[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 34 (Thursday, March 4, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2242-S2253]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             EDUCATION FLEXIBILITY PARTNERSHIP ACT OF 1999

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

       A bill (S. 280) to provide for education flexibility 
     partnerships.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.
  Pending:

       Jeffords amendment No. 31, in the nature of a substitute.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from New 
Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, is recognized to offer an amendment.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I thank you very much.


                            Amendment No. 35

   (Purpose: To provide for school dropout prevention, and for other 
                               purposes)

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on 
behalf of myself, Senator Reid, Senator Bryan and Senator Levin.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Bingaman], for himself, 
     Mr. Reid, Mr. Levin and Mr. Bryan, proposes an amendment 
     numbered 35.

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading 
of the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The text of the amendment is printed in today's Record under 
``Amendments Submitted''.)
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am proposing the National Dropout 
Prevention Act as an amendment to this Ed-Flex legislation. As I 
indicated, the cosponsors of this amendment are Senators Reid, Levin 
and Bryan.
  In my view, the amendment would create a much-needed program to 
target those schools in our country that have the highest dropout rates 
in the Nation. There is at present very little help from the Federal 
level going to some of these most troubled high schools, and the 
amendment is a valuable necessary addition to this legislation to begin 
moving ahead in solving this problem.
  Improving our schools, as we are trying to do through the Ed-Flex 
bill and through many other initiatives in Congress, is not going to 
make a whole lot of difference if half or a third--some substantial 
portion--of our students have already left before they graduate and 
they are no longer in those schools to receive the benefits of that 
assistance. Efforts to provide better teachers, more flexibility, 
computers in the classroom, higher standards--all of those efforts--
will be diluted if we continue to ignore the dropout crisis we have in 
this country.
  We do have what I refer to as a dropout drain. This chart makes the 
point very graphically showing that--the bucket represents our school 
system--we have students coming out of the school system in very large 
numbers and not gaining the benefit of the education we are trying to 
provide.
  At too many schools, dropout rates reach 30 percent and even 50 
percent, according to a 1998 Education Week report. Most States do not 
publish cumulative data, but Florida recently found that its 4-year 
dropout rate approached 50 percent when they added the students who 
dropped out in the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior year. They 
got close to 50 percent in the State of Florida.

[[Page S2243]]

  There are roughly 3,000 students who drop out on average each day in 
this country, according to the Department of Education statistics. 
About 500,000 students drop out of high school each year.
  Let me indicate at this point, Mr. President, that the reason I am 
offering this legislation on the Ed-Flex bill early in this Congress is 
that if we go ahead and try to do this as part of the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act, we will be talking about trying to do 
something 18 months down the road, because it is expected that the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act will likely not become law until 
sometime late next year.
  If that is the case, then we are talking not about 500,000 students 
per year, we are talking about a very large number of students who 
will, in fact, have left our schools with us sitting here trying to 
figure out what the right timing is to begin dealing with the problem.
  These new dropouts will join about 4 million other young adults who 
are presently without high school degrees. There has been a lot of talk 
by the President and by many of us about ending social promotion, and 
we all favor ending social promotion. But if we pursue that, and pursue 
it with vigor, we may create an even greater risk for students dropping 
out of our school system.
  Though dropout rates have not risen yet, higher standards mean more 
students become discouraged and fall through the cracks, unless there 
is some provision made to assist those students in meeting those higher 
standards. While some progress has been made for African American 
students, the real concentrated problem we have is in the Hispanic 
student population. Hispanic students remain much more likely to drop 
out.
  Let me call people's attention to this chart called ``Status Dropout 
Rates for Persons Ages 16 to 24 by Race Ethnicity for the Period 
October 1972 through October 1995.'' What you can see here very clearly 
is that the rate of dropouts in the Hispanic community is up in the 
range of 30 to 35 percent. The rate for black non-Hispanic students and 
white non-Hispanic students is substantially lower, down in the area of 
10 to 15 percent.
  So we have a very serious problem and one that we have not been able 
to address, and it most directly affects the Hispanic students in our 
country and in our State.
  One reason I became interested in this, Mr. President, which should 
be obvious--I am sure it is obvious to my colleagues--is that a very 
large percentage of our population in New Mexico is Hispanic and 
particularly in the school system. A great many of the young people in 
our State are Hispanic, and the problem affects us in a very real way.
  The annual dropout rate is almost 5 percent each year for all States. 
And States, such as Nevada, where Senator Reid, who is my cosponsor on 
this bill, and Senator Bryan hail from, and Georgia and New Mexico, 
have a much more severe dropout rate.
  Let me just say another word, before I go on to this chart here, 
about the issue of Hispanic students. The dropout rate for Hispanics 
has hovered near 30 percent for many years. That is more than three 
times the rate for white students, more than two times the rate for 
African Americans. The Hispanic population is the fastest growing 
population in our Nation, and many are being left behind in their 
educational opportunities while others are moving ahead. While the 
Hispanic students in our country make up 14 percent of all students 
now, they will comprise 22 percent by the year 2020. In large part due 
to differences in dropout rates, Hispanic workers earn only about 61 
percent of what comparable non-Hispanic workers are earning. So you can 
see the problem is severe.
  Referring again to this chart, unfortunately for Nevada, it is the 
State with the highest dropout rate. This is the dropout rate, on an 
annual basis, according to the Department of Education statistics. 
Twenty-nine States have provided annual dropout data. The other States 
have not provided that information. And, of course, they are not on 
this chart. But unfortunately, close behind Nevada and right behind 
Georgia is my own State of New Mexico, and the dropout rate there is 
8.5 percent according to these statistics.
  The National Goals Report--I serve on the National Education Goals 
Panel, Mr. President. And one of the discouraging things about serving 
on that panel has been that over the last several years--back in 1989, 
President Bush and the Governors met over in Charlottesville, VA, to 
set out national goals. And they had a very good vision of what they 
thought we ought to be trying to do as a Nation.
  The second goal is that at least 90 percent of our students should 
graduate from high school before they leave school. Unfortunately, the 
reality is that we have not made progress on that. The National Goals 
Report, the latest National Goals Report, found that roughly 40 States 
have not made any progress in increasing school completion rates during 
the 10 years that we have had since that national education goal was 
agreed to.
  Dropout rates affect more than just the students who leave school. 
Let me show another chart here which will make that point. While 
dropouts face a bleak future in terms of good jobs, communities that 
they live in are affected by higher crime, higher welfare rates, as 
well as very limited economic opportunity. Unemployment rates of high 
school dropouts are more than twice those of high school graduates. The 
probability of falling into poverty is three times higher for high 
school dropouts than for students who finished high school. The median 
personal income of high school graduates during the prime earning 
years, 25 through 54, is nearly twice that of high school dropouts. So 
we have a very serious problem here.
  At the present time, there is no Federal program dedicated toward 
eradicating the problem. This $150 million that we contemplate in this 
legislation, this amendment, would allow us to help 2,000 schools with 
the highest dropout rates throughout the country. With funds that they 
could receive from the State, these schools could restructure 
themselves in ways that have proven to lower dropout rates.
  We do know some of the ways schools can lower dropout rates. We need 
to get that information out better, and we need to give schools the 
resources to act on that information. This is necessary because most 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act programs, including title I, 
which of course is the largest program we authorize through the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, do not reach significant 
numbers of high school students.
  In our most troubled communities, this creates a very real dropoff in 
support services when students move from an elementary or middle school 
with a strong title I program. They get the assistance at the 
elementary level, and even at the middle school level, but when they 
get to high school, the assistance is not there.
  Not even GEAR UP, which is a newly created tutoring program to help 
middle school students and provides real support to help schools make 
fundamental changes to the way they are organized and run, that program 
itself is not available to solve this problem.
  Mr. President, this is not the first time that we have had a chance 
to act on this legislation. I offered this legislation last year to the 
bill which Senator Coverdell had sponsored on education issues. It was 
adopted here in the Senate. We had 74 Senators who supported the exact 
legislation, identical legislation last year. It has been endorsed, 
this amendment, by the Council of Great City Schools, by the Hispanic 
Education Coalition, and by the Education Trust.

