[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 34 (Thursday, March 4, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2258-S2271]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            EDUCATIONAL FLEXIBILITY PARTNERSHIP ACT OF 1999

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.

                        Vote on Amendment No. 36

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the vote will now 
occur on the Jeffords amendment No. 36. The question is on agreeing to 
the amendment. The yeas and nays have been ordered. The clerk will call 
the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  The result was announced--yeas 100, nays 0, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 31 Leg.]

                               YEAS--100

     Abraham
     Akaka
     Allard
     Ashcroft
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Breaux
     Brownback
     Bryan
     Bunning
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Cleland
     Cochran
     Collins
     Conrad
     Coverdell
     Craig
     Crapo
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Enzi
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Fitzgerald
     Frist
     Gorton
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moynihan
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nickles
     Reed
     Reid
     Robb
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith (NH)
     Smith (OR)
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Torricelli
     Voinovich
     Warner
     Wellstone
     Wyden
  The amendment (No. 36) was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.


                  Amendment No. 37 To Amendment No. 35

(Purpose: To authorize additional appropriations to carry out part B of 
            the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act)

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

       The Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Lott), for Mr. Jeffords, 
     Mr. Gregg, and Ms. Collins, proposes an amendment numbered 37 
     to amendment No. 35.
       In Lieu of the matter proposed to be inserted, insert the 
     following:

     SEC.  .  AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

       In addition to other funds authorized to be appropriated to 
     carry out part B of the Individuals with Disabilities 
     Education Act (20 U.S.C. 1411 et seq.), there are authorized 
     to be appropriated $150,000,000 to carry out such part.

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, in view of the status of the amendments at 
this point, in order for the Members working on this legislation to 
have a chance to discuss how we can proceed, I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. I ask that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator from Kansas is recognized.
  (The remarks of Mr. BROWNBACK pertaining to the introduction of S. 
539 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced 
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, just to let the distinguished chairman and 
manager know, it is my understanding that the sponsor of the pending 
amendment does not wish at this time for it to be set aside. In lieu of 
remaining in a quorum call, Senator Smith and I have decided not to, in 
fact, ask for a vote on our amendment, but we would like to proceed to 
at least talk about it for a period of time, and then obviously we will 
not introduce it, and we will not, therefore, have to withdraw it.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. I have no problem as long as it is for debate only and 
it won't be offered. I have a request to limit Senators to 5 o'clock; 
apparently, there is something else that needs to be done at 5 o'clock.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am sure Senator Smith and I will be able 
to finish by that time----
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Fine, I have no objection.
  Mr. KERRY. Depending on how things proceed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am not sure it is subject to an objection 
anyway, since I have the floor. I believe I am entitled to speak.
  But that said, it may be that, depending on how things go with this 
bill overall, we may decide at an appropriate time that it is worth 
submitting the amendment, but I think we have to see what the flow is 
going to be with respect to this particular piece of legislation.
  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, was the unanimous consent agreed to, to 
end the quorum call?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. It was, and it would end this discussion and 
colloquy at 5 o'clock.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I yield such time as needed to my 
colleague, Senator Smith of Oregon.
  Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I thank Senator Jeffords for 
giving us this time, and my colleague, Senator Kerry, for his 
leadership on this issue. I also appreciate Senator Kerry's willingness 
to set aside some of the partisanship that divides us on this issue. 
There are too many good ideas that Republicans and Democrats share in 
common for us not to make significant progress on the issue that is on 
the minds of most parents, perhaps, more than any other--the education 
of their children.
  While Senator Kerry and I will not be introducing our amendment today 
to this legislation, I think it is important that we take this 
opportunity to raise the issue of principal training and development.
  After speaking with educators, parents, principals, and teachers in 
both Oregon and in Massachusetts, it became clear to Senator Kerry and 
I that our principals are too often not prepared to address the needs 
of our children. As Senator Kerry has said many times, we can't expect 
our schools to be well managed without good managers. It is time to 
provide our States and school districts with the resources to train our 
principals as managers.
  Our proposal would provide States the needed resources for the 
development and training of excellent principals, and the retraining of 
current principals to improve the way they manage our schools. This 
competitive principals' challenges grant will allow States to develop 
programs that focus on providing principals with effective 
instructional skills and increased understanding of the effective use 
of educational technology and the ability to implement State content 
performance standards.
  Throughout the debate on the Ed-Flex bill, we have heard a lot about 
the need for greater accountability. Our proposal does not expect the 
States to be accountable. Our proposal requires accountability. State 
educational agencies must specify how the Federal funds will be used 
for principal training programs, how the use of these funds will lead 
to improved student achievement and provide, through annual evaluation, 
evidence of such improvement having occurred.
  Importantly, this proposal does not dictate to the States how to 
implement these programs. Rather, it gives States the opportunity, the 
resources, and the support to create programs that meet the needs of 
every school district, rural and urban.
  Mr. President, as we continue to debate education reform in the 
Senate, I believe that we must include a component that reforms the way 
in which our

[[Page S2259]]

schools are managed. We have some excellent principals in our school 
districts in Oregon, in Massachusetts, and all over the country. We now 
have an opportunity to recruit excellent principals. They are the CEOs 
of our schools. We should ensure that every principal has the resources 
and training to be a successful manager.
  Senator Kerry and I believe that our principals' challenges grant 
proposal is a strong step toward improving the quality of education in 
our public schools, and we look forward to working with our colleagues 
during the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education 
Act.
  Again, I thank my colleague, Senator Jeffords, for allowing us time 
to speak on this issue and for his leadership on the Ed-Flex 
legislation.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues, Senator 
John Kerry and Senator Gordon Smith, in the amendment to establish the 
Excellent Principals Challenge Grant program, which seeks to address 
the critical professional development needs of elementary and secondary 
school principals. Last month, during a meeting with the Michigan 
Association of Secondary School Principals (MASSP), a major concern 
expressed by them was the lack of professional development programs for 
school principals. What the school principals of my State said was, 
just as with the teachers and students around them, they too must keep 
growing in order to continue to be effective leaders; and as 
individuals most responsible for implementing vision, direction, and 
focus for their schools, principals must be fortified with the best 
knowledge and skills required to effectively manage positive change, 
including being cognizant of the best ways in which to integrate 
technology into their schools so that it enhances learning in the 
classroom.
  These are the views of the dedicated school principals of my State, 
including Jim Ballard, MASSP Executive Director, Sandy Feuerstein of 
Adams Elementary School in Livonia, Barbara Gadnes of Brighton 
Elementary School in Brighton, Jerry Dodd of Edsel Ford High School of 
Dearborn and Bob Cross of Troy Athens High School in Troy, Michigan.
  This amendment would facilitate the professional development needs 
expressed by the principals of my State and principals nationwide. It 
would establish a competitive grant program to the States, to fund 
local school districts for implementation of professional development 
programs for K-12 school principals. Authorized funding would be $250 
million for each of the years FY 2000-FY 2004. State and local school 
districts would be expected to contribute 25 percent of the total cost, 
with the exception of the poorest school districts that would be exempt 
from the match. In addition, a commission would be created to study 
existing principal development programs and report on the best 
practices to train principals nationwide. Activities would include 
developing management and business skills, knowledge of effective 
instructional skills and practices, and learning about educational 
technology, which has been a special focus of mine in Michigan where 
I've brought together colleges and universities and other entities in a 
partnership to move towards making Michigan's standards for teacher 
training in the use of technology the nation's best.
  The expectations for our school principals are high. They are trusted 
to coordinate, assist and inspire teachers and students, while also 
monitoring their own personal growth. We must invest in our principals, 
who dedicate so much to investing in our children. This principal 
preparation program will allow principals to reach their full potential 
and at the same time, create public schools that are more organized, 
well-managed and modern. I urge my colleagues to support this 
amendment.
  Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brownback). The Senator from Massachusetts 
is recognized.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, we are currently gridlocked over the most 
important issue in the country today. I don't think anybody in this 
Chamber would question that what the U.S. Senate and the Congress 
chooses to do with respect to education is going to have more to do 
with determining the long-term transformation that can take place 
socially and politically in the long run in this country.
  We hear countless references within almost every political speech 
today to the impact of globalization, the impact of technology, the 
changes that have taken place in the marketplace and, indeed, the 
extraordinary numbers of challenges that people face in the workplace 
today. It is almost axiomatic to say that if you are going to earn a 
decent living in the United States, or anywhere in the world today, you 
have to be able to manage information; you have to be able to develop 
your thinking skills.
  We live in an information age. Most of the good service jobs and even 
good light manufacturing jobs, technology-oriented jobs, and certainly 
the kinds of jobs to which most people aspire at the upper levels of 
income are absolutely dependent on the maximization of that skill 
level.
  The truth is, however, that in the United States of America today 
about two-thirds of our high school graduates are handed a diploma 
although they can read only at a basic reading level. A basic reading 
level, according to our testing standards, is not a proficient reading 
level; it is just that--it is basic.
  One-third of the graduates of our high schools are at below basic 
reading level. It is extraordinary that 30 percent of all the students 
in our country who go to college begin college taking remedial courses 
to fix what they didn't do properly in high school--remedial writing, 
remedial math, remedial reading. And colleges are literally required to 
expend--some might argue, waste--a considerable portion of the 
collegiate experience bringing people up to the level that they should 
have been when a principal handed them a diploma--or the chairman of 
the school board, or whatever dignitary is there--handed them a 
diploma, and said, ``Congratulations. You are ready to go out into the 
world and earn conceivably a low-level income, or perhaps even minimum 
wage.''
  I don't think most of my colleagues would argue with the notion that 
the public school system of this country is in distress. That is why we 
have such a tension on the floor and in our politics between vouchers 
and some of the priorities of those who approach reform differently. 
Most of the debate last year on the floor of the U.S. Senate was 
focused on either the voucher solution--which is in the end not a 
solution at all to the problem of fixing public schools--or it focused 
on construction money and technology money but barely enough on the 
issue of accountability: How do we guarantee that reforms are put into 
the schools that are really going to make a difference in how students 
learn and in how we will know that they are in fact learning?
  So Republicans and Democrats talked past each other, each intent on 
their own sort of ideological goals, with the end result that the 
Congress did precious little to fix the schools, and another grade, if 
you will--the kids who went from the 11th to 12th, the kids who 
graduated from high school, the kids who went from middle school to 
high school, or elementary school to middle school--all were sort of 
pushed on in the same state of inadequacy that has characterized the 
school systems for too long.
  I know my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle want good 
schools. I have also become convinced that one of the things which most 
restrains them from joining in some of the Democrat initiatives is the 
conviction they have that without accountability, without adequate 
change in the fundamental structure, without adequate capacity to 
really push the envelope of reform, they would be spending good money 
that would be chasing bad. I have to say in all candor I don't disagree 
with that--that in many school systems, if all we do is throw money at 
the problem, we are not going to be achieving what we want.
  There is, however, something that has been happening in the United 
States for the last 10 years or more which we ought to take note of and 
respect. That is that the Governors of the States have been engaged in 
major reform efforts on their own. I think we in Congress ought to take 
more note of the legitimacy of the connection of the Governors and 
local governments to the same people who vote for us. They

