[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 29 (Tuesday, March 17, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H1224-H1234]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      CONTINUING STATE OF EMERGENCY IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burr of North Carolina). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Owens) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about the continuing state of 
emergency in African American education. I have come here many times to

[[Page H1225]]

talk about education, and I may seem repetitious, but I only come 
because I do not see enough movement among the decisionmakers at any 
level to deal with the emergency that we confront in the African 
American community. I do not see enough movement at the Federal level, 
I do not see it at the State level, I do not see it at the local level 
either, and I think that it sort of contradicts the intense feeling of 
the American people about education. They really want us to make some 
movements in a more rapid and a more positive way toward resolving some 
of the problems that our schools face.
  Despite the fact that the polls continually show that the American 
people rank education as a priority problem, there is this slow 
movement, and the problem faced by the mainstream community is serious 
enough. However, the problem faced by the African American community, 
where most of our young people who are school age are concentrated in 
the big cities of America, in the inner-city communities, they are 
staggering. The schools in many of our big cities are literally basket 
cases, and that is no exaggeration.
  I do want to punctuate my remarks before I go into a more thorough 
discussion of the emergency in the African American community, the 
education emergency, I want to punctuate my remarks with some good 
news. There is some good news that I would like to share with the 
people out there whose common sense has helped to make this happen. The 
common sense of the American people keeps bubbling up and getting to 
some of our top decisionmakers, and I think that it is finally breaking 
through to our top decisionmakers that construction, school 
construction, is at the heart of any effort to improve our schools.
  School construction and school repairs and things related to the 
simple matter of physical safety, and adequate equipment in the 
schools, those matters are central to any improvement efforts we make. 
One cannot really seriously talk about reducing class sizes and having 
a better ratio of students to teachers unless we also build additional 
classrooms. These are common-sense matters, but there are people who 
want to move on to reduce the sizes of classes, but they do not want to 
talk about construction. That costs too much money. They want to deal 
with a nonsolution.
  If we do not have the classrooms, and we talk about funds for more 
teachers, then that is a nonsolution. More teachers cannot decrease the 
ratio of students to teachers if they do not have a classroom to go 
into to teach those students.
  So the good news is that at the meeting this afternoon, Vice 
President Gore announced that on April 8 there will be a national forum 
on the whole issue of school construction, a national electronic forum. 
We are going to have a big event here in Washington that will be 
broadcast all across the country, and various groups will be meeting, 
and satellites will tie in some of the discussion.
  It is a very important development because it means that as far as 
the President is concerned, as far as this administration is concerned, 
they are not slacking, they are not hesitating to go forward with their 
push to get something accomplished that is significant in school 
construction in this year.
  I was disappointed that it fell off the radar screen last year. 
Somewhere the negotiations between the President and the majority party 
in the Congress, construction got lost and was taken off the table. It 
is quite clear that the President does not intend to take it off the 
table this time, and one indication of the commitment of this 
administration to a construction program is the fact that on April 8 
there will be a national forum, a national discussion.
  Everybody is invited to do something at their own local level. I 
think Congress at that time will be on recess, but we are invited to do 
things back in our district, and I certainly plan to make certain that 
we do something of high visibility in my district to link up with the 
administration's effort to put construction, school renovation and 
things related to providing safe physical facilities for our children 
on the front burner in everybody's mind.
  We need to raise the level of awareness still of the voters and the 
average citizen, but I think they may already be ahead of the 
decisionmakers in our city councils and the decisionmakers in the State 
legislature and some of the decisionmakers here in Congress who are 
still not aware of the fact that this is crucial. Construction and 
everything related to physical facilities is crucial.

  The President's proposal is for $22 billion in loans. The loan 
program that was proposed last year has been made better by the fact 
that the last year's proposal talked of low interest rates and the 
Federal Government subsidizing so that those low interest rates would 
be there for the districts that chose to borrow to build schools. This 
time, the proposal says that there will be no interest rates. In other 
words, no interest will be charged. The principal is all that the 
locality will have to pay back. They are going to subsidize through tax 
credits. The lending institution, a variety of institutions that are 
going to participate in this process, the lending institution will 
receive a tax credit which will cover what they would normally be 
charging in interest, and the Federal Government will be responsible 
for that tax credit.
  This is a proposal that still has to pass. It has the support of the 
administration and in large part of the Congress, certainly the 
Democratic Members.
  I hope that we can keep a focus on this common-sense agenda. It is a 
simple matter on the one hand; it does not take a Ph.D., a very high 
IQ, to understand that we cannot improve education unless the place 
where the children come to learn is properly equipped, it is safe, 
conducive to learning, the laboratories have equipment for science 
courses that are held; there is a library. There are all kinds of 
things that need to happen.
  We need to also consider educational technology, telecommunications 
equipment, computers and video equipment. All of that is not a luxury 
anymore. That should be integrated into the whole process of improving 
our instruction, and those are capital items that ought to be in the 
fiscal facilities' budgets. Let us keep the common sense on target.
  Let us support the effort on April 8 and use it to further pressure 
our elected officials to move on school construction. They can move in 
New York City. They have more than $1 billion surplus. They expect $1 
billion surplus from this year's budget. That surplus should be 
dedicated partially, certainly, to some aspect of school construction. 
Maybe New York can show that it cares about its children by first 
dedicating part of that available $1 billion surplus to the elimination 
of coal-burning furnaces.
  We have almost 300 schools that have coal-burning furnaces, and we 
could move to eliminate those coal-burning furnaces. Maybe on April 8 
in New York City, we need to highlight this whole matter of the coal-
burning furnaces as a way to get it started. New York State has more 
than $2 billion in surplus, and that surplus, some part of that could 
be dedicated to the elimination of the coal-burning schools. There is 
no reason why the combination of the city surplus funds and State 
surpluses could not be used right away to eliminate the coal-burning 
furnaces.
  We do not have to wait for the Federal Government, but I am grateful 
that the Federal Government, under the leadership of President Clinton, 
is going to remain on target. I hope that out of shame the localities 
like the State of New York and the City of New York, local governments 
and State governments all over the country will be shamed into getting 
out there and taking the lead before the Federal Government comes to 
our rescue, and I hope that the Federal Government's insistence that 
something must be done will certainly wake up the citizens to push and 
pressure and demand that we get some action on this matter of school 
construction.

                              {time}  2100

  School construction is at the heart of any improvement, but there are 
many other things that have to happen.
  Tonight I do want to talk about some of the other things that must 
happen in order to really improve education in general and, 
specifically, education in the African American schools, schools where 
most of our African American students are educated.
  They still are, by and large, segregated in big cities in the North 
and

[[Page H1226]]

