he
knows what he is talking about. He is dealing with these situations
firsthand, which is what we really need when we are dealing with
education and other issues here in the House of Representatives.
A couple of things the gentleman mentioned here this evening I want
to sort of reiterate or go into a little more. First of all, I did
listen to some of our Republican colleagues a little earlier when they
were talking about the budget and taking credit for achieving or at
least trying to achieve a balanced budget.
It is certainly good we did pass the balanced budget proposal, and I
do believe that it will achieve a balanced budget, but I would mention
that the Democrats fought very hard not only to achieve a balanced
budget but also to make sure that there was funding in that budget bill
for education priorities. And we made a point, as did the President,
that we were not going to go along with the bill unless the Republicans
changed their policies and provided a significant amount of funding for
education priorities.
A lot of the money that was targeted by the Democrats in that bill
went to higher education, because, as the gentleman knows, the cost of
higher education has skyrocketed in recent years, in the last decade,
or even the last 20 years. And what we were trying to do was to provide
programs, tax credits, ways to provide additional funding to students
through their parents or through their own families so that they would
have access to quality higher education.
I think we succeeded. I am not saying we totally succeeded, because
costs are still going up, but we have at least provided some tax
credits and some deductions and some scholarship and some expansion
that makes more money available for those who do not have it; primarily
middle-class students. But what we need to turn our attention to now,
and what the gentleman from North Carolina described, is primarily
before a person goes to college, secondary schools, grammar school,
kindergarten, even preschool. That is where the Democrats now are
prioritizing what we think this Congress should do.
I know the gentleman in particular has cochaired the Democratic Task
Force on Education, which has come up with a number of basic principles
that I think really set the standard for what kind of legislation and
what priorities we should have in this Congress on education issues.
The gentleman mentioned a couple of those, but I wanted to zero in on
two.
One is, of course, the main purpose of our debate this evening, and
that is the need to basically provide for the education infrastructure.
We know that schools are overcrowded. We know that a lot of them need
repair. We know a lot of local school districts need to build new
schools because there is so much of an increase in enrollment.
The gentleman also mentioned the fact that the Federal role here
should be primarily to support public education and not take dollars
away from public education through a voucher system that primarily
supports private education.
One of the things that I think needs to be stressed, and I know the
gentleman mentioned it but I am going to stress it again, is that
throughout this debate that will be occurring in the next few weeks,
actually beginning this week with the D.C. appropriations bill, what
needs to be stressed is not so much that many of us, including myself,
are opposed to vouchers, but that we feel that vouchers take money away
from public schools.
In other words, if we had all the money in the world, we had money
growing on trees, so to speak, around here, and we were able to say,
OK, let us try a little experiment where we send a few thousand kids in
the District of Columbia or in the State of New Jersey or North
Carolina to try on an experimental basis a voucher system, I might say,
OK, why not. That is a small experiment. A few thousand kids here or
there. We will try it and see what the result is. But the problem here
is that our public schools are strapped for funds. We know when we talk
about the infrastructure problems how strapped for funds they are.
So for us to talk in the context of that and say we are going to take
resources away from these public schools, where it could be spent on
good programs in these public schools, whether it is infrastructure or
it is academic excellence or it is training teachers, whatever it
happens to be, and we are going to take those dollars and we are going
to spend them on voucher systems for private or parochial schools, I do
not think that is fair. I think that is counter to the interests of the
public school education that the overwhelming majority, I think it is
better than 90 percent of the students are educated in public schools.
So we need to stress to our constituents, and I explain this all the
time, that the voucher system is not without cost and impact on the
public schools, and that is the problem that I have with it.
[[Page H8425]]
Mr. ETHERIDGE. I thank the gentleman, because he is absolutely right.
We are not talking about putting additional dollars into the system. If
we go down that road, then all those who are currently out there who
are not in the public schools, who are either in private schools or
parochial schools or wherever they may be, they are going to be
standing in line for their dollars once we cross that threshold.
What we would be talking about doing is in every public school in
America, in the inner city, in the suburbs, and in rural America, we
will be taking dollars out of those schools and reducing that
opportunity for every single child. And the child that gets hurt the
most is the child who is most vulnerable, in most cases, but all of
them suffer.
The last time I checked, as our three children went through the
public schools, and we still have one in it, the PTA, in almost every
school that I am aware of, certainly in our State and I assume it is
true in the gentleman's, they do not have enough money. Otherwise, why
would they be having candy sales and hot dog sales and book sales and
all these other things they do to raise money? They are raising money
to supplement the resources in the schools that are not now available.