[[Page S2260]]

are held accountable in the same way. The races for Governor across 
this country are, more often than not now, fought out over the issues 
of whether or not the incumbent or, in an open race, which candidate is 
going to provide the best educational opportunities to the kids of that 
particular State. Indeed, they are accountable in the same way that we 
are accountable for what we do.
  I believe we in the U.S. Congress ought to be perhaps a little more 
sensitive to and respectful of that process of political accountability 
and perhaps be a little bit more willing to try to trust the Governors 
to embrace a certain broad set of reforms that we could in fact target 
or articulate through the legislative process without becoming sort of 
management specific, without becoming so intrusive that we tend to have 
taken the discretion away from them, or in fact asserted ourselves in 
ways that begin to become ideologically divisive rather than 
constructive in how we are trying to find reform.

  There are many areas where we could do this. I think Senator Smith 
and I have been trying together to frame a bipartisan approach to how 
we might in fact unleash a remarkable level of creative energy within 
the school systems of our country. I thank Senator Smith for his 
willingness to reach out across the aisle and to also try to be 
thoughtful about what we could do that would most impact the schools of 
this country.
  Mr. President, there are a number of different experiments happening 
in different schools in America. Private schools have engaged in 
certain reforms. So, generally speaking, an awful lot of private 
schools have had an easier road to go down for a lot of reasons that 
are inherent in the nature of private schools. The nature of their 
student population, the ways in which they are able to manage, the sort 
of streamlined accountability that exists within a private school--
there are a whole series of reasons. But there are things we can learn 
from private schools. There are things we can learn from parochial 
schools.
  I often hear people say, ``Gee, go to any parochial school and look 
at the level of discipline you have,'' or, ``Go to a parochial school 
and you will find people teaching for less than you see them teaching 
in public schools, and they teach as effectively or perhaps more 
effectively in some cases.''
  The question is legitimately asked: How is it that in a parochial 
school you have this broad mix and diversity of student population 
sometimes found in the inner-city and you are able to do better than 
you are in a public school?
  There are some reasons for that, incidentally. There is a certain 
kind of creaming that takes place, inadvertently perhaps sometimes, 
even consciously, or just by virtue of economics, by virtue of even the 
small fee that people are required to pay, or the simple fact that to 
get to a parochial school, you need a parent involved in your life who 
is both sensitive enough and caring enough to get you there, to take 
you there, to make the decision to pull you out of the other school.
  For too many kids who are stuck in our school system, their parents, 
regrettably, are not that involved. They don't have those kinds of 
choices in front of them. They aren't aware of them. They do not know 
how to effect them. There are a whole lot of reasons you wind up with 
disparities between the schools. But the truth is that there are 
practices within a parochial school which could serve as a model for 
what we might try to adopt or try to implement in public schools.
  There are obviously charter schools. Charter schools are the reaction 
to what is happening in the public school system. Charter schools have 
grown because people are increasingly despairing of whether or not they 
will be able to achieve the changes they want in their public school. 
So charter schools come along, and all of a sudden people say, ``Oh, 
boy, we can escape from the albatross of bureaucracy. We can get out 
from under the sort of school board politics. We can finally put our 
kids in a classroom that doesn't have 28 or 33 kids. We are going to 
get the magic 12 to 18 or something.'' So people say, ``I am going to 
go for this opportunity,'' and so all of a sudden the charter school 
increases in popularity. It is a reaction to the failure of the public 
school system.

  But here is the most important thing of all. All across this country, 
in community after community after community, there are great public 
schools. There are public schools that work brilliantly. They are not 
failing; they are on the rise. And what they say to us is that if we 
pay enough attention to this and work hard enough at trying to fix the 
things that are broken, you can make a public school great.
  No one in this country should doubt that. Because most of the 
generation that went ahead of us, and the generation before that--
generations that are being extolled in book after book now: Tom 
Brokaw's ``The Greatest Generation'' or other books that are out--all 
of those generations, the vast majority of them, came out of public 
schools, public schools that faced a different set of problems than the 
public schools of today, and those public schools were able to respond.
  The bottom line is, and I will repeat this again and again and again, 
there are not enough private schools, there will never be enough 
charter schools fast enough, and there are not enough vouchers to save 
an entire generation of young people when 90 percent of the kids in 
America go to school in public schools. So the real challenge to the 
U.S. Senate is not to get locked up in a debate about vouchers and not 
to get locked up in a debate about some targeted narrow area of reform. 
The real challenge to the U.S. Senate is, can we come together around a 
broad set of reforms that will empower the States and local communities 
to be able to embrace the best practices of any of the schools that 
work, a public school that can look to any other school and draw on 
those practices and put them into place? And the bottom line truth is 
we are not going to do that without a major increase in resources.
  I was delighted to see that the Senator from New Mexico, Senator 
Domenici, recently embraced the notion that we should put somewhere in 
the vicinity of $40 billion into education over the next 5 years, and 
put it back in the States, liberating the States to be able to embrace 
real reform. I believe that is a minimum figure, but it is a figure 
that Senator Smith and I and others have talked about over the last 
year or so. That is the raw, essential ingredient necessary to 
guarantee the kind of broad-based massive reform effort that will help 
to guarantee the kind of education structure that we want.
  No one should doubt if you want a tax cut in America in the long run, 
invest in children today. If you want to stop the extraordinary 
increases in spending in the criminal justice system or for chronic 
unemployment or for drug abuse or for other problems that come out of 
our juvenile justice system, or a host of other areas, the best thing 
we could do is guarantee that kids are not running around the streets 
in the afternoon or going home to empty homes and apartments after 
school and getting into trouble, or not doing their homework. I don't 
know what happened to the fundamental notion of raising children: 
children need structure, and structure in the earliest stages can be 
provided in schools or in community centers when parents are working 
until late hours of the evening and are less available to take care of 
their kids than they were in the past.
  Within that context of reform, there are a number of things that 
could be done. They range from attracting stronger teachers by loan 
repayment programs or by incentives to draw the higher tiers of SAT 
scores into teaching for a period of time. There are a number of ways 
in which we could provide incentives to college graduates who come out 
of school with $50,000-plus of loans and who need desperately to earn a 
decent base income to raise a family and to get ahead. We could help 
supplement that capacity of school districts, particularly in low-tax-
base areas where they do not have the ability to do this on their own; 
we could help them get the best teachers, which is what we want. We 
could also help school districts deal with the problem of technology. 
We could also help provide the capacity for ongoing professional 
education or mentoring. We could help schools keep their doors open 
into the evenings. We could help turn schools into real centers of 
community learning for parent and child--alike, into the evening hours.