far West. The patterns of housing are such and the dwindling commitment 
to integration is such that most of them are still going to school in 
segregated schools.
  I do not plan to deal with the virtues of segregation versus the 
evils of segregation, or the virtues of integration versus the evils of 
integration. I do not care to deal with that tonight. I think that the 
fact is that the way things have developed, we have large numbers of 
African American youth in inner city schools, and those schools are in 
terrible shape.
  I want to talk tonight from the base of a lecture that was given by 
an expert on this subject. I want to use excerpts from that lecture to 
pinpoint the kinds of things that are happening in African American 
education across the country.
  I heard a presentation by the author of this lecture. I heard the 
presentation on February 25 at Howard University, where we had a 
breakfast forum sponsored by the National Commission for African 
American Education and CRESPAR. CRESPAR is a program funded to help 
students placed at risk by OERI, the Office of Education, Research and 
Improvement.
  A combination of CRESPAR and the National Commission for African 
American Education sponsored this forum. This is the first of three 
forums. There is one each month; and one is going to be held on March 
25, also at Howard University; and another will be held in April.
  The subject was the state of African American education, and the 
presenter was Dr. Antoine M. Garibaldi, who is the provost of Howard 
University. Dr. Garibaldi had previously given a lecture, the annual 
Charles H. Thompson lecture, on November 5 of last year. This lecture 
was used as the basis of his excerpts and his summary presentation at 
the February 25 breakfast forum sponsored by the National Commission 
for African American Education and CRESPAR.
  The contents here, what I am about to read some excerpts from, this 
total presentation will appear in the Journal of Negro Education in the 
spring of 1998. I do not know, they do not give the exact publication 
date, but the contents of this presentation will be there in full. The 
Journal of Negro Education will have this lecture entitled, ``Four 
Decades of Progress and Decline: An Assessment of African American 
Educational Attainment.'' So I am going to read some excerpts from this 
presentation, which I think is a very good summary.
  I also want to utilize the recently published test results from the 
New York City school system. The New York Times and the Daily News and 
some other papers carried the results of the reading and math tests for 
the elementary schools, and this past week they had the results from 
the middle schools and the high schools also. I have with me the 
results. I am going to confine my remarks to the elementary schools and 
the test results and what that means.
  I think New York City and the education system in New York City is an 
excellent place for case studies, or one big case study. We have a 
system with 1,100 schools and 1,100,000-plus students, more than 60,000 
teachers. It is a fantastic laboratory for education. All kinds of 
things are going on there. It is a central-policy-making body, but it 
only makes general policy.
  They have 32 community school boards, and they differ in the policy-
making bodies that they have. Therefore, the policies and the emphases 
differ, even though they are under one basic chancellor and one board 
of education. These differences are very interesting to behold. There 
are patterns that apply throughout the city to communities that are 
similar in terms of income and demography, and there are patterns 
sometimes that are broken, suddenly.
  When you see schools that break out of a pattern, it seems to me a 
good example to go study and find out why you have a high-performing 
school in an area of great poverty, when most of the schools in areas 
of great poverty in New York perform very poorly.
  The results of the reading and math tests, the test scores, in 
summary say to me that we have a basket case of a system in many of our 
districts. Many of our district's education has almost ceased to take 
place. The scores are so low that you cannot say you are educating 
anyone. Too many of the districts have those kinds of reading and math 
scores.
  I think that I could venture safely to say that the school system of 
New York City today, in 1998, is much worse than the school system of 
New York City was 10 years ago, in 1988. In 1998, it is much worse than 
it was in 1988. Ten years have been 10 years of decline.
  One major reason for this, an obvious reason, is that we pulled the 
leadership out of our schools. Responding to budget emergencies in the 
school system, we encouraged the most knowledgeable people, the people 
with the most experience, to leave the system. To save money, we 
wrecked the system. No corporation when it downsizes is as foolish as 
the New York City school system was.
  I will not say the school system was foolish. I do not think the 
teachers and administrators who made those decisions were foolish. It 
was the city hall and the budget crisis that motivated and pressured 
the system into taking these tremendous cuts by encouraging the most 
experienced staff to leave because they had the highest salaries. They 
had advanced up the ladder and those were the highest salaries.
  You can save a lot of money if you get rid of high-salary people and 
you bring in brand-new people to start at entry level. The problem with 
people starting at entry level, they have no experience as to how to 
run schools, as to how to teach. They need people with experience on 
top.
  That one action, which was really driven by budget considerations, it 
was the wrong decision. They should have done something else, somewhere 
else in the budget. The last thing that should have been done was to 
encourage the leadership to leave the schools.
  So we have schools that were not good 10 years ago that are far worse 
now as a result of many forces, but the major factor is the fact that 
they pulled out the leadership. They pulled out the best teachers and 
the best administrators.
  We cannot blame this on the top administrator, because we have had 
three or four top administrators in the position of chancellor in the 
last 10 years. The present one has been there 2 years, and we cannot 
really hold him accountable for what has happened. A chancellor in New 
York City would have to be around for 5 to 10 years before we could 
really hold him accountable. I hope we can maintain some kind 
of continuity and the present chancellor will be around long enough to 
see if that leadership has some continuity and will be able to 
stabilize the system and stop it from going down more rapidly and also 
to improve the system.

  I also want to speak about some observations that I have in the 
pending markup of the Higher Education Assistance Act tomorrow. I want 
to talk about the impact of higher education and what is happening in 
our colleges, on what is happening in our African American elementary 
and secondary schools.
  I am talking about the state of emergency in African American 
education. The emergency goes right through with higher education. The 
number of students in higher education is nothing to brag about. We 
have an increase, and I am going to talk about that number of African 
American students in higher education, the number who have graduated, 
the number getting masters' degrees and Ph.D.s. Those are increasing, 
but far too slowly.
  The number who are going into teaching, who come out of college, is 
decreasing. The number of African Americans who go into teaching and 
the percentage of African American teachers in the schools where the 
greatest number of African American students attend has declined over 
the years. It has gone down. That is part of the problem.
  I want to make some observations about the fact that we are 
considering the reauthorization of the Higher Education Assistance Act 
in a markup tomorrow in the Committee on Education and the Workforce. 
The Committee on Education and the Workforce will be considering this 
piece of legislation, which is only reauthorized once every 5 years, so 
it is a critical piece of legislation.
  As we go into the 21st century we are making a statement about the 
role of the Federal Government in higher education. I am not pleased 
with the kind

[[Page H1227]]

of openness of this discussion up to now. I am not pleased with the 
breadth of the inclusiveness of this discussion.
  I have been here in Congress, this is my 16th year. I have gone 
through two reauthorizations of the Higher Education Assistance Act, 
and the other two were under our former colleague from Michigan, 
Representative Bill Ford, who later became the chairman of the 
Committee on Education and Labor, and Bill Ford was noted for his 
inclusiveness in the decision-making.
  The way he approached the reauthorization was a whole year in advance 
he began the process. He started the process by sending out the old 
bill, the existing law, and asking for comments on existing law. A 
widespread request went out to all the people in the higher education 
community, asking them to give us their input as to how they would like 
the existing law changed. He started this process a whole year in 
advance of the markups.
  We had a process where people were involved. We had hearings at the 
regional level. We had hearings in Washington. We had all kinds of 
discussions going on in the higher education community, and when we 
finally came to the process of markup, there was a thorough 
understanding of what the issues were, a thorough understanding of what 
was being proposed.
  Then the markups went on sometimes for quite a long time. The higher 
education markup never concluded in one day. It is too great a burden 
to bear to rush through this process, and I hope we do not rush through 
it tomorrow.
  I think as we approach the year 2000, given the fact that the country 
now is enjoying one of the greatest eras of prosperity that we have 
known in this century, given the fact that we do not have to worry 
about deficits anymore, given the fact that there is no Cold War, given 
the fact that there are places where there are large numbers of 
vacancies, job vacancies, especially in the telecommunications and 
information technology area.
  The information and technology area requires higher education beyond 
high school, generally; and there are a great number of vacancies. They 
estimate there are as many as 300,000 vacancies. I get a different 
number every day, but it keeps climbing. There are 300,000 vacancies 
now, and the projection is that this is going to go on for the next 10 
years.
  We are going to need more and more people who are trained and well-
educated with respect to information technology. We are going to need 
people who are not so well-trained. For every genius, we are going to 
need some assistance. For the designers for web sites and computer 
systems and software, we are going to need their helpers.
  We are going to need technologists, mechanics, aides in the schools. 
We are going to need a whole bevy of people to make educational 
technology work. If you saddle a teacher with the burden of having to 
take care of her own educational technology program with no help, the 
likelihood is they are going to be overwhelmed. So they need 
technologists in the schools. They need aides in the schools. They are 
going to need all kinds of people.
  I do not think that they have taken into consideration all of the 
places we are going to need technology workers. It is one item that 
should be considered as we consider a Higher Education Assistance Act. 
I will be offering an amendment tomorrow which deals with this.
  Finally, I want to end my comments on the continuing state of 
emergency in African American education by discussing a situation in 
New York City at another level. We had a problem with our elementary 
and secondary schools. We now have a problem with our higher education 
institutions.
  The City of New York, CUNY, the City of New York University system, 
the CUNY system has more than 200,000 students. There are all kinds of 
junior colleges, senior colleges. It is a huge enterprise; and a large 
number of the colleges, community colleges and senior colleges, have 
remedial education programs.
  For some reason, the mayor and the Board of Higher Education has 
declared war on remedial education. Suddenly, remedial education is 
being treated with great contempt. They have remedial education courses 
all over the country. I do not know why suddenly in New York remedial 
education programs are being treated with such great contempt. It is a 
great mistake.
  There is a crusade against remedial education, blindly lashing out 
and saying it does not belong in the schools and threatening to extract 
them and put them at the institutes. There is a whole lot of heat being 
generated about something without very much light. I am going to talk 
about that as part of my total discussion on the continuing state of 
emergency in African American education.
  I am pleased to see that I have been joined by my colleague, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald), who I yield to 
for a statement.