  Local schools need to decide how best to address the problem in their 
community. And we are not trying to dictate what any local school does 
to solve this problem. The legislation gives districts the power to 
choose from a broad array of proven, effective approaches to the 
dropout issue.
  As in the Obey-Porter program, States would receive funds on a 
formula basis identical to title I, and districts would compete for 
grants of not less than $50,000 from the State.
  The dropout problem can be addressed through school-based reforms. 
While many excuses are made for the dropout problems, in fact school-
related factors are cited most often by the students themselves, the 
students who do drop out of school. When they are

[[Page S2244]]

surveyed and asked why they left school, in 77 percent of the cases, 
they cite school-related factors as the reason. These are students who 
are failing--who are failing--who do not like school--they do not get 
along with their teachers or their peers and basically have found that 
there is nothing there in the school to keep them there.
  When you look at the top school-related reasons getting behind that 
other statistic, the top school-related reasons, the first or the most 
often cited top school-related reason is that they were failing or they 
could not get along with their teachers, and that is a reason for the 
students dropping out. They do not like school. They could not get 
along with students, felt they did not belong. They were suspended or 
expelled in 25 percent of the cases; and they did not feel safe in 10 
percent of the cases.
  These are school-related concerns which the schools themselves can 
begin to address, Mr. President. This is not something where we can say 
it is up to the parents. ``If the kids don't want to go to school, it's 
the parents' problem, it's not the school's problem.'' That has been 
the approach we have taken for decades in this country to this issue, 
and it has not gotten us where we need to be.
  Let me also talk about the size of schools. Small schools, academy 
programs, challenging material, alternative high schools, all of these 
have proven effective ways of addressing the needs of at-risk students 
in large, alienating, boring high schools.
  Mr. President, it is clear when you begin looking at this problem--
and I see it in my State--the problem is most severe in our large high 
schools, in our large middle schools where students feel anonymous, 
where there is very little interaction between the student and the 
teacher. And that problem is severe.
  In particular, this program that we have proposed here will allow us 
to make large schools smaller without building new school buildings. 
School size does matter. Yet we are still forcing our young people to 
go to very, very large schools. And in some places they have taken the 
very innovative step of breaking large schools into smaller schools 
where you have schools within schools. And that is part of the 
solution, I believe.
  In New Mexico and throughout the Nation, fewer than one out of three 
high school students goes to a school that has 900 or fewer 
students. That is the ideal size for a high school, according to 
studies that have been done nationally.

  Part of the funding we are trying to obtain through this legislation 
would be made available to schools to restructure into smaller learning 
communities. More and more research is showing that large middle and 
high schools are alienating and anonymous places for children to learn. 
This contributes to their disinterest in school, their lack of contact 
with caring adults. This bill would help large schools revamp 
themselves into smaller academies, schools within schools.
  There is a reason why our private schools are doing well. One of 
those reasons is that most of them are very small. Clearly, we need to 
learn from that in the public school system. Schools with high dropout 
rates receive little, if any, Federal assistance in turning themselves 
around.
  The vast majority of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 
programs are targeted to our elementary schools. We need to restore the 
``S,'' which stands for secondary schools, in the ESEA legislation. 
ESEA stands for Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Unfortunately, 
we usually forget about the ``secondary'' education aspect of the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
  Addressing the dropout crisis in my State has become a real priority 
for me. We have made some progress in the last 2 years but we still 
have one of the highest dropout rates in the Nation, with over 7,500 
students dropping out in the years 1995 and 1996.
  In the most recent State-level report, New Mexico's annual dropout 
rate had fallen to under 8 percent, contrary to the statistic I had on 
the chart, but the rate is nearly 10 percent for Hispanic students and 
over 8 percent a year for Native American students.
  There are innovative programs that will help us deal with this 
problem. In my State, we have a truancy prevention initiative in 
Clovis, NM. We have a Value Youth Program in Cobre High School in Grant 
County, NM. In Santa Fe we have a dropout prevention task force. We 
have a dropout czar who has been appointed in the Albuquerque schools.
  Clearly, there is much more that can be done. This legislation will 
provide some of the resources to do that. I believe very strongly that 
this is something we should do now.
  Before my cosponsor speaks on this issue, let me reiterate why we 
need to do this now. We should not be sitting around Congress biding 
our time and assuming that this is not a problem that deserves 
emergency attention. This is a problem that deserves emergency 
attention. It is in our best interests on a bipartisan basis to pass 
this legislation now, early in the session. I believe we can do that. I 
very much urge my colleagues to support the amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, if I could engage in a conversation with the 
Senator from New Mexico, it is stunning to think that 3,000 children 
drop out of high school every day. Is that difficult to comprehend?
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Visiting high schools, as I know the Senator has done a 
lot, you run into students on the verge of dropping out. You sit down 
with students who have dropped out and are back in school and talk to 
them about the reasons.
  There is a problem here that we have left unaddressed too long, in my 
opinion.
  Mr. REID. We talk about this being an emergency. Think of the fact 
that 82 percent of the men and women in our prisons around this country 
are high school dropouts.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. That is true.
  Mr. REID. If we had no other statistic than that, it would seem this 
is an emergency.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. That is exactly right. Clearly, if we can resolve this 
problem, reduce this problem, we will have an impact on the number of 
our young people who wind up in criminal activity. I think it is a 
priority for that reason as well.
  Mr. REID. I also say to my friend from New Mexico, this is a good 
bill. The amendments that are going to be offered at the appropriate 
time dealing with class size and the number of new teachers--the 
Senator agrees with me that that is important?
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Yes.
  Mr. REID. But I believe there is nothing more important than keeping 
our children in school. All these other things I support, and I am 
behind them all the way. In fact, would the Senator agree with me that 
perhaps it is more important to keep our kids in school?
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me just respond by saying I think 
you can do an awful lot to improve the quality of education. If the 
students aren't there in the classroom to benefit from that, all of 
that effort goes for naught.
  I do think we need to address this problem as we try to upgrade the 
quality of education. Clearly, this problem has gone unaddressed for 
way too long.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from New Mexico I went 
to a high school that had a few hundred kids in it. I moved from a very 
small rural town in Nevada to what I thought was a very, very big high 
school. The size of that school today is insignificant compared to the 
size of the high schools in the metropolitan Reno-Las Vegas area. There 
are numerous Las Vegas high schools that have over 3,000 students.

  The Senator displayed a chart indicating the reasons kids drop out of 
school--failing, couldn't get along with teachers, didn't like school. 
Can you imagine how lost a person would feel coming from Searchlight, 
NV, which had 1 teacher teaching all 8 grades, to a school with over 
3,000 kids? I think it would be easy not to like school, wouldn't the 
Senator think?
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I agree entirely with the point.
  I visited some of these very large schools in my State. The truth is, 
when they ring the bell to change classes, you almost have to get out 
of the way, because you are going to get knocked to the floor if you 
stay right out in the

[[Page S2245]]