  But one of the most important things we could do--Senator Smith and I 
were

[[Page S2261]]

going to offer an amendment to the Ed-Flex bill on this--one of the 
most important things we could do is help deal with the problem of 
principals. In every blue-ribbon school that I have ever gone into, I 
have found that the first ingredient that hits you about why that 
school earned the blue-ribbon award, or why it is a singularly strong 
school within the public school system, is you will find a principal 
with extraordinary capacity. I could cite schools in Massachusetts--the 
Saltonstall School up in the North Shore, or the Jacob Hiatt School in 
Worcester, or the Timilty Middle School in Roxbury. In all of the 
schools where I found great learning going on and great enthusiasm, I 
found, without exception, it was a direct result of an extraordinary 
principal who was helping to drive the energy of that school.
  I think every one of us knows the great impact that a principal makes 
on a school--principals who are real leaders; principals who can build 
the vital relationships between teachers, parents, students and the 
community; principals who are trained and talented enough, when it 
comes to leadership and when it comes to management, to understand all 
the nuances of modern education and all the ways they can implement 
good practices within their school. Without a principal doing that, it 
is not going to happen.
  Here is the reality. As we talk about providing more flexibility in 
public education, which is what Ed-Flex does, and as we talk about 
turning over more control on the local level, we are really talking 
about providing greater responsibility to the 65,000 or so principals 
in our public schools.
  I would like to just point to this chart. This is how we approach the 
issue of training principals in America today. The fact is that less 
than half of the school districts in the United States have formal or 
on-the-job training or mentoring programs for new principals. That 
comes at a time when we have a greater need for new principals than we 
had, just as we have a need for new teachers.
  In the next 10 years, we need to hire 2 million new teachers. Mr. 
President, 60 percent of those new teachers have to be hired in the 
next 5 years. If we don't have an effective principal who is managing a 
school effectively and searching for those best teachers, we are not 
going to fulfill this extraordinary opportunity with the hiring that we 
ought to have, and we are not going to wind up implementing the reforms 
in the way we ought.
  Let me just quote the executive director of the National Association 
of Secondary School Principals. He said:

       Schools are going without principals, retired principals 
     are being called back to full-time work, and districts have 
     to go to great lengths to recruit qualified candidates.

  I believe that this is the unheralded crisis of our education system, 
the quality of our principals and their capacity to be able to lead and 
effect reform. It is remarkable that we currently provide so little 
assistance to the people we trust to do the most important job of 
education reform. I do not believe we can leave it to chance, that 
every single principal has received the training or the skills needed 
to be the kind of dynamic leader that education reform requires.
  As the National Association of Secondary School Principals said in 
their letter supporting this amendment:

       As the individuals most responsible for implementing 
     vision, direction, and focus for their schools, these leaders 
     must be fortified with the best sources of knowledge and 
     skills required to effectively manage positive change.

  If we want flexibility to have the kind of impact that I think 
everybody in the Senate wants, then we have to guarantee as best we can 
that we help the local communities be able to provide qualified 
principals in each school who can apply that freedom we are giving them 
to the work of raising student achievement. That is why Gordon Smith 
and I want to introduce a title of our legislation, the Excellent 
Principals Challenge Act, as an amendment to the Ed-Flex bill, as a way 
of investing in the school leadership that we need.
  The amendment that we contemplate would provide grants to the States 
to provide funds to our local school districts for ongoing education 
and training for our principals, to empower them to learn all the best 
management and business skills the private sector has to offer, and to 
gain a knowledge of the most effective teaching practices in the 
country. So even if the principals themselves have not been teachers, 
as many of them have not been within decades, they can work with the 
teachers on their staff to help kids learn and to really give our 
principals the knowledge they need about education technology so they 
can put to use the new modern instruments of teaching that are now 
coming to the classroom.
  We also need them to be able to seek out and build the collaboratives 
and the partnerships with business and with the high-tech community to 
graduate students who are genuinely ready for the information age.
  Our amendment would also commission a report on the best practices of 
the best principals in the country, create a sharing of best practices 
so that we really start documenting what works best, not in theory, but 
the reality of what happens in our classrooms, so that Governors and 
school board leaders and principals in the years to come can bring good 
ideas to scale in every principal's office in this country.
  These are really some of the most important investments that we can 
make, if we are going to trust that the reforms we want so desperately 
are going to be implemented in our schools. There are many people of 
talent who we should encourage to become principals of schools; people 
who have left the public sector, people who have left the military at a 
young age, but who have great leadership skills and leadership 
development. There are many other examples across this country--CEOs 
who have retired at an early age because they have been very successful 
with their companies. They have great management skills, great 
leadership skills. We should be reaching out to these people all across 
this country to ask them to come in and be part of the job of helping 
to save our schools.
  At an investment that we offer of simply $100 million a year, 
including a 25-percent matching grant required from States and local 
school districts, exempting our poor districts, we believe this 
investment will leverage the local energies so badly needed in order to 
invigorate new school leadership and make reform work across the 
country.
  I come from an Ed-Flex State. Based on what we have learned in 
Massachusetts, it is clear that we should increase the flexibility we 
give to our schools. I have also been willing to recognize, and I have 
learned that it is not just the flexibility that brings us reform. In 
fact, if you give flexibility, but do not have strong leadership in 
place, or you do not have the kind of capacity to put best practices in 
place from other school systems in the country, then you will not have 
reform, and flexibility itself will be given a bad name. You cannot 
bring about these kinds of comprehensive efforts without terrific 
leadership, and that leadership should come from, must come from 
principals within each school. It is the first and most important 
commitment.
  As the National Association of Secondary School Principals wrote in 
their letter of support, this amendment addresses the critical 
professional development needs of principals as they seek to improve 
learning for all students.
  I hope when the time comes, whether it is on this bill or conceivably 
in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, colleagues will join 
together in embracing not just the effort to provide a better avenue 
for stronger principals to come into the school system, but will 
embrace a set of reforms that will truly liberate our schools so that 
good thinking and common sense can take over from bureaucracy. I think 
we need a major overhaul of the current structure, but I think if the 
U.S. Congress were willing to hold out to our schools the most 
significant incentive grant proposal we have ever provided, we would 
see the most dramatic change at the fastest rate that we could ever 
contemplate. Whether it is the hiring of new, stronger teachers, 
whether it is the lowering of classroom size, whether it is providing 
the capacity for classrooms that do not currently exist, whether it is 
raising the capacity of our principals, or even implementing the 
standards we know we need to measure student performance or even

[[Page S2262]]