                              {time}  2115

  Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. I thank the gentleman so much. When I heard 
the gentleman speak about the emergency state that our education system 
is in, I had no other recourse but to come to this floor. Let me first 
thank the gentleman for his unwavering, tireless efforts on behalf of 
the children of this country because he comes to this floor every night 
to talk about the conditions of education in this country and until we 
do something about that, I am sure he is going to continue to come and 
he is going to pull some of us out. Because we recognize what the state 
of emergency the education system is in, as I serve on the National 
Commission on Teaching and America's Future, I was pleased to hear the 
President's education initiative that he brought on the night of the 
State of the Union. And there are two very key components of that 
education initiative. One is the 100,000 new qualified teachers. We 
must have qualified teachers to teach our students if they are to 
engage in this global work force beyond the year 2000.
  The second part of that initiative is school construction. We can ill 
afford to talk about the infrastructure of our roads and bridges and 
not talk about the infrastructure of our schools. You are absolutely 
right. They are delapidated. They are the worst things that we can 
provide for our children when we talk about environments that are 
conducive to learning.
  I have gone to a lot of schools, the majority of the schools in my 
district, but a lot of other schools across this Nation. It is 
absolutely deplorable that we want to talk about educating our children 
when we do not put our money where our mouths are in, putting up the 
funds for the school construction to build the infrastructure for 
educating our children. It is absolutely unconscionable that we sit in 
this House and those on the other side of the aisle speak about 
education and speak about productivity when it comes to businesses but 
they do not see that it starts in the classrooms. When children have to 
run for cover when it rains because of leaky roofs, when they are 
sitting in classrooms and the plaster falls from the walls and from the 
top of the classroom and they have to run, that is lost productivity in 
a sense because they are not being trained. Therefore, they are not 
learning and it impedes those students.
  So what you are talking about is absolutely the number one issue in 
this country. If we are going to talk about education and the quality 
of education, we must first put our children in classrooms and 
facilities that are conducive to learning.
  I brought some statistics along and I want you to just hear me out 
here for a second. One-third of all elementary and secondary schools in 
the United States serving 14 million students need extensive repair or 
renovation. Now this is what we are talking about.
  Mr. OWENS. I am pleased that the gentlewoman has brought these 
statistics. You are talking about all students. We are talking about 
the mainstream. I am going to focus on just the African American 
community, but it is bad in many other places outside the African 
American community, suburbs and rural as well as in the inner cities.
  Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. Absolutely. I come from inner city so I am 
talking about the schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, 
in the Compton School District, in the Long Beach School District. 
These are urban school districts that I am talking about, with the 
majority minority students. As we look at the work force in

[[Page H1228]]

the year 2000 and beyond, it will be a majority minority. But we cannot 
educate kids in these dilapidated schools. That is what we are talking 
about.
  Minority students, African American students, Latinos, Asians and 
others, they will not be able to move into the 21st century because 
they will be behind having been impeded by the lack of infrastructure 
in these schools.
  Let me give you some more statistics. Over 60 percent of the Nation's 
100,000 public and elementary school facilities need major repair. We 
are talking about schools across the strata but we are really talking 
about a lot of the urban schools because that is where the parents are 
not able to put money into the schools to help, whereas in suburban 
schools, some suburban schools and some is rural schools. Rural schools 
and urban schools are pretty much in the same boat. They, too, are 
witnessing a decline in school facilities that will not be conducive 
for children and their learning. In 1996, an estimated $112 billion was 
needed to repair and upgrade school facilities into a good condition, 
not excellent condition, which means that the child might come in and 
something, plaster might fall on them. So when you talk about our 
African American children, you are talking about schools that are 
absolutely dilapidated and we should feel badly, we should really feel, 
talking about feeling ungodly, we should when we ask kids to go to 
these types of schools to learn. We do not come to this House where the 
roof is leaking and the plaster is falling. Why should we ask the 50 
something million children in this country to be put in that type of 
environment.
  So I am happy tonight that you have come to talk about that and to 
talk about all of the things that are impeding the quality education, 
public education that is sorely needed in this country. Public 
education must be the tool that helps African American children, other 
minority children to get the head start that they need if we are going 
to cross this bridge into the 21st century with students and ultimately 
workers to be prepared for this global work force.
  I will defer to the gentleman.
  Mr. OWENS. I think you have said public education. I just wanted to 
make a note here that large numbers of parents in the African American 
community, when they are interviewed for polls have been indicating 
that they want to send their children to private schools. The majority 
party, the Republicans are offering vouchers and scholarships, et 
cetera, to go to private schools as an answer, a solution to this 
problem. However, I have no problem with parents who want to send their 
children to private school if they can get them in. We have the mayor 
of New York with a scholarship program which provides spaces in private 
schools for 1000 youngsters. There are 1,120,000 plus youngsters who go 
to school in New York. So when they put out the indication that they 
want applications for the 1000 places, they got 22,000 applications, 
22,000 applications for 1000 places. Here in Washington I understand 
they had a situation where they put out the same thing. There is a 
scholarship fund that has been set up by the private sector and they 
got 7000 applications for 1000 different places. Suppose they had more 
money and could give more tuition scholarships, how many private 
schools are there that can absorb the youngsters who are attending our 
public schools? How many are there and how quickly will they run out of 
space? Many of them have waiting lists for people who can afford to 
pay. They do not have room for them, let alone people who are coming in 
on the scholarship basis. So most of our children are going to be 
educated in public schools. I am all in favor of charter schools 
and experimenting with charter schools, but the reality is that in the 
next 10 years most of the children of America, certainly 95 percent of 
the children who live in the inner city who are African American are 
going to be educated in public schools. We have to improve public 
schools. That is the only real solution that is going to help African 
American students and parents.

  Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. And the one real solution to keep America 
strong, we must invest in public education. Vouchers are not the 
answer. I can tell you that unequivocally, because when you give the 
vouchers, you are only giving X amount of dollars, supposedly, for the 
tuitional fee or tuitional cost of the student going to a private 
school. But you do not take into consideration the transportation that 
the parent has to provide for that student to go over there. If that 
student gets ill, the means by which or the inability of parents to go, 
to find their way to the school to take the child to what we perceive 
now, not really any health care facilities at all. The kids are not 
networking in the community of which they live. As a former educator, I 
will say to you, I fought the voucher in California and will fight it 
again because vouchers are not the answer. I am for charter schools, 
for those experimental types of schools that will allow the local 
control to be in control of their schools and that is because parents 
are involved in that process. That is why I am open to that concept. 
But never to the one that suggests that vouchers will be the answer 
when vouchers have not and will not be the answer to quality education 
for students. You are taking them out of their neighborhood 
environments. You are putting them ofttimes in environments that are 
more hostile because they do not know anyone and it becomes an isolated 
environment and then the parents are ill prepared to go and get the 
child if the child is sick. And so the voucher system is not a system 
that will work. I submit to you that a lot of our Presidents went to 
public schools, finished public schools.
  Mr. OWENS. We share the same sentiments, but I think you are aware of 
what is taking place in the African American community, that there are 
large numbers of parents who have given up on the system and they want, 
they say they want vouchers. The polls show this. What is happening is 
our Republican colleagues, by the way, they know that in their 
districts their constituents do not want vouchers. Their constituents 
want continued improvement in public schools and they think they have 
good public schools so their own constituencies are not interested in 
vouchers. They are going to go out and advocate for the African 
American parents that they should have vouchers and they are using them 
as guinea pigs, they are whipping up all of these false promises about 
what vouchers may produce. And as I pointed out before, when you come 
to the point where you have the places in the private schools that are 
all too few and nevertheless they keep pushing the idea that vouchers 
are the answers to school improvement in America. It is a dogma. They 
seem blind to the reality and to reason. They go right ahead. But they 
are parading, there are parading African American parents out to 
support that argument. Our first duty is to get to the African American 
parents and leaders, and it is hard to tell them not to give up on the 
public school system because they have gone through so much and, as I 
said before, New York, things are getting worse in the public school 
system. But we have no choice. We have to drive it home. We have no 
choice. Most of our children are going to be educated in the public 
school system. We must improve the public education.
  Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. Absolutely. I am a product of the private 
schools, but my father paid for the tuition, not, he did not strip 
public education funds for me to go to a private school. And so I 
submit to you for parents who want to pay for the private tuition, so 
be it. But we can ill afford to have anyone in this body strip the 
funds from public education to trick parents into going to schools 
whereby the parents will not be able to continue, first of all, the 
tuition fee. Tuition fee as we looked at this a couple of years ago 
when we had that as a proposition on the California ballot was beyond 
the amounts of money that the voucher system would entitle them to 
have. So consequently, they would not have enough money to even pay for 
the tuition, let alone the transportation and all other factors that 
are embedded in this whole notion of transferring kids from public 
schools to private schools. I will say to you that I am not for that, 
but a lot of my parents are not for that; they are African American 
parents. Maybe it is because we have drilled them quite a bit. We have 
had sessions with them, and they do understand the ramifications of the 
issue if in fact they would choose to do that. And they do not choose 
to have a voucher system.