middle of the hallway; there is such a rush of activity.
  I do think there is a real problem in the size of our schools. 
Whenever you get a school that is so large that nobody really pays 
attention to whether or not a student comes to school in the morning, 
then the school is too large, in my opinion.
  Mr. REID. I say to the Senator from New Mexico, he was always very 
faithful in attending when I had the responsibility of the Democratic 
Policy Committee and we did a retreat. And he will remember a woman by 
the name of Deborah Meier came to speak to the group of Senators 
assembled. As the Senator may recall, she had been an elementary school 
principal in New York in this very, very large public school. She came 
to the realization one day as principal of the school that she was 
basically wasting her time. The scores of the children were very bad; 
there was nothing she could seem to do that was right in helping these 
kids achieve.
  So she went to the school board and said she would like to try a 
radical experiment: We have this elementary school; let's break it up 
into four separate schools. We will have four separate principals, four 
separate sets of teachers. It will be like four schools in one 
building. They will each have their separate identity, with separate 
names.
  She has written a book entitled ``The Power of Their Ideas.'' In this 
book she talks about this and how immediately the grades soared, the 
scores on their national tests soared.
  Does the Senator remember that presentation?
  Mr. BINGAMAN. In fact, I had the good fortune to go to that school in 
New York and see some of that success. It is a great success story and 
it shows the value of a small school where you have teachers and 
administrators and students and parents, all taking ownership in the 
education process. That is what she was able to create.
  Mr. REID. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. President, I express my appreciation to the Senator from New 
Mexico for his substantive contribution to what goes on here in the 
Senate. There are very, very few Senators in the history of this body 
who add so much substance as the Senator from New Mexico. He is a 
person who, by education alone, should contribute--Harvard 
undergraduate, Stanford Law School. But it is more than just the 
education. He has put his education and his experience to the benefit 
of the people of the State of New Mexico and this country.
  There is no better example of that than this legislation which I am 
honored to be able to cosponsor with the Senator. Again I repeat, of 
the people in prison today, if there were 100 people in prison in our 
country today, 82 of those prisoners would never have graduated from 
high school.
  Let's say there were 1,000 prisoners in America today; 820 of those 
would never have graduated from high school. If there were 10,000 
prisoners, 8,200 would never have graduated from high school--and on 
and on, until we get to the point where we have approximately 1 million 
people in prison today, and 820,000 of those have never completed high 
school.
  Mr. President, every day, 3,000 children drop out of high school. 
Every day. It would seem to me that there should be no greater concern 
in this body than making sure that that does not happen.
  Now, I don't expect magic to occur tomorrow after this legislation 
passes, and that we are going to have all 3,000 children stay in 
school, but let's say that we could make some progress so that only--I 
say that with some trepidation--only 2,500 dropped out every day. That 
would mean 500 children every day would be children who could arrive at 
a better life. They would be able to achieve what they should be able 
to achieve.
  The concerns that we have with this dropout rate is magnified every 
day when you read in the paper about people doing things wrong. Most of 
them are high school dropouts. And 500,000 students dropped out of 
school before graduating from high school every year. I am sorry to say 
that dropout rates are the highest in the southern and western regions 
of the country.
  I am very embarrassed to say that in the State of Nevada, 1 out of 
every 10 children drop out of high school. I wish we did not lead the 
country, but we do. We have to do something to change dropout rates all 
over the country. Of course, Nevada, as I have said, leads the Nation, 
but no one else should feel very high and mighty about the fact that 
only 8 or 9 out of 100 drop out in other States. It is too many. We 
have to make sure that there is progress made in lowering the national 
dropout rate.
  Why do children drop out of school? The reasons are diverse. We 
talked about some of them with Senator Bingaman earlier. We must invest 
in diverse, innovative solutions to help kids stay in school. What we 
are talking about here, Mr. President, is not some vast Government 
program. In fact, the same legislation that we are talking about today, 
Senator Bingaman and I offered last year in the form of an amendment, 
and it passed. We got 74 votes in the Senate, but it was killed in the 
House. I hope we get more than 74 votes this time. I can't imagine how 
anyone could vote against this legislation.
  We are asking that there be $30 million a year for the next 5 years--
a drop in the bucket out of the $1.5 trillion we spend basically every 
year--establishing within the Department of Education a division, a 
bureau, the sole responsibility of which would be to work to keep kids 
in school. They would do that by looking around the country at programs 
that are successful. There are some that work pretty well. We would 
tell school districts to apply for a grant, a challenge grant, and we 
would give them the money to implement that program.
  This would not mean the Federal Government is micromanaging what goes 
on in school districts. The school districts would manage every program 
the Federal Government would assist them with. There are some really 
fine programs around the country. In fact, on a web site, every month, 
there is a model program dealing with dropouts. Every month, they put 
on the web site a program that they think should focus attention on 
keeping kids in school. The model programs in March were called the 
Truancy Intervention Project and Kids in Need of Dreams. The pseudonym 
is TIP and KIND. These programs have dealt with kids of all levels. We 
can't just go to a high school and say that is where we are going to 
start keeping kids in school. We have to work from the time they start 
kindergarten. It is a program that kids don't just drop out of school 
in the 9th, 10th, 11th or 12th grades. Their inclinations and feelings 
about school develop much earlier than that. That is why I talked with 
the Senator from New Mexico about the great program in New York where 
they broke up a very big elementary school and suddenly found that the 
kids weren't slower than other kids, that they weren't less inclined to 
learn than others; they just needed a setting for learning. That is why 
we need to have this bill passed, so that schools around the country 
that are having problems with dropout rates can at least meet part of 
their needs.

  The program I talked about--the model program in the month of March--
is a program whose objective was to provide an early positive 
intervention with children reported as truants, because truancy usually 
characterizes other symptomatic behavior. TIP volunteers work to 
determine and satisfy their clients' needs so that the clients may 
return to school. The program works to meet the daily necessities of 
clothing, water, heat, transportation and long-term needs. They even go 
into drug, psychiatric, tutoring and child care. It is a program used 
in Fulton County, GA. Its funding came from an Atlanta law firm and 
other private donations--the law firm of Alston and Byrd. As I say, 
this is the model program of March on this web site.
  In Las Vegas, at Horizon High School in the Clark County school 
district, there is a program there dealing with teen mothers and 
fathers and pregnant teens. This is a program that is part of the 
alternative education project that facilitates high school graduation 
of teen parents and pregnant teens by providing quality day-care 
services. There may be some who say, Why should the school district get 
involved in such a program? Well, as the Senator from New Mexico 
mentioned, we are going to cut back on social promotions, but we don't 
want to dump out in the streets all of these kids who

[[Page S2246]]

are not going to be socially promoted. We need programs to get them 
into the next level honestly. We can do that with summer alternative 
programs, afterschool programs, tutoring programs. When a child, for 
whatever reason, becomes a parent, he or she should not automatically 
have to drop out of school. That is why the program in Las Vegas is 
something that I think deserves national attention.
  These classes are set up to keep these kids in school--kids having 
kids--and are structured to provide these children with skills in 
listening, speaking, independent thinking, and even personal hygiene. 
There are programs in the Western States--and I am certain the Senator 
from New Mexico can appreciate that. We have programs where we focus on 
Indian children. There is a program in the Washoe County school 
district that focuses on keeping Indian students in school. There is a 
tremendously high dropout rate with Indian children. The program that 
is being tested really to work with these children is one that I think 
will work very well; it is called Phone Work. It is a voice mail 
approach to assist parents and teachers in the monitoring of the 
students' homework assignments. Parents are able to leave recorded 
messages for the teacher, providing a two-way communication between 
home and school. The teacher's responsibilities include recording daily 
assignments by a certain time of day, verifying each student's class 
assignments, written in the Phone Work assignment book, and that each 
student takes home books and materials that are needed. Student 
responsibilities include recorded homework assignments, taking books 
and materials home, and having parents check completed assignments and 
assign a designated time and place for a student to study. These are 
details that some may think are not important, but if you are trying to 
keep children in school--and there are some difficulties because the 
parents work, but this system allows, through the telephone--a program 
called Phone Work--that the teacher and the parent keep in touch and 
work to keep this child in school.
  One of the programs that I have worked on and have been impressed 
with is a program called OLA in Carson City. Surprising to most people 
is the fact that Nevada has a large number of Hispanic students, 
Hispanic people, but more students than adults. We have in the State of 
Nevada, in the Clark County school district, in the Greater Las Vegas 
area, the eighth largest school district in the United States, and over 
25 percent of the students in the Clark County school district are 
Hispanic.
  Other places in Nevada also have large Hispanic populations. In 
Carson City, NV, our capital, we have a program, as I have indicated, 
called the OLA Carson City Program, designed to keep Hispanic children 
interested in school. It has done a remarkable job. It has been in 
existence for 4 or 5 years. They produce a television program where 
they interview people who work in government, who work in the private 
sector. I have been doing interviews in their program at their station 
for some 4 years. They are excited young people. They not only do 
television, they are not only involved in the TV station, but they are 
involved in other things. This has helped these kids--I have heard them 
say so--develop self-confidence. They are proud of the fact that they 
can speak two languages. When I go there, one of the students will 
interpret for me. They have become more confident since connecting with 
the community. They have a recognition of the opportunities that are 
available to them. Their personal goals have risen steadily. They have 
won awards and honors in the community for their efforts. They have 
become actively involved in communicating their importance to their 
peers and to younger Hispanic youth. They started a tutoring program. 
There is a youth leadership club, advanced group, enthusiasm, 
volunteers for all kinds of programs in the community. They work in the 
juvenile justice system. The Governor selected them to work in the 
Goals 2000.
  This is a wonderful program, Mr. President, one that should be 
available to the rest of the country. That is what this amendment 
provides. It makes these programs available to the rest of the country. 
I think that is all we can ask for--that school districts have the 
ability. If they want to make an application saying they have a dropout 
problem, what programs are available? What programs would meet their 
needs? Have experts give them different alternatives, and they can 
choose from those. If their grant is in effect, then it is up to them 
to implement the program; the Federal Government stays out of their 
lives.
  We have a significant problem in southern Nevada especially. That is 
rapid growth. We have the most rapidly growing city and the most 
rapidly growing State in the country. We have to keep up with the 
growth in the schools. We have to build a school and a half a month to 
keep up with the growth in the Clark County school district. We hold 
the record of dedicating 18 schools in 1 year. The growth is 
phenomenal. Our long-time superintendent of schools is a very 
courageous, very good superintendent by the name of Brian Cramm. He has 
become more of a construction superintendent than a school 
superintendent. Think of that--a school and a half a month. The goal 
has been met. In 1 year, 18 schools were dedicated in the Clark County 
schools. But in an effort to accommodate all of these students, we have 
huge schools. As Senator Bingaman and I have spoken about, we really 
need to focus on ways of having smaller schools.
  I frankly don't think, unless the Federal Government recognizes this 
high school dropout problem is the problem that it really is, that we 
are going to get help. One of the things we have tried to do, separate 
and apart from this amendment but which will complement this amendment, 
is to get school construction money. School districts all over the 
country are having bond issues fail. We are very lucky and fortunate. 
We are blessed in southern Nevada because the people in Clark County 
are continuing these bond issues. Over $2 billion in bond issues have 
passed in four separate elections during the last 10 years--over $2 
billion. Around the rest of the State of Nevada, though, they haven't 
been so fortunate. Schools are not being built because they cannot get 
the bond issues passed. We have some counties which simply do not have 
the financial wherewithal to build new schools. They are in counties 
where there is a lot of Federal land. There is no mining. There is 
minimal ranching going on. They simply can't afford to build new 
schools, and kids are being educated in facilities that really, in the 
eyes of some, should be condemned.