So if we are to go in and take additional dollars out, we will do one
of two things, should it happen: We will increase the sales by the PTA
in other areas or we will deprive them of more opportunities than they
are now being deprived. And I think that would be a shame and a
disgrace at a time when education in America, in my opinion, is at a
premium.
I agree with the gentleman. I think he is absolutely right, and I
would yield back.
Mr. PALLONE. I will not go on too long, because I know my colleague
from Texas would like to speak as well, but what I see the Republican
leadership trying to do is to sort of give the impression that the
public school system has failed and we need to look for alternatives
now.
And that is not what I am getting from my constituents. They believe
that the public school system is generally doing OK. It needs
improvement, but they do not want to sacrifice it at the expense of or
in order to fund a voucher program that primarily sends resources to
private schools. They have a sense of community. They like their public
school. They want to see it improved. So let us not just throw it to
the wind and say, look, it cannot be repaired.
The bottom line is that if we spend some money and spend some Federal
dollars the way the Democrats and the way the gentleman's task force
has proposed on emphasizing academic excellence, better training of
teachers, and there are a whole slew of things, we have not even talked
tonight about the safe and well-equipped schools as well, if we spend
money on those things and we improve the public schools, then I think
that is money well spent. And that is where our constituents are saying
they would like to see the dollars spent.
I wanted to briefly say, and I know we have talked about this, but
again when we talk about the magnitude of the problem in terms of
school overcrowding and the needs because of dilapidated schools, it is
really overwhelming. Just some general statistics here. The General
Accounting Office has said that approximately one-third of all schools
serving 14,000,000 students are in need of substantial repair or
outright replacement. School enrollment, 1996-97 school year.
Elementary and secondary school enrollment was a record 51.7 million.
That has been broken by this year's high enrollment of 52.2 million.
So the number of kids entering the system is increasing rapidly and
the demand for more schools is there. And it is not even repairing the
infrastructure, but it is also the high-technology needs. As we move
into the high-technology era, the computers, the ability to access the
Internet. Very few schools have the ability, have the needed
infrastructure to access the Internet. They do not have the money to
buy the computers.
All we are really saying, I think, is that if the Federal Government
was able to spend a small amount of money and leverage, most of the
time, in terms of infrastructure need, the gentleman mentioned it
before, local school districts bond for infrastructure needs. But what
the President has talked about and, unfortunately, as the gentleman
mentioned, was not included in this budget, was the fact that we should
use Federal dollars to leverage and pay the interest costs on a lot
bonding, it allows more school construction and repairs to take place,
and it allows the local school districts to make those kinds of
investments at less of a cost over the long term.
So that is what we are talking about. We are not talking about
anything that is going to violate the basic concept that funding and
control is still local with regard to our education system. Because
that is what America has always been about: Local education. But there
is no reason, just like we do with sewage infrastructure or roads or
everything else, why not have some Federal dollars to help the local
municipality pay some of these costs.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. It is easy. If we do not want to do something, we can
find a thousand reasons. If we want to do it, it is not hard to find a
reason.
Last time I checked, I have not heard anyone get up on this floor and
say we should not send water and sewer money to our municipalities to
clean them up because we might take control of it. They will find
another way if they do not want to spend the dollars. But the truth is,
if we want to do it, we can find a way to do it.
The gentleman talked about the schools. And the truth is what we
really are about in the whole litany of things is reforming, repairing,
and renewing. The three R's. We have to reform and certainly go on
about doing things.
I really get frustrated, and I was out there 2 years ago when this
Congress talked about doing away with the Department of Education and
education was under assault, and both of the gentleman here were
fighting to make sure we saved it, and we did. But my colleagues cannot
imagine what that did for the morale of teachers and principals and
people on the frontlines educating children.
They just sort of tuned it out and kept working. They work hard every
day. They are some of the hardest working people in our society today.
And I think what we need to do is raise up the tremendous job they do
and give them an uplift rather than beating them down.
I know my good friend, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Green], his wife
is a teacher, and she is an outstanding one, and I yield to the
gentleman because I know he has something he would like to contribute
to this dialog.
Mr. GREEN. I want to thank my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, for allowing
for this special order tonight, particularly on education.
