[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 33 (Wednesday, March 3, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2160-S2177]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    EDUCATION FLEXIBILITY PARTNERSHIP ACT OF 1999--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 280, which the 
clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to the consideration of S. 280, a bill to 
     provide for education flexibility partnerships.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the motion to proceed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will be 3 
hours 30 minutes under the control of the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. 
Wellstone, and 30 minutes under the control of the Senator from 
Vermont, Mr. Jeffords, or his designee.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I make a point of order a quorum is not 
present.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that that time be charged to 
Senator Wellstone.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Ben 
Highton and Elizabeth Kuoppala be allowed to be on the floor during the 
duration of the debate on Ed-Flex.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me, first of all, explain to my 
colleagues and for those in the country who are going to now be 
focusing on this bill, the Ed-Flex bill, why I started out yesterday 
speaking in opposition to this motion to proceed and why I will be 
taking several hours today to express my opposition to this piece of 
legislation. There are a number of different things I am going to 
cover, but at the very beginning I would like to spell out what I think 
is the fundamental flaw to this legislation, the Ed-Flex bill. Frankly, 
I think my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, would have had an 
opportunity to carefully examine this legislation if we had a hearing, 
I mean a thorough hearing, or if we had waited to really examine in 
some detail and some depth what has happened in the different Ed-Flex 
States.
  The General Accounting Office gives us a report in which they say it 
looks like some good work has been done, but we don't really have a 
full and complete understanding of what has happened in these Ed-Flex 
States. I think what this piece of legislation, called Ed-Flex--and I 
grant it is a great title, and I grant it is a winning political 
argument to say let's give the flexibility to the States and let's get 
the Federal Government out of this--but what this piece of legislation 
is essentially saying is that we, as a national community, we as a 
National Government, we as a Federal Government representing the people 
in our country, no longer are going to maintain our commitment to poor 
children in America. That is what this is all about.
  What this piece of legislation essentially says to States and to 
school districts is: Look, when it comes to the core requirements of 
title I, core requirements that have to do with qualified teachers, 
that have to do with high standards for students, that have to do with 
students meeting those standards and there being a measurement and some 
result and some evaluation, these standards no longer necessarily will 
apply. What this legislation says is, when it comes to what the title I 
mission has been all about, for poor children in America--that is to 
say that we want to make sure that the money, first and foremost, goes 
to the neediest schools--that standard no longer will necessarily 
apply.
  As a matter of fact, in 1994, one of the things that we did in the 
Elementary/Secondary Education Act reauthorization was we sought to 
concentrate title I funds by requiring districts to spend title I on 
schools with over 75 percent poverty-stricken students first. That 
restriction has had the desired effect. Only 79 percent of schools with 
over 75 percent poverty received title I funds in 1994. Today, over 95 
percent of those schools receive it.
  So, Mr. President--and I want to make it clear that I will have an 
amendment--one of the amendments that I will have to this piece of 
legislation, if we proceed with this legislation, is an amendment that 
says that the funding has to first go to schools that have a 75 percent 
or more low-income student population.
  I cannot believe my colleagues are going to vote against that. If 
they want to, let them. But if they do, they will have proved my 
point--that we are now about to pass a piece of legislation or a good 
many Republicans and, I am sorry to say, Democrats may pass a piece of 
legislation that will no longer provide the kind of guarantee that in 
the allocation of title I funds for poor children that the neediest 
schools will get served first. I cannot believe that we are about to do 
that. I cannot believe this rush to recklessness. I cannot believe the 
way people have just jammed this bill on to the floor of the Senate. I 
cannot believe that there isn't more opposition from Democrats.
  Mr. President, the second amendment that I am going to have, which I 
think will really speak to whether or not people are serious about 
flexibility with accountability, is an amendment which essentially 
says, look, here are the core requirements of title I.

[[Page S2161]]

  The reason we passed title I as a part of the Elementary/Secondary 
Education Act back in 1965--that was almost 35 years ago--the reason we 
passed title I was we understood, as a nation, whether or not my 
colleagues want to admit to this or not, that in too many States poor 
children and their families who were not the big givers, who were not 
the heavy hitters, who do not make the big contributions were falling 
between the cracks.
  So we said that, as a nation, we would make a commitment to making 
sure that there were certain core requirements that all States had to 
live up to to make sure that these children received some help. Thus, 
the core requirements of title I: Make sure they are qualified 
teachers; make sure low-income students are held to high standards; 
make sure there is a clear measurement of results.
  Let me just read actually some of the provisions that would be tossed 
aside by Ed-Flex in its present form: the requirement that title I 
students be taught by a highly qualified professional staff; the 
requirement that States set high standards for all children; the 
requirement that States provide funding to lowest-income schools first; 
the requirement that States hold schools accountable for making 
substantial annual progress toward getting all students, particularly 
low-income and limited-English-proficient students, to meet high 
standards; the requirement that funded vocational programs provide 
broad education and work experience rather than narrow job training.
  These are the core requirements. I will have an amendment that will 
say that every State and every school district receiving title I 
funding will be required to meet those requirements, will be called 
upon to meet those requirements.

  Mr. President, right now this legislation throws all of those core 
requirements overboard. This legislation represents not a step forward 
for poor children in America; it represents a great leap backwards. 
This piece of legislation turns the clock back 35 years. It comes to 
the floor of the Senate without a full hearing in committee; it comes 
to the floor of the Senate without any opportunity to see any report 
with a thorough evaluation of what those Ed-Flex States have done; it 
comes to the floor of the Senate with the claim being made that Ed-Flex 
represents a huge step forward for education and for the education of 
poor children in America. It is absolutely ridiculous.
  I will talk over the next couple of hours about what we could be 
doing and should be doing for children if we are real. This piece of 
legislation does not lead to any additional opportunities for low-
income children. This piece of legislation does not dramatically 
increase the chances that they will do well in school. This piece of 
legislation does absolutely nothing by way of making sure that we have 
justice for poor children in America.
  To the contrary, this piece of legislation does not call for--and I 
am pretty sure that it will not happen, although I will have 
legislation that will try to make it happen--for an additional 
expenditure of funds for title I programs. This piece of legislation 
does nothing for the schools in St. Paul and Minneapolis that have over 
50 percent low-income students and still don't receive any money 
whatsoever because there isn't enough money and there aren't enough 
resources that are going to our school districts.
  This piece of legislation does nothing to make sure children, when 
they come to kindergarten, are ready to learn, that they know how to 
spell their names, that they know the alphabet, that they know colors 
and shapes and sizes, that they have been read to widely, that they 
have been intellectually challenged. This piece of legislation does 
nothing to assure that will happen. This piece of legislation does not 
do anything to dramatically improve the quality of children's lives 
before they go to school and when they go home from school. And I want 
to talk about that as well.
  I will tell you what this piece of legislation does. This piece of 
legislation says, we, as the U.S. Senate, are no longer going to worry 
about whether States and school districts live by the core requirements 
of title I. We are just going to give you the money and say, Do what 
you want to do. What this piece of legislation says is we are no longer 
going to worry about whether or not States and school districts provide 
funding first to those schools with a 75 percent or more low-income 
student population, the neediest schools. We are just going to say, Do 
what you want. And this is being passed off as something positive for 
poor children in America?
  Again, I will have two amendments--I will have a number of 
amendments, quite a few amendments--but two amendments that I think are 
going to be critical by way of sort of testing out whether or not we 
are talking about accountability or not: One, an amendment that says, 
again, the allocation of funding by States and school districts means 
that those schools that have 75 percent or more low-income students get 
first priority, and, second of all, an amendment that says, here are 
the core requirements of title I. This is what has made title I 
a successful program. And this is fenced off, and in no way, shape or 
form will any State or any school district be exempt from these core 
requirements.

  Why would any State or school district in the United States of 
America not want to live up to the requirements that we have highly 
qualified teachers, that we hold the students to high standards, that 
we measure the results, and we report the results?
  Mr. President, before talking more about title I, let me talk a 
little bit about context. And it is interesting. I am going to do this 
with some indignation. And I want to challenge my colleagues. I want to 
challenge my colleagues not in a hateful way, but I certainly want to 
challenge my colleagues.
  We are a rich country. Our economy is humming along. We are at peak 
economic performance. But fully 35 million Americans are hungry or at 
risk of hunger. Every year, 26 million Americans, many of them 
children, go to food banks for sustenance.
  Last year, the requests for emergency food assistance rose 16 
percent. Many of those requests were unanswered. I would like for 
everyone to listen to this story. A Minnesota teacher asked his class, 
``How many of you ate breakfast this morning?'' As he expected, only a 
few children raised their hands. So he continued, ``How many of you 
skipped breakfast this morning because you don't like breakfast?''
  Lots of hands went up. And how many of you skipped breakfast because 
you didn't have time for it? Many other hands went up. He was pretty 
sure by then why the remaining children hadn't eaten, but he didn't 
want to ask them about being poor, so he asked, How many of you skipped 
breakfast because your family doesn't usually eat breakfast? A few more 
hands were raised. Finally, he noticed a small boy in the middle of the 
classroom whose hand had not gone up. Thinking the boy hadn't 
understood, he asked, And why didn't you eat breakfast this morning? 
The boy replied, his face serious, ``It wasn't my turn.''
  Do you want to do something for children and education of poor 
children? Don't eliminate standards and accountability with title I. 
Make sure those children don't go hungry. The U.S. Senate, 2 years ago, 
put into effect a 20-percent cut in the Food Stamp Program, which is 
the single most important safety net nutritional program for children 
in America, and my colleagues have the nerve to come out here with 
something called Ed-Flex and make the claim that this is going to do 
all these great things for poor children in America.
  Let me repeat it: We have entirely too many children that are not 
only poor but hungry in America. We put into effect 2 years ago a 20-
percent cut which will take effect 2002 in food stamp assistance, which 
by all accounts is the single most important safety net program to make 
sure that children don't go hungry. I will have an amendment to restore 
that funding before this session is out.
  Children don't do real well in school when they are hungry. They 
don't do real well in school when they haven't eaten breakfast. If we 
want to help those children, this is the kind of thing we ought to do 
to make sure that these low-income families have the resources so that 
they can at least put food on the table. I can't believe that in the 
United States of America today, as

[[Page S2162]]

rich a country as we are, we can't at least do that.

  Instead, we have something called Ed-Flex. For all of the families 
with all of the hungry children, for all of the children that are poor 
in America--a quarter of all children under the age of 3 are growing up 
poor in America; 50 percent of all children of color under the age of 3 
are growing up poor in America--Ed-Flex doesn't mean anything. Ed-Flex 
means absolutely nothing.
  The New York Times told the story of Anna Nunez and of hundreds of 
thousands of families like her. Up a narrow stairway, between a pawn 
shop and a Dominican restaurant, Anna Nunez and her three children live 
in a single, illegal room that suffocates their dreams of a future. It 
is a $350-a-month rectangle with no sink and no toilet, that throbs at 
night with the restaurant's music. Ms. Nunez' teenagers, Kenny and 
Wanda, split a bunk bed, while she squeezes into a single bed with 
little Katrina, a pudgy 4-year-old with tight braids. Out of the door 
and down the linoleum-lined hallway is the tiny bathroom they share 
with five strangers.
  Last winter, tuberculosis traveled from Kenny to his mother and 
younger sisters in a chain of infection as inevitable as their 
bickering. Inevitable, too, is the fear of fire: Life in 120 square 
feet means the gas stove must stand perilously close to their beds. 
Kenny, at age 18, is a restless young man in a female household. Ask 
him what bothers him most, and he flatly states that he has the only 
way to get some privacy--``I close my eyes.''
  At night, Anna said, when the mice crawl over us in bed, it feels 
even more crowded.
  What should we be doing on the floor of the U.S. Senate if we are 
really committed to children in America, and if we are committed to 
poor children in America? We would be making a dramatic investment in 
affordable housing, which is receiving crisis proportion. But these 
children and these families are not the ones who march on Washington 
every day.
  We want to talk about what will help children in school. If we want 
to talk about family values, we ought to talk about making sure that 
these children don't live in rat-infested slum housing, but have some 
decent shelter. But we don't. Instead, we have Ed-Flex. Ed-Flex will do 
absolutely nothing for these children.
  I have a close friend that many staffers know well and I think many 
Senators know well because of his brilliance and also because he is 
sort of a perfect example of someone who really lives such an honest 
life. He treats all of us, regardless of our political viewpoint, with 
such generosity--Bill Dauster. My friend, Bill Dauster, wrote something 
which I think applies to this debate:

       We need to restore the family values that put our children 
     first, for if we do not advance the interests of those who 
     will inherit the future of our society, then we have no 
     vision. And if we do not protect the most helpless of our 
     society, then we have no heart. And if we do not support the 
     most innocent of our society, then we have no soul.

  I think he is absolutely right.
  Mr. President, I will talk more about the concerns and circumstances 
in children's lives in a while, but I did want to give some context 
before returning to title I, and then I am going to develop my 
arguments about what we should be doing specifically in education.

  I will say one more time that I find it very interesting that we have 
a piece of legislation on the floor that purports to be some major step 
forward for poor children. As a matter of fact, most of the Ed-Flex 
waiver requests have dealt with title I, which deals with poor 
children. That is why I am talking about poor children. At the same 
time, this is the U.S. Congress that not only has no positive agenda to 
make sure that poor children aren't hungry and therefore able to learn, 
doesn't have any positive agenda to make sure that poor children live 
in decent housing and therefore can come to school ready to learn, but 
actually has cut nutrition programs for children, and now brings a 
piece of legislation out which, all in the name of flexibility, is 
supposed to do all of these great things for poor children.
  Now, let me return to title I. Let me explain my indignation. My 
indignation about this particular bill goes further than what I have 
said. Not only does it represent a retreat on the part of the U.S. 
Senate from a commitment to poor children in America, not only does it 
represent a retreat from any basic accountability so that the core 
requirements of title I--I will repeat it one more time--that have to 
do with highly qualified teachers and high standards and those 
standards being met--no longer apply if a State or local school 
district doesn't choose to comply, not only does this piece of 
legislation abandon what we did in 1994 with positive effect, that is 
to say some assurance that the money would first go to the neediest 
schools. In addition to adding insult to injury--I don't even know why 
this bill is on the floor--to add insult to injury, this piece of 
legislation does absolutely nothing by way of, not even one word, 
calling for more funding.
  I will tell you what people in Minnesota are telling me. I am 
assuming--but I am not so sure it has happened--I would like to believe 
that my colleagues who are in such a rush to pass this piece of 
legislation have spent a lot of time with principals and teachers and 
teacher assistants who are working with the title I program. I have to 
believe that. Well, if you have, I want to find out--when we get into 
debate, I would like for my colleagues to identify for me a specific 
statute in title I right now that is an impediment to reform. Tell me 
what exactly we are talking about.
  I will tell you what I hear from people in Minnesota. They are not 
worried about flexibility. What they are worried about is, they don't 
have enough money. What we hear from those men and women who are 
working with poor children in the title I program is, ``We don't have 
enough resources.'' That is what they are telling us. In that sense, 
this particular piece of legislation is a bit disingenuous. We talk 
about flexibility, that is the sort of slogan here, but we don't 
provide any additional resources.
  Examples: St. Paul. I talked about some of this yesterday, but I 
think it is well worth presenting this data. There are 20 schools 
altogether--there are 60 K-through-12 public schools in St. Paul, MN. 
There are 20 schools in St. Paul with at least a 50 percent free and 
reduced lunch--that is the way we define low-income--that receive no 
title I funds at all--one-third of the schools.
  Let's talk about urban schools. I would like to ask my colleagues, 
have you been in the urban schools? Did the principals and the teachers 
and the families in these urban schools--was the thing they were saying 
to you over and over again, ``We need to have Ed-Flexibility''? Or were 
they saying, ``We need more resources to work with these children''? 
What were they saying to you? I will tell you what they were saying to 
me: ``We don't have the resources.'' One-third of St. Paul's schools 
have significant poverty, a low-income student body, and receive no 
title I funds to eliminate the learning gap. At Humboldt Senior High 
School, on the west side of St. Paul, 68 percent of the students are 
low-income; no title I funding. I visited the school. I try to be in a 
school about every 2 weeks.