teacher performance, these things are the sine qua non of any kind of 
legitimate education reform.
  It is time for the U.S. Senate to embrace real reform, not another 
set of Band-Aids, not a simple little trinket here and a simple little 
trinket there that satisfies one political party or another or one 
constituency or another. A broad-based reform ought to be something 
that we can all understand.
  I hope we can cross the aisle and build the kind of coalition of 
bipartisanship that will make this the year of genuine education reform 
in the country. We have talked about it for too long. We have lost too 
many kids to the lack of our capacity to build that coalition. Now is 
the time to make it happen.
  Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I think there is something that is going 
to happen at 5:00. I am going to talk for a while and wait and see if 
the leaders can resolve the little stalemate we have going on on the 
floor right now.
  Title I is a very important program in Nebraska. It serves somewhere 
between 37,000 and 38,000 students, but costs us about $800 per student 
per year. We have about 80 schools that have schoolwide Title I 
programs and about 350 that are in the targeted program.
  One of the concerns I have in general with education is, we typically 
are fighting with peanuts. I do not mean to say that $8 billion is 
peanuts, but relative to the cost of some of our larger programs we 
rarely debate around here, Title I is still a relatively low-cost 
program.
  By that I mean, one of my issues since I have come here to the U.S. 
Senate has been to try to alert both the people of Nebraska, as well as 
the people in the Senate, that we have a tremendous problem with our 
growing mandatory programs: Social Security, Medicare, the long-term 
portion of Medicaid. I must say I am not very pleased with the progress 
of that debate this year. We are fighting ourselves with a significant 
amount of constraint in discretionary spending. There is a big debate 
going on right now whether we ought to lift the budget caps that are 
currently imposed to $574 billion for this year for budget outlays. One 
of the reasons there is pressure on that is these mandatory programs 
continue to take a larger and larger share of the total budget.
  For all the talk about Medicare in the last few years, you would have 
thought we cut it. During the 1997 balanced budget agreement, I know 
many people were concerned that we were cutting Medicare. Medicare 
continues to go up about $20 billion per year over the next 10 years. 
We have to decide, it seems to me, if we are going to maintain laws 
that place a minimal amount of restriction on business, that keep kind 
of an entrepreneurial spirit alive and well in the United States of 
America. I am in favor of cutting some of the regulations we have on 
business today. We do not impose a great deal of restriction on what 
people are required to do with their employees.
  We have minimum wage laws, but, beyond that, we do not require health 
insurance and we do not require pensions like many other nations do. If 
we are going to do that, it seems to me we are going to have to 
reexamine the fundamental laws we have governing our so-called safety 
net. That is going to lead us, it seems to me, both to change the 
structure of our Social Security system as well as to change the 
structure of our health care system.
  Unfortunately, what happens is, we get terrified about the time an 
election shows up, and we get concerned about whether or not changing 
eligibility age or some other adjustments in the cost of these programs 
will enable us to survive an election. As a consequence, we rarely take 
any action.
  Indeed, I must say the President's budget, though it is attractive in 
many ways, has a couple of significant flaws that make this problem 
even worse, in my view at least. The biggest flaw is that the President 
requires us to take the surplus and exchange publicly held debt and 
transfer it over to, in one place, the Medicare trust fund, the other, 
the Social Security trust fund--nearly 65 percent I believe the total 
number is. What this is going to do is give people who are eligible 
either for an old-age benefit or health care benefit out in the future 
a larger and larger claim than they have even now on our taxes.
  I say that preliminarily, because I examined the Title I program 
considerably in my State and I see it is doing a great deal of good. It 
is not just being used for low-income people, although free and 
reduced-price lunch guidelines mean schools that have incomes of 
$31,000 for a family of four would qualify. Mr. President, $31,000 is 
typically Mom and Dad--at least in my community--both out there working 
like mad, trying to make ends meet. It is not what people would think 
of when they think of traditional ``poor'' folks. In this case, we have 
more poverty on a percentage basis in rural Nebraska than we do in 
urban Nebraska, and, as a consequence, these Title I funds are 
enormously important. They are like a lifeline. There are 37,000 
students being served by it. That is about 17,000 short of the total 
who are eligible. We have another 17,000 schoolchildren out there who 
are eligible, by Federal guidelines, to be assisted.
  As you examine what is being done by these schools, how they are 
using these basic grants and the concentration grants, you can begin to 
get an idea not only of the problems that are being faced but the need 
that is there and the good that gets done if we are able to provide 
these Title I funds.
  Under the Ed-Flex bill, which I like a lot, we are granting the 
States some additional flexibility which will be enormously helpful in 
my State, especially in the rural areas. I have been using this piece 
of legislation as an opportunity to work with the Department of 
Education to get them to help Nebraska--in fact, get a waiver to help 
us develop our Title I plan, using the standards and assessment of the 
local districts. The State would approve those local plans, but it is 
not quite a State plan.
  We have been having difficulty getting that waiver, and I thank the 
Department of Education for helping us accomplish this goal. Secretary 
Riley has been enormously helpful in that regard. It gives us another 
window into the problems we are facing right now of children of lower-
income working families.
  Understand that the world has changed considerably. I graduated from 
high school in 1961, just shortly before the ice started to recede back 
up into the North. In 1961, three-fourths of my graduating class went 
right into the workforce. There were good jobs available in 1961 that 
supported a family at the Havelock shops for Burlington Northern, at 
Goodyear, at Western Electric, the new AT&T plant that just opened up 
in Omaha. They were good jobs. The rule was, you went out and got a 
job. That job supported your family. You did a little time in the 
service. You came back from the service. The job was there, and you 
worked at it for the rest of your life.
  Mr. President, a third of our high school graduates who are going 
straight into the workforce today find a much different situation. I 
support free trade. I want our laws to provide us with free trade 
opportunities. But that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on these 
young people to compete in a global economy in a way that I was not 
required to do when I graduated in 1961.

  I would like to keep the restrictions on business to a minimum so 
that we can grow our economy and allow entrepreneurs and the energy of 
the entrepreneur community to create new jobs and wealth in America. 
But if we are going to have both of those things, it seems to me what 
we have to do is be very diligent in the first place about being 
willing to tackle these mandatory programs where a larger and larger 
share of our budget is going, but we are also going to have to be 
willing to invest in these young people and give this lifeline to the 
State and local educators who are trying to make Title I a program that 
does, in fact, give our young people the reading skills, the math 
skills, and the other skills they are going to need when they graduate 
from high school.
  I am very much troubled about that one-third of the class who are now 
going right from high school into the workforce with the kind of skills 
that they have, given what the marketplace is asking them to have in 
order to get the kind of job they are going to need to support their 
families.

[[Page S2263]]

  Title I is one of the bills that has been mentioned repeatedly here 
on the floor of the Senate, especially by people who are concerned 
about the impact of this Ed-Flex bill--I believe Ed-Flex is going to 
enable us to make Title I an even better program than it is right now. 
Now Title I is one of those programs that has a name on it, a number on 
it--I know when I talk to educators, I sometimes have to get a 
translator to tell me what exactly they are talking about--but it also 
has people behind it.
  When you see the impact of Title I, at least in my communities, it is 
a program that not only deserves to be supported, Mr. President, but, 
in my judgment, when we reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act, we need to find a way to put more money into Title I.
  We made significant reform in 1994 requiring standards to be 
developed, requiring assessments to be developed. We made it a much 
better program. But in my State there are 17,000 eligible kids whom we 
cannot serve simply because we don't have enough money to get the job 
done.
  There are few programs right now in education--in fact, there is none 
in education-- that I believe does more in my State to help our 
children acquire the skills they are going to need when they graduate 
and go into the workforce to earn the kind of living they will need to 
support a family and to achieve the American dream.
  I see the distinguished chairman has walked back on the floor. I am 
prepared to yield the floor.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. The Senator has until 5.
  Mr. KERREY. I cannot possibly talk for another 20 minutes, so I yield 
the floor.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I would like to state where we are and 
what we hope to accomplish the rest of the day.
  Unfortunately, we have broken down in the sense of being able to 
efficiently and effectively consider amendments on the Ed-Flex bill.
  I remind everyone, the Ed-Flex bill is a very limited bill which is 
supposed to assist States to manage their educational systems better by 
having a waiver capacity in title I particularly.
  Just to give some examples of what we run into on that bill, at this 
point the State of Vermont has found with Ed-Flex--we are one of the 
six States that has Ed-Flex--to be at a great advantage in making 
modifications without the necessity of a waiver, and those 
modifications can be made within the State.
  What this does is allow, in certain circumstances where we have 
specific percentages set forth which must be reached or you cannot do 
certain things--.5 percent is an important one with respect to poverty. 
Thus, communities that have slightly less than .5--say in our case like 
.48--it is just impossible for you to do anything even with the next-
door school which has .5. And there is no reason why those schools 
should be treated differently. You have to have waiver authority for 
that outside of the State.