[[Page H1229]]

  Mr. OWENS. Maybe it is because they have excellent leadership in an 
educator like you. They understand better.
  Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. We are trying to educate the masses because I 
think it is important that we do that. I think we as CBC Members should 
really do the network and the cross to the school board Members and 
others to educate our constituencies to let them know that stop before 
you pick up the wrong plum because that might not be the plum, that 
might be the plum with the worm in it.

                              {time}  2130

  We must be careful of folks coming in sheep clothing because it may 
not be the right thing that is applicable to our child getting a 
quality education.
  I think we can do that. We can do that and should do that 
expeditiously so that we can provide the type of leadership that 
African Americans and other minorities need when it comes to this 
voucher program. We must just turn off from that and start looking at 
the number of children who must be educated by public schools and get 
the type of school facilities that will be conducive to these kids and 
a quality education.
  I am just appalled at us still hammering out and staying on this one 
issue of vouchers and not looking at the crumbling schools, the 
inferior types of classrooms and schoolhouses that we are asking our 
children to go to, and yet we are talking about the 21st century and 
this global work force.
  This is why businesspeople are coming now to me asking what can they 
do to help create the climate in public schools whereby our children 
can learn and have a quality education. And that is the road that I am 
going to journey, not this other road.
  Mr. OWENS. I think the gentlewoman might be aware, because, after 
all, she is from California, and that is where Silicon Valley is, she 
must be aware of this tremendous shortage of information technology 
workers. And she has probably heard we are going to have on this floor 
a proposal to amend the immigration bill by the people who were so 
harsh on immigrants and wanted to keep out immigrants. They are now 
going to have proposals here asking us to amend it, to bring in more 
immigrants who have high-technology experience, information technology 
workers.
  They are going to try to solve the problem of the shortage of 
information technology workers not by increasing the educational 
opportunities for the people in this country, they are going to bring 
in immigrants to do that. These anti-immigrant Republicans are going to 
be leading the fight to get more people in here to take those jobs 
instead of educating people here already to enable them to qualify for 
the jobs.
  Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. The gentleman is absolutely right, I have 
heard of that. I think again it is unconscionable that we are talking 
about bringing folks into a country that has so much to offer and a 
people who are thirsty for this type of education that we cannot 
educate our own to provide them the jobs that will be sorely need in 
the Silicon Valley to all other places where high tech is booming.
  So I submit to the gentleman that I hope that we come to our senses 
before this bill comes and goes off of this floor. What type of message 
are we sending to our students? I have a science academy with very 
bright kids coming from low-income families. It is not the top 1, 2 and 
5 percent, it is the middle level who are very sharp kids who are going 
to this academy. They are looking for these jobs in the future. What am 
I to tell them when they are making the A's and B's and wanting to go 
to MIT and others; that I am sorry someone from overseas might come and 
take their jobs?
  I cannot do that, and, therefore, I will be fighting against that 
bill.
  Mr. OWENS. Well, I think we are going to have that opportunity. I 
thank the gentlewoman for her comments.
  Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. We thank the gentleman so much for this 
tonight. I am happy to have had an opportunity to come and share with 
him my feelings. Again, I thank him so much for being just absolutely a 
stalwart person in bringing this education issue to the people across 
this Nation so that they can write us and let us know that they agree 
with us. They applaud what the gentleman is doing, and I hope he will 
continue his great work for all our children.
  One-third of all elementary and secondary schools in the United 
States, serving 14 million students, need extensive repair or 
renovation.
  Over 60 percent of the Nation's 110,000 public elementary and 
secondary school facilities need major repair.
  In 1996, an estimated $112 billion was needed to repair and upgrade 
school facilities to a ``good'' condition.
  Many schools do not have the physical infrastructure to take 
advantage of computers and other technology needed to meet the 
challenges of the next century.
  I am a former school teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School 
District in California.
  In California, 87 percent of the schools report a need to upgrade or 
repair on-site buildings to good overall condition.
  Seventy-one percent of all California schools have at least one 
inadequate building feature, and of these building feature problems: 40 
percent are the roofs; 42 percent are exterior walls and windows; 41 
percent are plumbing; 41 percent are heating, ventilation, and air 
conditioning; and 37 percent of schools do not even have sufficient 
capability to use computers.
  Currently, 25 percent of schools are too small or overcrowded and the 
Department of Education predicts that the Nation will need 6,000 more 
schools by the year 2006.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman. I think most people 
understand that I am not a fanatic. I am not an extremist. I am not 
coming repeatedly talking about the same subject because I have some 
kind of mental infirmity. I just think that our children, our 
grandchildren will be very disappointed in us if we do not take 
advantage of this opportunity we have at this moment in American 
history.
  We have no evil empire to fight. We have the highest prosperity 
levels that we have had in this century. If we do not invest in 
education now, when will we do it? Are we going to let these 
opportunities that are opening up go by without making an effort to 
have a match between the opportunities and the youngsters who are in 
this country right now?
  I am going to hasten on, and instead of doing the entire set of 
excerpts that I was going to do from Mr. Garibaldi's presentation, I am 
going to just read his abstract and go on to the other points I want to 
make.
  As I said before, this is a presentation to deal with the ``State of 
African American Education.'' I am reading from Dr. Antoine M. 
Garibaldi, Provost, Howard University, who gave this lecture on 
November 5th, 1997, at the 18th annual Charles H. Thompson lecture, and 
it is going to be published in the Journal of Negro Education. I heard 
him give his summary comments at a breakfast forum sponsored by the 
National Commission for African American Education at Howard 
University.
  To quote from Mr. Garibaldi, ``Even though significant progress has 
been made in attendance and degree attainment in elementary and 
secondary schools, college, graduate and professional schools, data 
shows that there has also been a pattern of regression with respect to 
African Americans' educational attainment and achievement over the last 
four decades. This mixed assessment, however, must be placed in an 
appropriate context and be used to improve further those conditions 
that are impairing the performance of African American students.
  ``Additionally, the presentation will highlight positive trends such 
as high graduation rates from high school, improved performance on 
selected tests on educational measures, successful school programs, 
successful students, the continued contributions of historically black 
colleges and universities to baccalaureate, graduate and first 
professional degree production, and to the preparation of African 
American teachers, to name just a few.
  ``Specific recommendations are also offered to raise the level of 
student performance, i.e. more rigorous curricula, higher educational 
standards and higher expectations for students, higher expectations by 
teachers, increased involvement by parents and the vigorous support of 
communities and nonprofit organizations.
  ``Many challenging issues and questions are also cited to demonstrate