  For those listening to the debate--and I am taking this time because 
I want to slow this up. I want people in the country, and journalists, 
people who cover this or who write and cover it--so people in the 
country will know what is going on. I can be put in parentheses and 
keep me out of it, but I want the people to know what is going on. I 
don't think legislation like this that has the potential of doing such 
harm to low-income children should zoom through the U.S. Senate.
  As I say, at Humboldt Senior High 68 percent of the students are on 
free and reduced lunch; no title I. So the question is, How can that 
be? The answer is that in Minnesota, altogether, this year, we had $96 
million for title 1 programs. We can use double that amount of funding, 
triple that amount of funding. What happens is that after we allocate 
the money in St. Paul to the schools that have an even higher 
percentage of low-income students, there is no funding left. And we 
have Ed-Flex that is such a ``great response'' to the challenges facing 
these families and these children, which isn't even talking about 
providing more funding.
  My prediction is that, come appropriations, don't count on it. Don't 
count on it. It won't happen, though some of us will fight like heck to 
try to make it happen.

[[Page S2163]]

  Several middle schools receive no title I funding. Battle Creek 
Middle School has 77 percent low-income students and no title I funds.
  By the way, I argue that I have often believed--since I have some 
time here today, I can go a little slower--I have often believed that 
the elementary school teachers just do God's work. I think it starts 
there. I was a college teacher, but I know that elementary school 
teaching is more important; I am sure of it. If I had to do it over 
again, I think I would have been an elementary school teacher, if I 
could be creative enough. I was a wrestling coach, but I would have 
liked to teach elementary school. I did coach the junior high school 
wrestling team in Northfield. Those are difficult years. I think any 
kind of support we can give kids who are middle school or junior high 
school age, we ought to do so.
  What is the kind of support we can do with title I? It is a good 
program. That is why I am on the floor. This is a good thing we did in 
1965. This was a good thing we did in reauthorization in 1994. It means 
there are more teacher assistants, more one-on-one instruction, more 
community outreach, and more parental involvement. It is not easy 
because a lot of not such beautiful things are happening in the lives 
of many children in America today. I know that. I am in the 
communities. But this makes a difference. I will tell you, we could do 
a lot at Battle Creek Middle School if we had the funding. Frost Lake 
Elementary School has 66 percent low-income children and no title I 
funding.
  So can I ask this question: What exactly are these schools going to 
be flexible with? Are they going to be flexible with zero dollars? What 
are they going to get to be flexible about? Do they get to choose 
between zero and zero? Is that the flexibility? Let's get real. Let's 
get real. The U.S. Congress, a couple years ago--because it is so easy 
to bash the poor--cut the Food Stamp Program by 20 percent. We have 
done next to nothing by way of pre-K. That is where the Federal 
Government is a real player in education. I will talk about that in a 
moment. We have done next to nothing by way of getting resources to 
families so there could be decent child care. And we are not talking 
about increasing the funding for title I, but we are talking about 
flexibility.

  Some other schools: Eastern Heights Elementary, 64 percent low-
income, no title 1. Mississippi Magnet School, 67 percent low-income 
students and no title I. They get to be flexible between zero and zero. 
They get to choose how to spend no money. They get to imagine and 
dream. But do you want to know something? They need to do more than 
that. I am not going to let this piece of legislation go through this 
floor like this. I am sure some of my colleagues will be angry, but I 
am not going to let this zoom through the Senate without a lot of 
discussion. I want people to know exactly what it is.
  Now, it could be--I have to be careful because it could be that 
people say: Well, you know what, all right, case made; we know what it 
doesn't do; but, nevertheless, in terms of what it tries to do, let's 
have more flexibility. These are two different things. I don't, first 
of all, want this to go through as the ``big education initiative.'' It 
is not. It is not. I don't want this piece of legislation to go through 
as the sort of legislation that represents the ``bold response'' on the 
part of the United States of America to the concerns and circumstances 
of poor children. It is not. And I certainly don't want this piece of 
legislation to go through with the slogan of ``flexibility,'' unless we 
have real accountability.
  When we get to our amendments, I will have an amendment on 
accountability. I know Senator Kennedy will have an amendment on 
accountability. I know that Senator Reid will have an amendment on 
accountability. We will see if people are ``real'' about that.
  By the way, what I hear from the St. Paul School District is that if 
they had another $8 million in title I funding, they would use it to 
reduce class size. They would use it to increase parental involvement. 
They would use it to hire additional staff to work with students with 
greatest needs. There are a lot of ways they could use it. But we are 
not providing for the funding that they need. This is one of the things 
that I just hate about this vicious zero sum game, especially in 
greater Minnesota, which is rural. Here is what happens.
  Don't anyone believe I am giving only urban examples somehow about 
the problem of children that need additional support. The whole goal of 
getting it right for all the kids in our country is not just an urban 
issue. It is suburban, and it is rural. But see, here is what happens 
when we don't provide enough funding. I don't know why we don't call 
this an unfunded mandate. It may not technically be, but in many ways 
it is.
  We talk a lot about IDEA. We should. I say to the Chair, who is a 
former Governor, that the Governors make a good point. And I am in 
complete agreement that we ought to, when it comes to children with 
special needs, be providing for funding. I don't know why we don't talk 
about this, because you know what happens, I say to my colleague from 
Vermont. There is strong rural community as well in Vermont. What 
happens is that in those schools in the rural areas where maybe there 
is a 35 percent, low-income, or 30 or 20 percent, they say, ``Listen. 
We need some funding.'' But we get into this zero sum game with not 
enough funding. It gets divided up in such a way that it makes sense 
that the funding goes first to the neediest schools. And there isn't 
any. And there isn't any.
  Minneapolis--this is just looking at estimates for next year. K 
through 12 schools in Minneapolis: 31 schools will receive no title I 
funds; 14 schools with at least 50 percent free and reduced lunch 
recipients will receive no title I; 14 schools that have 50 percent 
low-income student population will receive no title I funding. 
Burroughs Elementary School, 43 percent low-income, no title I funding. 
The school would be eligible, if we had funding.
  For almost $100,000 in title I next year, they would use the money to 
buy computers for special reading software, additional assistance in 
reading and math, work for students in small groups, and to close the 
achievement gap. But they can't do it. We are going to give them Ed-
Flex. We are going to give them Ed-Flex. Anthony Elementary School, 43 
percent free and reduced lunch, again, the operational definition of 
low-income, receive no title I. The school would be eligible if we got 
funding we needed--$154,000 next year--and they would use the money for 
afterschool tutoring, that is what we should be doing, if we are 
``real.'' We will have an amendment on that before this debate is all 
over.
  They would use the money for afterschool tutoring to improve math and 
science, to improve technology, to increase staffing, and to improve 
parental involvement.
  Marcy Open Elementary School, 44 percent low-income, they are going 
to lose their educational assistance if they don't get the funding they 
need. Kenny Elementary School, 39 percent low-income, no title 1. If 
they were going to get the funding that they deserve, they would have 
about another $9,000 that they would be eligible for, and they would 
use that to hire tutors who are trained to tutor small group 
instruction, to buy certain computer-assistance instruction, to make 
the Read Naturally Program available to more students, and to focus on 
students who are English language learners. I think this whole issue of 
students who are English language learners is the key issue here.
  One of the things that is so unconscionable to me about all of this 
and the way we give title 1 the short end of the stick is that we have 
a lot of students right now who are from families--Minneapolis, MN--I 
think I am right. Don't hold me to these figures. But, roughly 
speaking, in Minneapolis students come from families where there are 90 
languages and dialects spoken. That is Minneapolis, MN. That is not New 
York City. In St. Paul, it is about 70 languages and dialects spoken. 
It is not uncommon. I remember being in a Jackson Elementary School 
meeting with fourth grade students, and there were five different 
languages spoken in that class of 25 or 30. For a lot of those 
students, they need additional help. We know why. That is a big 
challenge.
  Title I really helps if the funding is there. But we are not talking 
about--I haven't heard any Republican colleagues talking about 
dramatically increasing the funding for title I. I haven't heard the 
President talk about it. He has talked about $110 billion

[[Page S2164]]

more for the Pentagon over the next 6 years, and $12.5 billion next 
year. And the President of the United States, a Democrat, says 
education is his highest priority, and he doesn't even call for an 
additional $2 billion for education for the whole Nation. You would 
think that he would call for as big of an increase, I say to my 
colleague from Vermont, for the Education Department and education as 
he would for the Pentagon, if education was his No. 1 priority. I think 
that is part of the problem. I think the White House has absolutely 
caved on this issue. I cannot believe their silence. I cannot believe 
it.

  Mr. President, I would like to talk a little bit about some success 
of title I. I think I read a couple of these letters last night. But I 
think it is worth talking about again.
  Let me start with Annastacia Belladonna Maldonado from the 
Minneapolis Chicano-Latino Council who says:

       I am very concerned about the hurried fashion in which 
     Congress is handling S. 280. Given that ESEA is up for 
     reapproval, it seems reasonable, more appropriate, and 
     certainly a more dramatic way of addressing issues and 
     concerns that Ed-Flex has written. At the very least I would 
     expect a series of responsible considerations of all aspects 
     of S. 280 be addressed by the committee before proceeding to 
     an open debate.

  Well, it is too late. We are on the floor. Secretary Riley, who I 
personally think is probably the gentlest and kindest person in 
government--I can't fault him for his commitment to education. I can't 
fault him for his courage as Governor of South Carolina who called for 
an increase in taxes to fund public education. He came to our 
committee, I say to my colleague from Vermont, a couple of weeks ago, 
and he said we believe that since title I represents really a big part 
of what the Federal Government does here, we would prefer that when you 
go through your reauthorization of the Elementary Secondary Education 
Act, that you put off this Ed-Flex legislation, which has such huge 
consequences, until then. But we didn't. While I appreciated the words 
of Secretary Riley, I don't see a lot of fight on the part of the 
administration on this question.
  A constituent of mine, Vicki Turner, says:

       The title I program of the Minneapolis public schools 
     provided not only help for my two children, but the parental 
     involvement program was crucial in helping me develop as an 
     individual parent and now a teacher for the program.

  Gretchen Carlson Collins, title I director of Hopkins School 
District, a suburb of Minneapolis, says:

       There is no better program in education than title I, of 
     the ESEA. We know it works.

  She didn't say, ``Oh. We are just strangled with regulations. It 
doesn't work.'' In fact, I haven't heard that. I haven't had people in 
Minnesota say this is the statute that has been changed. As a matter of 
fact, I would say to my colleagues, if there is something right now in 
the title I statute that is an impediment to the kind of steps we need 
to take to improve educational opportunities for low-income children, 
please identify it, and then we will change it. But what you want to do 
is throw out all of the accountability.
  You want to basically have the Federal Government, which represents 
the Nation, a national community, you want us to remove ourselves from 
any kind of protection for these low-income children. You want to say 
that the very core requirements that have made title I so important and 
so positive in the lives of children, albeit we have enough funding, we 
no longer will require that States and the school districts live up to 
these requirements. That is what you want to do. That is not 
acceptable. I don't care if you call it ``Ed-Flexability.'' I don't 
care if you have all of the political arguments, 10-second sound bites 
down pat. Give the power back to the States, get the Federal Government 
out, get rid of all of the Washington rules and regulations.
  You can say that over and over and over again, and I will tell you, 
even though some of you won't like it, that I am all for flexibility. I 
was a community organizer. I am all for people at the local level 
making a lot of the decisions in terms of how they design programs and 
what they do. But I will tell you something else. There is a whole 
history of all too many States not making poor children and their 
families top priorities when it comes to commitment.
  I am not about to let this piece of legislation just fly through here 
without pointing out what we are doing, which is we are abandoning a 
35-year-old commitment on the part of the Federal Government that we 
will at least have some minimal standard that will guarantee some 
protection that poor children will get the assistance they need in the 
United States of America.
  That is what this legislation does. And this legislation could be 
different legislation if strong accountability measures were passed--
strong, not wishy-washy language. And we will see. We will see, because 
I am, again, all for the flexibility part, but I am not for abandoning 
this commitment to low-income children in the country.
  John and Helen Matson say:

       How could anyone question the need for a strong ESEA? Ed-
     Flex waivers are an invitation to undermine the quality of 
     public schools.

  That is an e-mail I received.
  High school senior Tammie Jeanelle Joby was in Title I in third 
grade. She says:

       Title I has helped make me the hard-working student that I 
     am. My future plan after high school is to attend St. 
     Scholastica--

  Which is a really wonderful college in Duluth, MN--

       I may specialize in special education or kindergarten.