While I was in my office returning some phone calls and listening to
my colleagues from the Republican side for the first hour, the fear
they have is Federal control of our schools. Well, I think the three of
us would agree we do not want Federal control of our schools. We have
fought against that. In fact, in 1994 we reauthorized elementary,
secondary education funding, and it was a Democratic Congress and a
Democratic President who signed that.
We actually freed a lot of the schools from the paperwork and the
requirements that we built up, both Republican and Democratic
Presidential administrations. Goals 2000 was a great program, and is
still a great program for schools to benefit and States to adopt
without Federal controls. Just Federal assistance without the Federal
Government saying this is what they have to do. They can do it for
literacy, they can pay for lots of different programs with it, but this
is our effort to help local schools and States to provide for
educational opportunities.
I know the gentleman talked about vouchers, and again this week we
will talk about experimenting with the District of Columbia. And Lord
knows the District of Columbia needs help for their public school
system, but I really do not know if we need to use them as an
experiment, because those children need an education. We do not need to
lose a generation of children by experimenting with some program that
may work in the District of Columbia so then we can export it to the
States.
I know the gentleman also talked about national standards. And,
again, as long as they are voluntary, I think most folks agree with
that.
[[Page H8426]]
Like the gentleman, I have two children that went through public
schools and are now a junior and senior in college, by the way in
public institutions in Texas, because we also have some low-tuition
rates in our public colleges in Texas. And, sure, they could have
gotten a better education, but they also got an adequate education. It
is an urban school district, literally a microcosm of our country,
probably 70 percent minority students today. And when they were in
school it was probably 65 percent minority students.
But they went to public schools and they got an education. Of course,
my wife teaches in those schools so she also made sure they had that
motivation, not just in school but at home.
One of the concerns I have, and in serving a lot of years in the
legislature, was the facilities situation we have. We talked about that
in special orders a number of times, our deteriorating schools
facilities around the country, whether it be in New York, or
Washington, DC, or Houston, TX, or a lot of our districts. Providing
opportunity for quality education is one of the most important things
we do in Congress.
{time} 2200
I always believed that the key to the future of our country was a
quality education. Now, we all know we want to make sure we have a
strong military. We want to have a strong economic base. But it does
not take too far to go. We can go just across the river in Virginia and
talk to the folks in the Pentagon, and they will tell us that to have a
strong military, we have to have an educated force there, people who
can think, people who can respond to different circumstances.
And that is what public education is supposed to do. Granted, does it
do it 100 percent of the time? No. That is why we are here. That is why
we have teachers every day and legislators across the country and
school board members and superintendents trying to make it work.
As the gentleman mentioned, my wife is an algebra teacher. I have to
admit, I took algebra and barely struggled through, even college
calculus. And if somebody gave me the quadratic formula tonight, I
could not solve it without the best tutor I ever had in college, who is
my wife.
But that also taught me a way of thinking. So whether it was managing
a business or practicing law or serving here in an elected office, we
have a way that we can make decisions. And that is what we are trying
to teach children.
Sure, we want them to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. We want
them to know the history of our great country. We want them to know
English. We want them to know lots of things. We want them to know
science, although some of us, I have to admit, are not science
oriented. That is why I am not on the Committee on Appropriations.
But we also want them to have a way to think and be able to change
with the times. So that is why I think public education, the investment
we put into it, lots of things, is helping those local districts and
the States where most of the funding is raised.
Just as we help our children to read, we must also give them schools
that are safe places to learn. Today, our Nation's schools are
increasingly run down, overcrowded, and technologically ill-equipped.
Too many of our school buildings and classrooms are deteriorating,
again, not just in Washington, D.C., that we hear about, as a Nation we
hear about all the time, but all across our country, whether it be in
an urban area like I represent or rural area.
According to a GAO report, one-third of our schools need major repair
or outright replacement. Sixty percent need work on major building
features, such as a sagging roof or cracked foundation. Forty-six
percent lack even the basic electrical wiring to support computers and
modems and modern communications technology that we want our children
to be able to respond to not only this decade but the next century, and
we cannot do it with the facilities we have today.
These are problems, again, not just in my own district in Houston but
also across our country. A number of studies have shown that many
school systems, particularly those in urban and high-poverty areas, are
plagued by decaying buildings that threaten the health and safety and
the learning opportunities of our children. Good school facilities are
an important precondition for school learning.