  So this bill just makes it so much better for Governors to be able to 
administer and to be able to take advantage of Federal programs within 
their States. Thus, it really isn't creating for us any problem at all. 
That is all we are talking about.
  I want to keep reminding people that this bill is something which the 
Governors, every single Governor wants, and I think everyone here in 
the Senate should.
  I understand Senator Murray would like some time. I would be happy to 
yield to her if I could regain the floor at 4:55. Would that be all 
right?
  Mrs. MURRAY. I would be happy to yield the floor to the Senator at 
4:55.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield the floor with the understanding I can regain 
the floor at 4:55.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Santorum). The Senator from Washington is 
recognized.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I thank the Presiding Officer and thank my colleague for 
yielding me time.
  Mr. President, I was out here earlier today to talk about the issue 
of class size. And we are currently discussing the Ed-Flex bill which 
is a bill that simply means the Federal Government transfers its 
paperwork to the State governments in terms of flexibility in allowing 
the school districts to have waivers for different requirements, which 
I do not oppose, and I think a number of our colleagues will support 
that.
  But what is really expected of us in today's world, where parents and 
students and teachers and business leaders and community leaders are 
asking us to deal with education, is to deal with issues that really 
make a difference in the classroom and in learning.
  I will be offering my amendment, as a 6-year effort, to help school 
districts hire 100,000 new, well-trained teachers in grades 1 through 
3. I talked a little bit about that this morning. I wanted to come to 
the floor this afternoon because one of the questions surrounding 
reducing class size is whether it is really connected to learning.
  When I offer my amendment, I will be talking about four different 
issues which I think are important reasons that we do this:
  First, that it is a bipartisan effort. This is an effort that we 
began last October. It was supported by Democrats and Republicans. It 
was supported in both Houses, and it was supported by the 
administration. We all told our school districts across this country we 
were going to help them reduce class size. They are now putting their 
budgets together, and we need to show them that in a bipartisan way we 
are going to continue this partnership and reduce class size.
  Second, I will be talking about research. I will be talking more 
about that in just a minute. So I will come back to that.
  The third reason to do this is that there is broad public support. I 
hear from law enforcement officers, I hear from business leaders, I 
hear from teachers, I hear from school board members, I hear from 
parents, in particular, and I hear from young people that reducing 
class size is critical and that we need to be a part of the solution on 
this.
  Finally, I will next week talk about the fact that there is a 
compelling policy reason to pass this amendment now. That is because 
school districts across this country, school board members, are making 
their decisions about their budgets right now. They need to know 
whether last October was just a fluke. Was last October just a 
political message because of the election or are we really committed to 
class size reduction?
  I will be talking about all of those arguments next week. But this 
afternoon I really want to focus on the research because I think it is 
very important that we show why class size reduction really works.
  Mr. President, I have behind me a chart which shows that K-12 
enrollments are at record levels. That is why we need to deal with this 
issue. If you will look, we have gone from 45,000 in 1985 and will go 
all the way up to just under 55,000 in the year 2005. Our school 
districts are dealing with jammed class sizes, and they are going to 
get worse if we do not begin to deal with this issue.
  All last year, when I talked about my amendment on class size 
reduction, I talked about research and what it shows. I referenced a 
1989 study that was done of the Tennessee STAR Program, which compared 
the performance of students in grades K through 3 in small and regular-
sized classes. They found that students in small classes significantly 
outperformed other students in math and reading; every year, at all 
grade levels, across all geographic areas, students performed better in 
math and reading.
  Ask any businessman out there, ask anybody who is hiring a student, 
ask any teacher, ask any professional, and they will tell you, we need 
to focus on math and reading in our young students. Reducing class size 
makes a difference. We knew that from the 1989 study.

  A followup study of that STAR Program in 1995 found that students in 
small classes in grades K through 3 continued to outperform their peers 
at least through grade 8. They followed these kids, if they started in 
1989, and they continued into 1995 outperforming their peers, with 
achievement advantages especially large for minority students.
  Other State and local studies have since found that students in 
smaller

[[Page S2264]]

classes outperform their peers in reading and math, perform as well or 
better than students in magnet or voucher schools, and that gains are 
especially significant among African American males.
  Mr. President, many of our colleagues have come to the floor decrying 
the state of education and talking about the performance of our 
students in math and in reading. Small class sizes make a difference; 
students perform better. A 1997 national study by Educational Testing 
Service found that smaller class sizes raise average achievement for 
students in fourth- and eighth-grade math, especially for low-income 
students in ``high-cost'' regions.
  Particularly of note in the 1997 ETS study was the finding that in 
eighth grade the achievement effect comes about through the better 
discipline and learning environment that the smaller class size 
produces. As policymakers try to make decisions that will affect 
students in the critical years of middle school, class size makes a 
difference in terms of behavior and academic achievement. Class size in 
those early grades transfers to better achievement in the middle 
grades.
  Mr. President, there is good news. These students who were followed 
in 1985 have continued to be followed, and many of them have now 
graduated or are just graduating. And last week--just last week--on 
February 25, I received letters from the head researchers who have been 
studying the success of the STAR project. As of June of 1998, most of 
the students from STAR have graduated. A pilot study showed that ``more 
[of these] students from small classes [in the early grades] had 
enrolled in college-bound courses (foreign languages, advanced math and 
science), and had higher grade point averages than students who 
attended regular or regular-aide classrooms.
  ``The findings also suggested that small-class students''--students 
who have been in small class sizes in the early grades --``progress 
through school with fewer special education classes, fewer discipline 
problems, lower school dropout rates, and lower retention rates than 
their peers who had attended regular-size and regular-size classrooms 
with teacher aides.''
  Mr. President, they are now showing us that not only did it make a 
difference when they were in kindergarten, first, second, and third 
grades because they were in a small class size, but it made a 
difference when they graduated. It made a difference on whether or not 
they went on to college. It made a difference with their grades. It 
made a difference with their learning.
  I have behind me a quote from a letter by Helen Pate-Bain and Jayne 
Boyd-Zaharias, who were part of the STAR research. They said, ``We can 
say with full confidence that the findings of this landmark study fully 
support class size reduction.'' These are the researchers who have been 
following these young kids who are now graduating. And they began in 
early grades some years ago.
  They said students from small classes--this is what their research 
shows--enrolled in more college-bound courses, such as foreign 
languages and advanced math and science. These were kids who came from 
small classes. They were confident when they graduated. They knew these 
tough subjects. And they felt qualified to go on and enroll in tougher 
courses as they went on, because they had a smaller class size when 
they were younger. They learned the skills they needed. They got the 
confidence they needed. They had the one-on-one with an adult that 
allowed them to go on to these kinds of courses. Students from small 
classes had a higher grade point average. They did better in school. 
Learning, small classes: Completely connected. They had fewer 
discipline problems.
  You can ask why. I can tell you as a former teacher and a parent of 
kids in public schools and having been out there many, many times with 
young kids, when you pay attention to a child when they are having a 
discipline problem, and you deal with it directly, then you can move on 
and not continue to have a child with a discipline problem. If you are 
in a large class with 30 kids, you can't pay attention enough to those 
kids who have learning difficulties or who are just needing attention, 
and they tend to be discipline problems later. And this study backs 
this up. Students from small classes have fewer discipline problems.
  Finally, they had a lower dropout rate. These students from small 
classes stayed in school. Students in smaller classes, especially 
minorities and low-income students, are more likely to take college 
admission tests. The chart shows this. The graph on the left is large 
classes; on the right is small classes. Looking at all students, if you 
were in a small class, you are much more likely to take college 
admission tests.
  Students in smaller classes had significantly higher grades in 
English, math and science. Again, how many times have we heard from our 
colleagues on the floor that we need to make significant gains in 
learning, particularly in English, math and science. Talk to any 
business leader today. They will tell you they are looking to hire 
students who come out of our K-12 programs who have a good, solid 
background in English, math and science. Smaller classes meant higher 
grades in every part of the study.
  Dr. Krueger said:

       These results suggest that reducing class size in the early 
     grades for at least one year--especially for minority or low-
     income students--generates the most bang for the buck.

  No surprise.
  I will be offering an amendment to make our commitment to reduce 
class size continue over the next 6 years. This is a commitment we made 
last October. We need to continue to stand behind it.
  We have teachers, we have school boards, we have communities, we have 
businesses, we have young students out there today who know what these 
studies show--that it will make a difference if we reduce class size. 
We need to do this now. We need to keep our commitment.
  It is going to be bipartisan. If we don't get it done today, I will 
keep doing it until we get it done, because it is the right thing to 
do. We hear a lot of rhetoric on the floor about education. We hear 
that we need to make a difference. My amendment will make a difference. 
Ask any parent, ask any teacher, ask any student.
  I thank my colleague from Vermont for yielding me the time, and I 
look forward to the debate we will have next week on this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, my understanding is that under the 
present situation we are in debate only until 5 o'clock, is that 
correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no formal order to that effect, 
though there is an understanding to that effect.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. That is no problem. I will go forward under either 
circumstance and do the same thing.
  I certainly commend the Senator from the State of Washington for 
presenting the results of the study. I understand that is the only 
study that has been done. Obviously, considerable effort was put into 
doing that.
  Again, I emphasize, as I have to all Members, that I want to keep 
this bill, the Ed-Flex bill, clear of amendments in order that we can 
expedite its passage. This will have good reception in the House. I 
want to get this done so the Governors can, as soon as possible, have 
the flexibility to be able to handle the problems created in the 
present law--especially title I.
  I am not going to accept any amendments that are related to the 
elementary and secondary education reauthorization. Otherwise, we will 
be here all the rest of this year talking and blocking all other 
legislation because we cannot get this little Ed-Flex bill out, which 
is small but is really important. I have alerted everyone that I will 
not accept and will oppose any amendments which are related to the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization on which we are 
presently holding hearings. We have already had several hearings and we 
will have more hearings. To do it piecemeal, as Members are attempting 
to do, to do things in this piecemeal fashion before we have held the 
necessary hearings is very counterproductive at this particular time.
  Also, I remind Members, for those amendments which do set forth an 
authorization for the expenditure of funds, I will second degree those