  And I think that is great.
  Then here is something from Claudi Fuentes from the Minnesota Urban 
Coalition. He opposes Ed-Flex. And you know what he says instead: 
``Focus on all day, every day kindergarten.''
  People in the communities, they have the wisdom. I will come back to 
some of their wisdom a little while later, but it is pretty 
interesting. The whole idea of Ed-Flex is let's get it back to the 
local communities. You know what. Why don't we listen to people in the 
local communities?
  Did we spend any time, I would love to find out--I can't wait for the 
debate. Here is the question I am going to ask of the authors of the 
legislation: How much time did you spend with low-income parents? How 
many meetings did you have with the parents? How many meetings did you 
have with the children? How many meetings did you have in communities 
with those students and those families who are going to be most 
affected by this legislation? I will be very interested in hearing the 
answer. I will be very interested in what they say because, frankly, I 
don't even hear anybody talking about it. When I go into cafes in 
Minnesota, nobody comes up to me and says, Are you for or against Ed-
Flex? They don't even know what it is. They will tell me that I am a 
single parent or we are two parents and we have an income of $30,000 a 
year and we can't afford child care. Child care costs us as much as 
college tuition now. Can anything be done about that?
  They will say what about a tax credit? How about we pass today a 
refundable $2,000-a-year tax credit for child care, for families with 
incomes up to $50,000 a year? Why don't we do something real?
  That is what people talk about. Or they talk about--and I will talk 
about early childhood development in a moment--or they talk about 
working and their kids are home after school and they are very worried 
and what about afterschool care? Can something be done by way of 
providing some adults to look after our kids when school is over 
because we are both working?
  Or they will talk about how their daughter has a really--she has an 
abscessed tooth, and I don't have any dental care; we can't afford it, 
and she goes to school in pain. She can't learn when she is in pain.
  The language is very concrete. I don't hear community people--as long 
as we are saying the case for Ed-Flex is to decentralize, I don't hear 
community people saying it. Sometimes I think Washington, DC, is the 
only city I have ever lived in where when the Governors come to town 
everybody says, The grassroots is here; let's hear from the grassroots. 
I have never lived anywhere else where that happens. ``The Governors 
represent the grassroots of America.''
  Well, I would suggest to you, since most of what Ed-Flex is really 
about is waivers and title I, that grassroots goes down to a little bit 
lower level. It goes to the community level and starts with the 
children and the parents who

[[Page S2165]]

will be affected by what we do or by what we don't do.
  Mr. President, let me talk about what would make a difference as 
opposed to this piece of legislation, which represents at best a great 
leap sideways and at worst a great leap backwards. And let me talk 
about equity in education, which is just another way of talking about 
the kind of inequality that exists right now. Let me talk about 
learning gaps.
  And by the way, I don't have any evidence of this. A friend of mine, 
Colin Greer, who is head of the New World Foundation, told me--I think 
Senator Jeffords would be interested in this. I haven't seen the data. 
It would be interesting. I think this is what Colin said. He said that 
actually the United States of America measures up well against any 
other country in terms of our educational attainment, educational tests 
if you take title I students and put them in parenthesis for a moment. 
In other words, the learning gap is essentially, these are issues of 
race and gender and poverty in children. That is really what the 
learning gap is about. These are the kids who come to school behind and 
fall further behind.
  So let me talk about the learning gaps. They are prevalent at all 
education levels. In general, the poor and minorities do worse on just 
about any measurement of achievement, be it the Federal Government's 
national assessment of educational progress or real-world outcomes like 
high school and college graduation rates
  Boy, I hope I didn't read this the right way, but I think I read the 
other day that in California there are five times as many African 
American men ages 18 to 26 or 30 in prison than in college. I think I 
read that the other day, that in California there are five times as 
many African American men ages 18 to 30 in prison than in college.
  And, by the way, there is a higher correlation between high school 
dropout and winding up in prison than between cigarette smoking and 
lung cancer. So we should be doing everything we can to make sure that 
kids do well in school and don't drop out. And Senator Bingaman will 
have an amendment that speaks to that.
  The disparities that we see--if you think that where I am going is 
blaming the children, no, I am not. Now, let me be clear about this 
because we have a lot of this going on, too, and I would like to talk a 
little bit about the White House again.
  When I say that in any measure of achievement the poor and 
``minorities'' fall way behind, I am not now about to engage in blaming 
those children and blaming those families because a large part of these 
disparities are caused by unequal educational opportunities. These 
students have unequal access to key resources that strongly affect 
their achievement levels. Preparation to begin schools, teacher 
quality, class size, curriculum content, school infrastructural 
quality--and I will talk about all of that. Let me just jump ahead now.
  I am sorry to be speaking with some anger here today. I don't know, 
maybe the President got it from a poll--you know, be against social 
promotion. I am a Democrat. Say you are tough on social promotion 
because everybody says, boy, I tell you what, you are right; those 
students, they just shouldn't be promoted if they haven't reached an 
educational attainment. That is just terrible. Well, you know what it 
is. But here is what is so outrageous about this latest given.
  You have a White House that sends a budget over here--and I will be 
talking about it--that does precious little by way of making sure the 
children come to school ready to learn. We know that is the most 
critical time. It does absolutely nothing by way of really investing 
resources in afterschool care. We have this huge disparity that I am 
about to go into, where all too many kids go to schools where the 
toilets don't work, where the heating doesn't work, where there is no 
air conditioning, where the buildings are crumbling, when they are 
hungry, where there are not enough textbooks, where there aren't 
computers, where there aren't adequate lab facilities. They don't have 
the same opportunity to do well. So, now, all in the name of 
educational rigor--I was a teacher--now what we are going to do is 
flunk them again. It is outrageous.
  We don't do anything to make sure that they have the same chance to 
do well on these tests, but we will give them the tests and flunk them. 
That's great. These kids come to school way behind, we don't make the 
investment in the schools, they don't have the same opportunities to 
learn, and then we give them the tests, and then we say you don't go 
on. And then, come senior year, we give them another test, and if they 
don't pass it, then they don't graduate.
  We failed the students who have been failing. If you don't do 
anything to make sure that these children have the same chance to do 
well, then this is just blaming these children. This is cowardly. Why 
don't you blame the school systems? Why don't you blame the adults? Why 
don't you blame Senators? Why don't you blame mayors and 
representatives and school boards? No, you blame the children.
  By the way, a lot of our educational experts, if anybody wants to 
listen to them, say: Listen, you know what, we want to do additional 
one-on-one tutoring, we want to do summer school, we want to do 
everything we can to help these kids to do well. But if the only thing 
you are going to do is flunk them, what happens is they will drop out 
of school. Pretty soon you will have 17-year-olds who will be in, I 
don't know, 10th grade, 9th grade, they will be flunked 2 or 3 years, 
and they drop out or they cause trouble for other kids. Not many 
educational experts are very high on this idea, especially given the 
tin cup education budget that the President gives to us, with my 
Republican colleagues probably not even wanting to support that. But we 
blame the children.
  Let's talk about what we should be putting the focus on.

       It is not unusual for economically disadvantaged students 
     in these poor districts to enter school without any preschool 
     experience, to be retained in the early grades without any 
     special help in reading, to attend classes with 30 or more 
     students, to lack counseling and needed social services, to 
     be taught by teachers who are inexperienced and uncertified, 
     and to be exposed to a curriculum in which important courses 
     are not taught and materials are inadequate and outdated.

  That is Bill Taylor, ``A Report On Shortchanged Children, the Impact 
of Fiscal Inequity on the Education of Students at Risk,'' U.S. 
Government Printing Office, 1991.
  May I repeat this quote? And then I would like to, later on in 
debate, ask my colleagues how you intend to rectify this through Ed-
Flex.
  There is probably not a more serious and important scholar on this 
question than Bill Taylor.

       It is not unusual for economically disadvantaged students 
     in these poor districts to enter school without any preschool 
     experience, to be retained in the early grades without any 
     special help in reading, to attend classes with 30 or more 
     students, to lack counseling and needed social services, to 
     be taught by teachers who are inexperienced and uncertified, 
     and to be exposed to a curriculum in which important courses 
     are not taught and materials are inadequate and outdated.

  What does Ed-Flex do? What does Ed-Flex do to address any of these 
disparities? Do you know what the answer is? Nothing. Zero. What is the 
U.S. Senate doing to address these disparities? Nothing.
  Mr. President, let me start off--and this is hard to do--by reading 
excerpts from a book by a man who has probably contributed more to 
raising the consciousness of people about children in this country than 
anyone else, Jonathan Kozol. The last thing he wrote was a book called 
``Amazing Grace, Poor Children and the Conscience of America.'' It is 
set in the Mott Haven community in the Bronx. I recommend this book. 
For all who are listening, I recommend this book, it is so powerful. It 
is called ``Amazing Grace, Poor Children and the Conscience of 
America.'' Here is what Jonathan Kozol said. Basically, what he is 
saying is: No country which truly loved children would ever let 
children grow up under these conditions. But we do.
  By the way, I had a chance to meet with these children. The heroine 
of this book is a woman named Mother Margaret, who is an Episcopalian 
priest. She has done incredible work with these kids. She came down to 
D.C., and Jonathan said, ``Would you host the children?'' I said, 
``Great. I read the book and I read about the kids.'' They came down 
here, and I think Jonathan

[[Page S2166]]

Kozol thought they would be impressed, meeting in the office, but the 
only thing they really talked about was the swimming pool in the hotel, 
and the other thing they talked about was beds. It was a very big deal 
to them to be able to sleep in a bed.

  Mr. President, this book is called ``Savage Inequalities.'' Let's 
just talk about what Ed-Flex does and what it does not do.
  A 14-year-old girl, with short black curly hair says this:

       Every year in February we are told to read the same old 
     speech of Martin Luther King. We read it every year. ``I have 
     a dream.'' It does begin to seem, what is the word--she 
     hesitates and then she finds the word--perfunctory.
       Perfunctory? I asked her what do you mean?
       We have a school in East St. Louis named for Dr. King, she 
     says. The school is full of sewer water and the doors are 
     locked with chains. Every student in that school is black. 
     It's like a terrible joke on history.

  It startled Jonathan Kozol to hear her words, but I am startled more 
to think how seldom any press reporter has noted the irony of naming 
segregated schools for Martin Luther King. Children reach the heart of 
these hypocrisies much quicker than the grownups and the experts do.
  A history teacher at Martin Luther King School has 110 students in 4 
classes but only 26 books. What is Ed-Flex going to do for this teacher 
of these students?

       Each year, [Kozol observes of East St. Louis High School] 
     there is one more toilet that doesn't flush, one more 
     drinking fountain that doesn't work, one more classroom 
     without texts. Certain classrooms are so cold in the winter 
     that the students have to wear their coats to class while 
     children in other classrooms swelter in a suffocating heat 
     that cannot be turned down.

  You know, we have all these harsh critics of our public schools. Some 
of them are my colleagues in the U.S. Senate. They couldn't last 1 hour 
in the classrooms they condemn. They couldn't last 1 hour in these 
schools.
  I am going on to quote the teachers:

       These kinds of critics willfully ignore the health 
     conditions and the psychological disarray of children growing 
     up in burnt out housing, playing on contaminated land, and 
     walking past acres of smoldering garbage on their way to 
     school.

  Mr. President, let me go on to read from this book:

       In order to find Public School 261 in District 10, a 
     visitor is told to look for a mortician's office. The funeral 
     home which faces Jerome Avenue in the North Bronx is easy to 
     identify by its green awning. The school is next door in a 
     former roller skating rink. No sign identifies the building 
     as a school. A metal awning frame without an awning supports 
     a flagpole, but there is no flag. In the street in front of 
     the school, there's an elevated public transit line. Heavy 
     traffic fills the street. The existence of the school is 
     virtually concealed within this crowded city block. Beyond 
     the inner doors, a guard is seated. The lobby is long--

  And there is a sign, by the way, on the outside of the school: ``All 
students are capable of learning.''

       Beyond the inner doors, a guard is seated. The lobby is 
     long and narrow. The ceiling is low. There are no windows. 
     All the teachers that I see at first are middle-aged white 
     women. The principal, also a white woman, tells me that the 
     school's capacity is 900, but there are 1,300 children here. 
     The size of classes for fifth and sixth grade children in New 
     York, she says, is capped at 32, but she says the class size 
     in the school goes up to 24. I see classes as large as 37. 
     Classes for younger children, she goes on, are capped at 25, 
     but a school can go above this limit if it puts an extra 
     adult in the room. Lack of space, she says, prevents the 
     school from operating a prekindergarten program. ``Lunchtime 
     is a challenge for us,'' she explains. ``Limited space 
     obliges us to do it in three shifts, 450 children at a 
     time.'' Textbooks are scarce.

  And it goes on:

       The library is tiny, windowless. There are only 700 books. 
     There are no reference books.

  And it goes on and on and on. These are the conditions of the 
schools.
  Let me just read the conclusion. I could go on for an hour from this 
book. Here is the conclusion where he concludes his book:

       All our children ought to be allowed a stake in the 
     enormous richness of America. Whether they were born to poor 
     white Appalachians or to wealthy Texans, to poor black people 
     in the Bronx or to rich people in Manhattan or Winnetka, they 
     are all quite wonderful and innocent when they are small. We 
     soil them needlessly.

  Mr. President, I have tried to develop my case. We are not talking 
about providing more funding for title I. We talk about abandoning 
basic core requirements of title I--we are talking about abandoning the 
Federal Government, holding States and school districts accountable and 
making sure that the money gets to the neediest schools. We are talking 
about abandoning the very essence of accountability, that these 
standards are lived up to to make sure that there are good teachers, to 
make sure that the kids are held to high standards, to make sure there 
is testing.
  And we know the results. We have not done a darn thing to make sure 
we make a commitment to pre-K so kids come to kindergarten ready to 
learn. We do not do much by way of afterschool care. We do not have the 
money, we say. We are a rich country. The economy is booming, but we do 
not have the money to do any of that?
  In addition, the reality is that some schoolkids go to schools, 
because of the property tax, wealth of the school districts, that can 
give them the best of the best of the best--the best of computers, the 
best of technology, the best of labs, the best school buildings, the 
best teachers, the best band and music and theater and athletics, the 
best of everything. Other kids in America, who come from different 
school districts, or come from communities where there is not the 
commitment to them or they do not have the resources to make the 
commitment, go to schools that are burnt out--I mean, how would any of 
my colleagues do, as U.S. Senators, if you walked into this Chamber --
this is a beautiful Chamber, thank God--how would you do if you walked 
into this Chamber and it was the summer in DC and there was no air-
conditioning or it was winter and there was no heat or we did not have 
staff to help us, we did not have pages to help us, we weren't able to 
have the materials we needed, we were hungry, and maybe 20 percent of 
us had a gun, which is not unusual in a lot of schools in our cities? 
Would you learn? Would you do well?
  What kind of message do you think we communicate to children in 
America when they go to school buildings that are decrepit, where the 
roofs are leaking, where the toilets do not work, where the buildings 
are just grim? What kind of atmosphere is that for children? What kind 
of encouragement do you think we give these children to learn?
  You think these children are fools? You think these children think 
that the Ed-Flex program is going to do anything for them? They are a 
lot smarter than you think they are. They know it is not going to do 
anything for them, because we are not doing anything for them. As a 
matter of fact, we are going to pass a piece of legislation, unless 
there is some strict accountability measures in this bill, amendments 
that are passed, that is going to do harm to them. That is what we are 
doing. And I cannot believe that this bill just came to the floor of 
the Senate and there has been so little opposition.
  Mr. President, let me talk about some of the inequalities that exist. 
First of all, the inequality in participation in early childhood 
programs, like nursery school and prekindergarten: Three-year-olds from 
better-off families are more than twice as likely than those from less-
well-off families to be in these programs, like the nursery school 
programs and prekindergarten programs.
  Among 4-year-olds, there remains substantial disparities. Barely half 
of the children with families of incomes of $35,000 or less have 
participated in early childhood learning programs compared to three-
fourths of the children from families with incomes over $50,000. So if 
we wanted to do something about this, Mr. President, what we would do 
is we would make sure that we would invest the resources in early 
childhood development.
  I am going to talk about some really shocking statistics in a moment. 
But let me just say it again--whether it be Arkansas or whether it be 
Minnesota or whether it be Vermont, the Federal Government--what the 
education community tells me in Minnesota is you all are real players 
when it comes to making sure that children can come to kindergarten 
ready to learn. You could make a real commitment of resources.
  We have in the President's budget--you know, we have a White House 
conference on the development of the brain. The evidence is 
irrefutable, it is irreducible. I am going to talk about it at some 
length a little later on in my

[[Page S2167]]

presentation. But we know that if you do not get it right for these 
kids by age 3, they may never do well in school and may never do well 
in life.