[[Page H1230]]

that serious work is needed to reduce the many inequities that still 
exist in the schools attended by African American students.''
  Now, Mr. Garibaldi is an ex-professor. He was a professor at Xavier 
University at one time. He has been in the field for a long time, and 
he has accumulated quite a bit of firsthand experience, but he also 
uses very good sources, as he demonstrates in this presentation, in his 
thorough knowledge of the state of African American education.
  I am going to ask a lot of this be introduced into the Record without 
my reading it all, because the time is going rapidly. But I do want to 
begin by just pointing out that under elementary and secondary 
educational attainment, Mr. Garibaldi notes the following: ``Over the 
last four decades, African Americans have made tremendous gains in 
elementary and secondary educational attainment, and significant 
increases in high school completion rates began in the 1970s. In 1975, 
high school completion rate for 18- to 24-year-old African Americans 
was only 64.8 percent compared to 83 percent for whites and 80.8 
percent overall. In 1995, however, 18- to 24-year-old African 
Americans' high school completion rate was 76.9 percent, which was a 12 
percent increase over the 20-year period. But the high school 
graduation data for African Americans are even better for 25- to 29-
year-olds between 1975 and 1995; in 1975, 71 percent graduated from 
high school compared to 86.5 percent in 1995.''
  He goes on in a later passage to say, ``While African Americans' high 
school completion rates provide one barometer of educational 
attainment, performance on national assessments are needed to determine 
how much learning has been actually achieved. Thus, the best collection 
of national comparative data is the National Assessment of Educational 
Progress, NAEP, a congressionally-mandated project of the U.S. 
Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. 
Since 1969, NAEP has periodically assessed students' proficiency in 
academic achievements in science, reading, mathematics and writing in 
public and nonpublic schools, with the specific purpose of evaluating 
the condition and progress of education in the Nation.''
  He goes on to talk about performances in mathematics and reading and 
writing of African American students and students overall, showing that 
there have been some impressive gains by African American students, but 
they still fall far short, especially when we come to the SAT scores 
over the years. There is still a great gap between the achievements of 
white students and African American students who take the SAT test.
  There is a section which I think is important to bring to my 
colleagues' attention in this presentation which talks about the impact 
of poverty on urban schools: ``Earlier in this article great concern 
was expressed about the increasing segregation of many of the Nation's 
public schools. Of special significance here is the fact that most of 
the schools attended by nonwhite youth are located in urban areas. 
While this has been known for some time, numerous perceptions about the 
quality of these schools are fueled by unsubstantiated anecdotal 
comments. But a July 1996 report by the U.S. Department of Education on 
how poverty relates to the characteristics of students in urban, rural 
and suburban schools in the 1980s has made several notable comparisons 
in describing the students' school experiences, their school 
achievement, the expectations of their parents and other related 
factors.
  ``In this study, which is entitled Urban Schools, The Challenge of 
Location and Poverty, the methodology controlled for the extent of 
poverty and three types of school locations. The school locations that 
were examined included urban, suburban and rural areas, and the level 
of poverty in each school was defined by the percentage of students who 
received free or reduced-priced lunches. Thus, more balanced 
comparisons were able to be made on each factor even though more low-
income students attended urban schools.
  ``The following highlights of the study's major findings show more 
clearly how factors of school location and the level of poverty in 
those schools directly and indirectly affect school performance. Urban, 
suburban and rural public schools with high poverty concentrations, 40 
percent or more, were more likely to have larger minority student 
populations than schools with low levels of poverty. Additionally, 
urban public schools with higher concentrations of poverty enrolled 
larger numbers of minority students than high-poverty rural and 
suburban schools.

  ``Sixty-nine percent of students who attended high-poverty urban 
public schools, for example, were minorities, compared to enrollment of 
26 percent minorities at low-poverty schools. Similarly, at suburban 
schools, 56 percent of the students in high-poverty schools were 
minorities, but only 10 percent of students at low-poverty suburban 
schools are minorities. Additionally, high-poverty rural public schools 
enrolled 35 percent minority students compared to only 9 percent at 
low-poverty schools.
  ``Thus, most African Americans and other minority students not only 
attend urban schools, but the schools also have the highest 
concentrations of students from families with low economic 
backgrounds.''
  In other words, to summarize, no matter where African American 
students go to school, they are usually attending schools with a large 
poverty population. There is a correlation. The percentage of African 
Americans who are poor is quite great. It is much greater than the 
percentage of the overall population who are poor.
  I am not going to read any further, but I do want to submit for the 
Record additional pages from this lecture, which is entitled Four 
Decades of Progress and Decline in the Assessment of African American 
Educational Attainment.
  In the section that I just read, they mentioned poverty as a 
correlation with low achievement. I want to take a few minutes to talk 
about the scores of the students in the public schools of New York 
City, the elementary schools. There was a report, as I said before, in 
all the newspapers. The New York Times did something which was unusual. 
They took the poverty level of the school in the same manner in which 
the study that was cited here in Mr. Garibaldi's presentation. They 
chose the number of students who received school lunches as an 
indicator of the poverty of the school.
  Therefore, the prosperity of the school is indicated by just the 
reverse, the number who do not qualify indicate the income level. They 
chose that figure, and in their presentation of the results of the 
reading and math tests for New York City Schools, they added the income 
for each school, the income level, meaning the number of students who 
do not qualify for school lunches.
  If the income was 2.5, that meant that all of the other students did 
qualify; 97.5 percent qualified for school lunches.

                              {time}  2145

  So the income level after 2.5 means that 97 percent of the students 
were poor, and in certain districts you have this tremendous 
concentration of poverty.
  The New York Times also went one step further and they chose to 
measure the performance of schools with a certain poverty level in New 
York City with schools who would have the same poverty level than the 
rest of the State, the same income level, not just poverty but those 
with high income were measured, too; and they have put another column 
in here called Reading Performance. And just certain quick 
observations.
  One of the highest income areas in the city, Staten Island, happened 
to be one the lowest performing areas. When you compare the performance 
of the students in Staten Island, which has an overall level of 58.9 
million, meaning 58.9 percent of all of the students in Staten Island 
have incomes which disqualify them for school lunch programs, many of 
the schools have income levels which rate as high as 84 and 85 percent, 
I think 86 percent, very high income levels; and, nevertheless, it was 
one of the areas that scored lowest when you compared the performance 
of the students in those schools with the performance of students at 
the same income level in other parts of the State.
  So Staten Island I might note, as I have before, has a serious 
problem. And

[[Page H1231]]

this barometer is a very interesting one that brings out the fact that 
we may have some serious problems in the way administrators and 
teachers and the system is conducting itself beyond poverty.
  However, poverty is still the major problem in the majority of the 
districts in New York City. The correlation between the reading scores 
and poverty is there in school after school except, in every district, 
one or two schools, despite the low poverty level, they stand out as 
having extraordinary performance. Which means that despite the fact 
that there is a close correlation between poverty and low performance, 
it can be overcome. And it is important that an attempt be made to 
overcome it and pinpoint at the schools that are performing well, we 
should pinpoint what factors allow them to overcome the poverty.
  I am going to just deal with District 23, which is one of the school 
districts. We have 32 districts in New York. District 23 is located in 
Brownsville, a large concentration of low-income housing projects. The 
overall income level in District 23 is the lowest in the City, just 
about, 8.3. Only 8.3 of the students have incomes so high that they do 
not qualify for school lunch programs. That means that 91 percent of 
the students are poor, they qualify for the school lunches, and a great 
deal would have to be done to overcome that.
  Finally, I am running out of time so I want to mention that, in 
dealing with the problems faced by areas like Brownsville District 23, 
we are going to need teachers in large quantities. We are going to have 
to do something unusual. The Higher Education Assistance Act that we 
are discussing tomorrow needs to focus on teacher training and ways to 
deal with that problem, just as it needs to focus on information 
technology workers.
  We have a TRIO program which has been over the years a program that 
works very well. The TRIO program produces students from low-income 
areas who were able to qualify for college admission, and they have a 
record of outstanding achievement. We need to look at the TRIO program 
in terms of the authorization level. We need to double, go so far as to 
double the authorization. Because from one end of the spectrum to the 
other, both sides of the aisle agree that the TRIO program, which 
consists of upward-bound programs, talent search programs, and some 
others, they work. If they work, we need to consider doubling the 
amount of appropriations and doubling the size of those programs in 
order to deal with the problem of poverty and the poverty relation to 
education if we are going to get students come out of the poverty areas 
and able to go to college and qualify to get the jobs that are 
available.
  Finally, we certainly do not want a crusade against remedial 
education in our colleges in New York. Education adds value to 
everybody who gets it, and remedial education as a part of the process 
will add value to the people who are in our City and enable them to go 
on to qualify for some of the jobs that are available and become 
productive in our society, thus lessening the kind of expenditure you 
have to make to support them.
  Mr. Speaker, I insert the following for the Record:

  [Pre-publication manuscript to be published in the Journal of Negro 
                        Education, Spring 1998]

            (Antoine M. Garibaldi, Ph.D., Howard University)

The State of African American Education--A Presentation to the National 
               Commission for African American Education

          (By Antoine M. Garibaldi, Ph.D., Howard University)