  The bill for school construction would help rapidly growing school 
districts such as Clark County and Lincoln County, which need help 
because of the lack of economic growth in those counties. That is 
something that could complement this and hopefully would have school 
districts focus on not how big they can build a school but how many 
schools they can build to accommodate the children.
  I hope, Mr. President, that this issue dealing with 3,000 children 
dropping out of school every day is something the Senate will focus on. 
It is, as I have indicated, the No. 1 problem as far as I am concerned 
with our schools today--children dropping out of school. I recognize 
the reason for children dropping out of school is varied. There are a 
lot of reasons they drop out of school. But whatever the reason, it is 
a situation that we must focus on. We must do something to keep 
children in school.
  Mr. President, let's talk about the future for high school dropouts. 
We know that unemployment rates of high school dropouts are more than 
twice those of boys or girls who graduate from high school. The 
probability of falling into poverty is three times higher for high 
school dropouts than for those who have finished high school. The 
median personal income of high school graduates during the prime 
learning years--25 to 54--is nearly twice that of high school dropouts.
  I have to mention again that 82 percent of the people in our 
penitentiaries or prisons or jails around the country are high school 
dropouts. The children of high school dropouts, it has been 
statistically proven, have a much higher probability of dropping out of 
school than children whose parents did not drop out of high school.
  Let's look, as Senator Bingaman did, at Hispanics and what is 
happening around the country with Hispanic children. I talk about the 
OLA Carson City Program, which is a miracle program. It is working 
wonders in Carson City.

[[Page S2247]]

But we have too many Hispanic children all over the country dropping 
out. We have too many Hispanic children dropping out of schools in 
Nevada. We talk about a dropout rate of over 30 percent, which is some 
200 to 300 percent higher than other children and something we should 
become concerned about.
  Why are so many Hispanic children dropping out of school? The bulk of 
Hispanic students who come to Nevada and the western part of the United 
States are from Mexico. Mexico does not have a tradition of public 
education. In addition to that, there are language problems that we all 
realize. We also have the phenomenon that Hispanics are noted for 
having a really good work ethic. They believe in working hard. They are 
not afraid to work. That is a bad combination, because with the 
shortage in the labor market there are people who entice young men and 
women who are Hispanic to go to work. That gives them another excuse 
not to be in high school, because they are making fairly decent money. 
The fact of matter is, they are still doing those entry-level jobs when 
they are 55 or 65 years old.
  We have a problem that we have to identify. The Hispanic students 
have a dropout rate of 30 percent compared to an overall rate of 11 
percent. And the 30 percent is lower than it is in a lot of places. 
Unemployment rates for Hispanics is high. That is because, for those 
who have not finished high school, it is really hard to get a job. 
Forty-nine percent of all persons living in Hispanic households receive 
some type of means-tested assistance.
  We can make all of these figures disappear with a high school 
education. We need to do that.
  As we all know, with this new census that is going to be completed in 
a year and a half or so, it is going to show a tremendous rise in the 
number of people of Hispanic origin making up the population of the 
United States. By the year 2030, Hispanics will make up 20 percent of 
the population of the United States. Even about 10 years from now, by 
the year 2010, the Hispanic origin population is projected to become 
the second largest ethnic group in the United States. Soon, as you 
know, it will be the No. 1 ethnic group. We need to address the dropout 
problem in this country for everyone, but especially for the Hispanics. 
Hispanic leaders all over America understand this and are working hard. 
But I think we need to focus on what we can do in the Department of 
Education to assist them.

  I have spoken to the Hispanic leaders in the State of Nevada and this 
is clearly the No. 1 problem--keeping their youth in school, having 
them finish high school. That is how the national Hispanic leaders feel 
also.
  If we do not address the dropout problem in this country now, we will 
be faced in the future with a weak and uneducated workforce. We don't 
need that. We can't stand that. We will have increased unemployment 
rates, increased prison incarceration rates, and an increase of people 
on welfare and other Federal assistance programs. By keeping our kids 
in school, we are attacking much larger social and economic problems.
  It may be a surprise to many, but there is no national plan to lower 
the dropout rates--there is none--and no targeted program to help 
schools most in need of restructuring to lower dropout rates and raise 
achievement. We would all think this should have been done a long time 
ago, but it has not been. I think it is time to keep our children in 
school. It should become a national priority.
  Again, unemployment rates of high school dropouts are more than twice 
those of high school graduates. The probability of falling into poverty 
is three times higher for high school dropouts than for those who have 
finished high school. The median personal income of high school 
graduates is twice that of high school dropouts. The median income of 
college graduates is three times that of high school dropouts. For the 
fourth time: 82 percent of our people in prisons have not graduated 
from high school. Need we go further?
  So I hope this bill will receive overwhelming support and that we can 
get this bill passed in the House of Representatives. This is something 
that is important. This amendment is as important as the underlying 
legislation--I believe more so. I, again, express my appreciation to 
the people of the State of New Mexico for sending to the Senate someone 
with the abilities, the skill of Senator Bingaman. This amendment is an 
important amendment. It has been an honor for me to work with him on 
this. I repeat, I hope the Senate overwhelmingly passes this much-
needed amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. I thank both Senators for raising this issue. There is 
no question but one of the most severe problems we have--probably the 
most severe problem we have--is the large number of dropouts in the 
schools. Certainly they have delineated their feelings on that very 
accurately.
  But I also point out, however, we are dealing this year with the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization. These programs, 
and I am sure there will be others which will be offered on this bill, 
are all worthy of a very substantial examination. In fact, we have 
already started holding hearings on reauthorization of the Elementary 
and Secondary Education Act. Those hearings are going well. We will be 
holding many more. Two-thirds of all the money we spend in education at 
the Federal level is on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 
That is where the money is. Thus, that is where these amendments are 
appropriate.
  I want to assure both Senators that it is my intention to give top 
priority to such programs as those for dropouts. This Nation, however, 
has a very serious problem with respect to education. The Senator from 
New Mexico and I sit on the Goals 2000 Panel. We have been there, 
frustrated, because over the period of time we have been on it we have 
not had any measurable change in the statistics in this country about 
the state of our education.
  The President has appropriately also pointed out the difficulties of 
social promotion. We are looking into that, obviously. There are 
programs that are required for that, but it is not easy to do it 
program by program. That is just not the way it should be handled. It 
should be handled in a coordinated effort, which we are doing, with 
hearings, to fully understand why, for instance, there are dropouts, 
why kids are dropping out, before we suddenly come up with a program 
that is going to attempt to alleviate the problem.

  So I want Members on both sides to please refrain from offering 
amendments that should be appropriately considered in the Elementary 
and Secondary Education Act's reauthorization, because only with 
coordinated hearings and sitting down and working together can we come 
up with a coordinated plan to handle all of these very serious issues 
which we have. I am hopeful the Senators would withdraw this amendment 
at this time. They have my assurances that we will be discussing fully 
the matter of school dropouts when we get into the hearing process.
  We are already into the hearing process. They are all tied together. 
We did pass, this past year, at least one or two efforts: The Reading 
and Excellence Act, which gets into the questions of why people drop 
out; and we have others that we passed last year that we are studying 
in terms of professional training and all that. There will be other 
amendments, I am sure, that we have heard about, that will also be 
right in line addressing the problem.
  There is one, I understand, on principals, principal training, and 
there will be a number of other amendments which they will offer. But I 
want to say I am not willing to accept amendments which will do what 
may be a good idea because of our purpose right now. Every 5 years we 
reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We should 
concentrate on this right now. We have to have a coordinated effort on 
it.
  First, we must delineate specifically what the students should have 
when they leave the school. We know they should read. We have the 
social promotion situation that if they don't read, we just push them 
on through. The statistics are startling in that regard. Over half of 
the young people who have graduated from high school have graduated 
functionally illiterate. The primary cause of that is social promotion. 
What we do to try to alleviate that through ESEA is something we have 
to look into.