  What is really interesting about the literature that has come out is 
that--we have always known--we have always known that if a 7-year-old 
comes to school and she has not received dental care, she is not going 
to do well. We have always known that if children do not have an 
adequate diet, they are not going to do well. We have always known if 
women expecting children do not have a good diet, that at birth that 
child may have severe disabilities and may not be able to do well. But 
what we did not know--although I think all of us who are parents and 
grandparents; I am a grandparent as well--what we did not know is that 
actually literally the way the brain is wired, and whether or not a 
child will do well in school, whether or not a child will behave well 
is highly correlated to whether or not--is my mike working or not? Is 
the mike working?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. HUTCHINSON). Senator, I do not know 
whether your mike is working. You can be heard very well.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, my good friend from Arkansas, what is 
really astounding about this literature is that literally the key part 
of it is whether or not there is real intellectual stimulation for 
these children. It isn't a question of whether they have had a proper 
diet or have been immunized; that has a huge impact on whether they can 
come to school and do well.
  Anyone who is a parent or grandparent knows this. I like to tell the 
story, because it is absolutely true. Our children are older and I had 
forgotten what it was like. But now we have three grandchildren: 3-
year-old Josh; 4-year-old Keith; Kari is 7, she is older. They visit us 
and every 15 seconds these children are interested in something new. 
When they are 2 and 1, it is the same way. It is a miracle. It makes me 
very religious. It is as if these small children are experiencing all 
the unnamed magic of the world that is before them.
  We know that if we would make an investment in these children, we 
make sure that there is good child care, and we make sure when they 
come to kindergarten they are ready to learn. I will say it again: Our 
national goal ought to be that every child in the United States of 
America, when he or she comes to kindergarten, they know how to read, 
they know how to spell their name, they know the alphabet; if they do 
not know how to read, they have been read to widely. Can't we make that 
a national goal? These are all God's children. But the fact of the 
matter is, we don't. There is a huge disparity. The fact of the matter 
is that many children, by the time they come to kindergarten, are way 
behind, and then they fall further behind. And then they wind up in 
prison.
  This Ed-Flex bill does absolutely nothing to make a difference for 
these children.
  Point 2: Reading levels are not where they need to be. In early 
February of this year, the National Center for Education Statistics 
released the 1998 reading report card for the Nation. These results are 
based on the national assessment of education progress data collected 
in 1998. These results tell us how our children are doing, what their 
reading levels are, and whether they need improvement.
  There are two sets of findings I want to emphasize. First, as a 
country, too few of our children have the reading skills necessary to 
succeed. At all grade levels, 40 percent or fewer of the Nation's 
students read at a level that is proficient for their grade. This 
figure is unacceptably low. What can we do?
  Second, and even more disturbing, are the tremendous disparity levels 
in reading levels by family income, race, and ethnicity. For example, 
children who are eligible for the free and reduced lunch program, title 
I or title I-eligible children, are more than twice as likely to be 
below the basic reading level than those who are not eligible for the 
program. In addition, fourth- and eighth-grader white students are 
three times as likely as black students or Hispanic children to be 
proficient readers.
  Part of what these figures are telling us--in fact, they are 
screaming at us--is that we have a long way to go. This is a crisis.
  Now, may I ask the question: Does Ed-Flex do anything to help these 
students? Are there additional resources that we are calling on? Are we 
doing anything to make sure that kids come to school ready to learn? 
Are we doing anything to improve their nutritional status? We cut 
nutrition programs for these children. Are we doing anything to make 
sure each and every one of those children is healthy? Are we doing 
anything about the housing conditions? Are we doing what we should do 
to reduce some of the violence in the communities, some of the violence 
in the homes? Are we doing anything to provide some additional support 
services for these kids?

  A woman is beaten up every 15 seconds in her home. Every 15 seconds 
in the United States of America, a woman is battered in her home. A 
home should be a safe place. Those children, even if they are not 
battered themselves--although many are--see it. They essentially suffer 
from posttraumatic stress syndrome.
  My colleague from Arkansas works with veterans. I have done a lot of 
work with Vietnam vets. I see it all the time, PTSS. We have children 
who suffer from that. Do we have anything in Ed-Flex that talks about 
additional services to these children? No. The only thing we do in the 
Ed-Flex bill is essentially wipe out any kind of accountability 
standard that would make sure the money goes to the neediest schools 
first, and we wipe out the accountability standards that make sure 
title I children have good teachers, are held to high standards, that 
we have testing and results, and we know how we are doing. And this 
legislation purports to be a step forward for poor children in America?
  There have been a number of lawsuits filed. It is too bad, but that 
is the way we have to go to affect these conditions. Since Ed-Flex 
doesn't have anything to do with the reality I am describing, I think 
the lawsuits are necessary. Let me cite a lawsuit that came out of 
Hartford, CT, in the early 1990s. The Hartford School District had a 
substantially higher percentage of minority students than the 
surrounding suburbs. The Hartford school enrollment was more than 92 
percent minority, whereas contiguous suburbs such as Avon, East Granby, 
and Wethersfield were less than 5 percent minority. Although 
Connecticut had the highest per capita in the United States, Hartford 
was the fourth-poorest of the United States cities, with the second 
highest rate of poverty among children.
  At the same time, not surprisingly, the Hartford school system had 
substantially inferior educational resources than other school systems. 
Hartford students were shortchanged in a broad range of educational 
inputs. For example, school systems across the State spent an average 
of $147.68 per student per year on textbooks and instructional 
supplies; in Hartford, it was $77 dollars, only 52 percent of the 
statewide average.
  Or consider East St. Louis, IL, in 1997. Here are some of the 
problems that the students in the East St. Louis school system faced: 
Backed up sewers, flooding school kitchens; faulty boilers and 
electrical systems, regularly resulting in student evacuations and 
cancelled classes; dangerous structural flaws, including exposed 
asbestos; malfunction of fire alarms; and emergency exits that were 
chained shut; instructor shortages that usually meant students did not 
know in advance whether or not they even had a teacher; and school 
libraries that were typically locked or destroyed by fire.
  How can we expect our children to achieve or be able to learn to 
develop and realize any, let alone all, of their potential as human 
beings when faced with such an outrageous environment as this? What 
does Ed-Flex do to change this environment? Nothing, zero. This is what 
we ought to be talking about on the floor of the U.S. Senate. That is 
why I am trying to slow this bill up.
  Here is a final description from Louisiana, although you can pick any 
State. In preparing for a lawsuit in Louisiana, the ACLU staff 
discovered a pitiful lack of the most basic resources. Besides having 
to deal with leaky roofs and broken desks, students often had to share 
textbooks among the entire class, negating any possibility of doing 
homework or building out-

[[Page S2168]]

of-class research skills. What few books existed in school libraries 
were typically torn, damaged, or outdated, a particularly riling 
problem for subjects like technology, science, and history. At one 
school, students posing for a class photo in the auditorium had to keep 
their coats on because of the lack of heat in the building. I repeat 
that: At one school, students posing for a class photo in the 
auditorium had to keep their coats on because of the lack of heat in 
the building.
  Here is the reaction of one of the staff attorneys. ``It was 
impossible to imagine that any serious education could go on in these 
decrepit schools. In some schools children had to go to the principal's 
office to get toilet papers. The overwhelming impression left on us 
[the lawyers] was sadness.''
  Mr. President, let me talk about Federal standing on elementary and 
secondary education. Now, I am going to try--some of this is off of the 
top of my head. These statistics will be close, but they might be off 
just a little bit. We have had reports, like Nation at Risk in the 
early 1980s, and we have had politicians of all stripes give speeches 
about children and education. We all want to have photo opportunities 
next to children. We have talked about it as a national security issue.
  Do you want to know something? The percentage of the Federal budget 
that goes to education is pathetic. It is pathetic. It amounts to about 
2.5 percent of total Federal budget outlays--2.5 percent.
  By the way, on title I, since this Ed-Flex is supposed to represent 
some great step forward, according to the Rand Corporation study, we 
would have to double our spending on title I to really even begin to 
make a difference for these children. I said this earlier and I will 
say it again. Here is what I am not quite sure of. Then I will tell you 
what I am absolutely sure of. What I am not quite sure of is, I think 
that during the sixties--this was where title I became part of the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act--we were at maybe 10 percent 
that we were devoting as a percentage of the Federal budget to 
education. That is what we say is a priority.
  When Richard Nixon was President, it was higher than it is with the 
Democratic President. And then it was Ford and Carter, and I think it 
stayed about the same level. With Reagan, it went way down. And then, 
with President Bush, it went up some. It never got back to the 
percentage it was during Nixon's Presidency. With President Clinton, it 
is about the same as it was with President Bush, maybe even a little 
less; I am not sure.
  Here we have a Democratic President who says that education is the 
No. 1 priority, and we are spending less as a percentage of our Federal 
budget on education than under President Nixon, a Republican. I am 
going to talk about Head Start in a while. Here we have a Democratic 
President and we don't fully fund the Head Start Program. I can forgive 
my Republican colleagues; I didn't expect a Republican President to 
fully fund Head Start. I just expected a Democratic President to fully 
fund Head Start. How naive of me.
  Mr. President, it is just unbelievable. I point out these 
disparities, and a lot of K through 12 is at the State level. But you 
would think that we would make a difference where we could make a 
difference. Yet, we don't, and we have all this discussion about 
education being the No. 1 priority.
  Frankly, the President has presented us with a ``tin cup budget.'' 
The President wants to increase the Pentagon budget next year by $12.5 
billion and by $110 billion over the next 6 years, and he calls for 
barely a $2 billion increase in the Department of Education budget. 
Pretty unbelievable. You would think that if education was a big 
priority, we would see the same increase in funding for education as we 
would see for the Pentagon. Not so.
  Mr. President, I now want to turn my attention to what we ought to be 
doing as opposed to what we are doing. Before I do that, however--and I 
will finish up on this--I want to point out one more time--and I will 
have an amendment that deals with this part of the bill that makes it 
crystal clear that this title I program is severely underfunded. And I 
will have a vote on it. I spend a lot of time in these schools with 
these principals, teachers, and these families. They all tell me--
before my colleague came here, I was saying that I went to the schools 
in St. Paul-Minneapolis with 65 to 70 percent poverty that don't 
receive any title I funding because by the time we allocate the money, 
there is no more money left. And we do very good things with this money 
for these children that need additional help. But we are not calling 
for any additional investment of money for our schools to work with. In 
addition, what we are not doing is, as a national community, we are no 
longer saying to the States and school districts there are certain 
core, if you will, values, that we want to see maintained.
  There is a mission to title I. We know why we passed title I in 1965, 
because we took a look around the Nation and it wasn't a pretty 
picture. In quite a few States, whether anybody wants to admit it or 
not, these poor children fell between the cracks. So we, as a Nation, 
will at least have a minimal standard that will say, with title I, 
there will be certain core requirements; there will be qualified 
teachers; there will be high standards; there will be some testing and 
some results and some evaluation, and this will apply to title I 
programs everywhere in our land, to make sure that some of these 
children have a real opportunity. And now, with this legislation, we 
are going to toss that overboard. I will have an amendment that says we 
can't.
  The second thing we said in 1994--and I don't know what my colleagues 
think, and I will have an amendment and we will have a debate and vote 
on it--was that in the allocation of the money, those schools with a 
higher percentage, 75 percent low-income students or more, should have 
first priority for funding. That makes sense to me. For some reason, my 
colleagues want to toss that overboard.

  By the way, I made a third point, which is that I understand--I know 
my colleague from Arkansas comes from a smaller town, a rural 
community, and that is a big part of Minnesota. I understand the zero 
sum game we are in, because the crazy part of it is that we don't get 
enough funding and, therefore, say--I could pick any community in 
Minnesota, but in any number of our greater Minnesota communities, 
people are saying, ``Paul, we have 20 percent or 30 percent low-income 
or 35 percent low-income''--in some rural areas it is much higher--
``and we don't get any funding.'' So it becomes a zero sum game. What 
do you do with a limited amount of money? I would like to see something 
real out here on the floor of the U.S. Senate when we talk about 
getting more resources to our States and school districts.
  Now, here is what we should be talking about on the floor of the U.S. 
Senate: early childhood development. This is the most pressing issue of 
all. If you talk to your teachers, they will tell you this. The best 
thing we can do as Senators is to get--by the way, it would be $20 
billion over the next 4 years minimally. If we really wanted to make a 
difference, it would be about $20 billion over the next 4 years. Well, 
listen, we are going to do $110 billion to the Pentagon over 6 years--
more subs, more nuclear warheads, more missiles.
  If we were serious about this, we would make the commitment to early 
childhood development. That is what all of our teachers are telling us, 
and that is what our experts are telling us. It is the best thing you 
can do. By the way, those of you for flexibility, I agree, don't run it 
from Washington, DC. Get the resources back to the local communities 
and, like NGOs and nonprofits and all sorts of folks who meet the 
standards, set up really good development child care centers and also 
family-based child care and give the tax credits, but make sure they 
are refundable and that the low-income aren't left out, or families. Do 
it. Get real. Do the best thing we can do. But that is not on the floor 
today. We have Ed-Flex. Ed-Flex means nothing to these families.
  Mr. President, I have already talked some about the kind of science 
literature--my colleague, I am trying to remember the name of the 
book--Dick and Ann Barnett. Dick is at the Institute of Policy Studies, 
and Ann is a pediatric neurologist. They have written a wonderful book. 
I can't remember the title. But there are many books that have come 
out.
  Let me talk about the disparity. Listen to this 1990 study. Looking 
at the

[[Page S2169]]

hours of one-on-one picture book reading kids have experienced by the 
time they started first grade, low-income children average 25 hours. By 
the time they come to first grade they have altogether, with picture 
book reading, been read to 25 hours. Middle-class children average 
between 1,000 and 1,700 hours. It is unbelievable.
  By the way, as a grandpa, I know that reading makes a difference. Now 
this gets tricky, because I can read my colleague's face here about the 
responsibility. Let's talk about this a little. I just said this. I now 
have to figure this out a little bit.
  First of all, let me make the case that we could do so much better. I 
am for combining the commitment to child care. That is what we should 
be talking about today, and investing some resources in this, and 
getting community level volunteerism. I am for doing whatever can be 
done in the families, and I want parents to take the responsibility. I 
wish more would. I think sometimes it is brutal. People work different 
shifts, and two or three jobs working their heads off. And they hardly 
have the time to have a common occasion with their children; even to 
sit down and eat dinner together. All too many of our families are 
under siege.