                                abstract

       This presentation \1\ is based on an assessment of African 
     American educational attainment--from the elementary grades 
     to first-professional degrees--over the last four decades. 
     Even though significant progress has been made in attendance 
     and degree attainment in elementary and secondary schools, 
     college, graduate and professional schools, data show that 
     there has also been a pattern of regression with respect to 
     African Americans' educational attainment and achievement 
     over the last four decades. This mixed assessment, however, 
     must be placed in an appropriate context and be used to 
     improve further those conditions that are impairing the 
     performance of African American students. Additionally, the 
     presentation will highlight positive trends such as higher 
     graduation rates from high school, improved performance on 
     selected tests and educational measures, successful school 
     programs, successful students, the continued contributions of 
     Historically Black Colleges and Universities to 
     baccalaureate, graduate, and first-professional degree 
     production, and to the preparation of African American 
     teachers, to name just a few. Specific recommendations are 
     also offered to raise the level of student performance, i.e., 
     more rigorous curricula, higher educational standards and 
     expectations for students, higher expectations by teachers, 
     increased involvement by parents, and the vigorous support of 
     communities and non-profit organizations. Many challenging 
     issues and questions are also cited to demonstrate that 
     serious work is needed to reduce the many inequities that 
     still exist in the schools attended by African American 
     students.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Footnotes at end of article.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
       These ``re-segregated'' enrollments have not occurred by 
     accident; rather, they are partly the result of the out-
     migration of whites from urban to suburban school districts 
     and the ineffective implementation of court orders designed 
     to increase school integration in the late 1960's and 1970's. 
     In spite of the 1954 Brown decision, it is discomforting to 
     realize that in 1997 many of the schools attended by African 
     Americans are still ``inherently unequal.''


            elementary and secondary educational attainment

       Over the last four decades, African Americans have made 
     tremendous gains in elementary and secondary educational 
     attainment; and significant increases in high school 
     completion rates began in the 1970's. In 1975, the high 
     school completion rate for 18- to 24-year old African 
     Americans was only 64.8 percent, compared to 83 percent for 
     whites and 80.8 percent overall. In 1995, however, 18- to 24-
     year old African Americans' high school completion rate was 
     76.9 percent, a 12 percent increase over the twenty year 
     period.

 TABLE 3--HIGH SCHOOL COMPLETION RATES FOR 18- TO 24-YEAR-OLDS: 1975 AND
                                  1995                                  
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           African-                     
                  Year                     Americans   Whites    Overall
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1975....................................       64.8%       83%     80.8%
1995....................................       76.9%     81.9%     80.8%
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Carter, D.J. and Wilson, R. (1997). Minorities in Higher        
  Education: Fifteenth Annual Status Report, 1996-97. Washington, DC:   
  Americans Council on Education.                                       

       But the high school graduation data for African Americans 
     are even better for 25 to 29-year olds between 1975 and 1995: 
     in 1975, 71 percent had graduated from high school, compared 
     to 86.5% in 1995 (Carter and Wilson, 1997).

 TABLE 4--HIGH SCHOOL COMPLETION RATES FOR 25- TO 29-YEAR-OLDS: 1975 AND
                                  1995                                  
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                   African-             
                      Year                         Americans    Whites  
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1975............................................         71%       84.4%
1995............................................       86.5%       87.4%
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Carter, D.J. and Wilson, R. (1997). Minorities in Higher        
  Education: Fifteenth Annual Status Report, 1996-1997. Washington, DC: 
  American Council on Education.                                        

       Not only are these gains remarkable, but the data also 
     confirm that more African Americans have obtained an 
     education over the last three decades as a result of expanded 
     educational opportunities and a variety of special programs 
     (such as Head Start, Title 1/Chapter 1, etc.) for African 
     American and other disadvantaged students.
       While African Americans' high school completion rates 
     provide one barometer of educational attainment, performance 
     on national assessments are needed to determine how much 
     learning has actually been achieved. Thus, the best 
     collection of national comparative data is the National 
     Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)--a congressionally 
     mandated project of the U.S. Department of Education's 
     National Center for Education Statistics. Since 1969, NAEP 
     has periodically assessed students' proficiency and academic 
     achievement in science, reading, mathematics, and writing in 
     public and nonpublic schools, with the specific purpose of 
     evaluating the condition and progress of education in the 
     nation. This national database assesses student performance 
     in reading, mathematics and the sciences at 9, 13 and 17 
     years of age, and in grades 4, 8, and 11 for the writing 
     assessment. More recent assessments since 1990, however, use 
     grades 4, 8, and 11 as the baseline of comparison. Before 
     presenting the twenty-eight year trend data for African 
     American and white students, it is useful to cite NAEP's 
     recently released summary statement of all students' overall 
     performance since the tests were first administered in 1969.
       ``In general, the trends in science and mathematics show 
     early declines or relative stability followed by improved 
     performance. In reading and writing, the results are somewhat 
     mixed; although some modest improvement was evident in the 
     trend reading assessments, few indications of positive trends 
     were evident in the writing results'' (Campbell, Voelkl, & 
     Donahue, 1997).


           trends in naep mathematics scale scores: 1973-1996

       On the NAEP mathematics test, 17-year old white and black 
     students had declining scores between 1973 and 1978, but both 
     increased their performance between 1978 and 1996, with black 
     students showing the most

[[Page H1232]]

     growth. The mathematics scores of white and black 9- and 13-
     year old students also consistently increased throughout the 
     assessment period. However, while black and white students' 
     mathematics scores increased between 1973 and 1996, the 
     scores of white students were at least 25 points higher than 
     their black counterparts in each age group.


             trends in naep reading scale scores: 1971-1996

       The NAEP reading scores for each of the three age groups of 
     white students increased slightly during the 1971-1996 
     assessment period. African Americans' scores also increased 
     between 1971 and 1988, but fluctuated between 1988 and 1996. 
     Thus, while both groups' performance showed modest 
     improvement on this key educational measure, white students' 
     scores averaged 30 points higher than those of their black 
     counterparts in each age group.


             Trends in NAEP Writing Scale Scores: 1984-1996

       On the NAEP writing tests between 1984 and 1996, both white 
     and black students performed poorly. The scores of white 
     students who were in the 11th-grade decreased consistently 
     over the assessment period; and eighth-grade and fourth-grade 
     white students' scores fluctuated over the twelve year 
     period. Black students' writing scores also fluctuated at all 
     grade levels. Fourth-grade black students' 1984 score was 
     identical to the 1996 score, while both 8th and 11th-grade 
     black students' 1996 score was slightly lower than their 1984 
     score. White 11th-grade and 8th-grade students and black 
     11th-grade students demonstrated an ability to write clearly. 
     But black 8th-grade students and white 4th-grade students 
     demonstrated vague and unclear writing skills. As was the 
     case in the previous assessments, white students' average 
     scores in writing were at least 22 points higher than their 
     black counterparts in each age group.


             Trends in NAEP Science Scale Scores: 1969-1970

       The average NAEP science test scores for 17-year old black 
     and white students decreased from 1969 to 1982, but steadily 
     increased from 1982 through 1996. The scores for white 9- and 
     13-year old students decreased slightly from 1969 to 1977, 
     but increased moderately from 1977 through 1996. African 
     American students' scores for this group also declined during 
     the early 1970's, but increased noticeably through 1996. Even 
     though the scores of African American 9- and 13-year old 
     students increased more over the duration of the assessment 
     period, the scores were not higher than that of their white 
     counterparts in 1996. Between 1969 and 1996, the average 
     score of white students was 47 points higher than that of 
     black students.


                        1997 Act/Sat performance

       The preceding NAEP data indicate that there have been both 
     trends of progress and decline in all American students' 
     performance in the four core subject areas of reading, math, 
     science and writing. And those less than proficient signs of 
     performance are unfortunately, but expectedly, reflected on 
     other national educational measures, such as the verbal and 
     mathematical scales of the College Board's Scholastic 
     Achievement Test, and on the English, mathematics, reading, 
     and science reasoning sections of the ACT, Inc.'s American 
     College Test. In 1997, for example, the average SAT score of 
     all students was 1016 on a total scale of 1600. Asian 
     American students obtained the highest average score of 1056; 
     White students were next with a score of 1052; American 
     Indian students had an average score of 950; Hispanic 
     students had a score of 934, followed by Mexican Americans 
     with 909, and Puerto Rican students with an average score 
     of 901. African American students had the lowest average 
     score of 857.


                 Table 5--1997 Average SAT Test Scores

Asian-American students............................................1056
White students.....................................................1052
National average...................................................1016
Hispanic students...................................................934
African-American students...........................................857
Source: The College Board, 1997.
       The patterns of performance were similar on the ACT: 
     average overall performance was 21.0 (out of a total score of 
     36); Asian American and White students had the same average 
     score of 21.7; American Indian and Hispanic students had 
     scores of 19; Mexican American students scored 18.8; and 
     African American students had the lowest average score of 
     17.1 (Selingo and Fiore, 1997).