[[Page S2248]]

  Why do students drop out? We need to look into that very thoroughly. 
Obviously, a great deal of that usually occurs in the middle school 
area where young people come through and they don't see any relevance 
of education to their lives. We have to look into how to alleviate the 
middle school problem.
  One of the problems there is the lack of training of principals. That 
is another area we should be looking at in the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act. But right now I want to be very clear: I do not think we 
should be using this bill to do that. This bill is one which will just 
help the States now to be able to deal with some of these problems with 
more flexibility in the way they can handle their school systems in the 
allocation of funds. They need that flexibility now to handle these 
problems. We should concentrate on the reauthorization and not try to 
do it piecemeal on this bill, which is left over from last year. We got 
10 good bills out. We didn't get this one out. The committee handled 
the bill. I don't think these were offered as amendments at that time. 
Certainly I had the same attitude then as I do now.
  With that, I urge Senators seriously to consider not offering these 
at this point and wait for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 
to do that.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Fitzgerald). The Senator from Nevada 
sought recognition first.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I say to my friend from Vermont, the manager 
of this bill, we need flexibility now and I acknowledge that. But we 
also need something to address these children who are dropping out of 
school now, 3,000 children a day. I can tell my friends in the 
majority, they may table this amendment today or tomorrow--whenever 
they decide they want to do it--but they better get used to voting on 
it. Because every time a bill comes up, whether it is missile defense--
it doesn't matter what it is--I am going to offer this amendment.
  Mr. President, 3,000 children are dropping out of school every day 
and we have to do something about it. It received 74 votes last year. 
Let people who voted for this bill last year come and vote against it 
this year and get it lost in the hole on the other side of the 
Congress.
  This bill needs to pass. We have children dropping out of school 
every day, 3,000 of them, 500,000 a year. Eight-two percent of the 
people we have in prison are high school dropouts. Do you think that is 
something we should address, or wait for a 5-year education bill?
  This is something that people, if they are going to vote against it, 
they are going to vote against it more than once, because I am going to 
keep offering this. I do not think there is anything more important we 
can do than vote on keeping our children in school.
  Mr. VOINOVICH addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. VOINOVICH. Mr. President, I share the concerns about the dropout 
rate in this country with the Senator from Nevada. I am very familiar 
with the dropout rate in the State of Ohio and what we tried to do to 
deal with the problem.
  I contend that the passage of Ed-Flex will allow many States today to 
better utilize the money coming into their State to do a better job in 
those early years with youngsters so that they will be successful and 
they will stay in school.
  For example, in the State of Ohio, we have used the Ed-Flex waiver on 
the Eisenhower Professional Grant Program to allow teachers to learn 
how to do a better job of teaching and helping children to learn. We 
have also allowed some of that money to be used in areas where kids are 
having the biggest problem, for example, in reading. We have seen that 
by using Ed-Flex, we have been able to do a much better job helping 
youngsters to learn, the same way with the waivers that we received in 
Ohio under Ed-Flex under title I, to be able to use those dollars in a 
more efficient way so that we can really make an impact in the lives of 
the children where the teachers feel that it will do the most good.
  Again, we have seen the statistics from 1996 and 1998. Where we have 
had Ed-Flex, the kids are doing better, because they have had a waiver 
on the Eisenhower Professional Grant Program under title I.
  There is no silver bullet in terms of the issue of dropout rates. 
When I became Governor of Ohio, I went to the head of the Department of 
Corrections and said to him, What can we do to keep down the prison 
population in the State of Ohio? His answer was, Head Start; we have to 
get involved with these youngsters earlier. So we went to town on the 
issue of Head Start, and today my State is the only State where every 
eligible child whose parents want them to be in preschool or Head Start 
is in the program. That is the responsibility, I believe, of the 
Governor of the State and the people involved in the State in 
education. They need to make these early childhood programs.
  For example, you will be hearing from me later on in this session in 
terms of the use of TANF money. We have a very good program in our 
State called Early Start, where we are going to families as soon as 
that baby is born and intervening and trying to make sure that during 
those first 3 years of a child's life, they develop those learning 
capacities that they need to be successful in school. Too often these 
dropout programs are dealing with the end of the line, and that is what 
we, as a government, ought to be doing, making a commitment to 
intervene early on. That is where you can really make a difference in 
terms of having a program that deals with birth to 3, zero to 3, 
intervening earlier in the lives of our children to make that 
difference.
  In addition, I think people should understand that there are lots of 
dropout programs in this country. I have been chairman of a group 
called Jobs for American Graduates for a couple of years. As a matter 
of fact, Senator Robb from Virginia at one time was head of Jobs for 
American Graduates, and Senator Jeffords is very familiar with the Jobs 
for American Graduates Program. It is a program that has been in 
existence for 19 years and has served over 250,000 young people.
  What we do is, we identify kids in the 12th grade who are in need of 
help. We get them into a job club. We intervene, and 90 percent of them 
stay in school. Then we follow them a year afterwards to find out what 
has happened to them, and they are either in secondary posteducation or 
they are in the service or they have a job. This program is in 
existence in about 28 States and territories in the United States.
  I say to Senator Reid of Nevada, we tried to get the program into the 
Las Vegas school system and they turned us down. Governor Miller tried 
to also do the same thing, and they turned us down. I suggest to 
Senator Reid that he ought to talk with the people in the Las Vegas 
school system and ask them why they are not part of the Jobs for 
American Graduates Program, the most successful dropout program in the 
United States.
  Mr. REID. Is the Senator directing a question toward me?
  Mr. VOINOVICH. I would be glad to have the Senator answer that, sure.
  Mr. REID. The Senator would have to ask Senator Miller--a Freudian 
slip there--Governor Miller that question. There are a lot of good 
programs in the country. That is the whole point of this amendment, 
that we have to have these amendments, these different programs 
available to everybody in the country. Then the school districts can 
pick and choose those. You may think that program is the best program 
in the country. Others may disagree. But the fact of the matter is, 
this amendment that I am offering does nothing to take away from the 
ability of school districts to manage their schools any way they see 
fit. It does give the resources to the school districts all over the 
country that they now do not have. I think it certainly seems that we 
should have a national strategy for dropouts, which we now do not have.

  Mr. VOINOVICH. Mr. President, I point out that today our Jobs for 
American Graduates Program is utilizing--listen to the Federal programs 
that we are already utilizing. We are utilizing the Joint Training 
Partnership Act. We are using School to Work Opportunities Act. We are 
using the Wagner-Peyser Act. We are using the Carl Perkins Vocational 
Education Act funds. We are using the title IV Safe and Drug Free 
Schools funds. We are using the Criminal Justice Crime Prevention 
funds. We are using welfare reform funds.
  The point I am making is that, No. 1, the dropout issue is a national 
problem, but it is primarily the responsibility of State and local 
governments. It

[[Page S2249]]