Now, we know that if you have a great teacher, a great teacher can
teach you under a tree. But that teacher cannot teach you under that
tree if it is snowing or raining outside. So we have to have a facility
that is adequate not only for those good days that that teacher may be
there, but also for the whole school year.
Numerous studies have linked student achievement and behavior to good
physical building conditions. Not only are our schools in a state of
disrepair, but we also need to see the accommodating growths in
enrollment. And I heard my colleagues talking about that earlier.
In Houston, our school enrollment is skyrocketing. The Texas school
population increased by 7.9 percent in 1 year. In the Houston
Independent School District, we experienced an increase of 3,700
students just from last year.
We have a solution to that, or at least a down payment, or a start.
The Senate Labor-HHS-Education appropriations includes $100 million for
provision for school facility infrastructure, and it is a good starting
point.
In fact, I think it is ironic when my colleague, the gentleman from
New Jersey [Mr. Pallone], asked me today about doing a special order on
education, I am always willing to do it, one of my school
superintendents from Aldine School District, Sonny Donaldson, whom I
work with on a number of occasions, just happened to send me a letter
talking about how important that $100 million provision is for school
facility infrastructure in the Senate appropriations bill. Our House
bill did not include that $100 million.
I have to admit, $100 million, we can spend that in the State of
Texas alone. But it is a help from the Federal Government to leverage,
as the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] talked about, to show
that we will provide a dollar for maybe what a local district may
provide $10 or $100, but to provide that assistance, that we recognize
that that child is also our responsibility on the floor of the House.
We cannot just put it off on school board members, we cannot put it off
on State legislators or school superintendents; we have to take the
responsibility on ourselves.
As we help our communities build and maintain their schools, we must
ensure that every school and classroom is connected to the information
superhighway. And the President has proposed a 5-year, $2 billion fund
that will support grass-roots efforts and again put the fingertips of
every child by the year 2000 on modern computers, high-quality
educational software, trained teachers in connection with the
superhighway.
Again, I appreciate the opportunity to join my colleagues tonight.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey
[Mr. Pallone], because I think he has something he wants to add to
that.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I was listening to what the gentleman from
Texas [Mr. Green] said, in particular with regard to the effects of
overcrowded classrooms or decaying schools. There is no question that
it affects the quality of education provided to students.
It is much more difficult, and I know my colleague from North
Carolina [Mr. Etheridge] mentioned, as well, it is much more difficult
to learn in an environment where the building is crumbling around you
or the situation where there are too many students in the classroom.
Of course it is true, as my colleague said, that some teachers can
teach in the worst situation in the world and some students can learn
in the worst situation. But, unfortunately, those are often exceptions,
and the reality is, we have to see how the average student is impacted.
The one thing that the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Green] mentioned,
though, that I particularly want to draw attention to is, it is really
ironic that this week, I think it is either Wednesday or Thursday of
this week on this floor, we are going to be considering this Republican
amendment that would adopt a voucher system in the District of
Columbia.
I do not know if it was the last time, but certainly in early
September, when the gentleman from North Carolina
[[Page H8427]]
[Mr. Etheridge] and I, and I think the gentleman from Texas [Mr.
Green], we were all here and we were talking about how the schools in
the District of Columbia were closed, I believe, for at least 3 weeks,
in some cases maybe even more, because the Federal judge in the
District of Columbia had ruled that the conditions in the schools were
so bad, that the infrastructure conditions were so bad that she, I
think it was a woman judge, insisted that the schools be closed until
the money was spent to repair the schools.
Now, we have been talking about infrastructure and we have been
talking about vouchers all night. But here we have a situation where
probably the infrastructure problem in the District of Columbia is one
of the worst in the Nation, to the point where they could not even open
the schools.
I am sure the judge was motivated by the fact that it was going to be
a bad learning experience for these kids and it was going to be hard
for them to learn, given these buildings and the shape they were in.
And here, where there is such a great need for money to repair schools,
we are proposing a voucher system, which I do not know how many, I
think there are a few thousand kids that are going to be impacted by
it. Why not spend that money on the infrastructure needs when the court
has actually had to step in and close the schools for that reason?
Again, it points at directly how the need is there and yet we are
wasting the resources. In fact, in some cases, I understand these kids
might not even be in the District, they might actually be going to
Virginia or Maryland or some other places for their education.