                 Table 6--1997 Average ACT Test Scores

Asian-American students............................................21.7
White students.....................................................21.7
National average.....................................................21
Hispanic students....................................................19
African-American students..........................................17.1
Source: ACT, Inc. 1997.
       While one of the signs of progress with respect to these 
     tests is that there have been increasingly more test-takers, 
     especially among minority groups \2\ staff from both 
     organizations that develop and administer these tests have 
     expressed their concern about the lower standardized test 
     performance of students who cite that they have high grades 
     in high school. To this issue, Donald M. Stewart, President 
     of the College Board, has emphatically stated that:
       ``Educators who give high grades for average or below-
     average performance promote a hollow, `just good enough' 
     attitude that is detrimental to students and society'' 
     (Selingo and Fiore, 1997).
       Grade inflation and social promotion are unconscionable 
     practices that should be eliminated at every school site to 
     assure that students have a realistic assessment of both 
     their abilities and performance. Additionally, schools must 
     assume more responsibility and require students to take more 
     academic and college-bound courses in junior and senior high 
     schools. The latter recommendation is a necessity for schools 
     with large numbers of African American and other non-white 
     students given the evidence which shows that many of these 
     students are more likely to take lower level courses in the 
     core subject areas (i.e., English, Mathematics, Sciences, 
     etc.) rather than college prep courses (Braddock, 1990; 
     Oakes, 1985, 1986; Irvine, 1990).


                 the impact of poverty on urban schools

       Earlier in this article, great concern was expressed about 
     the increasing segregation of many of the nation's public 
     schools. Of special significance here is the fact that most 
     of the schools attended by non-white youth are located in 
     urban areas. While this has been known for some time, 
     numerous perceptions about the quality of these schools 
     are fueled by unsubstantiated anecdotal comments. But a 
     July 1996 report by the U.S. Department of Education on 
     how poverty relates to the characteristics of students in 
     urban, rural and suburban schools in the 1980's has made 
     several notable comparisons in describing the students' 
     school experiences, their school achievement, the 
     expectations of their parents, and other related factors. 
     In this study, Urban Schools: The challenge of location 
     and poverty (U.S. Dept. of Education, 1996), the 
     methodology controlled for the extent of poverty in the 
     three types of school locations. The school locations that 
     were examined included urban, suburban and rural areas, 
     and the level of poverty in each school was defined by the 
     percentage of students who received free of reduced price 
     lunches. Thus, more balanced comparisons were able to be 
     made on each factor even though more low income students 
     attended urban schools. The following highlights of the 
     study's major findings show more clearly how factors of 
     school location and the level of poverty in those schools 
     directly and indirectly affect school performance.


               race, poverty levels and school locations

       Urban, suburban and rural public schools with high poverty 
     concentrations (i.e., 40 percent or more) we more likely to 
     have larger minority student populations than schools with 
     low levels of poverty (i.e., 5 percent or less).\3\ 
     Additionally, urban public schools with high concentrations 
     of poverty enrolled larger numbers of minority students than 
     high poverty rural and suburban schools. Sixty nine percent 
     of students who attended high poverty urban public schools, 
     for example, were minorities, compared to enrollments of 26 
     percent minorities at low poverty schools. Similarly, at 
     suburban schools, 56 percent of the students at high poverty 
     schools wee minorities; but only 10 percent of students at 
     low poverty suburban schools were minorities. Additionally, 
     high poverty rural public schools enrolled 35 percent 
     minority students compared to only 9 percent at low poverty 
     schools (U.S. Dept. of Education, 1996). Thus, more African 
     American and other minority students not only attend urban 
     schools, but the schools also have the highest concentrations 
     of students from families with low economic backgrounds.


        student achievement, poverty levels and school locations

       The level of poverty at schools was an important variable 
     when examining students' academic achievement. Students who 
     had the lowest levels of achievement on standardized tests 
     were more often enrolled at high poverty public schools, 
     while students who performed at higher achievement levels 
     attended schools with lower levels of poverty. However, when 
     the schools' poverty levels were controlled for, the 
     results percent of the graduates of the nation's public 
     schools had taken a geometry course.\4\ At suburban 
     schools, 73 percent of students had enrolled in a geometry 
     course, compared with 57 percent of urban students. And 60 
     percent of students who attended high poverty schools had 
     taken geometry compared with nearly 74 percent of students 
     at low poverty schools. However, when the study controlled 
     for the level of poverty, there was no statistical 
     difference among urban, rural or suburban students who had 
     enrolled in a geometry course. To raise the educational 
     achievement of all students, advanced placement as well as 
     college-prep courses such as Algebra and geometry, 
     biology, chemistry, three years of English and other core 
     subjects must be offered so that students will be prepared 
     for college even if they elect not to attend a four-year 
     college or university.


           african american college enrollment and attainment

       Given the increases in African American high school 
     graduation around the 1970's, it would not have been 
     unreasonable to expect a larger share of African Americans to 
     attend and graduate from college. In 1975, the college-going 
     rate for all Americans was 36.2 percent, compared to a rate 
     of 32.8 percent for African Americans (Carter and Wilson, 
     1997). But in 1995, the proportion of African American high 
     school graduates who were enrolled in college decreased by 
     almost two percentage points to 34.4 percent, compared to a 
     national average that increased six percent to 42 percent.

[[Page H1233]]



   TABLE 8--COLLEGE-GOING RATE OF HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES: 1975 AND 1995  
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                               African- 
                      Year                          Overall    Americans
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1975............................................       36.2%       32.8%
1995............................................         42%       34.4%
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Carter, D. and Wilson, R. (1997). Minorities in Higher          
  Education. Fifteenth Annual Status Report, 1996-1997. Washington, DC: 
  American Council on Education.                                        

       While college enrollment statistics have fluctuated since 
     the peak year of the mid 1970's when slightly more than one 
     million African American students (1,033,000) were attending 
     college, almost one and a half million (1,400,000) African 
     Americans were enrolled in college in 1995 (Hoffman, Snyder 
     and Sonneberg, 1996). Despite the increase of almost four 
     million more African American students in college between 
     1976 and 1995, the ratio of those attending four-year and 
     two-year institutions did not change; 59 percent attended 
     four-year institutions compared to 41 percent who were 
     enrolled at two-year colleges and universities.\5\ Thus, the 
     larger number of black students in college in the 1990's 
     cannot be viewed as a major gain since a significant amount 
     are enrolled in two-year institutions. Furthermore, much of 
     the growth in postsecondary attendance by blacks over the 
     last twenty years is due to a sizable increase of African 
     American women who enrolled in college.

TABLE 9--1994 AND 1995 COLLEGE ENROLLMENT OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS BY GENDER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                Year                     Males      Females      Total  
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1994................................     550,000     899,000   1,449,000
1995................................     556,000     918,000   1,474,000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Carter, D. and Wilson, R. (1997). Minorities in Higher          
  Education. Fifteenth Annual Status Report, 1996-1997. Washington, DC: 
  American Council on Education.                                        

                    postsecondary degree attainment

       The best way to determine whether any gains in college 
     access have been realized for African Americans over the last 
     two decades is by reviewing the amount of degrees received 
     during this period. Regrettably though, the data show that 
     there has not been consistent annual increases in some of the 
     degree categories since 1976. More African Americans, for 
     example, received baccalaureate degrees in 1976 and 1981 than 
     in 1985. In 1976 and 1981, African Americans received an 
     average of slightly more than 59,000 bachelor's degrees 
     (59,122 and 60,673 baccalaureate degrees, respectively), or 
     about 6.5% of the total degrees awarded, compared to 57,473 
     undergraduate degrees in 1985, or 5.9% of the total (Carter 
     and Wilson, 1989). Thus, the 1981 and 1985 totals for African 
     Americans at the baccalaureate level showed a decline in both 
     the number and percentage of degrees awarded when compared to 
     1976. In the 1990's, however, the percentage increased from 
     6% of the total awarded in 1991 (65,341 degrees) to a high of 
     7.2% in 1994 (83,576).\6\

    TABLE 10--BACCALAUREATE DEGREES AWARDED TO AFRICAN-AMERICANS FOR    
                        SELECTED YEARS: 1976-1994                       
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                     African-American                   
               Year                   baccalaureate     Percent of total
                                         degrees        degrees awarded 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1976..............................             59,122                6.5
1981..............................             60,673                6.5
1985..............................             57,473                5.9
1991..............................             65,341                  6
1994..............................             83,576               7.2 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Carter, D.J. and Wilson, R. Minorities in Higher Education:     
  Eighth Annual Status Report, 1997. Washington, DC: American Council on
  Education.                                                            

       As has been mentioned earlier, the gains by African 
     Americans at the bachelor's degree level are primarily 
     attributed to the significant increases by black women who 
     completed their undergraduate studies. In 1976, for example, 
     the number of African American women who received 
     baccalaureate degrees was 33,489, compared to 25,026 that 
     were awarded to African American men--a difference of almost 
     8,000 degrees. Ten years later, African American women 
     received 34,056 undergraduate degrees compared to 22,499 that 
     were awarded to African men--or roughly 11,000 more (Gordon 
     and Brown, 1990). In 1994, the gap was even wider as 22,000 
     more African American women received baccalaureate degrees 
     (52,928 versus 30,648) than did men. This pattern of almost 
     20,000 more bachelor's degrees awarded to African American 
     women has been consistently occurring since the early 1990's.