[[Page S2265]]

amendments and have that money go not to the intended purpose of the 
amendment but, rather, to fully fund the IDEA; that is, money for 
special education. If there is a shortfall in funding, there is no 
question that the shortfall in funding is in IDEA.
  Behind me, Senators can see a chart that demonstrates how incredibly 
stingy the Federal Government has been in meeting its obligations. I 
was on the committee that wrote the original IDEA in 1976, and I 
remember when we made the pledge to make sure that the Federal 
Government was responsible for 40 percent of the cost of special 
education. As Members probably realize by this time, yesterday a 
Supreme Court decision greatly expanded the potential for expenditure 
of funds by saying that under IDEA, we have the obligation now--the 
States do; I think the Federal Government as well--to pay for health 
care costs related to special education children. That is a great 
expansion of the present situation.
  This is not a mandate, as someone called it, of the Federal 
Government. This is a constitutional requirement. Any State that offers 
free education must offer the free and appropriate education to special 
education children. Thus, this is a constitutional requirement which we 
agreed to pay 40 percent.
  Now, what our goal is--the Republican goal--we have increased the 
funding by some 85 percent over the last 3 years. That was all done by 
Republicans for the purpose of trying to get us closer to that 40 
percent that we agreed to do back in 1976.
  I want to make that clear as we try to move forward on this bill. I 
know there are a number of amendments that have been put forward 
contrary to my feeling that we should not be amending the Elementary 
and Secondary Education Act until such time as we have held the 
appropriate hearings, and that we should only concentrate on the Ed-
Flex bill to free the Governors of the kind of complications they have 
now with respect to trying to get through the maze of regulations, in 
order to free up flexibility to help more of their communities with the 
limited funds they have.
  Hopefully, we will be offering an amendment in the not-too-distant 
future that will assist in moving toward improving the Ed-Flex bill, so 
that we can bring it to an end and be able to pass it out in an 
expeditious way to help the States be able to handle the problems from 
which they are suffering.
  I am hopeful Members will understand. I hope my friends on the other 
side of the aisle will not try to take advantage of this opportunity to 
prematurely amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I hope 
they will wait until the hearings are finished, and until such time as 
we have an orderly process, to delineate what the new Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act should contain.
  In a moment I will send an amendment to the desk in order to make 
progress on the Ed Flex bill. This amendment is drafted to the text of 
S. 280 rather than the pending substitute. Members should be aware that 
we will vote shortly after that--depending, of course, on debate--in 
relation to the amendment.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Will the Senator from Vermont yield for a question?
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Not at this point. I am ready to offer the amendment.


                            Amendment No. 38

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

       The Senator from Vermont [Mr. Jeffords] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 38.
  In the language proposed to be stricken by amendment No. 31, at the 
appropriate place insert the following:

     SEC.   . PUBLIC NOTICE AND COMMENT.

       The Secretary of Education shall prescribe requirements on 
     how States will provide for public comments and notice.

  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I move to table the amendment.
  Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is not a sufficient second.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. 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.
  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.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator 
from Arkansas be allowed to speak and that the vote occur at 5:15.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Arkansas is recognized.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I am delighted to be here today to speak 
on behalf of one of the issues that I think is the most important to 
our Nation. The great philosopher Edmund Burke once said, ``Education 
is the cheap defense of nations.'' So I think it is appropriate that we 
have moved on to education after last week's discussions about military 
spending. I tend to maybe disagree with some of my colleagues over 
there. I do think this is a very important issue to be discussing right 
now in the context of all of the different things we can be doing on 
behalf of our children, which I do think are our greatest resource.
  Investing in our children is the best national investment we could 
possibly make at this stage of the game. Giving our children the tools 
to succeed is a valuable investment in the success of our workforce and 
the resulting economy.
  Schools are not just buildings where children and teachers spend 
their days. Our schools serve as the cornerstone of our neighborhoods, 
and they are the most basic building blocks that our children need to 
compete in the future and in the coming 21st century. There is no doubt 
that our time is very well spent in this debate here not only on the 
issue of Ed-Flex and being able to give States and school districts 
flexibility to be able to produce the best workforce possible, but it 
is also a great time for us to be speaking in the context of all issues 
related to education--certainly, increasing our teachers and making 
sure that we have the proper infrastructure.
  We all have our particular areas in education of great importance, 
and certainly, we all represent different areas in the country that 
have specific needs. But we must ensure that as we discuss any 
legislation to repair our educational infrastructure, our school 
buildings, and classrooms, that we remember the needs of rural areas as 
well as urban areas.
  We must also do our best to equip all classrooms with the proper 
wiring and equipment so all of our children can ride the information 
highway, not just those in urban areas. When I served in the House of 
Representatives, I worked on the telecommunications conference, and I 
recognized how absolutely vital it was for us in rural America to have 
an interest ramp onto that information highway.

  Let's not overlook the importance of parental involvement in our 
educational reform discussions here. When parents read with children 
each night and help them with their homework, they reinforce what their 
children have learned during the day. This is so totally appropriate, 
not only that we are talking again about the flexibility we can provide 
States and districts but of every aspect of education. And if we spend 
the first 2 months of this session talking about education and 
reinvesting in our children, it is certainly worth it.
  Teachers will certainly have greater success in the classroom if 
parents are doing their part as well. We have a great example in 
northwest Arkansas of a family night constructed by a school district 
to help bring together fellowship in that school area with parents, 
local businesses, superintendents, principals, administration, teachers 
and students to come together in fellowship and understand their school 
community and how important that school community is to the overall 
community.
  My sister and many of my other relatives are teachers. They have 
talked to me about the importance of getting

[[Page S2266]]

our children ready to learn. When you have a classroom of 5-, 6- and 7-
year-olds who come in and are hungry or scared or they are sick, they 
can't possibly learn. School nutrition is absolutely vital to our 
children if they are going to be able to learn, to take on the tools 
they are going to need to be competitive. It is absolutely essential. I 
have met with teachers who have told me for years they could do their 
jobs better if they also weren't subbing as psychologists, doctors, and 
disciplinarians.
  There is so much we can do. We can fill our time and our debate here 
with investing in that great resource of our children. These teachers 
have also told me one of the most important things we can continue to 
do is, again, reinforce those nutrition programs in our school 
districts. I have done some of that debate in our recent hearing this 
week in the Agriculture Committee, and I hope we will continue debating 
what an important role that plays in this discussion we have here.
  As we discuss ways to empower teachers and improve teacher quality, 
let's try to support our teachers with resources so they can deal with 
the troubled children who are in our Nation's schools today. Whether 
children were born with the side effects of crack cocaine, or have 
witnessed domestic violence at home, or are tempted by others to smoke, 
these problems affect their performance in the classroom, and we must 
be focusing on how to eliminate those temptations to our children. 
Reducing class size is the first step toward helping our teachers deal 
with these issues, both being able to get the students' attention, but 
more importantly, to be the best teachers they can possibly be.
  It is important that we move quickly to put 100,000 new teachers into 
the classrooms because school districts are making hiring decisions 
right now for the fall. That is what makes that issue important and a 
part of this legislation that we are discussing right now.
  In my own State of Arkansas, like many of the other States that are 
represented here, a majority of our teachers are beginning to retire. 
We are losing a large number of our teachers over the next few years to 
retirement, and if we don't address the issue of teacher recruitment 
right now, we are going to be in serious trouble in many of our States.
  We will not have the qualified teachers to be able to teach our 
children, to nurture them in what it is that they need to be 
competitive in the future.
  I certainly appeal to my colleagues that all aspects of education 
must be addressed, and must be addressed as quickly as we can, because 
we certainly at this point must recognize that this greatest resource 
of ours, our children, and our future in this Nation are in jeopardy if 
we are not doing all we can in this debate to provide the best 
education possible for our children.
  Let's reverse the unfortunate road and trend of fewer young adults 
pursuing a career in education. Let us work towards giving teachers the 
incentive not only in pay but in stronger classrooms, smaller sizes, 
and a better capability of reward in what it is that they are there to 
do, and that is to teach our children.
  I thank my colleague for bringing this issue up. I am very supportive 
and have been an original cosponsor of Ed-Flexibility. But, more 
importantly, I think it is extremely appropriate for us to be 
discussing these issues of education. I hope we will continue this 
discussion and continue to improve this bill with so many of the 
opportunities that we have before us.
  I thank the Chair.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, will the Senator be good enough to yield 
for a question?
  Mrs. LINCOLN. I am glad to yield.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I want to thank the Senator for her statement and for 
her excellent summation of some of the challenges that are facing the 
children of her State, and also across this country.
  The Senator has spoken to the members of our Health and Education 
Committee about some of the challenges that exist in the rural areas of 
her State, particularly in terms of ensuring that those children have 
access to the types of technologies which are commonplace in so many of 
our schools--not commonplace enough, but at least are important tools 
for learning--and to make sure that they have teachers who are going to 
know how to use those technologies in ways that might be taught in 
those schools.
  I know this has been one of the special areas she has been interested 
in based upon her own visits to a number of the different communities 
across Arkansas. I want to indicate to her that we look forward to 
working closely with her on that issue as well as other issues. It is a 
matter of very significant importance. We welcome the chance, as we 
have talked with her about her concerns about education, to make sure 
that these items are given priority.
  I thank the Senator.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. I appreciate my colleague's concern. I would like to 
express to him--and I think it is probably the sentiment of many of the 
Senators from rural States--having visited with some of my 
communications workers on the technical aspects of what we need to do 
in order to bring our schools and the infrastructure up to the level 
where they are actually going to be able to house these wonderful 
pieces of technology and computers, that we have to bring those 
buildings up to standard if we don't want to create fire hazards by 
overwiring classrooms to try to accommodate equipment that we are not 
prepared for in the buildings. We really have to focus on that kind of 
investment and infrastructure in our classrooms. I have certainly seen 
it, traveling rural America--the problems that we see out there. I am 
dedicated to making sure that all of our children of this Nation 
receive that help.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Generally speaking, we understand from the various 
General Accounting Office reports that there is about $125 billion 
worth of needs for our schools, K through 12, to bring the buildings 
and facilities up to safety standards and to meet other kinds of codes. 
In many different communities, whether it is urban or, as the Senator 
pointed out, rural, there are not sufficient resources to help. Those 
communities can help somewhat. The State can help somewhat. But they 
are looking for a partner. At least I find that is true in my own 
State. We are going to have an opportunity to address that particular 
need, to try to figure out how we can best partner with the State and 
local communities and work with those in the rural areas as well as the 
urban areas.