I am not here to defend the District of Columbia and its school
system. I am sure there are bad conditions and there are problems, and
they have been documented. But it does not make any sense to me to say,
okay, forget about that; Let it continue to deteriorate, and we will
just set up this voucher system.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, if we take that
another step and we look at industry, and one of the first things I
remember in the D.C. situation that my colleague mentioned was, they
went in to put the roofs on the buildings because the buildings were
leaking.
It is one thing to have poor lighting. It is another thing to have
trash cans in the building catching the water when it rains. And that
leads to a multitude of problems of safety and additional deterioration
and on and on. There is no question that the quality of the environment
makes a difference. There are enough studies.
The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Green] mentioned growth. Let me just
share a few of the States, if I may, that are growing so rapidly. Over
the next 10 years, it is projected, this is just high school
enrollment, because it goes back to the point he made about those
youngsters showing up at elementary school. I have often said, some
people want to know why communities are growing so and schools are
growing. I said, well, you know, people move into communities, and when
they move there, they tend to want to bring the children with them if
they have children. That is normally what happens. And when they bring
them there, normally they want to go to school.
And in growing communities, we understand that. And for some
communities, they can pretty well determine how large their first-grade
class will be by the number of live births that happened 5 or 6 years
earlier. The problem most schools have are in those fast-growing
communities where you have in-migration; people move in and bring the
children.
As an example, in California, over the next 10 years, it is projected
that there will be a 35-percent increase in the high school enrollment
in the State of California, a State right now that is a large State, a
State that most of us think of as being a State that is fairly
affluent.
But when we have that kind of growth continue in a State that is
right now already struggling to meet the needs, we wind up with major
overcrowding. And overcrowding leads to all those problems that we talk
about of discipline, lack of academic achievement.
There is no question of the studies, and there will be more studies
that will continue to come out, beyond having quality teachers in the
classroom and a good curriculum, the next best thing we can do for
children to provide for them learning opportunities where they excel is
smaller class sizes.
We can talk to any teacher in this country, in urban or rural
systems, in elementary grades or high school, and what they will say
is, ``Let me have a small class.'' It gets back to the point the
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Green] made earlier about the teacher
teaching under the tree. If we have got a small enough class, you can
teach most anywhere. The problem we have is, as those classes grow, we
really do need space in the larger classes so that children have places
to move around, or students, for that matter, who happen to be in high
school.
But let me give my colleagues a couple of other States. For the
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Green], your State is one that is proposed to
grow very rapidly over the next 10 years. High school enrollment will
increase by 19 percent. They can take their high school enrollment
right now and figure out how many more schools they are going to need
across the State and classrooms.
My home State, which happens to be the ninth or tenth largest State
in terms of public schools, depending how you measure it, but I think
we are about ninth, is going to grow 27 percent at the high school
level in the next 10 years. We are building buildings as fast as we
can. We will not keep up.
And the list goes. Nevada, 24; Georgia, the tenth or eleventh largest
State, depending on how you look at it in terms of numbers, they are
always right close to North Carolina, they will grow by 20 percent in
population at the high school level. So we are seeing a tremendous
need. Virginia, 20 percent.
All across this country, we are going to see the most rapid, the
largest growth at the high school level over the next 10 years we have
seen at any period since the end of World War II. It is what some are
calling the baby boom echo. We had the baby boomers. Now the baby
boomers are echoing, and we are having children, and it is growing
very, very rapidly.
These numbers in no way reflect the tremendous need that my
colleagues have talked about that is out there for repairs, for
renovations, for making sure that buildings are wired to take care of
the access to the Internet and computers to deal with all the
information that is now bombarding society and certainly children and
teachers and students have to deal with.
It does not say anything about all the other needs outside those
school buildings just in the learning environment, because if we are
going to have a large number of students together, we have got all
those auxiliary needs at the high school level, for the athletic
program, for the extracurricular activities that are absolutely needed.
When we get that many young people together, we had better have
something for them to do beyond academics. We all know that that is
awfully important.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Green].
Mr. GREEN of Texas. When we talk about, again, buildings, thank
goodness we are going to have those kids in high school, because the
other problem we talk about a lot of times is the dropout.
We do not want to see those children start in the elementary grades
and go on to middle school and then drop out before they get to high
school. We want to see them complete high school, because that is just
another step on the road to their success, but also on the road to our
country's success, because our country, as great as it is, is not any
good at all if we have an uneducated work force or uneducated people
that are defending our Nation.