  It is not that people aren't working. It is that people are working 
entirely too many hours. But both have to work. But I wish that parents 
would read more to their children before they are in kindergarten. But 
I also think this is all about whether there is good child care. This 
is also true with volunteers. I would be, for all of us who no longer 
have children that are young, getting the books out of our homes, and 
older computers out of our homes, and do it through veterans halls, do 
it through union halls, do it through the religious community, and 
invite volunteers, get tutors and mentors. We could do a lot. But I 
will tell you something. It makes a real big difference in terms of 
whether these children are ready to learn. And they are needy.
  The needy--50 percent of the mothers of children under the age of 3 
now work in our country outside of the home; 50 percent. There are 12 
million children under the age of 3, and one in four lives in poverty. 
One out of two of color live in poverty--half of the children of color 
today in our country--and under the age of 3 are needy, the richest 
country in the world.
  Compared with most other industrialized countries, the United States 
has a higher infant mortality rate portion of low-birth weight babies 
and a smaller portion of babies immunized against childhood diseases.
  This critically affects education. This critically affects the 
educational payment of children. Full day care for one child ranges 
from $4,000 to $10,000. That is comparable, as I said earlier, to 
college tuition, room and board at our public universities.
  Half of the young families in our country with young children earn 
less than $35,000 a year. A family with both parents working full time 
at minimum wage earns only $21,400 a year.
  I want to tell you something. More than just about any other issue 
when I am in cafes in Minnesota, people talk to me--working families. 
They say, ``We can't afford this. We both work. We both have to work. I 
am 30. My wife is 28. We have two small children. Isn't there any way 
we can get some help for child care?''
  That is what is really critical, if we are going to be talking about 
education. Ed-Flex means nothing to these families.
  Drawing on some reports, I am sorry to report these statistics. Six 
out of seven child care centers provide only poor to mediocre care. One 
out of eight centers provides care that could jeopardize a child's 
safety in development. One out of three home-based care situations 
could be harmful to a child's development--the Children Defense Fund 
study.
  Although approximately 1,500 hours of training from an accredited 
school is required to qualify as a licensed hair cutter, masseur, or 
manicurist, 41 States do not require child care providers to have any 
training prior to serving children. The annual turnover rate among 
child care providers is about 40 percent. Do you want to know why? I 
love to take my grandchildren to the zoo. If you work at the zoo, you 
make twice the wage that women and men make with small children in this 
country.
  One of the worst things we have done in the United States of America 
is to have abandoned too many poor children. This legislation takes us 
in that direction. And we have devalued the work of adults that work 
with these children. Most child care workers earn about $12,000 a year, 
slightly above the minimum wage. And they receive no benefits. That is 
unbelievable--unbelievable.
  When I was teaching, I would have students come up to me, and they 
would say, ``Look. You know, do not be offended, but we want to go into 
education. But we don't want to teach at the college level. We think we 
could really make a difference if we work with 3 and 4-year-olds.'' 
Then the next thing they say is, ``But we don't know how we can afford 
it. We have a loan to pay off. How do you make a living?'' Why in the 
world do we pay such low wages? So the families can't afford the child 
care. The families can't afford the child care. And those adults that 
want to take care of children can't afford to provide the care.
  What we have on the floor of the U.S. Senate instead is Ed-Flex. We 
could make a huge difference, but we don't, and we will not.
  There was a woman, Fannie Lou Hammer--I have quoted her before--a 
civil rights activist. She was, Senator Hutchinson, I think, one of 14 
children, the daughter of a sharecropper. Her immortal words, where she 
was once speaking, were, ``I am so sick and tired of being sick and 
tired.''
  I am sick and tired of the way in which we are playing symbolic 
politics with children's lives. If we were serious about doing 
something on the floor of the U.S. Senate that would make a difference 
for children, we wouldn't have this Ed-Flex bill on the floor. We would 
be talking about the ways in which we are going to provide money, 
dollars, resources for local communities to provide the very best of 
elemental child care so that every child, by the time he or she is of 
kindergarten age, is ready to learn. That is the most important thing 
we could do. And we don't even make it a priority.

  Now, Senator DeWine and I passed an amendment that we are proud of; 
it is the law of the land, but we don't have the funding yet, which 
says that we will at least have loan forgiveness for those men and 
women who get their degree and go into early childhood development 
work. But that still doesn't do the job. We ought to pay decent wages. 
I don't understand this.
  Senator Hutchinson is, I guess, what Governor Bush would call a 
compassionate conservative. He is certainly passionate; he is certainly 
conservative. I don't understand this. We have two groups of citizens 
that are the most vulnerable that deserve the most support and the 
adults that work with them make the least amount of pay with the worst 
working conditions.
  Nursing homes, my mother and father both had Parkinson's disease, and 
we fought like heck to keep them at home, and we did. We kept them at 
home for a number of years. We kept them at home, between Sheila and I 
and our children spending the night, as long as we could until we could 
not any longer. And then toward the end of each of their lives, toward 
the end of their lives they were in a nursing home.
  Well, I don't think I could do that work. It is pretty important. You 
have people who built this country on their backs. They have worked 
hard. They are elderly. They are infirm. They need the help, and we pay 
the lowest wages. We have a lot of people in these nursing homes who 
don't even have health care coverage.
  Congratulations, Service Employees International Union, for your 
victory in California in LA organizing home health care workers. The 
other thing we ought to do is to try to enable people to stay at home 
as long as possible to live in dignity and provide help. But why do we 
pay people, why do we pay adults so little to do such important work?
  And then the other group of citizens that is the most vulnerable, the 
most in need of help that we should provide the most support to is 
small children. We devalue the work of adults. I don't get it. If you 
are some advertising executive--I don't want to pick on them, but if 
you are some advertising executive who figures out some clever way

[[Page S2170]]

to sell some absolutely useless product or you have got all sorts of 
ads that the Senator from Arkansas and I both would not like, just 
think it is trash, it should not be on TV, exploitive in all kinds of 
ways--and I think the Senator from Arkansas knows what I mean--such a 
person probably gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then 
you have child workers who are working with children, and they get next 
to peanuts. Boy, I think our priorities are distorted.
  Let me tell you, Ed-Flex doesn't do anything to deal with this 
problem of priorities.
  Mr. President, I am going to just mention two other areas. I have 
really covered Head Start already. I was going to read from some 
Minnesota stories, but I am going to move on, some huge success stories 
just to simply mention the well-known Perry study on the benefits of 
Head Start. It is pretty interesting. They did a sort of a control of 
two different groups.
  Head Start participants, they did a followup through age 27. This 
program was started in 1965. Criminal arrests: 7 percent Head Start, 25 
percent control group--those kids that weren't in Head Start, 
controlling for income and family background and all the rest. Higher 
earnings, 29 percent of Head Start kids, 2,000 plus per month, only 7 
percent control group; 71 percent Head Start kids graduated or received 
a GED, only 54 percent control group. And 59 percent received 
assistance, they did receive some assistance, still poor, but 80 
percent of the control group. And fewer out-of-wedlock births across 
the board.

  For kids who have really grown up under some really difficult 
conditions, the Head Start Program has helped them with a head start. 
And we have a budget that the President presents that will get us to 2 
million children, I think, covered, but that is about half.
  About 2 million children will be eligible. The President's budget 
gets us a million. Half. So our goal--talk about a downsized agenda, 
talk about politics of low expectations--is to provide funding for only 
half these children.
  Now, this isn't even early Head Start because really what we have to 
do well is before the age of 3. I noticed when Governor Whitman was 
testifying before, she was talking about her program in New Jersey, 
which sounds to me as if it is a very important program that deals, I 
think, with 4 and 5-year-olds or 3 and 4-year-olds, and I said to her, 
what about preage 3? I know she nodded her head in agreement.
  Why aren't we providing the resources? In all due respect, if we want 
to do something really positive, the most important thing we can do is 
invest in the health care and intellectual skills of our children. Ed-
Flex doesn't do that, and we are not going to do it.
  So I am not going to let my colleagues put this bill forward as if it 
is a great big, bold step forward for poor children in America. It is 
not. As a matter of fact, it will do damage to children unless we have 
the strengthened accountability language. And we will see whether or 
not we can get a vote for that.
  Might I ask a question, Mr. President? I wonder how much time do I 
have remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 1 hour 31 minutes remaining.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I have a few things I would like to lay 
out, but I want to ask my colleague from Vermont--he has had to sit 
here and listen to some of which I don't think he agrees and some of 
which he might agree. I wonder whether or not--I could take another 15 
minutes and then reserve the remainder of my time if my colleague wants 
to speak, or does he want to wait, or how would he like to proceed?
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I have no intention at this time to 
speak. I will obviously at a later time. I will do it when it is 
appropriate. But I desire to expedite our situation so that we can get 
to the bill as soon as possible.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleague.
  Mr. President, I say to my colleague from Vermont, on my time, if he 
chooses to assent or disagree or remind me where I am wrong, please 
feel free to do so. I extend the invitation. I was a teacher. I can 
easily fill up the next hour without any trouble.
  Mr. President, before I go to afterschool care, I would like to just 
one more time focus on why I think this Ed-Flex bill shouldn't even be 
in the Chamber. I have talked about what I think the flaws are with the 
legislation, but I also want to talk about what I think we should be 
talking about. I would like to just draw, if I could, on two 
experiences that I have had traveling the country that I think apply to 
this debate.
  One of them which I have talked about once or twice before--it is 
very positive. It is not a putdown of anybody--took place in the delta 
in Mississippi, in Tunica, MS. I had traveled there because I wanted to 
spend some time in low-income communities around the country--South, 
North, East, West, rural, urban. And when I visited Tunica several 
years ago now, there was a teacher, Mr. Robert Hall, who I will never 
forget. It was at a town meeting, and he stood up and said it is hard 
to give students hope, and he talked about how--I don't know--I think 
maybe about 50 percent of the students graduated.
  By the way, this young African American woman that I quoted I think 
in East St. Louis, who was talking about her school being segregated, 
actually in Tunica the case is that the public school is all black or 
African American, the private school is all white.
  Anyway, at the end of this he asked me whether I would come back to 
speak, would I come next year for the graduation? I said yes, and I 
said yes not realizing that I had made a prior commitment. What are you 
going to do, you know, when you make a commitment like that? So I 
called and I said could I come the day before graduation, to at least 
get a chance to meet with the seniors, because I wanted to live up to 
my commitment. And he said yes. So I flew from Minneapolis down to 
Memphis and then was met, I think by Mr. Erikson, who was driving me to 
Tunica. This is one of my favorite stories.
  I said, ``Are we going to the high school?''
  He said, ``No. You are going to be addressing the third and fourth 
graders.''
  And I said, ``I am going to be giving a policy address to the third 
and fourth graders?''
  And he said, ``Well, yes.''
  And I said, ``Is this the last day of school?''
  He said, ``Well, yes.''
  I said, ``So I am going to be giving a policy address to third and 
fourth graders on the last day of school?''
  He said, ``Well, yes.''
  I said, ``I'm in trouble.''
  So we go to the elementary school. There are, I don't know, a hundred 
kids, third and fourth graders, thereabouts, sitting in the chairs, 
waiting for me to give a policy address. And there is the PA system on 
the stage, which is high above where the students are, and the 
principal gives me a really nice introduction, and I am supposed to go 
up there and look down at these students and give them a policy 
address.
  So I was trying to figure out what to do. I asked the principal, 
``Can I get down in the auditorium where the kids are?''
  He said, ``Sure.''
  So I got down there, and this little girl, thank God, made my class 
for me. I said, ``Is this the last day of school?''
  Everybody said, ``Yes.''
  I said, ``Well, what have you liked about school?''
  And this one little girl raised her hand and she said, ``Well, what I 
like about school is, if I do good in school, I can do really good 
things in my life.'' Something like that.
  And I said, ``Well, what do you want to be?'' And I said to all the 
students, ``What do you want to be?''
  There were, Senator Hutchinson, 40 hands up. It was great. They had 
all sorts of dreams. I mean, quite a few of them wanted to be Michael 
Jordan--not a surprise. I heard everything: Teacher, writer, 
psychiatrist, Michael Jordan, on and on and on. But the thing of it is, 
there was that spark. It was beautiful. I know, as a former teacher, 
that you can take that spark of learning in a child, regardless of 
background, and if you ignite that spark of learning, that child can go 
on to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment. Or you can pour cold 
water on that spark of learning. We are not doing anything here in 
Washington, DC, to help ignite that spark of learning. We are not.

[[Page S2171]]

  Now, I feel a little uncomfortable saying that. Maybe I should say 
``precious little.'' We are doing precious little. I feel uncomfortable 
saying that, because Senator Jeffords is a Senator who is committed to 
education. I know that. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. 
But I am talking, I say to my colleague, Senator Jeffords, in a more 
general way. I don't understand our priorities. I just don't understand 
our priorities. I am just sick and tired--to sort of again talk about 
Fanny Lou Hammer--of bills that are brought out here, people get the 
impression there is some big step forward, and when it comes to the 
investment of resources--some of which you fight for, this investment 
of resources--we do not do it. I just tell you, it is tragic.
  For these kids and these schools all across the country, they are not 
saying: Give us Ed-Flex, give us Ed-Flex, give us Ed-Flex. They are 
saying: We want to have good teachers and smaller classes. We want to 
have good health care. We want to have an adequate diet. We want to go 
to schools that are inviting places. We want to have hope. We want to 
be able to afford college. That is what they are saying. They are not 
talking about Ed-Flex.
  The second point, and last one of my stories--true. I am going to 
shout this from the mountaintop. I get this time on the floor of the 
Senate because I insist this is what we should be talking about, and I 
will do everything I can, with amendments and bills, to bring this out 
here and force debates and votes and all the rest.
  I hear this in the law enforcement community. We should hold kids 
accountable when they commit brutal crimes. We should hold people 
accountable when they commit brutal crimes. But we will build a million 
new prisons on present course. That is the fastest growing industry in 
the country. And we will fill them all up and we will never stop this 
cycle of violence unless we invest in the health and skills and 
intellect and character of our children. And we are not doing that in 
the U.S. Senate or in the U.S. House of Representatives. Certainly not 
with Ed-Flex.

