[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 19 (Wednesday, February 3, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H402]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    ACCOUNTABILITY IN HELPING STUDENTS MEET HIGH ACADEMIC STANDARDS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, as we have heard from 
all of our colleagues, from the President of the United States and from 
governors across this land, education is the top issue on the public 
agenda and accountability is the order of the day. Parents and 
taxpayers want quality schools that show results in helping students 
meet high academic standards. The President says that he wants us to 
have world class standards so that students in the United States can 
compete in a world economy with the students and citizens of any Nation 
in the world, and I think that that is important.
  The Federal Government over the past three decades has spent some 
$118 billion in funding the Title I education programs, with rather 
mixed and variable results, and now we are looking to invest many 
billions more over the next five years. In fact, we will invest 
something in the neighborhood of $40 billion over the next five years 
in Title I, a program that is designed to help in the main 
educationally and economically disadvantaged children. But what is it 
we are getting for that investment, and how can we ensure that we will 
in fact get a better return on that investment of $40 billion than we 
received on the first $118 billion that we invested?
  We have been told by the Republican leadership of the House and, I 
believe, also in the Senate that the expansion of the so-called Ed-Flex 
bill will be one of the first items of their agenda in meeting some of 
the educational needs of this country. Currently there are 12 States 
that receive broad authority to waive many of the Federal laws and 
regulations with respect to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
  My question is, I want to know, for the granting of that waiver for 
the additional flexibility to let school districts use this money in 
their best judgment for their best purposes, what is it they are 
telling us they are prepared to do on behalf of America's students and 
on behalf of the families that are so terribly concerned about the 
education of their children?
  They tell us that States are being held accountable under Ed-Flex for 
their actions and that they have put in place a procedure of 
accountability, and yet when we look at the GAO report that has 
recently been issued on Ed-Flex, we find out that that is not 
necessarily the case. We find out, according to GAO, that many Ed-Flex 
States, these 12 States that have been granted this authority, have not 
established any goals or defined only vague objectives.
  One State's plan, in exchange for flexibility in Federal dollars, 
says that they have a commitment to the identification and 
implementation of programs that will create an environment in which 
students actualize their academic potential. For that we are handing 
them millions of dollars, so that they can create an environment and 
the implementation of programs so that students will actualize their 
academic potential. No suggestion of how we would measure that or 
whether we know that is true.
  Yet we find a State like Texas which has said not only will they set 
out specific numerical criteria that are closely tied to both schools 
and districts and the specific students affected by the waiver; the 
Governor of Texas has said what he will do and what the State 
legislature of Texas has agreed to do and the Department of Education, 
in exchange for the flexibility under Ed-Flex from rules and 
regulations of the Federal Government, that he expects that the 
districts that receive the waivers under this act, that they will make 
annual gains on the State tests so that 90 percent, 90 percent of his 
students will pass the State assessment in reading and math.
  In addition, the Governor of Texas goes even further than that. He 
says that the districts must make gains so that at the end of that same 
five-year period 90 percent of the African American students will pass 
the State exam, 90 percent of the Hispanic students, 90 percent of the 
white students and 90 percent of the economically disadvantaged 
students. For that we have granted them a waiver and access to millions 
of dollars of Federal moneys for education.
  I am asking Members of Congress and the administration, which plan 
would you rather invest in? Would you rather invest in a plan that 
gives you numerical goals and standards and achievement for our 
students in this country, or would you rather invest in a plan that 
gives you rhetoric about some ephemeral goal that may or may not be 
achieved and no timetables and no standards as to how they will achieve 
that?
  If we are going to be the venture capitalists in improving education 
in this country with the limited Federal dollars that we have, that in 
this one program will provide over $40 billion, I think like any 
venture capitalist we ought to ask what is the return we are getting on 
that money, because there are a lot of uses for that $40 billion and 
every Member of Congress has a different priority.
  But we ought to be asking, what are we going to get back? The 
Governor of Texas has told us what we will get back is a 90 percent 
passage rate at the end of five years on a high-quality State test that 
will test their ability to perform in both reading and mathematics. In 
the other 12 States it is something in between. A lot of it is 
rhetoric, a lot of it is no goals and no accountability.
  The President stood here in the State of the Union and said that he 
wanted accountability, the parents wanted accountability, and clearly 
Members of Congress do. When the Ed-Flex bill comes to the floor, we 
should demand that it have provisions for accountability. We ought to 
at least demand something as rigorous as the Governor of Texas and the 
State legislature were prepared to put on the line in the name of 
education reform.

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