And we can defend our country not just by carrying a gun or manning a
missile; we defend our country every day by being as aggressive in our
business. That is what our school system is all about.
{time} 2215
That is why the United States is the greatest country in the world
for lots of reasons. One, the free enterprise system; but also, because
we educate everyone. We are a diverse country and we want everyone to
be educated. We want to give them the opportunity, and granted, some
people are harder to educate.
[[Page H8428]]
In fact, I had some high school teachers who said I was probably one
of those harder to educate students. But I am glad that they persevered
because they were preparing me to serve in Congress. And that is why we
need to encourage and do better today for those teachers that are out
there today doing that, just like the gentleman said. They are hard-
working. They not only work their 7 hours a day, but they spend hours
and hours in the evening grading those tests, grading those papers that
they cannot do during the day.
Also, conferences. I cannot remember, when I was in school, a teacher
calling my parents. One, I did not want them to. But today, because
most of the schools have it built into the responsibilities, teachers
have to contact those parents, not just sending a note home but calling
those parents to make sure they bring them in as part of the education
system, because we just cannot educate children with teachers and
students; it is all of us involved in it, parents, the community, and
that is where we see the success in the school districts.
Let me say that the problem in some facilities, some districts have
success with their local taxpayers who approve the bond elections. We
had some great successes in the districts I am honored to represent. We
have a school, Cheneby High School, a small school district on the
outskirts of Houston that has a new high school, Cheneby High School
that has state-of-the-art computers. There is a hookup in every
classroom. We do not have that in most of our districts, because some
districts, the voters voted against bonds, so they are having to do
creative financing to do it. Galena Park High School in a neighboring
district is building a new high school, doing the same thing, because
their voters approved it. But we need to help on a national basis
because it is a national concern, because we need to make sure that
those young people are prepared to take our places here on the floor.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman says, it is part of our
national security, and I think it is just as important or certainly
measures in importance with defending our borders, because if our young
people cannot compete in the economic environment we find ourselves in
in the world economy, we are going to be in trouble in the 21st
century.
I yield to my friend from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone].
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to follow up on some of the
things that my colleague from Texas said about the way that we are
talking about proceeding with this school construction Federal funding.
I know the gentleman from North Carolina mentioned basically the
legislative proposal.
There have been various proposals, but essentially what we are
talking about is to provide these intra subsidies, if you will, for new
construction and renovation. When we were talking about the President's
budget, the program that was actually negated, if you will, by the
Republicans, that was a $5 billion Federal jump start that had a goal
of increasing school construction by 25 percent over the next 4 years.
But what the gentleman from Texas mentioned, and I think is so
important, is that generally, my understanding, it is certainly true in
New Jersey, I think in almost every State, is that in order to finance
school construction through bonding, one usually has to go to a local
referendum to do that.
Part of the reason why local school districts have turned down the
bond proposals is because of the exorbitant costs. They cannot
necessarily get a good package or get financing at a low interest rate
because of maybe the nature of the district, or I do not know how much
State funding they get, or whatever.
So we are not forcing anybody to do anything here. What we are saying
is if there is a district that needs some help in terms of their
putting together a package and doing the financing, the Federal
Government is out there to help to provide an intra subsidy, and the
idea would be then that the local school district and the voters would
still have to approve the bond issue, but it would be more attractive
to them because it would be at a lower interest rate and they would
have some subsidy, if you will, coming from the Federal Government.
So it is more likely that this is going to help those districts that
are having problems getting the financing, because it will make it more
attractive to the voters and make it easier to pass these bond issues,
is my understanding. But again, it is strictly voluntary. Nobody is
stepping in from the Federal Government telling them what to do. If one
is willing to spend the money, and the school districts are still going
to have to spend the majority of the money on this, it just makes it a
lot easier for them to do that.
To me, that is exactly what the role of the Federal Government should
be doing, trying to help the school districts that want to help
themselves. They have the need, they are having difficulty obtaining
the financing, and we step in and we make it a lot easier to do so. But
that can go very far in my understanding, just from my own experience
in New Jersey, that kind of subsidy can go very far towards achieving
the goal of having a lot more renovation, a lot of new schools
constructed, just that little bit of Federal help, so to speak.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman is absolutely
correct. What the gentleman was talking about is, the gentleman said we
are setting a national priority and he is saying that is important.