  Where do these kids wind up? They come to school way behind, they 
fall further behind, they don't have anywhere near the same 
opportunities to learn, and then they wind up in prison. I talked about 
this before. I think this will be the last time I will talk about it, 
except when we debate a bill which I introduced, the mental health 
juvenile justice bill. I visited a ``correction facility'' called 
Tallula Correction Facility in Tallula, MI. But I say to my colleagues 
from Arkansas, Louisiana, south--this could be anywhere in the country, 
anywhere in the country. And the Justice Department has had a pretty 
hard report about conditions in Georgia and Kentucky and some other 
States.
  I see there are some young people here today in the gallery. What did 
I find in Tallula? The Tallula facility is a corrections facility for 
kids ages 11 to 18. I went to Tallula because I had read in the Justice 
Department report that there were kids who were in solitary confinement 
up to 7 weeks at a time, 23 hours a day, and I wanted to know what they 
had done for this to happen to them.
  One young man, Travis, he is now 16, he went to Tallula when he was 
13 for stealing a bike. He wound up there for 18 months, and he was 
beaten up over and over again. Tallula has had some lawsuits filed 
against it.
  I went to the Tallula facility, and the first thing I noticed about 
the 550 kids was about 80 to 85 percent of them were African American. 
And then, when I met with some of the officials, I wanted to go to the 
solitary confinement cells and they wanted to take me to where the 
students were eating lunch--students--kids--young people. So we first 
started out to where they were eating lunch and then we were going to 
go to these cells.
  When I walked in, even with all these officials there, I asked some 
of these kids, ``How are you doing?''
  I will never forget, this one young man says to me, ``Not well.''
  I say, ``What do you mean?''
  By this time, there were 30 officials looking at this kid. He said, 
``This food, we never eat this food. It's because you are here.'' He 
said, ``These clothes? We never had clothes like this. They just gave 
us these shorts and T-shirts. We have been wearing the same smelly, 
dirty clothes day after day.''
  He said, ``The tables are painted--smell the paint. It has just been 
painted.''
  Then I went outside and this one young man made a break from the 
guards, jumped onto a roof, and ran across the roof. It was about 100 
degrees heat. And I said, ``Why are you doing this? You are going to 
get in a lot of trouble.'' I looked up at him, walked up to the roof.
  He said, ``I want to make a statement.''
  I said, ``What's your statement?''
  He said, ``This is a show, and when you leave here they are going to 
beat us up.''
  Well, the State of Louisiana has taken some action. This was 
privatized. There are lawsuits. There have been editorials about 
anarchy at Tallula. I will just tell you this. I will tell you this: 95 
percent of these kids at Tallula had not committed a violent crime. I 
met one kid who had stolen a bike. I met one kid who was in there for 
breaking and entering. I did meet one kid who cut a kid in a fight with 
a knife. I forget the fourth kid. Mr. President, 95 percent of 
nonviolent crimes--that is about the case in all of these juvenile 
detention facilities.
  I will tell you, Senator, I would be pleased to meet almost any of 
those kids at 10 o'clock at night before they got to Tallula. I would 
not want to meet any of them when they get out.
  So let's not kid ourselves. These State budgets and Federal budgets 
that go to prisons and jails are just going to continue to skyrocket, 
and that is where a lot of young people are going to end up unless, 
from the very beginning of their lives, we figure out--at a community 
level, not a Federal Government level--how we are going to make sure 
that we make the investment in these kids. And that is something we 
should be doing in the Senate. But this bill does not do that.
  Before I return to the final case I want to make on this specific 
bill, let me just read some figures. Mr. President, I would like to 
read a little bit about some facts on what is going on with kids after 
school. Twenty-two million school-aged children have working parents; 
that is, 62 percent of these children have parents who are working. 
Children spend only 20 percent of their waking hours in school. The gap 
between the parents' work schedule and the students' school schedules 
can amount to 20 to 25 hours per week. That is from the Ann E. Casey 
Foundation.
  Experts estimate that nearly 5 million school-aged children spend 
time without adult supervision during a typical week. An estimated 35 
percent of 12-year-olds care for themselves regularly during 
afterschool hours when their parents are working.
  What happens during out-of-school hours? Violent juvenile crime 
triples during the hours of 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. And 280 children are 
arrested for violent crimes every day. Children are most likely to be 
the victims of violent crime by a nonfamily member between 2 p.m. and 6 
p.m.
  Children without adult supervision are at a significantly greater 
risk of truancy from school, stress, receiving poor grades, risk-taking 
behavior, and substance abuse. Children who spend more hours on their 
own and begin self-care at younger ages are at increased risks. And I 
could footnote each and every one of these findings.
  Children spend more of their discretionary time watching television 
than any other activity. Television viewing accounted for 25 percent of 
children's discretionary time in 1997, or 14 hours per week on average.
  Facts about out-of-school programs: Almost 30 percent of public 
schools and 50 percent of private schools offered before- or 
afterschool care in 1993-1994. It is going up. But the General 
Accounting Office estimates that, for the year 2002, the current number 
of out-of-schooltime programs for school-aged children will meet as 
little as 25 percent of the demand in urban areas.
  Mr. President, I could actually go on and on, but here is the point I 
want to make. The point I want to make is that if we want to pass 
legislation that makes a positive difference in the lives of children 
and helps parents raise their children decently--you know, what 
families are saying to us is: ``Do what you can do to help us do our 
best

[[Page S2172]]

by our kids.'' They are not talking about Ed-Flex.
  What I am hearing from families in Minnesota--and I think it is the 
same for around the country--is: Look, we both have to work, or, I am a 
single parent, and I am working, and I am worried sick about where my 
child is after school. Can't you provide some funding?
  Why doesn't the Ed-Flex bill talk about flexibility for schools and 
communities to have more resources for afterschool care? There is 
something positive we can do. I assume that maybe Senator Boxer or one 
of my colleagues will have an amendment and we will have a vote on 
this. Now, there is an educational initiative that will make a huge 
difference.
  There is nothing more disheartening to a parent or parents than to 
know that both of you have to work but to also know that your second 
grader or your third grader or your 12-year-old or your 13-year-old is 
going home alone. Why don't we do something about that? We have all the 
evidence we need. We have all the evidence we need.
  We know that this is the time when kids get into the most trouble. We 
know that in more and more of our working families both parents are 
working. We know this is one of the biggest concerns parents have, 
right alongside affordable child care. What we all ought to be doing by 
way of ed-flexibility is providing the resources for communities and 
for schools to make a difference.
  By the way, Mr. President, I was mentioning television. For my 
colleagues who are worried about the violence that kids see on TV--and 
it is awful--you should just think about what they see in their homes. 
Every 15 seconds, a woman is battered. One of the things we ought to be 
doing, if we really want to do something that will make a difference 
for kids--and I have a piece of legislation I am introducing on this 
that I hope to get a lot of support on--is to provide some funding for 
partnerships between the schools and the other key actors in the 
community that will provide some help and assistance to kids who have 
seen this in their homes over and over and over again. That would make 
a big difference. That would make a big difference.

  I said this last night. I think I need to say it again. I do not 
think I am being melodramatic when I say that we have two problems. We 
have a huge learning gap. That is what it is all about. And it is 
highly correlated with income and race and poverty and gender. But we 
also have--and I do not know what the right label is for this, but we 
have a lot of kids who, by the time they come to kindergarten or first 
grade, have seen so much in their lives, that children should not have 
to see and experience, that they are not going to be able to learn at 
all, even with small class sizes, even with really good teachers, even 
with really good facilities--none of which Ed-Flex deals with--unless 
there is some help for them. They need additional help. And you know 
what? They deserve it. They deserve it.
  Mr. President, I am going to, I think, finish up where I started. 
Before I do that, I want to just read one other quote that is kind of 
interesting. This is from a woman Jonathan Kozol is talking to in his 
latest book he has written called ``Amazing Grace.'' And I say to my 
colleague, I am not sure I should quote this because of the current 
circumstances, but I think it should be read. This woman lives in the 
community, South Bronx, the Mott Haven community. And here is what she 
has to say. She is saying this to Jonathan Kozol, the author:

       Do you ever turn on C-SPAN? You can see these rather 
     shallow but smart people--

  This is just her perspective--

     most of them young and obviously privileged, going on and on 
     with perky overconfidence about the values and failings of 
     poor women, and you want to grab them in your hands and shake 
     them.
  It is like this young man I met at Center School, which is an 
alternative school in Minneapolis, in the Phillips neighborhood, about 
a month ago. This is kind of his last chance; he is a young African 
American man. I was having a discussion with 30 or 40 kids. There are a 
lot of Native American students there, as well. Actually, there are 
more Native American students. I was trying to be very honest with 
them. I said, I would like for you to answer one question for me. I am 
here because I really do care about you and I respect your judgment. A 
lot of these kids don't believe anybody values their opinions. They 
have very little self-confidence. I said to this one young African 
American man, a senior, ``A lot of people say that you don't really 
care. The problem isn't the poverty of your family, the problem isn't 
the violence in the neighborhoods, the problem isn't that you haven't 
had the funding or the opportunities. The problem is you don't care. 
And that if you really cared, you would be able to do this. How do you 
respond to that?'' He looked at me and he said, ``Tell them to walk in 
my shoes.''
  I think that is what this woman was saying about her observations 
about what she sees on C-SPAN.
  I conclude this way: I came to the floor of the U.S. Senate last 
night and I spent half an hour speaking. I have come to the floor of 
the U.S. Senate today and I have spent several hours speaking about the 
Ed-Flex bill. I have been strong and maybe harsh in my comments. I do 
not mean them to be personal at all. I have gone out of my way to say, 
because I think it is true--I wouldn't say it if I didn't think it was 
true.
  It happens that the Senator from Vermont is out here managing the 
bill, and I consider him to be a Senator who cares a great deal about 
education and children. I know what he has done right here in 
Washington, DC.
  What deeply troubles me about what is going on here in the U.S. 
Senate, which is why I have tried to the best of my ability--and I will 
have amendments, as well--to say, wait a minute, we have a piece of 
legislation, and I can see the spinning and I can see the hype. It has 
a great name: Ed-Flex. It has a great slogan: ``Get the bureaucrats 
out, let the States decide.'' But I can see this piece of legislation 
represented as a piece of legislation that is a major educational 
initiative for children in our country. I have tried to make it crystal 
clear that is quite to the contrary.
  I say to my colleague from Arkansas that I will be finished in a 
minute or two. If he chooses to debate, I will be glad to do that. Is 
he standing to speak?
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. You earlier said you might yield for a question.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. If I could finish this thought, I am pleased to yield 
for a question. In fact, that might be a welcome relief from hearing 
myself speak. I am pleased to take a question or whatever criticism 
that the Senator might want to throw my way.
  This piece of legislation isn't going to do anything that is going to 
make a significant difference in assuring educational opportunities for 
all of our children in our country. It won't. This particular piece of 
legislation is not going to meet the standard, which is the most 
important standard that I believe in more than anything else. I say to 
my colleague from Arkansas: I think every infant, every child, ought to 
have the same chance to reach his or her full potential.
  This legislation doesn't make any real difference. This legislation 
doesn't point us in the direction of making a commitment to early 
childhood development, to making a commitment to communities so that 
kids can come to school, ready to learn. This piece of legislation 
doesn't fully fund Head Start. This piece of legislation doesn't 
provide the funding for nutrition programs for children, many of whom 
are hungry. Quite to the contrary. We put into effect a 20-percent cut 
in the Food Stamp Program by the year 2002. This piece of legislation 
doesn't do anything that will change the concerns and circumstances of 
these children's lives before they go to school and when they go home. 
This piece of legislation doesn't do anything to effect smaller class 
size, to repair or rebuild our crumbling schools, to help us recruit 
over the next 10 years 2 million teachers, who we will need, as the 
best and the most creative teachers. This piece of legislation does 
absolutely nothing that will in a positive way affect the conditions 
that have the most to do with whether or not each and every child in 
our country will truly have the same opportunity to be all he or she 
can be.
  Moreover, to summarize, this piece of legislation turns the clock 
backwards. This piece of legislation takes the good

[[Page S2173]]

work of the 1994 reauthorization bill, which will assure that the 
allocation of funds first goes to those schools with a 75 percent low-
income population or more, and tosses it overboard. This piece of 
legislation in its present form--and to me this may be the biggest 
issue of all about this piece of legislation. I think other bills 
should be on the floor that make a difference, but if we are going to 
pass this piece of legislation, at least let's make sure we have 
flexibility with accountability. That means that the basic core 
requirements of title I on well-qualified teachers, high standards 
testing, measuring results and knowing how we are doing are fenced in. 
In no way, shape or form, with all the flexibility in the world, will 
any State or school district be exempt from meeting those requirements.
  I say to my colleague from Arkansas, I am pleased to yield for a 
question.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burns). The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. I did have a question for the Senator from Minnesota, 
but if the Senator is about to conclude, I know there will be plenty of 
debate and time to debate, so I don't want to further hold up 
proceeding on the bill. I thank the Senator for yielding.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I will yield the floor in just a moment. I appreciate 
my colleague's courtesy. The C-SPAN quote, just so it is in the Record, 
was from a Mrs. Elizabeth Washington of the Mott Haven community in the 
South Bronx.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I yield.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. The Senator from Oregon is desirous of speaking for 15 
minutes.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. How about if I reserve the remainder of my time? I 
will reserve the remainder of my time, and if the Senator from Oregon 
wants to speak, that would be fine with me. How much time do I have 
left?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 57 minutes.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Would the Senator mind yielding his time to the 
Senator?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Fifteen minutes of my time? I would be pleased to do 
that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized for 15 
minutes.
  Mr. WYDEN. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I am sure that many Americans who are watching this 
debate hear the words ``Ed-Flex'' and wonder what in the world is the 
U.S. Senate talking about? My guess is that we probably have some folks 
thinking that Ed-Flex is the new guy who has been hired to run the 
aerobics class at the local health club. But since my home State of 
Oregon was the first to receive an Ed-Flex waiver, I would like to take 
a few minutes to tell the U.S. Senate why Ed-Flex makes a real 
difference and especially why it has been a valuable tool to improve 
the lives of poor children.
  To begin with, Ed-Flex represents a new approach in Federal-State 
relations. Right now, there are two schools of thought on the 
relationship of Washington, DC, to the States. One side says everything 
ought to be run at the Federal level, because folks locally can't be 
trusted to meet the needs of low-income people. The other side says the 
local folks ought to be able to do it all, because everything the 
Federal Government touches turns to toxic waste.
  Ed-Flex represents a third-wave approach, and we have pioneered it in 
a variety of areas, including health, welfare and the environment, and 
now in education, in addition.
  We told the Federal Government in each of these areas that we will 
meet the core requirements of Federal law. The Federal Government ought 
to hold us accountable, but, at the same time, the Federal Government 
ought to give us the flexibility to make sure that we can really meet 
the needs of our citizens--in this case, the poor children--rather than 
building up bureaucracy.
  Ed-Flex has been good for students, but especially good for poor 
students. There are no examples of abuse, Mr. President--not one. We 
have asked the opponents of this legislation to give us even a 
scintilla of evidence of an abuse, and they cannot cite one example for 
a program that has been used in 12 States. But I will tell you there 
are plenty of examples where this program has worked for poor children.
  In Maryland, one low-income school used Ed-Flex to reduce class size. 
Class size dropped under this Ed-Flex program from 25 students to 12. 
And the last time I looked, a fair number of Members of the U.S. Senate 
wanted to see class size drop.
  In our home State, Ed-Flex helps low-income high school students take 
advanced computer courses at the community college. Before the waiver, 
Federal rules would only allow high school students to take computer 
courses offered at the high school. If a student wanted to take an 
advanced computer course, but the school didn't have the equipment or 
the people to teach advanced computing, those poor kids were out of 
luck. But we found a community college that was just a short distance 
away with an Ed-Flex waiver where we could take the dollars that would 
have been wasted because there were no facilities at the high school, 
and the poor kids learned at the community college. No muss, no fuss. 
But we did what the Federal Government ought to be trying to do, which 
is to help poor children.

