[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 143 (Sunday, October 11, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H10529]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  DEMOCRATS' APPROACH BEST SOLVES THE PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WYNN. Mr. Speaker, time and time again, Americans have said that 
they want Congress to deal with the real issues, the issues that affect 
their daily lives and that affect the future of their young people. 
Education is such an issue.
  We are here this weekend debating, and some say fighting, over the 
question of education and America's future. We on the Democratic side 
have a clear proposition. We believe that we need to invest more money 
in public education.
  As my colleagues know, recently we got a wake-up call of sorts. In a 
battery of international tests, American students lagged behind their 
foreign counterparts. Moreover, as we talk about the global economy and 
the 21st century, what we realize is that we need more technical 
training for our students in order to compete in the global economy.
  That is why education has become the issue of the day. That is why 
the debate rages.
  What I would like to do is talk about the two perspectives and two 
approaches to solving the problem of education in this country.
  On the Republican side they have advocated basically two things:
  One, a voucher program. They want to use the District of Columbia as 
a laboratory in which to take money out of public schools, put it in 
private schools and say this new competition from the private school 
sector will create better schools. That is clearly erroneous because 
they do not put enough money into a voucher program to make it work. 
Private schools do not have to take all types of students; public 
schools do. We do not need to put money into a voucher program for 
private schools because 9 out of 10 American students will always end 
up in the public school system, and we need to make an investment in 
the public school system.
  Next, they come up with the notion that they like to call dollars to 
the schools, to the classroom. What I call it is dollars from the 
classroom because what their proposal does by creating a block grant is 
to cut over $2 billion from public education and then tell us we are 
actually putting more dollars in the classroom.
  Now we have to understand their premise is that too much money is 
being spent on bureaucracy. That is simply not true. The fact of the 
matter is only 2 percent of the entire Federal budget in education for 
the Department of Education goes to Federal administration. The rest 
goes to your State, your county and your city to administer education 
programs. So do not let them come up and suggest, well, there is too 
much bureaucracy. It is certainly not Federal bureaucracy. We do have 
that 2 percent, though, and that is used to monitor Federal programs to 
make sure the money is not wasted at the local level. So they want to 
take this money out of the Federal sector and take, basically cut it 
out, of the budget. That is what their dollars from the classroom does.
  Let me tell my colleagues some of the things that they cut. They cut 
educational technology challenge funds. They cut the Eisenhower Teacher 
Training Program. They cut school to work. Why would you cut a school 
to work program that is helping students make the transition? They cut 
the After School Learning Program. Why would you cut a program that 
helps students after school hours when they are most likely to get in 
trouble? It does not seem to make a lot of sense.
  Now they talk about their Dollars to the Classroom. I did a little 
research, and from my State of Maryland we will lose $10 million as a 
result of the Republican approach. So I do not call it Dollars to the 
Classroom; it is clearly for the State of Maryland and, for most other 
States, dollars from the classroom.
  Now let us turn to the Democratic approach. We believe we need to do 
a couple of fundamental things to improve education in America. First, 
we need to hire a hundred thousand new teachers for the elementary 
school, grades 1 to 3, to reduce class size. That is what we are 
fighting about over the weekend, whether we need to make that 
investment, because more teachers mean smaller classes, and smaller 
classes mean a better learning environment.
  Second, we want to invest in modernizing our schools. Over a third of 
our schools need major repairs. That is to say that they need heating 
systems, air-conditioning systems, that their boiler systems do not 
work very well. Over half of our schools have major environmental 
problems that we need to confront and are not prepared to adapt to 
the Internet. They cannot be wired to the Internet.

  So what we have is a situation in which outmoded, crumbling schools 
cannot deliver a quality education, and again we on the Democratic side 
believe we need to make an investment in public education to modernize 
our school system.
  We also have a problem of overcrowded schools. The President came to 
my school district, we visited a school. The school was only 5 years 
old, but yet it had 6 trailers outside to teach kids. The trailers do 
not have air-conditioning, the trailers do not have restrooms. You do 
not have a proper educational environment.
  So here we are. We are confronting the 21st century. We know that we 
lag behind our international counterparts, and we know we need to 
modernize our schools. I think the Democratic approach best solves the 
problem of education in America.

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