I know in my home State in North Carolina we passed a bond issue this
year, $1.9 billion, and it may seem like a lot of money, and it is a
large sum of money in our State, but we were looking at school facility
needs 2 years ago in excess of $5 billion. So the State was going to
assist the locals; they had to pass their own referendums on a match,
on a sliding scale, for assistance.
Well, now we are growing so fast that a lot of those communities are
going to still see themselves with tremendous needs over the next
several years. But that is really what the gentleman is talking about,
those that show the initiative locally, that draw from a pool, and this
money would be used to draw down, to make the interest rates lower. So
in effect one is able to have a larger bond issue for less money, is
really what the bottom line is.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield again, this
proposal, the one that the Republicans knocked down, was very flexible
in how the money could be used. I know the gentleman from Texas talked
about computers or technology infrastructure, whatever. I just have a
list here. It can be used just for basic building purposes, but it also
can be used for health and safety problems, with plumbing, heating and
lighting; it can be used to improve energy efficiency; it can be used
for all kinds of educational technologies, such as communications,
closets, electrical systems, power outlets, all of that goes to the
computers; and also for after school learning centers, community
projects that are linked to the schools.
I know the gentleman from North Carolina has mentioned in the past in
different special orders how increasingly schools are learning centers
for all kinds of activities, not only during the school day but after
school, for extracurricular programs, sports, adult education. So this
is a very flexible proposal that can be used for all of those different
things.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely correct. We
have schools across this country, and I know in my State, before-school
programs for children, before school opens they actually open the
school and provide a morning day care, provide breakfast for them, and
it is on a sliding scale and the schools actually make money on it. For
those who cannot afford to pay and those that can, they put together
different programs to work.
I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. GREEN. Mr. Speaker, let me talk about some innovative things that
schools have done. For example, in some of the districts I am familiar
with, we have always heard of night school students, but they are using
their buildings, because why build new buildings if they are not
utilizing them? So they are using them for night students. Those
students who may be more motivated by going out and working during the
day and coming in and getting their high school diploma during the
night in an abbreviated program, schools are doing that. So even
[[Page H8429]]
in those opportunities, we are seeing overcrowding on the high school
level.
So there are other activities, and the gentleman mentioned other
activities. We have great ROTC programs, great band programs; obviously
athletics, if one is coming from Texas or North Carolina, I guess. But
every way we can reach that child to keep them in school, to encourage
them to be in school, again, no matter what we do, any of the
extracurricular programs and use it as a motivator.
I just happened to like to play football when I was in high school
and that was a motivator. In fact, those coaches could motivate me much
better than any English teacher could. But that worked. The same way
with ROTC now is so successful, and it is a growing program in our
districts, at least in Texas and I think nationwide.
So that is why the infrastructure funding is so important. What my
colleague from New Jersey mentioned, we have title I funding that is
available for computers. We can go buy the computers now. But to wire
the school, we cannot use title I funding. That is why an
infrastructure, to bring that school up to grade level for wiring for
the public schools for the computers, but also for the health and
safety of those children, so not only does the roof not fall in, but
the fire safety is there, and I know that is the D.C. problem. The
judge said those schools are just not safe for those children. Frankly,
if I had a child in the D.C. schools, I would be glad that the judge
said that and said, OK, we need to fix them before we put those
children in those schools.
Mr. Speaker, I include the following letter from the Aldine
Independent School District, Houston, TX, for the Record:
Aldine Independent
School District,
Houston, TX, September 30, 1997.
Hon. Gene Green,
Rayburn Bldg.,
Washington, DC.
Dear Congressman Green: Enrollment is rising in the
nation's public schools and federal incentives are needed to
fund critical construction to meet growth. The $100 million
provision for school facility infrastructure in the Senate's
appropriations bill is a starting point. The House bill,
however, does not include school infrastructure funding.
I urge you to contact House conferees who will meet to
resolve differences between the House and Senate bills and
ask them to accept the $100 million for school infrastructure
included in the Senate version. For your convenience, I have
included a list of the House conferees from the subcommittee.
For urban school districts such as Aldine, which has
experienced 2-3 percent annual growth over the last three
years, federal funding is vital. Your assistance in retaining
the $100 million appropriations for the Rebuild America's
Schools initiative is greatly appreciated by our children,
taxpayers, and educators.
Sincerely,
M.B. Donaldson,
Superintendent of Schools.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Let me thank the gentleman. He is absolutely correct.
