[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 144 (Thursday, October 23, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H9477]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               PUT EDUCATIONAL DOLLARS IN THE CLASSROOMS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, why are the liberal Washingtonian 
Democrats so afraid to change public education? Why are they trying to 
maintain the status quo in public education? What is it that they were 
afraid of? Are they so in the pockets of the Washington big unions that 
they are willing to sacrifice America's children to educational 
mediocrity?
  I am a graduate of public schools. I am the son of a teacher and the 
brother of a teacher. I think it is very important for us to have a 
strong, dynamic public education system, and that is why I have worked 
with our conference to try to give public education the schools that 
they need to prepare our children for the future.
  I am appalled by Members of Congress who choose to ignore the global 
realities of a changing world in order to keep the status quo. Just 
because Washington bureaucrats do not want to change or improve 
education does not mean that Congress has to be their lap dog.
  Since I graduated from high school in 1973, SAT scores have fallen. 
On an international basis, American children, compared to Japanese, 
German and British children, score lower on many of the standardized 
tests. Public schools are losing students to private schools and 
religious schools, and home schools are increasing in popularity and 
numbers.
  Public schools, because of this Washington command and control 
approach, have lost their local flexibility, their local control. They 
are mired in paperwork and red tape. That is why charter schools have 
become so popular.
  What are charter schools? Charter schools are public schools. They 
are funded by public tax dollars. But unlike a regular, normal school, 
a charter school is free of the educational restrictions that the 
bureaucracy puts on them out of Washington and out of the State capital 
school boards.
  They are so popular that in 1992 there was one charter school in the 
United States of America. Today there are 1,000, and within the next 3 
years there should be another 2,000 to 3,000 charter schools. Again, 
why are they so popular? Because they have local control.
  What is it that teachers and educators are so sick of? I will give my 
colleagues an example. A teacher in Camden County in my district was 
telling me she just returned from a seminar on child sensitivity where 
they told her, at great expense to the taxpayers, not to hug children, 
not to be in a room alone with a child, and never to touch a child. And 
she works in an area where there are lots of broken homes and lots of 
kids who, Mr. Speaker, frankly, need a hug more than they need an A or 
an A+. They need a little loving, but we are paying teachers to learn 
how not to hug children.
  Or the teacher in Darien, Georgia, who told me she has to spend 2 to 
3 hours each and every week filling out paperwork for the bureaucrats 
in Atlanta who must send it to their bureaucrat bosses in Washington, 
D.C., 2 to 3 hours a week, which could be spent helping that marginal 
student catch up on the algebra or on the chemistry or on the social 
studies. But it is gone.
  Or the mother in Savannah, Georgia, who tells me she no longer goes 
to PTA meetings because if she comes up with ideas, the teacher may 
agree or disagree with her, but it does not matter because they cannot 
change a thing because the teachers' hands have been tied by the 
bureaucrats, and the bureaucrats' hands at the school board have been 
tied by the Washington bureaucrats.
  People want to return to local control in education. Our schools back 
home want to be free of Washington command and control bureaucracy, Mr. 
Speaker, and that is why it is so important that we, as a Congress, 
keep pushing for local control of education, we keep pushing for 
flexibility in the classroom, and we keep pushing to put educational 
dollars in the classroom with the teacher and the student and not the 
bureaucratic brokers in Washington and the State capitals.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time with a final word; 
that our public education system is well worth fighting for. Again, I 
am a graduate of public schools. I believe in them. But I believe we 
have to allow them the flexibility to be the great institutions which 
they once were.

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