is up to the Governors and to the local people, local education people 
to respond to the problem. For example, in the JAG program, when I came 
in as Governor, we were spending about $4 million. Today we are 
spending $22 million in the State of Ohio, because we understand how 
important it is to try to identify these youngsters who are going to 
drop out of school and keep them in school. That is just a phase of it.
  When you talk about dropout, you have to look at the entire specter 
of the cause of the dropout program.
  I will go back to what Senator Jeffords has just said. It starts out 
with Early Start. It starts with Head Start. It starts out with 
technology in the schools.
  An interesting story. I went to our prisons and visited those where 
they are ready to come out into society. I went in and I asked a 
question, How many of you graduated from high school? Not one hand went 
up. They were there working with these computers. I asked them what 
they were doing, and they pointed out to me that they were getting 
ready to get their GED. I remember after leaving there--it was about 7 
or 8 years ago--I said to myself, we have computers in our prisons to 
help people get their GED and prepare them to go out, and we didn't 
have computers in our schools in Ohio. So we undertook a program to 
wire every classroom for voice, video and data. We brought computers 
into every classroom. It is amazing what is happening in elementary 
school. What you have to recognize is the reason why a lot of these 
youngsters drop out of school is they are not doing well. They have not 
had Head Start. When they get to school, they do not have the tools 
that are necessary to get the job done.
  For example, in our State now, we have reduced the class size for 
first, second, and third grade to no more than 15 because we know those 
years are so important. So to stand here and say we need a program for 
dropouts, it seems to me that if we really want to get at the dropout 
problem in this country, this Congress should sit down and look at all 
these programs that we have and figure out how we can do a better job 
with the money we have to really make a difference. And we also ought 
to understand it is not our primary responsibility. It is the 
responsibility of the Governors; it is the responsibility of those 
local school superintendents and those local school boards and the 
people that are there to get this job done.
  And for them to send money to Washington and then turn around and 
have it go back, I do not think is the best way to get the job done. On 
the other hand, the Federal Government should be trying to figure out 
how they can be a better partner.
  I suggest a nice little task force that we could undertake in this 
Senate could sit down and look at these various programs, how do they 
fit together, how can we better maximize those dollars, and maybe look 
at some programs that we already have and say, if we put a little bit 
more money into this--for example, if we allow the States to use more 
of their TANF money to deal with this big problem, if they do not have 
education--they will not go on welfare.
  There are a lot of things that we can do, I think, if we just sat 
down and looked at what we were doing. And one of the things that we 
can do, Mr. President, I think, is to pass Ed-Flex because Ed-Flex will 
give us a little better opportunity to take the Federal money that is 
coming in and really make a difference in the lives of kids.
  And one of the things that I heard when I sat in your chair, Mr. 
President, during the debate earlier on was about accountability. In 
those school districts that are getting waivers for Eisenhower 
Professional Grants, getting waivers for title I, what have we found 
out? We are finding out if the programs are working. The ones that have 
not asked for waivers, we do not know what they are doing in terms of 
making a difference in the lives of children.
  I say to Senator Jeffords, I think one of the great benefits of the 
Ed-Flex program is that when you make application you agree, first of 
all, to waive a lot of State statutes and also rules and regulations, 
but you also agree that you are going to meet certain standards; and 
you are held accountable toward those standards.
  So I am saying to you that the schools in this country, in our 12 
States that have taken advantage of Ed-Flex, at least we know whether 
or not some of this Federal money is really making a difference in the 
lives of children. And the more our schools can go to get waivers, I 
think the more accountability we are going to have. And it is one 
aspect I do not think has been talked about enough here on the floor of 
the Senate.
  Mr. JEFFORDS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. First, I thank the Senator from Ohio, who has had great 
experience in this area with respect to being Governor of that State. 
And watching what they have done makes me happy to know that we have a 
Senator with us now who has that experience in the immediate past. I 
look forward to looking to him for guidance.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to cosponsor the School 
Dropout Prevention and State Responsibilities Act which is aimed at 
lowering the student dropout rate in our nation's schools. We cannot 
have high expectations that our young people will be prepared for the 
challenges that lay ahead if they have not attained at least a high 
school diploma. The fact is that over half a million high school 
students drop out each year, joining almost 4 million young Americans 
who lack a high school diploma and are not in the process of getting 
one.
  Mr. President, it is a bipartisan National Education Goal to increase 
high school completion rates to 90 percent and eliminate gaps in the 
rates of graduation among different groups, according to the goals 
established by the Governors and the President in 1989. However, there 
has been no progress in lowering national dropout rates. As a matter of 
fact, there is currently no targeted national funding to help schools 
most in need of restructuring to lower their dropout rates.
  To help schools in their efforts to reduce dropout rates, this 
amendment would authorize $150 million annually over five years to 
create a coordinated national dropout prevention program. Under this 
proposal, States would receive funding according to the Title I 
formula, and would then award competitive grants to schools or local 
education districts with the highest dropout rates. The goal is to 
enable such schools to implement proven and widely replicated models of 
comprehensive dropout prevention reforms such as, for example, the 
Lansing School District in Michigan, which has established a mentoring 
program with community leaders and the ``New Beginnings'' program for 
students who have been expelled to keep them in school; and the Detroit 
Public Schools' successful 9th grade restructuring program which is 
advancing up to the higher school grades.
  In addition, this amendment will create a national system of data 
collection and sharing, so that we have a complete understanding of the 
extent of the dropout problem. If local school districts are to curb 
middle and highschool dropout rates, they must have uniform data and 
statistics. This amendment, which creates a national clearinghouse and 
a dropout ``czar'' within the Department of Education, will give middle 
and high schools the tools they need to keep our youngsters in school.
  Mr. President, this amendment is identical to the legislation that 
passed 74-26 by the Senate during debate last year on the education IRA 
proposal, and was, regrettably, dropped in conference. This is a very 
important proposal to help keep young Americans in school and it is my 
hope that my colleagues in the Senate will again adopt this amendment.


                  Amendment No. 36 To Amendment No. 35

    (Purpose: To honor the Federal commitment to fund part B of the 
              Individuals with Disabilities Education Act)

  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Vermont [Mr. Jeffords], for himself, Mr. 
     Gregg and Ms. Collins, proposes an amendment numbered 36 to 
     amendment No. 35.

       On page 20, between lines 4 and 5, insert the following:

     ``SEC.   . FUNDING FOR IDEA.

       ``Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the 
     provisions of this part, other than

[[Page S2250]]

     this section, shall have no effect, except that funds 
     appropriated pursuant to the authority of this part shall be 
     used to carry out part B of the Individuals with Disabilities 
     Education Act (20 U.S.C. 1411 et seq.).''

  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I am sorry for not being successful in 
getting the Senator from New Mexico to withdraw the amendment. I 
understand the feelings. But to me, the best way right now that we can 
help immediately without having to wait through the whole process is to 
be dedicated to ensuring that we fully fund the money that is used for 
special ed.
  If we can use all of these funds that we want to be used otherwise 
just to do that, we would free up the States and local governments to 
be able to handle some of these problems. So I want to make it very 
clear that the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act is so important that we cannot prematurely adopt 
amendments which would put us in the position of having to undo things 
which this body does. It should be done in a very coordinated way that 
will allow us to thoroughly understand the impact of what we do.
  I also bring to the Senate's attention the front page of the 
Washington Post this Monday. The Post carried a story regarding the 
months of delay which learning-disabled students in Prince Georges 
County are experiencing in obtaining educational services. This is 
important to know, that we should take action now in this area.
  Antonio Martin, a 15-year-old resident of Prince Georges County, has 
been sitting home for a year waiting for placement in a school that can 
meet his needs. Today's Post carries a story regarding a Supreme Court 
decision requiring that schools pay for full-time nursing care in some 
situations, which will undoubtedly increase costs for any school which 
finds itself in this situation.
  But this is not just a Washington problem. This is a problem in every 
school in every State in the country. When I visit with school board 
members or principals in Vermont, funding IDEA, special education, is 
the first, second, and third thing they want our help on.
  The amendments that my Democratic colleagues are proposing are all 
well-intentioned, but they are not responding to what I am hearing from 
Vermont educators and educators around this whole country.
  Vermont's legislators are telling me the same thing. I visited the 
Vermont educational communities during the recent recess, and time and 
again they asked that the Federal Government uphold its commitment to 
fund IDEA. They did so without regard to party. Democrat and Republican 
legislators agreed that funding IDEA is easily the most important thing 
we can do by far.
  Last month, when our committee held hearings on education budget 
priorities, a representative, Al Perry, a Democrat from my good State 
of Vermont, was very persuasive on this point. In 1975, the year I came 
to Congress, we promised that we would provide funding that would be 40 
percent of the national average per pupil expenditure for each school-
age child with a disability. We have not delivered on that promise.
  In fiscal year 1998, we provided 10.8 percent of the excess costs of 
educating children with special needs. If we follow through on this 
promise, we will free up critical local funds. Once we do, local 
communities, and not the Federal Government, will be in the position to 
decide how to spend their local dollars--for teachers, for textbooks, 
for technology, or for some other locally determined educational 
policy.
  Senator Wellstone, yesterday, talked about listening to community 
needs. Anyone who has done so has probably heard the same thing that I 
have. The President certainly has--from school boards across the 
country and from the Governors. Yet the President has ignored their 
plea. In his budget request for fiscal year 2000, the 25th anniversary 
of IDEA, there is no increase in funding. In his public statements on 
education, he has ignored IDEA entirely. At a time when no educational 
issue seems to escape the administration's purview, special education 
seems stuck in the White House purgatory.

  A year ago I urged President Clinton to join Congress and keep the 
promise that we all made in 1975. He declined. Again, in December 1998, 
I implored the President to join us in meeting our commitment to 
children with disabilities. He ignored it.
  Instead, the President has made many new promises in his budget for 
fiscal year 2000. But what good are all these new promises if past 
promises are empty in the area of greatest need? Year after year we 
have seen budget requests from the administration that represent no 
real funding increase for special education. This constitutes a pattern 
of neglect and a lack of concern that cannot be defended. Children 
suffer, families suffer, and school districts suffer.
  In each of the last 3 years, Republican Congresses have increased 
Federal funding for special education by over 85 percent. We are fully 
committed to reaching that promise made 24 years ago.
  I show you a chart. What we have done has been fine, but look at what 
is left to do. In the orange there is what we should be paying but we 
are not paying. That is shown on that chart. If the President thinks 
Congress will take care of business and increase funding for special 
education, he is right. We will, through this amendment and other 
amendments. If he thinks because we will, he can put his funding 
priorities elsewhere, he is wrong.
  School districts are demanding financial relief. Children's needs 
must be met. Parents expect accountability. There is no better way to 
touch a school, help a child, or support a family than to place more 
dollars into special education.
  I urge my colleagues to support my amendment. If we put money into 
IDEA, school districts will be in a position to address class size or 
whatever they determine to be local priorities. They can ensure that 
children like Antonio Martin won't sit in education limbo for months on 
end.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I intend to support this amendment. Now 
that we have the time to get to the crux of education policy, I welcome 
this opportunity. The manager of the bill has now advanced this issue 
in terms of the debate and discussion, and I hope we will move beyond 
the question of whether we are just going to deal with Ed-Flex, because 
the manager himself has offered this particular amendment.
  Mr. President, I joined with those back in 1975 to make a commitment 
in terms of trying to address the problems of supporting those children 
in our schools that have special needs. Four million disabled children 
did not receive the help that they need to be successful in schools. 
Few disabled preschoolers receive services. One million disabled 
children were excluded from public schools. Children in this country, 
prior to the 1975 Act, were basically shunted aside in institutions and 
did not participate in the education system of this country.
  In 1975 we passed legislation to provide help and assistance. We set 
in the 1975 Act the level of a 40-percent goal for funding to help and 
assist the local communities. I daresay I had thought we might have the 
opportunity in the wake of the Garrett decision yesterday to have an 
opportunity to debate and discuss how we were going to be able to help 
and assist a number of local communities now that will have to provide 
additional help and assistance to the special needs children. That 
ought to be a matter of priority. That ought to be a matter of debate. 
It ought to be a matter of allocating resources to help and assist 
local communities.
  In many instances, we are finding across America that the needs of 
special needs children are being placed against the needs of educating 
the broader constituency, so we are pitting children against children. 
What we ought to try and do is deal with both of these particular 
issues. I am for allocations of resources that move us closer and 
closer to the level of some 40 percent, which was set as a goal for us 
in the 1975 Act.
  Let us not lose the fact that under the constitution of every State 
there is a commitment to educate children in their States. Sometimes 
they forget this, but they have a solemn responsibility. I don't know a 
single State