           TABLE 11--1976, 1986 AND 1994 BACCALAUREATE DEGREES AWARDED TO AFRICAN-AMERICANS BY GENDER           
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                   Black male        Black female               
                             Year                                baccalaureate      baccalaureate     Difference
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1976.........................................................             25,026             33,489        8,463
1986.........................................................             22,499             34,056       11,557
1994.........................................................             30,648             52,928       22,280
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: (1) Gordon, P. and Brown, P. (1990). Degrees conferred in institutions of higher education, by race and 
  sex: 1976-77 through 1986-87. National Center for Education Statistics and (2) Carter, D. and Wilson, R.      
  (1997). Minorities in Higher. Fifteen Annual Status Report, 1996-1997. Washington, DC: American Council on    
  Education.                                                                                                    

       Overall increases of black baccalaureate recipients were 
     partly due to the rising number of undergraduate awards made 
     by historically black colleagues and universities. In 1985, 
     HBCUs awarded 16,326 bachelor's degrees; between 1991 and 
     1994, HBCUs awarded an average of almost 21,000 degrees to 
     African Americans.\7\ Thus, HBCUs annually accounted for 
     approximately 28% of all undergraduate degrees to African 
     Americans between 1985 and 1994, compared to the late 
     1970's and early 1980's when they accounted for between 
     35% and 32% of all black bachelor's degrees.\8\ 
     Nevertheless, this is still a favorable sign that HBCUs, 
     which represent barely three percent of all American 
     colleges and universities, continue to enroll and graduate 
     a significant number of students even though African 
     American students have much more access to other 
     institutions of higher education.


 Table 12--Baccalaureate degrees awarded to African Americans by HBCUs 
                     for selected years: 1985-1994


        Year                                        HBCU baccalaureates
1985.............................................................16,326
1991.............................................................17,930
1992.............................................................19,693
1993.............................................................22,020
1994.............................................................23,434
Source: Hoffman, C., Snyder, T. and Sonneberg, B. (1996). Historically 
Black Colleges and Universities: 1976-1994. National Center for 
Education Statistics.

  TABLE 15--FIRST-PROFESSIONAL DEGREES AWARDED TO AFRICAN-AMERICANS FOR 
                        SELECTED YEARS: 1977-1994                       
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  First-professional    Percent of total
              Year                  degrees awarded     awarded annually
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1977...........................                 2,536                  4
1979...........................                 2,836                  4
1981...........................                 2,931                  4
1985...........................                 3,029                4.3
1991...........................                 3,575                  5
1993...........................                 4,100                5.5
1994...........................                 4,444                5.9
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Carter, D. and Wilson, R. (1997). Minorities in Higher Education
  Fifteenth Annual Status Report, 1996-1997. Washington, DC: American   
  Council on Education.                                                 

                               Conclusion

       Based on all of the data that have been presented--from the 
     elementary grades to first-professional degrees, it is fair 
     to say that there has been both progress and regression with 
     respect to African Americans' educational attainment and 
     achievement over the last four decades. This mixed 
     assessment, however, should not be viewed as a sign of 
     discouragement; rather it should be used as a source of 
     motivation to improve further those conditions that require 
     immediate attention. Additionally, it is imperative that 
     positive trends such as higher graduation rates from high 
     school, improved performance on selected tests and 
     educational measures, successful school programs, successful 
     students, the continued contributions of Historically Black 
     Colleges and Universities to baccalaureate, graduate, and 
     first-professional degree production, and to the preparation 
     of African American teachers, to name just a few signs, must 
     be constantly emphasized. At the same time, however, it is 
     necessary that those negative indicators which can 
     be improved are addressed; more rigorous curricula, higher 
     educational standards and expectations for students, 
     higher expectations by teachers, increased involvement by 
     parents, and so forth.
       It may not be as easy to change the segregated composition 
     of the public schools where so many African Americans are 
     currently enrolled, or the numbers of students who come from 
     poor backgrounds in those schools, but it is possible to 
     exercise our civic duty and inquire what can be done to 
     reduce class sizes, to sustain reading and mathematics 
     performance beyond the fourth grade, to offer more college 
     prep and advanced placement courses, and to provide 
     comprehensive career counseling for students. Furthermore, it 
     is our responsibility to find out why there are few gifted 
     and talented programs in public schools, why African 
     Americans account for almost 30 percent of all students in 
     special education classes, and why more students do not 
     achieve at higher levels of proficiency on various subject 
     matter tests. It is also our obligation to resolve why 41% of 
     African American college students are attending two-year 
     institutions, why 350,000 more African American women than 
     men are attending college today compared to a difference of 
     200,000 up to 1984, and why little, if any, gains are being 
     made at the doctoral level. These are indeed challenging 
     issues and questions which signal that serious work is needed 
     to reduce the many inequities that still exist in the schools 
     attended by African American students. Change and real growth 
     are possible, but hope must be supported by commitment to 
     standards, carefully designed educational programs, 
     systematic action and the realization that success is within 
     reach. With the belief and conviction that the glass of 
     ``educational opportunity'' is half full, we can help to 
     fulfill the dreams of those numerous African American parents 
     who expect their children to attend college and be productive 
     citizens in the 21st Century.


                               footnotes

     \1\ This presentation is based on the 18th Annual Charles H. 
     Thompson lecture--Four Decades of Progress. . . and Decline: 
     An Assessment of African American Educational Attainment--
     delivered at Howard University in November 1997. The lecture 
     will be published in the Winter 1997/Spring 1998 issue of The 
     Journal of Negro Education (Vol. 66, No. 1-2).
     \2\ Minority students accounted for 32 percent of those who 
     took the SAT in 1997 compared to 22 percent in 1987. And 60 
     percent of the 1997 freshmen (959,301 students) took the ACT, 
     compared to 817,076 in 1990.
     \3\ In this study, 40 percent of urban students attended 
     schools with poverty concentrations of 40 percent or more, 
     and only 12 percent of urban students attended low poverty 
     schools. However, only 10 percent of suburban students and 25 
     percent of rural students attended high poverty schools; and 
     36 percent of suburban students attend low poverty schools.
     \4\ Geometry was chosen by NAEP because the patterns for 
     students who had enrolled in this course were similar to 
     those for students who had taken science, foreign language 
     and other advanced courses.

[[Page H1234]]

     \5\ In 1976, almost 604,000 African American students 
     attended four-year institutions, and a little more than 
     429,000 attended two-year institutions. In 1995, almost 
     834,000 African American students attended four-year 
     institutions and 614,000 were enrolled at two-year 
     institutions.
     \6\ African American baccalaureates rose to 72,346 in 1992, 
     or 6.4% of the total, and 77,782 in 1993, or 6.7% of the 
     total.
     \7\ The annual number of bachelor's degrees awarded to 
     African Americans by HBCUs for 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1994 were 
     17,930, 19,693, 22,020, and 23,434, respectively.
     \8\ In 1977 and 1981, African Americans received 58,515 and 
     60,673 bachelors degrees, respectively. HBCUs awarded 20,754 
     and 19,556 degrees to African Americans, respectively, or 35% 
     and 32% of the total (Gordon and Brown, 1990).

                          ____________________