  I want to give assurance to the good Senator that we want to work 
very closely with her as we try to work through this process. I believe 
we can take some important steps in this Congress in that area. We look 
forward to her insight and her assistance in doing so.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. I appreciate my colleague, although he probably grew up 
as a city boy, understanding the needs of us in rural America. It is 
very important to us. We really appreciate it.
  (Laughter.)
  Mr. KENNEDY. I accept that definition. I have not been described in 
that way, but I am glad to be described in that way.
  I thank the good Senator.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. I thank the Senator. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote be 
postponed until 5:20 and that Senator Burns be able to proceed for 5 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Vermont and my good 
friend from Massachusetts. It won't take me long to make a couple of 
points before we go into the vote, because I think everybody wants to 
wrap up and get out of here for Thursday evening.
  I am pleased to cosponsor and support this Ed-Flexibility Act. I want 
to make a couple of points. I want to thank our good friend from 
Tennessee, who a couple of years ago really elevated the awareness on 
the importance of this issue. The report that he prepared stands to be 
read by everybody.
  I don't know if everyone visits schools when they go home. But for 
the week that I was home a couple of weeks ago, I had two or three 
chances to go into some high school assemblies and to talk with some 
teachers. The problem they are incurring is that they teach for a half-
day and then they spend the rest of that day on paperwork compliance.
  I think this is a very first step where teachers and parents and 
principals can

[[Page S2267]]

make some very vital decisions on the education they want to give our 
children. All 50 States have the ability to grant individual school 
districts waivers from selected Federal education requirements, like 
title I--there is no lack of support in this body for title I of the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act--and even the Carl D. Perkins 
Vocational Act and the Applied Technology Education Act.
  When we talk about distance learning, nobody has been involved in 
distance learning longer than I have on the Commerce Committee, and I 
think the Senator from Massachusetts. We work very hard on 
demonstration units of distance learning. We even did it here on the 
inner cities and worked very, very hard on two-way interaction between 
teachers.
  We have over in eastern Montana, where we have a lot of dirt between 
light bulbs, schools as far as 200 miles apart with teachers sharing 
sciences and languages in a class. She teaches there and also interacts 
live with students in three other classrooms. The total graduating 
class of all those schools put together will be fewer than 50.
  Distance education, making those decisions of using the new technical 
tools that we have developed, has been one great thing to watch. It 
blossomed. Now we are teaching teachers in our land grant universities 
how to use those tools.
  Unfortunately, right now many of our Federal education programs are 
overloaded with rules and regulations. States and local schools waste 
precious time and also resources in order to stay in compliance. It is 
obvious that these State and local districts need relief from the 
administrative burdens that many federally designated education 
programs put on States, schools, and education administrators.
  We hear a lot about numbers of children in classrooms. I want to tell 
you, in our State the numbers are sort of going down. The goal of this 
legislation and our goal should be, at the Federal level, to help 
States and local school districts to provide the best possible first-
class education for our children that they can. They can't do it if 
they are burdened with rules and regulations and always reading the 
book on compliance. This is one big step toward taking care of that.

  I compliment my friend from Vermont on his work in education and his 
dedication to it, because we will probably not take up any other piece 
of legislation that will have as much impact on local neighborhoods, on 
our taxing districts, and also the attitude of educators at the local 
level.
  This is one giant step in the forward direction. It won't fix all of 
the problems. It won't fix them all, because we can't fix them all. But 
I think it places the trust back in the people that the Federal 
Government, yes, does play a role. We want to play a role. But we want 
to play a constructive role in helping meet the needs of the local 
communities and put the decision back with teachers, parents, and, of 
course, administrators at the local level.
  I thank my friend from Vermont for yielding the time.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question is on 
agreeing to the motion to table the amendment. The yeas and nays have 
been ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Kentucky Mr. Bunning 
and the Senator from Oklahoma Mr. Inhofe are necessarily absent.
  Mr. REID. I announce that the Senator from North Dakota Mr. Dorgan is 
necessarily absent.
  The result was announced, yeas 54, nays 43, as follows:
  The result was announced--yeas 54, nays 43, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 32 Leg.]

                                YEAS--54

     Abraham
     Allard
     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Bond
     Brownback
     Burns
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coverdell
     Craig
     Crapo
     DeWine
     Domenici
     Enzi
     Fitzgerald
     Frist
     Gorton
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Hatch
     Helms
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Jeffords
     Kyl
     Lincoln
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Roberts
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith (NH)
     Smith (OR)
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Voinovich
     Warner

                                NAYS--43

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Breaux
     Bryan
     Byrd
     Cleland
     Conrad
     Daschle
     Dodd
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Graham
     Harkin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Mikulski
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Reed
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Torricelli
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Bunning
     Dorgan
     Inhofe
  The motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 38) was agreed to.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennett). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it is now 6:10 p.m. on a Thursday 
evening, and we have had this Ed-Flex legislation before the Senate 
since yesterday. The Ed-Flex proposal would permit States and local 
communities to have greater flexibility with accountability for scarce 
resources that are provided by the Federal Government--in this case, 
the Title I program, which is about $8 billion that focuses on the 
neediest children in this country. There was an effort to give greater 
flexibility to the local communities, consistent with the purpose of 
the legislation, to try to have a more positive impact in the 
achievement of the children in this country.
  This legislation was thought to have been a part of the Elementary 
and Secondary Education Act. We were going to have an opportunity to 
consider those measures together, but it was a decision of the majority 
of the committee to vote that out as an early piece of legislation. I 
voted in favor of that process and procedure. And then there was the 
indication by the Majority Leader that this measure would be before the 
Senate at an early time in this session.
  We had legislation last week to address the very important, critical 
and legitimate needs of our service men and women, to try to give them 
a fair increase in their pay--particularly those individuals who are 
serving in harm's way in many different parts of the world, but 
generally for the armed services of this country, in order to make up 
for the failure to do so at other times. We had a good debate on that, 
and it was voted on. We had 26 different amendments that were advanced 
during that period of time, some of which were accepted and some of 
which we voted on. But we came to a conclusion on that particular 
measure.
  So we started the debate on Ed-Flex. I don't think most of those 
American families who are watching now would really understand exactly 
what Ed-Flex is really all about. Nonetheless, it might very well 
provide some benefit to some young people in this country, and we were 
going to move ahead with it. I think most parents would understand if 
their children were in a classroom where there were fewer children in 
the class and a well-qualified teacher was interacting with that child 
and the 17 or 18 other children in that particular classroom, rather 
than the 30, 32, or 33 children in many classrooms across this country. 
I think parents would understand the advantages of moving toward 
smaller classes.
  I think the overwhelming majority of Americans would favor that 
action, and we have an excellent proposal to do that, which was 
accepted by Republicans and Democrats in the final hours of the session 
last year prior to the election. And now we have many of those 
communities that are asking, ``Well, should we just hire a teacher if 
we are only going to have a teacher for 1 year? Let us know, Congress 
of the United States. You didn't do the whole job last year in 
authorizing it for the complete 6 years. Let us know whether you are 
going to make the judgment