  In Massachusetts, a school with many low-income kids who are doing 
poorly in math and reading received title I funds in 1997; but they 
were denied title I funds the next year because of a technicality. This 
meant that low-income children who were getting special help with title 
I funds in 1997 could not get those funds in 1998 for one reason, and 
that was bureaucratic red tape. But when they got an Ed-Flex waiver, 
they could use the dollars to serve low-income children and make sure 
that they could use that help until they had addressed the mission of 
the program.
  Ed-Flex doesn't serve fewer poor kids; it serves more of them, and it 
serves them better.
  In the State of Texas, the State has used Ed-Flex, and the 
achievement scores confirm that Ed-Flex has improved academic 
performance. After only 2 years under the waiver, statewide results on 
the Texas assessment of academic skills shows that schools using Ed-
Flex are outperforming the districts that aren't. These are poor school 
districts with low-income children, and reading and math scores are 
rising using Ed-Flex. At one high-poverty elementary school, student 
performance improved almost 23 percent over the 1996 math test scores; 
82 percent of them passed. The statewide average was only 64 percent. 
Poor kids did better. Poor kids did better under Ed-Flex.
  Now, this legislation protects the poor in other important ways. The 
civil rights laws, the labor laws, safety laws, all of the core Federal 
protections for the vulnerable, are not touched in any way. The 
Secretary of Education has complete authority to revoke a waiver if 
title I requirements are not met. Under current law, a State must have 
a plan to comply with title I. This legislation requires a plan as 
well.
  Let me outline a number of specific protections that pertain to the 
poor in this legislation. First, under current law, title I funds can 
only be used in school districts that are for the low-income. Our 
legislation keeps this requirement. You cannot get an Ed-Flex waiver 
and move it out of a low-income school district to somewhere else. You 
have to use those dollars in a low-income school district. They can't 
be moved elsewhere.
  Second, not only does the legislation keep the core requirements of 
title I, it strengthens them. For example, under current law, States 
are not required to evaluate whether they are meeting title I goals 
until 2001. Ed-Flex says to the States: Why should you wait for 2 years 
to show that you are serving the poor and disadvantaged? Develop high 
standards for serving the poor now, demonstrate that you meet the 
accountability requirements, and put more education dollars in the 
classroom to serve poor kids and their families now, rather than 
waiting until 2001.
  Now, opponents of Ed-Flex have not been able to offer any examples--
not even one--of how the flexibility waivers have been abused, and that 
is because the Secretary of Education has watch-dogged these Ed-Flex 
waivers; and we can cite examples of how it works, and they can't cite 
any examples of how it has been abused. That is why the Education and 
Labor Committee in the last Congress approved this legislation by a 17-
1 bipartisan vote.

[[Page S2174]]

  Senator Kennedy, the ranking member of the committee, said,

       Under Ed-Flex, the Secretary of Education allows 
     Massachusetts and other States to waive Federal regulations 
     and statutory requirements that impede State and local 
     efforts to improve learning and teaching. With that 
     flexibility comes stronger accountability to improve student 
     achievement.

  Since that time, since those eloquent words of Senator Kennedy, in a 
17-1 vote in the Labor Committee, after lengthy debate, the sponsors 
felt that it was important to work with those who have had reservations 
about this legislation, and we have made six additional changes in the 
legislation to strengthen a bill that had virtual unanimous bipartisan 
support. We have strengthened the requirements for public participation 
so that there is public notice. We put in place a requirement that 
States include specific, measurable goals, which include student 
performance, a requirement that the Secretary report to the Congress 
after 2 years on how Ed-Flex States are doing. The Secretary must 
include how the waiver is affecting student performance, what Federal 
and State laws are being waived, and how the waiver is affecting the 
overall State and local reform efforts.

  There is a requirement that the Secretary review State content and 
performance standards twice, once when deciding if the State is 
eligible to participate and again when deciding whether or not to grant 
approval for a waiver. This is to make sure that there is no 
compromising title I. The Secretary of Education reviews twice whether 
or not to go forward with an Ed-Flex waiver.
  We have always altered the legislation to ensure that local review 
cannot be waived under Ed-Flex; that is, any school or school district 
receiving title I funds is still subject to punishment and still has to 
answer to a local review board. Those provisions that protect the poor 
cannot be waived.
  Mr. President, it is no accident that every Governor, every 
Democratic Governor, believes this will be a valuable tool to them to 
make existing programs work better.
  I think the Senator from Minnesota has made an important point in 
talking about how additional dollars are needed for some of these key 
programs to serve the poor. But the best way to generate support for 
that approach is to show that you are using the dollars that you get 
today wisely. That is what Ed-Flex allows. It is a fresh, creative 
approach to Federal-State relations, one that has enormous potential 
for improving the delivery of services to the poor and all Americans.
  So I say to the Senate that we have a chance to take a new, creative 
path with respect to Federal and State relations where one side says 
all the answers reside in Washington, DC, and the other side says, no, 
they all reside at the local level. The third path that is being taken 
by Ed-Flex, that is being taken by my State in health, in welfare, in 
the environment, says to the Federal Government: At the local level, we 
will meet the requirements of Federal law, Federal education law. We 
will be held accountable. But in return for holding us accountable, 
give us the flexibility so that we can ensure that we come up with 
solutions that work for Coos Bay, OR, and The Dalles, OR, and you don't 
take a ``one-size-fits-all'' cookie-cutter approach and say that what 
is done in the Bronx is what is going to work in rural Oregon.
  Before I wrap up, I would like to pay a special tribute to our former 
colleague, Senator Hatfield. I served in the House when Senator 
Hatfield took the lead in 1994, working with Senator Kennedy and 
others, to promote this approach. In my view, his record alone, 
standing for years and years for civil rights laws, for health laws and 
safety laws, would suggest that there is a commitment by the sponsors 
of this legislation to ensure that this helps the poor, not hurts the 
poor.
  If there was one example, Mr. President, even one, of how an Ed-Flex 
waiver has harmed the poor, I know I would immediately move to address 
that and to ensure that our legislation didn't allow it. But we have no 
examples of how in any of those States the poor have been exploited or 
taken advantage of. We have plenty of examples of how Ed-Flex has 
worked in Texas where the scores have gone up, in Maryland where it has 
reduced class size, in Oregon where poor kids who couldn't get advanced 
computing under the status quo were able to use Ed-Flex dollars to get 
those skills that are so critical to a high-skill, high-wage job.
  So I urge the Senate today to vote for the motion to proceed, vote 
for the bill, empower the communities across this country to earn the 
right to use Federal education dollars to serve the vulnerable in our 
society most effectively. This is not the sole answer to what is needed 
to improve education, public education, in our country, but it is an 
important step, because it shows the people of the country that we can 
use existing Federal funds more effectively, that we can be more 
innovative in serving poor kids. It seems to me that step does a 
tremendous amount to lay the foundation to garner public support for 
areas where we need additional funds.
  We are going to need additional funds for a number of these key areas 
that the Senator from Minnesota is right to touch on. But let's show 
the taxpayer that we are using existing dollars effectively, as we have 
done in Oregon, as we have done in Texas, as we have done in 
Massachusetts, in line with objectives that, as far as I can tell, are 
widely supported on both sides of the aisle.
  I see the Senator from Tennessee has joined as well, and the Senator 
from Minnesota was kind enough to give me time from his allocation. I 
would just wrap up by thanking the Senator from Minnesota and also say 
that I very much appreciated working with the Senator from Tennessee on 
this legislation. I think it is clear that the country wants to see the 
U.S. Senate work in a bipartisan way on this legislation.
  This bill had exhaustive hearings in the Senate Budget Task Force on 
Education. It was debated at length in the Education and Labor 
Committee, where it won on a 17-to-1 vote in the last session of the 
Senate. Since that time, as I have outlined in my presentation, 
additional changes have been made to promote accountability.

  I urge my colleagues to support the legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will take about 5 or 10 minutes, and 
then I will yield back the rest of my time. I have had several hours. I 
say to my colleague from Tennessee that I will yield back my time 
because I have to give a talk with law enforcement people in Minnesota 
via video.
  There are some students from Minnesota who are here. Welcome. We are 
glad you are here, and teachers and parents.
  Let me just make three points.
  First of all, although we will have tougher debate later on, I say to 
my colleague from Oregon, we certainly didn't have any lengthy debate 
on Ed-Flex this Congress. We never had a hearing--not one hearing at 
all. When my colleague says they can't talk about any abuses, the fact 
of the matter is that both the Congressional Research Service and GAO--
I am not prejudging one way or other, but it is difficult to talk about 
what is going on--both have said we don't have the data in yet. We 
don't have the data in. What is the rush? I might have a different 
judgment about this on the basis--I don't know whether I will 
generalize 12 States to 50 States, but I certainly might be less 
skeptical if in fact we had the data and if we had the reports in. We 
don't. But we are rushing ahead.
  The second point I want to make is that my colleague talks about the 
``core'' requirements. Certainly it is true that, with IDEA, the core 
requirements are kept intact. But as a matter of fact, we will see that 
the truth will be very clear with this amendment. I will have an 
amendment on the floor, and it will simply say that the core 
requirements are that title I students be taught by highly qualified 
professional staff, that States set high standards for all children, 
that States provide funding to the lowest income schools first, that 
States hold schools accountable for making substantial annual progress 
toward getting all students, particularly low-income and limited-
English-proficient students, to meet high standards, and that the 
vocational programs provide broad education and work experiences rather 
than their own job training. I will have an amendment

[[Page S2175]]

that says those core requirements will be fenced off and no State or 
school district will be exempt.
  Can my colleagues tell me that that is the case right now? If so, 
then that amendment will pass with overwhelming support. Right now, 
that is not in the bill. Do you have language in the bill that 
guarantees that all those requirements will be met?
  Mr. WYDEN. Yes. I think your amendment is OK.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Do both my colleagues agree? Lord, we don't even have 
to have a debate on it.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I would be happy to respond.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, clearly, we would like to get to the bill, 
and we can actually talk about what is in the bill. The bill has not 
been, as you know, introduced in the managers' package. And I hope 
that, although the morning hour has been reduced, we can get to the 
bill and discuss what is in it or not.
  For a State to become a title I State, in both existing law as well 
as what we will have in our bill, you have to have the full complement 
of title I requirements, which will be spelled out.
  You can't be an Ed-Flex State both today and in the future law. So is 
it in the bill? Because you can't be eligible unless they are actually 
in. For the very specific things, if we could introduce it, there is a 
whole list of accountability clauses I would like to get to after we 
introduce the bill formally, if we could do that, talk about the core 
principles and the protections and the accountability.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my colleague, this amendment will say that 
States cannot waive the following core requirements. These have been 
the core requirements of title 1.
  Would my colleague agree that States will not be able to waive these 
core requirements?
  Mr. FRIST. I have not seen the core requirements. I didn't hear what 
the core requirements are specifically. But if you would allow us to 
proceed to the bill at some point, at the appropriate time--right now, 
as you know, we have given the Senator the last 3 hours so he can make 
these points. We are ready to go to the bill, introduce to America a 
great Ed-Flex bill, as soon as the Senator is finished.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Just to be clear, I get a different message from my 
two colleagues here. This is where the rubber meets the road. I spent a 
lot of time on what Ed-Flex doesn't do and what we should be doing. My 
point right now is that every single person I know who has worked on 
title I and knows what it is all about is absolutely committed and 
insistent that the core requirements be fenced in, remain intact, and 
no State can get a waiver, no school district can get a waiver. I am 
asking the Senator whether he agrees. If the Senator agrees, this 
certainly makes it a far better bill than it is right now.
  And my second question is, What about the 75 percent rule? That is a 
core requirement right now. We worked that in in 1994. Would both of my 
colleagues agree that schools with 75 percent low-income students or 
more should be first priority in funding and that we keep that in as a 
requirement, so that we don't lessen the financial aid to the neediest 
schools? Would you agree? Could I get support for that right now?
  Mr. FRIST. I would respond to my distinguished colleague from 
Minnesota, that if we could introduce the bill and discuss the bill 
before specific amendments--right now we have not had the opportunity 
because of these delaying tactics, which is what they are, so the 
Senator would have the opportunity to have 3 hours to lay everything 
out--if the Senator would just allow us to at least bring this bill to 
the floor at some time so we can discuss and formally debate and read 
the amendments--he is talking about an amendment which I have not seen. 
I haven't had the opportunity to see it. The Senator hasn't presented 
it. It is a little bit strange to be debating specific amendments and 
principles to amendments before the bill is introduced.
  So let me just make a plea to the Senator to allow this bill to be 
formally introduced, debated, amendment by amendment, if the Senator 
would like, and I think that is appropriate, but we can't do it unless 
the Senator allows consideration of this bill. Right now it is 
important for the American people to understand that we, because of 
what is going on right now and what we are hearing, cannot proceed 
until the Senator from Minnesota allows us to proceed with the 
underlying bill.
  So I will just ask, Is the Senator going to allow us to proceed to 
address the Ed-Flex bill?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, my colleague, first of all, well knows 
that we are going to be allowed to proceed, because I asked for several 
hours and I have about used up my time. So we are going to proceed.
  My colleague already knows that, so there is no reason to press, to 
make the case. With all due respect, we could have a discussion about 
these issues right now. We can have the discussion about them later on. 
I have spent a considerable amount of time pointing out right now that 
in the bill, as it reads, States can receive a waiver from these basic 
core requirements of title I. I want to make sure we have the strictest 
accountability measures to make sure that will not happen. I have 
pointed out that right now, as the bill currently stands, States can 
receive a waiver from the 75-percent requirement.
  Mr. WYDEN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I want to make sure that doesn't happen.
  I will be pleased to yield. In fact, I literally have to leave in a 
minute
  Mr. WYDEN. This will be only 30 seconds.
  On page 12, line 12 of the bill, it states, and I quote:

       The Secretary may not waive any statutory or regulatory 
     requirement of the program.