[[Page S2251]]

that doesn't have that particular requirement. This is going to be 
something that we will have to work out with the various States and we 
will have to work this out with the local communities, but if the 
Senator from Vermont and the Senator from New Hampshire and others want 
to say they want to find additional resources in meeting the needs of 
special children, put me on that particular piece of legislation, too, 
because I am all for it. I am all for it--not at the expense of these 
other children. No serious educator would put it at the expense of 
other children.
  If we have better trained teachers in smaller classrooms, we will 
identify more easily those children that have special needs. If we have 
smaller class size, we will know which child needs the special 
attention. If we have better trained teachers, the better trained 
teachers will understand which of the children should be involved in 
special need programs and which should not. With achievement in reading 
programs and literacy programs, we may very well help children at the 
early ages not be qualified in terms of special needs, because they 
will be advanced and their academic achievement may very well be 
enhanced.
  If we do the kind of things that the Senator from Ohio just pointed 
out, more and more targeted resources in terms of the children in terms 
of Head Start will be enormously important. We reauthorized Head Start 
last year. We expanded the Early Start children up to 12.5 percent in 
that Head Start program, but we are still not doing enough. The Senator 
from Ohio points out that it is an admirable effort. In the State of 
Ohio they have gone ahead, evidently, and provided the difference 
between what is provided by the Federal Government and funds provided 
by the State in order to make sure that every child who is eligible in 
Ohio is going to qualify for Head Start. We are only reaching about 40 
percent of the children across the country. By that early type of 
intervention, we will find out what can be done in terms of special 
needs children.
  The bottom line is every educator knows if you have a smaller class 
size, better trained teachers involved in afterschool programs--all of 
these help and assist both to make the total numbers of children that 
might need the kind of special needs less; and, second, to identify 
those that truly need that help and assistance.
  So there may be those that want to try and pit the special needs 
children against other children, but I hope that would not be what the 
U.S. Senate is about. Parents understand this; schoolteachers 
understand it. What we are basically understanding is that is the 
proper way to go.
  We can understand a legitimate effort to try and address the question 
of the school dropouts, which is a very important and significant 
national need, a modest amendment that had been considered by the 
Senate, passed overwhelmingly with bipartisan support last year. This 
isn't something new. The amendment of the Senators from New Mexico and 
Nevada, quite frankly, have more legitimacy to be considered on the 
floor of the U.S. Senate than the Ed-Flex bill, because we have already 
considered and passed it. Even so, it is fine if we put that on. It 
certainly will help strengthen the Ed-Flex bill.
  However, now we have the parliamentary games to try, instead of 
permitting a thoughtful legitimate amendment that has been considered 
to be debated and finally voted on, to effectively try to emasculate 
that amendment with the second degree. I want to give assurances to 
those on that side that we understand; we have been here a certain 
period of time as well. We are glad to spend as much time as our 
friends and colleagues want in debating education. The longer the 
better. But we are going to make sure that we are going to have a vote 
up and down on their amendment. This bill will not pass without a vote 
up and down. We can do it either nicely or whatever way they want to do 
it. We have that opportunity. We have that right to do it.


                        Privileges of the Floor

  Mr. KENNEDY. I ask unanimous consent that Connie Garner, Mark Taylor, 
and David Goldberg, legislative fellows in my office, be granted floor 
privileges during the consideration of the bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Chair recognizes the Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I support this amendment. I am an original 
cosponsor of this amendment offered by Senator Jeffords. I think it 
goes to the essence of what is very much the debate which we are about 
to embark on here in the Senate and as a country--at least at the 
Federal level--relative to where we are going in applying the resources 
of the Federal Government when it comes to education.
  Now, the President has come forward almost on a weekly basis with a 
new initiative. In fact, I doubt there is a week that has gone by, or 
even hardly a day that went by for a while--while we were in the 
impeachment trial, there was never a day that went by--without a new 
initiative on some subject. Now we are in a period where it is weekly.
  Many of those initiatives have been new ideas in the area of 
education, which would essentially centralize decisionmaking here in 
Washington; new programmatic ideas that would require Washington's 
imprimatur of approval before they can go forward, before a State can 
use them; new ways in which to move into the District of Columbia the 
control over our local schools and how local schools are either hiring 
teachers, building additional schools, doing their afterschool activity 
or exercising their initiatives in the area of dropouts.
  That is a philosophy of government, and I recognize that--the 
philosophy that all good ideas in education come from Washington, the 
philosophy that when you manage the schools at the local level, they 
should have significant influence from Washington in the decisions and 
in the process as to how they are run. That is not a philosophy I am 
attracted to, but it is clearly the philosophy of the other party and 
of this Presidency.
  Our position, as reflected in this amendment, is significantly 
different. Our position is that, first, before we start any other 
major, new programs in education in the Federal Government, new 
programs that put new costs and burdens on the local communities, we as 
a Federal Government have an obligation to live up to what we said we 
were going to do in the first place.
  One of the things we said we were going to do back in 1975 was to 
take care of special ed kids and pay 40 percent of the costs of special 
education at the local community level. That is one theory we have on 
our side. Let's do what we said we would do first, let's pay for what 
we said we would pay for first, before we add a bunch of new programs 
that may or may not be good ideas, but in any event which we don't have 
the resources for, unless you take them from programs that already 
exist at the Federal level.
  The second philosophy we have is that the local folks--teachers, 
parents, principals, school boards--know a heck of a lot more about 
education than we know here in Washington. I can name a couple of kids 
in my local school district because I know them, but I can't name all 
of them. I will bet you the principal at Rye Elementary School can name 
them and that he knows something about every child, knows some of the 
problems that child may have. Certainly, the teachers know that. They 
know what they need in order to address that child's concerns. Maybe 
Johnny Jones has a reading problem and they know he may have to get 
extra reading. If Mary Smith has a problem with attention, they know 
they have to get a specialist in for that. Maybe it is just as simple 
as they may need a computer in order to allow that child to get a 
little extra help that is self-initiated, or a little confidence in 
themselves. They know what their children need in order to educate them 
better. I don't. I can tell you that nobody down at the Department of 
Education knows, and nobody in this Senate knows better than the 
parents, teachers, and the principals what those children need in order 
to make them better students.
  I will tell you something else. As Republicans, we don't believe that 
folks here in Washington have more concern for those kids than their 
parents, teachers, and principals. That seems to be a philosophy we are 
hearing a lot--that in some way, somehow, because we have been granted 
the office of the Senate, or because we are serving in

[[Page S2252]]

the administration of a President, we suddenly have some knowledge or 
capability that gives us a better awareness and a more sincere desire 
to help a child than the parent of that child has, the teacher of that 
child has, the principal in that school has, or the school board has. 
That, to me, is a lot of hokum. But it is the philosophy, regrettably, 
that pervades the proposals that have come from this administration.
  So these are the fundamental differences we have, and they are joined 
in this debate over this amendment: One, that we as a government have 
an obligation to fund what we already have on the books; two, that 
better decisions are made at the local community level, not here in 
Washington; three, that we have no special portfolio or no special 
awareness, no higher level of concern for a child's education, than 
that child's teacher has, or that child's principal has, or that 
child's parent has.
  So this amendment says simply that, back in 1975, the Federal 
Government said it would pick up 40 percent of the cost of special 
education in this country. Well, as of 3 years ago, the Federal 
Government was only paying 6 percent of the costs of the special 
education in this country, and what did that do? What did that failure 
of the Federal Government to pay that additional 34 percent do to local 
schools?
  Essentially, what it did was it skewed the ability of the local 
school systems to deliver the educational efforts that they desired to 
deliver, because the local school districts were having to go out and 
use their tax base, whether was a property tax or a State broad-based 
tax; they were having to use their tax base to pay for the Federal 
share of special education. So they were basically taking dollars that 
they should have had available to them from their property taxes--in 
New Hampshire, for example--and instead of spending then on a new 
classroom, or a new teacher, or a new computer system, or new books, 
they were having to take those dollars and pay for the Federal share of 
the obligations to educate special ed children.
  Now, I happen to be a very strong supporter of special ed. I chaired 
a center for special needs children; I was president for many years. I 
am still on the board. I think 94-142 is one of the best laws this 
country has ever passed. One of the insidious aftereffects of the 
Federal Government's obligations to pay under 94-142--to pay its 40 
percent--is that I saw time after time, in school district after school 
district, a cost to my State--and I know it happens in other States 
because I have heard about it from other Senators--that the special 
needs child was confronted with other parents in the school system who 
felt that because so much money was being spent on the special needs 
child, and because so much of the local tax base was being used to help 
the special needs child, their children weren't getting an adequate 
education and their children were being unfairly treated.