We have talked about after hours, and I just wanted to make a point
of that, because I have been in a number of schools where they actually
have an after hours program for a number of students who have
difficulty at home. They drop out of school. They decide they want to
come back to the public schools, they do not want to go to the
community college and get a GED. They want to get their high school
diploma.
And I know it is happening in North Carolina, where they actually can
come to school at night, have a full-time job during the day because
they have to earn a living. They may have already gotten married early,
but they want to get their degree, and this happens.
The public schools are changing. We can put together another special
order very shortly, hopefully before this week is out, and actually
talk about some of these things, but more importantly talk about the
strengths of our public schools, the academic things that are
happening. Our schools certainly have a lot of challenges today, but
they are meeting those challenges in a way they have never met them,
because as both of my friends have said this evening, they are working
harder, our teachers are working hard, they are committed, and we have
some of the best qualified people in those classrooms we have ever had
and the leadership, the principalship.
I think we need to talk about it. I know we are seeing student
achievement go up, as we talk about the National Assessment of
Education Progress, which I happen to believe is a better measure than
the SAT that we use on an intermittent basis, because NAEP tends to do
it by sampling, and that is where we can absolutely sample and they
come back with a statistical number and it is accurate. We have seen
some dramatic growth in our State and really across the country since
1990 in math and reading, and those are two of the core areas, and we
have to see that continue and escalate across this country for all
children.
That is one of the things I hope we will be able to talk about and
have some data on over the next several days, and that gets back to the
issue the President proposed and that others are saying we ought not to
do.
Well, that is silly. That is absolutely silly. It is voluntary. We
are now giving it to 43 States in this country. Forty-three States are
taking the NAEP right now, and they are doing it on a voluntary basis.
When I was a superintendent and we met all 50 chiefs, we absolutely
said there will not be a national curriculum; we will not support it,
we will not have any part of it, but we will participate and want to
participate in a voluntary testing program.
Why? Because the people who live in North Carolina today very well
may live in Texas next week or New Jersey the year after that, and they
have a right to know that their children, as they move from place to
place, that it is measured and they are getting the kind of education
they want.
I think that is why we are seeing the American public on almost
everything we read say they are willing to make sure that their
children have a good education, and they want that assessment and they
want it on a voluntary basis.
I hope we can talk about that and erase that myth that our schools
are not doing better than we are doing, because they really are,
because we are doing it with children, as my friend from Texas said,
that are coming to school with a lot of baggage these days. They are
coming to school when they have not had a chance to sleep the night
before; many come when the first meal they have had since they left
lunch the day before is the breakfast they get when they show up in the
morning.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I think we
are running out of time, but I just wanted to, if I could, follow up on
what the gentleman from North Carolina said.
The gentleman from Texas mentioned earlier about Goals 2000, and we
know that the Republicans have many times opposed Goals 2000 and asked
that it not be funded. But in my home State of New Jersey we have
received funding from Goals 2000. And one of the things that we have
done with that funding, and it has been very successful, is not only do
testing statewide, but also use the results of that testing to develop
core curriculum.
One of the goals of the Democratic education task force that the
gentleman cochairs is to emphasize academic excellence in the basics. I
think that across the country people understand that we need to have
excellence in the basics.
{time} 2230
Obviously, curricula will vary from one school district to the next,
or one State to the next. That is the way it should be. That is the
American way. But the basics, students need to learn how to read and
write. They need basic science courses. These are the kinds of things
they need if they are going to be successful.
There is absolutely no reason why the Federal Government cannot
provide money to the States to help develop core curriculum, in some
cases do testing, to do what the States think needs to be done on a
voluntary basis to improve basic skills. I do not think anybody is
against that. If they are, I do not care, because I think they are
wrong. We need basic skills.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. The gentleman is absolutely correct. I was there when
we got the Goals 2000 money. Of all the money the Federal Government
sent to our State, that was the most flexible money; very few strings
attached, other than fill out about a 2-page form and send to it to the
Department of Education on what you were going to do with the money,
how you were going
[[Page H8430]]
to use it, what results you were going to get. That is the money that
has been used in North Carolina, and I would assume in the other 49
States and territories, to allow for the reform, the change that is now
taking place all across this country.
I thank the gentleman, and I hope we can get back and spend a whole
evening on this whole issue of academic reform and accountability in
these areas, and talk about assessment, because I feel very strongly
about it and I think the American people do. I thank the gentleman for
joining me.
____________________