  Point blank. You cannot waive any of the core requirements. I thank 
the Senator for yielding.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I would say to my colleague from 
Oregon, that if we have the same interpretation--and we will see; I get 
a somewhat different reaction from my colleague from Tennessee--I will 
have an amendment with clear language that lists those core 
requirements and makes it crystal clear that they are fenced in and 
that no State or school district can receive any waiver on those 
requirements, in which case that will be some good accountability, in 
which case I would expect full support for it. My interpretation is a 
different one. If you are right that we already have the ironclad 
guarantees, then this amendment should pass with 100 votes.

  Mr. President, let me simply thank my colleagues. We don't agree, but 
I think it was important to have the opportunity to speak about this 
bill and give it, I think, a wide context and to speak to what I think 
are the flaws. We are going to have a spirited debate with any number 
of amendments, and I hope ultimately this ends up being a very positive 
piece of legislation that will make a positive difference in the lives 
of children. In its present shape and form, it does not do that. And we 
will have a major debate.
  I will yield back the remainder of my time, and I say to my 
colleagues, I will not be asking for the yeas and nays. We can just 
have a voice vote.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I would like to very briefly respond to a 
couple of points that have been made over the course of this morning.
  The distinguished Senator from Minnesota has made a number of points 
in outlining his view of what needs to be done with education in this 
country as we go forward. His time was delegated to him so that he 
would have that opportunity, although a lot of us are anxiously waiting 
to get to the bill itself, the Ed-Flex bill, which is the subject of 
our debate over the course of today, tonight and tomorrow, and probably 
the next several days.
  First of all, he has outlined many of the challenges that we do have 
in education today. The great thing about this whole debate is that 
whether it is his intentions or my intentions or the intentions of the 
Senator from Oregon,

[[Page S2176]]

it really is to address the fundamental issues of education, of really 
making sure that our children today, and in future generations, are 
best prepared. And they are not today. We all have come to that 
conclusion. Parents recognize that and principals understand that, and 
teachers and school boards and Governors, and all the various groups 
that we will hear about.
  That is the great thing, that as the No. 1 agenda item coming out of 
this Congress and the Senate, we are addressing education. Let me say 
that the approach is going to be different. There won't be a lot of 
heated debate. What needs to be protected, which programs to address, 
how to address them, how much control does the Federal Government have, 
how much control do the local communities have or do parents have or do 
Governors have, that will be the subject of much of the debate that we 
will hear.
  A second big issue is flexibility. People on both sides of the aisle 
are so well intentioned, and we all have our favorite education program 
and we think that that program might be the silver bullet, but we all 
know that there is no single silver bullet as we address this whole 
issue of educating our young people, preparing them for that next 
century.
  Let me say that right coming out of the box, before we even introduce 
this bill formally, which I think will be done early this afternoon: 
This bill is no silver bullet either. It does address the basic 
principles. It is not a series of programs that are well intended that 
may cost money, that may be very good in and of themselves, but it sets 
that principle that does allow more flexibility, more creativity, more 
innovation in accomplishing the goals that most of us agree to. This 
bill does not change the resources going in, nor does it change the 
goals, but it does reorder our thinking of how to get from those 
resources to those goals. And what it does, it drops the barriers with 
strong accountability.
  When we talk about flexibility and we talk about accountability, that 
is what this bill does. Not the resources, not yet; we are going to 
have that argument over the course of the year with what is called--we 
will all become very familiar with it--the ESEA, the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act. There is an ongoing discussion right now in 
Senator Jeffords' committee, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 
Committee. That is ongoing and hearings will be held and that is where 
we will be looking at all these multiple well-intended programs. We 
will be looking at all the resources going into education. Is it too 
little? Is it too much? Should we divert certain of those resources to 
certain programs?
  That is not what we are doing today or tomorrow in the Ed-Flex, the 
Frist-Wyden Ed-Flex. That is not what we are doing. We are looking at 
how to streamline the system, make more efficient use of those 
resources, trust our local schools and local teachers and local 
principals who can identify specific needs in order to improve 
education, and make sure those resources are used in the appropriate 
way to meet the goals that we all lay out. That is an important 
concept, because a lot of these amendments that are being proposed, 
principally on the other side of the aisle and maybe solely on the 
other side of the aisle, will be to make some good, strong points that 
this program is great. You will hear me and others say let's consider 
all of those issues, but we need to consider them in the context of 
what we are doing with education totally and that is not what this bill 
is all about. This is about the Education Flexibility Partnership Act, 
the Ed-Flex Act.
  I want to begin with that because it does set the overall environment 
in which this debate can most intelligently be carried out. Without 
that, we are going to drop into these whirls of rhetoric: Although this 
program will really turn things around--and we all should recognize 
right up front we cannot look just at rhetoric.
  I heard three points over the last 3 hours that my colleague from 
Minnesota mentioned. No. 1, we are rushing through this thing and we 
are trying to jam it through the U.S. Senate and thrust it upon the 
American people. You hear these words ``rushing it through, rushing it 
through.'' The second point he seemed to make this morning was that in 
some way Ed-Flex hurts poor children. And then he said there is no 
data, there is no evidence, there is no information; let's wait until 
we generate some information before we go forward. In some way it hurts 
poor children, that was almost the theme. So I think we need to respond 
to that and move on and look at the great things this bill does.
  The third point he made is that our bill does not address a lot of 
specific programs that he would like to address, and it is nutrition 
needs and it is Head Start and a lot of afterschool programs and a lot 
of programs which are very important to education and need to be 
discussed. We need to go back and evaluate. But that is not what Ed-
Flex is intended to do. That is not what the Ed-Flex bill is all about.
  What we have is a bill that was generated by myself and Senator 
Wyden, who just spoke on the floor, that is a bipartisan bill that 
represents strong support with all 50 Governors--every State Governor 
is supporting this piece of legislation. It is bipartisan, 
symbolically, because it is Ron Wyden and Bill Frist out there who have 
been working on this bill for the past year.
  We will talk, after the bill is introduced, about the broad support 
that it has. But we all know the President said last week: Let's pass 
Ed-Flex this week. The Department of Education has been very supportive 
of this bill throughout. Unfortunately, I think what we heard this 
morning may be a prelude to what we can expect, and that is going to be 
a series of programs which have billion-dollar price tags, million-
dollar price tags, that will be billed as the best program out there. 
And some of those programs are really going to appeal to our colleagues 
and to people listening to this debate. They will say: Yes, things like 
more teachers and construction and all would be good, and they are very 
concrete and real. Again, we are going to look at those later.

  Real quickly, as we go through, are we rushing this through? Let's 
make very clear that we are not rushing this through. We addressed this 
in the committee, the appropriate committee of Health, Education, 
Labor, and Pension, which is the former Labor Committee. Senator 
Jeffords will be managing this bill with me. He has been very 
thoughtful, and over the period of time through a number of different 
discussions, we have debated the bill, we marked this bill up--again, 
that is terminology inside this room--but that means we have discussed 
this bill, we have debated these amendments, many of them, both last 
year when it sailed through the committee we debated each of these 
issues and then again this year.
  It is important for the American people to understand that, yes, this 
particular bill passed last year 17 to 1; that one person, that 
colleague we have heard from this morning and I am sure we will hear 
from again and again. But recognize it passed 17 to 1. We ran out of 
time at the end of the last Congress. It came back through the 
committee and was marked up just several weeks ago and, again, was 
passed out and sent to the floor.
  The General Accounting Office study which has been cited, which will 
be referred to--again, I will have to turn to my colleague, Senator 
Wyden, and say thank you. He is the one who initially requested that, 
the initial request to GAO which came back with the report, and out of 
the report we have been able to see great benefits and also some of the 
areas in which we need to strengthen our legislation, which we have 
done so we can go ahead and move ahead with that flexibility and 
accountability.
  Then ``rushing this through,'' when you think about most of the 
education we address here, we have not had an experience of 5 years. 
Remember, this is a demonstration project today. There are 12 States 
that have Ed-Flex--passed in 1994 with six States; another six States 
added on to that. So we have a 5-year experience in 12 different States 
with this program already. So, yes, we know that it works. So, are we 
rushing it through? You can just move that argument right to the side.
  No. 2, it hurts poor children? This is remarkable because it was 
really the theme of this morning: In some way, Ed-Flex hurts poor 
children. Let me just look to some outside groups who have looked at 
this.
  If you refer back to the chart behind me, it is the report of the 
Citizens'

[[Page S2177]]

Commission on Civil Rights, a wonderful report that may be referred to 
several times in the course of the next several days, issued in the 
fall of this past year, and they hit right at the heart. Really, I 
think we can just move on, almost:

       In the Citizens' Commission's judgment, these waivers did 
     not seriously undermine the statute's intent to target aid to 
     poor children.

  Then, if we look for hard data, again we have heard all this rhetoric 
about, ``Oh, we have a potential for hurting poor children; we have the 
potential for this.'' Clearly, you can create hypotheticals in any 
piece of legislation, in any statute, any regulation, and politicians 
are pretty good at it. We can create hypotheticals and say if this were 
to happen it would destroy education and so forth. My approach is a 
little bit more the scientist.
  Before coming to the Senate, I spent time looking at data and that 
scientific, analytical mind may interfere with some things, but it does 
cause me to ask the question: What data do we have? What is the hard 
data and what is the evidence? And let me just look at some of the 
areas that were mentioned.
  Texas, which has a very successful Ed-Flex program, has accumulated 
some representative data which looks at three different areas. It is 
going to be hard to read, but at the top it looks at African American 
students; beneath that it looks at Hispanic students; and beneath that 
it looks at economically disadvantaged students.
  The far left column shows 1996, the next column over shows 1997. The 
column I want to concentrate on is, ``Actual change.'' Remember, this 
is hard data, looking at a State that compared Ed-Flex to non-Ed-Flex.
  If you look at that middle column--let me just drop right down to the 
bottom where it says ``Economically Disadvantaged Students.''
  In 1996--this is for mathematics. This is a statewide comparison of 
selected campuses in title I, part A. Title I is the disadvantaged 
students element which we heard so much about this morning. We see in 
those States, like Westlawn Elementary, La Marque ISD, with the title I 
schoolwide waiver, in that column we see an improvement of 16.8 
percent. These are just with the disadvantaged students. The statewide 
average was an improvement of 8 percent.
  Thus, for those disadvantaged students, if you compare the Ed-Flex 
program, we see that students improved twice as much in the very 
population that we hear this rhetorical concern about. Again, this is 
hard data, representative data.
  We look at African American students compared to the statewide 
average. In the Ed-Flex, African American students at Westlawn 
Elementary, we see they improved by 22 percent; statewide average, 9 
percent--again, more than a doubling of improvement in the Ed-Flex 
schoolwide waiver program.
  Halfway down you see Hispanic students. Again, if you take the entity 
of Westlawn, you see an improvement of 16 percent versus 7.9 percent--
again, that Ed-Flex school doing twice as well under a schoolwide 
waiver as they would otherwise do. And this is representative data. 
Again, once we get to the bill, you will see.
  So we see that the Commission on Civil Rights--we see hard data. 
There are other examples from Massachusetts we will hear about.
  And then I guess really the fundamental thing I will come back to 
later is, our bill can't hurt poor children, because the dollars have 
to be used. Going back to my earlier comments, we do not change the 
dollars and we did not change the ultimate goals in the targeted 
population. Our bill does not do that. So by law, if you are targeted 
for this population, the money and the programs have to go there. How 
you get there is where the flexibility comes in.
  One last point I referred to, which was his last point, was that we 
are not addressing nutrition and other well-meaning programs, again, 
that we will hear paraded out. Let me just say that is not the intent 
of this bill. We can discuss them. We can introduce them. Those sorts 
of issues will be discussed in the chairman's committee appropriately, 
where they can be debated, where we can consider all of the resources, 
all of the programs, recognizing there is not one single silver bullet 
to cure education, the challenges of education. The Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act is the appropriate forum that this body has to 
consider these issues.
  With that, I thank you for this opportunity to speak and thank the 
chairman for yielding time.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I understand the Senator from Oregon 
desires some time.
  Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Senator from Vermont. I could wrap up very 
briefly, even in, say, 5 minutes.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield to the Senator 5 minutes.
  Mr. WYDEN. I thank the chairman.
  Senator Frist has said it very well. Mr. President, and colleagues, 
all we want to do under Ed-Flex is to make sure that these dollars get 
into the classroom to help poor kids and not get chewed up by 
bureaucratic redtape.
  Ed-Flex is not a block grant program. It is not a voucher kind of 
scheme. The people who are advocating Ed-Flex in my home State of 
Oregon do not want a Federal education program to go away. Quite the 
contrary, they want those programs. They know that we need those 
dollars to serve low-income students. What we want is, we want some 
freedom from some of the Federal water torture and bureaucratic redtape 
that so often keeps us from using those dollars to better serve the 
poor.
  I would just hope, Mr. President, and colleagues, that during the 
course of the afternoon colleagues look at the requirements that 
protect the poor families and the poor children that cannot be waived 
under the Ed-Flex statute. Specifically, it is not possible to get a 
waiver if you are trying to waive the underlying programs of each of 
the critical services that is made possible under title I. You cannot 
do it. And as I stated earlier, you can only use those dollars in a 
low-income school district; you cannot move those dollars out of a low-
income school district and take them somewhere else.
  So there is a reason for the Governors and all of the Democratic 
Governors supporting this legislation. I happen to have some sympathy 
for the Senator from Minnesota about the need for additional dollars 
for a variety of human services. But the best way to win support for 
that additional funding is to show that you are using existing dollars 
well and effectively. That is what Ed-Flex does.
  I am very pleased to have had a chance to team up with Senator Frist 
of Tennessee who has worked very hard to bring both parties together. 
And I thank the Senator from Vermont for the time.
  I yield the floor, Mr. President.
  Mr. JEFFORDS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield back all our remaining committee time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion to proceed.
  The motion was agreed to.

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