  But it wasn't the special needs child's fault. That child was just 
getting the education they had a right to. It wasn't the fault of the 
parent of the special needs child, who usually got most of the abuse at 
the school meetings. They were just asking for what they had a right to 
have. They were being put in this terrible position of being confronted 
by other parents who were legitimately angry about the misallocation of 
resources, as they saw it. Why? Not because of anything the special 
needs child did, or the parents of the special needs child, but because 
the Federal Government refused to pay its obligation of picking up the 
40 percent of the cost of that child.
  So 3 years ago, under Republican leadership in this Senate, under the 
leadership of Senator Trent Lott, with a lot of effort by such people 
as Senator Jeffords from Vermont, myself, and Senator Collins from 
Maine, we made a commitment to do something about this, to pay our fair 
share of special needs. In fact, S. 1 in the last Congress said we were 
going to put ourselves, as a Congress, on a ramp that would allow us to 
pay special needs children the 40 percent. It would take us 10 years, 
but we would get there. Then we backed that up with appropriations. 
Senator Specter from Pennsylvania, 3 years in a row, has dramatically 
increased the funding for special needs, for IDEA--$740 million in the 
first year, $690 billion in the second year, and $509 billion last 
year. I think those are the numbers. It essentially has meant almost a 
doubling of the commitment to the special needs child by this Congress.
  Do you know something? The administration didn't support any of it. 
This administration, which is so committed to education, has not sent a 
budget up to this Congress in the last 3 years that has called for any 
significant increase in special ed. They are playing a shell game on 
education. What they are doing, in fact, is they are borrowing money 
that should be going to special ed in order to fund all these new 
initiatives, so that members of this administration can go across the 
country and say, ``I am for this new program,'' or, ``I am for that new 
one,'' ``We are going to put a billion dollars into that and $500 
million into that.'' Where do they get that money? They take it from 
the special needs child. How much did they ask for in new funding for 
special education in this budget? We presently spend $4.3 billion. On 
special education, how much did they ask for as an increase? $3.3 
million. That is what the administration asked for--$3.3 million out of 
a $4.3 billion budget, which only accounts for, by the way, out of that 
$4.3 billion, 11 percent of the cost of special education. We are 
supposed to be paying 40 percent.

  So, under this Republican Congress, we have taken it from 6 percent 
to 11 percent. That is good news. The bad news is, we still have a long 
way to go. The bad news is that still in every school district across 
this country, local school leaders, principals, PTAs, school boards, 
are having to take money they would have otherwise used maybe to add a 
teacher, maybe to build a building--where have we heard that before?--
maybe to do an afterschool program, maybe to put a computer in, to put 
an arts program in, a language program in. Instead of taking the money 
they would have used for those programs, they are having to take that 
money and having to use it to fund the gap that remains in the Federal 
obligation to pay for special education.
  Just yesterday, the Supreme Court in the Cedar Rapids case made it 
very clear that that gap isn't going to get smaller, it is going to 
accelerate dramatically, because the Supreme Court decided that, as a 
matter of education, the person had a right to health care while in the 
school system. Many of these children need extraordinary health care. 
Kids we dealt with in the center I was involved in required immense 
health care. So that is going to increase the cost of special education 
even further.
  What is going to happen for every dollar increase that comes about as 
a result of the need and as a result of this new Supreme Court 
decision? The local school district is going to fall further behind. It 
is going to have to take more taxes than it would have used to buy 
books and to add teachers and to build new buildings, more of those 
taxes, and have to move them and reallocate them to special education. 
So it is going to become worse. The situation is going to become worse. 
Why? Because this administration refuses to fund special education or 
even make an attempt to address it in any aggressive way. Instead, it 
comes forward with program after program after program, borrowing from 
special education funds to do that, and, as a result, leaves the 
special education child out on the street while it puts out its press 
releases.
  We are going to debate this, as the Senator from Massachusetts said. 
I look forward to that debate. If the Senator wants to filibuster the 
Ed-Flex bill, which has been supported in the last Congress, supported 
in this Congress, supported by the President, and is supported by 
members of both parties, a bipartisan bill, if he wants to filibuster 
the Ed-Flex bill, that is his choice. But the fact is that what he is 
really filibustering is special needs children. What he is 
filibustering is the ability of local communities to manage their 
dollars more effectively so that we take care of special needs children 
and the other children who are in our school system. It is ironic and I 
think inappropriate to filibuster. But it sounds as if that is what we 
are going to get. Ed-Flex, a program defended and supported in the last 
Congress by the majority of the Congress, a program supported by the 
President, a

[[Page S2253]]

program supported by the Secretary of State, is now going to be 
filibustered because people do not want to fund special education--a 
very interesting approach to government.
  Mr. President, I look forward to this debate, I look forward to a lot 
of it, because I do think that the American people need to learn just 
how irresponsible this administration has been on the funding of 
special education.
  Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, perhaps the good Senator didn't hear me. 
We are prepared to accept the amendment. So if there is no other 
speaker on it, we are prepared to vote on the amendment.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. KENNEDY. Yes.
  Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator accept this amendment on any other 
initiatives, which are appropriate, which are going to have funding for 
the purpose of education?
  Mr. KENNEDY. We have this bill up now. The Senator has offered the 
amendment. In behalf of this side, we are prepared to accept it right 
now.
  Mr. President, we are prepared to vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment?
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am pleased to be an original cosponsor 
of the amendment offered by Senator Jeffords. The amendment would 
require the federal government to make good on its commitment to fund 
special education before it made any additional promises it might not 
keep.
  When Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 
in 1975, the federal government made a commitment to the states and to 
the local school districts to help states meet the cost of special 
education. The federal government promised to pay each state 40 percent 
of the national average per capita cost of providing elementary and 
secondary education for each student receiving special education. For 
the school year 1996-1997, the national average expenditure was $5,913 
per student. The federal payment to the states, however, was only $636 
per student or slightly more than ten percent of the total cost and 
about one fourth of the $2,365 promised.
  We must meet our commitment to special education and end this 
unfunded mandate. Maine is promised $80 million by the Individuals with 
Disabilities Education Act. Yet, in 1998, it received less than $20 
million toward the $200 million federal law requires the state to spend 
on special education. In short, special education is an unfunded 
federal mandate of $60 million that must be met by the citizens of 
Maine through already burdensome state income and local property taxes. 
This accounts for millions of dollars annually that can not be used for 
school construction, for teacher salaries, for new computers, or for 
any other state effort to improve the performance of our elementary and 
secondary school students.
  We need to increase federal spending on education, but we do not need 
new federal categorical programs with more federal regulations and 
dollars wasted on administrative costs. Rather, we need to meet our 
commitment to bear our fair share of special education costs. As the 
Governor of Maine told President Clinton last week, ``If you want to do 
something for schools in Maine, then fund special education and we can 
hire our own teachers and build our own schools.'' This is true for 
every state. The best thing this Congress can do for education is to 
fully fund our share of special education and at the same time return 
control of the schools to the states and local communities by passing 
the Education Flexibility Act.
  These two actions will empower our states and communities to meet the 
challenge of improving schools. Instead of presuming that we in 
Washington know what is best for every school across the country, let 
us acknowledge that each of our individual states and towns knows what 
is needed on a state-by-state and community-by-community basis. I urge 
my colleagues to give our states and local communities the financial 
support they have been promised and the freedom to educate our students 
as they see fit. We can do this by adopting this amendment to fully 
fund the federal share of special education and then passing the Local 
Control of Education Act.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment 
offered by the Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________