[[Page S2268]]

and decision, as recommended by the President, that we ought to have 
the full 6 years.'' The President of the United States, in his budget, 
has allocated resources to be able to do that. The communities want to 
know.
  Senator Murray has an excellent amendment to deal with that issue. I 
don't know about my other colleagues, but I know that in my own State 
of Massachusetts, communities want to have an answer to that particular 
question. And we are prepared to move ahead with that debate. We are 
prepared to have a full discussion on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We 
were prepared to do that yesterday. We are prepared to do it tonight. 
We are prepared to do it tomorrow or Monday, or at any time. It is of 
critical importance, and it is the kind of business that we should be 
dealing with in terms of education.
  Families can understand smaller class size. Families can understand, 
as well, the importance of the development of afterschool programs. I 
referred, earlier in the debate, to the excellent review that has been 
made by independent reviewers on the value of the Title I programs, and 
there were a number of recommendations in there. They noted that we 
have made some important progress in the past few years in targeting 
the Title I programs more precisely, as we did in the last 
reauthorization legislation. But we also know of the importance of the 
afterschool programs.
  I will mention this report, the evaluation of promising results, 
continuing challenges, of the national assessment. This is about Title 
I from the Department of Education, 1999, and was just released. One of 
the findings shows that in a recent study of elementary schools in 
Maryland, the most successful schools were seeing consistent academic 
gains as a result of extended-day programs. Afterschool programs are 
extended-day programs. And there are others, such as programs that 
extend into the weekend and summer programs that continue the education 
during the summer months.
  There are a number of different ways that local communities have been 
implementing afterschool programs. Last year, we had some $40 million 
in appropriations for afterschool programs, and there were $500 million 
worth of applications for those programs coming from local communities. 
The President has raised his appropriation up to $600 million to reach 
out to one million children in the country and provide afterschool 
programs. We have an excellent amendment by our friend and colleague 
from California, Senator Boxer, and also one from Senator Dodd in that 
particular area--one would be based upon the schools, and the other 
would be based upon nonprofits. They are somewhat different approaches, 
but I think they both have very substantial merit.
  Nonetheless, Mr. President, we have the opportunity to vote and 
debate on a measure that will make a real difference in terms of 
families' lives for extended-day programs. That will make a difference. 
It will improve quality education and student achievement.
  We were prepared to move ahead with that particular debate. But that, 
evidently, will not be the case. We had a good opportunity and a good 
record to explore and to engage those that would differ with us. We 
have the amendment that our colleagues are familiar with that was 
advanced by Senator Bingaman, Reid and others, that brought special 
focus and attention on the problems of school dropouts. Sure, we have a 
lot of dropout programs. But this program was very innovative in terms 
of the evaluation of that, and was successful in implementing a program 
that can make a difference.
  I commend those Senators for the work they have done on it. In the 
past, that amendment was accepted overwhelmingly by this body. That 
could make a difference to children that are in school now, today and 
tomorrow. We were prepared to debate that program, but we have been 
unable to bring that to resolution.
  As the good Senator, Senator Bingaman, pointed out, some 500,000 
children drop out of school before graduating from high school each 
year. There are important reasons for that. There have been successful 
programs to try to correct that. But this was a worthwhile effort to 
bring the authorization of funding for that particular program.
  My colleague and friend from Massachusetts, Senator Kerry, had a 
modest program to provide additional help, assistance and training to 
principals to help them deal with some of the more complex issues that 
they face. And that is a very, very worthwhile amendment.
  Our good friend from North Dakota, Senator Dorgan, and others had a 
program to have a report card on various schools so that parents would 
have better information about how the schools were doing.
  There were others, but not many others. I haven't gotten the complete 
list at this time, but there are a few others.
  But on each and every one of those, Senator Daschle was prepared to 
recommend to all of us that we move ahead with short time limitations. 
As far as I was concerned, we would have been able, at least from our 
side, to have concluded the consideration this measure by Tuesday of 
next week. We were glad to try to accommodate the interests of the 
majority in working out the time limits of these particular measures, 
and even the order of them. We assume that there may be amendments to 
be offered by the other side, including the very important amendment 
that was brought to our attention with regards to IDEA and children 
with special needs. That amendment would provide additional help and 
assistance to local communities, through IDEA, to offset some of the 
serious financial burdens of educating of children with special needs.
  We have an important responsibility to children with special needs, 
and the States have an obligation under their own constitutions to 
educate every child.
  We did make the commitment back in 1975 that we would establish a 
goal of 40 percent federal funding, and we have failed to do so.
  I believe very strongly that we should support those programs, 
particularly in light of yesterday's Supreme Court decision that will 
permit children with special needs to continue their education. It will 
be supported by the local communities as well. That will add some 
certainty for those children, so they will be able to continue their 
education.
  That is the most important and significant aspect of the program. But 
there will be some additional financial responsibilities. This is an 
area of national concern, because all of us understand that our 
participation in the education process is limited and targeted to 
special priorities. We have made disadvantaged children and the 
neediest children in our country a priority. Certainly those with 
special needs ought to be a national priority as well. We ought to be 
willing to help children, regardless of what community they live in, 
and regardless of what their needs may be.
  Mr. President, these are some of the items that we are talking about. 
I think most families in our country could make up their mind pretty 
easily about the kind of priorities that we should be considering. I 
think the overwhelming majority of Americans would feel support for the 
programs I have begun to outline.

  Let me point out that they are very modest and important programs, 
with demonstrated effectiveness. Certainly we are able to do so and 
support those programs. Many of them, as I mentioned earlier, have 
already been targeted for support by the President in his budget--
financial support has been there.
  Mr. President, we find ourselves in the situation on Thursday evening 
where effectively by the rules of the Senate are not going to be 
debating these issues tomorrow, we will not be debating these issues on 
Monday, and at 5 o'clock the Senate will vote whether or not we are 
going to exclude all possibility of considering those amendments on 
this particular measure. We will not spend the time tomorrow, which we 
certainly could, in debating and considering these issues. We will not 
do it on Monday. And we will delay the eventual outcome of 
consideration of these measures to a future day.
  We heard earlier today, around noontime, that those that are 
supporting the measure of Senator Bingaman were actually filibustering 
the legislation. This is after a day and a half of considering the 
amendments to the Ed-Flex

[[Page S2269]]

legislation. We had indicated at that time that we were prepared to 
accept--at least Senator Bingaman was--the amendment and move ahead.
  It reminds me of where we were at the end of the last session where 
we were effectively denied any opportunity to bring up the patients' 
bill of rights, which American families were so strongly in support of. 
We were denied the opportunity for fair consideration and debate on it. 
We were denied the opportunity to consider an increase in the minimum 
wage for working families in spite of the extraordinary progress that 
we have had--economic prosperity which so many have participated in, 
but not those at the lowest end of the economic ladder. We were 
prepared to refute the case that a modest increase in the minimum wage 
is going to mean lost jobs or is going to add to the inflation in this 
country, ridiculous claims by those that were trying to stop any 
increase in the minimum wage.
  We will have an opportunity to consider a minimum wage increase. I 
must say that the responses that Speaker Hastert has given on the 
consideration of the minimum wage has given us some reason to hope that 
we will have an opportunity to debate and to act on increasing the 
minimum wage. But we were denied that chance in the last Congress, as 
we were denied the opportunity to act on a patients' bill of rights.
  Some of us have come to the conclusion that the only way we can get a 
vote is if we offer an amendment that the majority agrees with. That 
seems to be the rule. We are denied the opportunity on this side to 
bring these matters up and have a full debate. I quite frankly don't 
understand why this should be so. The American people want action in 
the field of education. I believe they want partnership--a Federal 
partnership with the State and with the local communities. They 
understand the primacy of the local control on education, and they 
understand the importance of State help and assistance to many 
different communities. And they value the limited but important 
targeting that is given by some of the Federal programs.
  But they want to have the participation of all of us in a partnership 
to try to help families. They have heard the various philosophical and 
ideological debates. They want action. They want well-qualified 
teachers in every classroom. They want classrooms where children can 
learn. They want to make sure they are going to have the kinds of 
technology in those classrooms which will permit children going to 
public school to compete with any young person going to school in any 
part of the country. They want their teachers' skills upgraded so they 
can integrate those skills into the curriculum with additional 
training.
  They want afterschool programs, because they know that it makes a 
difference to give a child the opportunity to get some extra help in 
the course of the afternoon--maybe getting their homework done instead 
of watching television or engaging in other kinds of unhealthy 
behavior--so when the parents return home, the child can spend some 
quality time with those parents and the parents don't have to say, 
``You have been watching television all afternoon. Get upstairs and get 
your homework done.'' These are issues about which families care very 
deeply.
  Sure, we have a full agenda on many matters--on Social Security, but 
Social Security reform is not ready for debate; on issues dealing with 
Medicare, but Medicare is not ready for Senate consideration either. 
Sure, we have important responsibilities in trying to get a Patients' 
Bill of Rights, but we are attempting to work that out through the 
committee process and hopefully will have an opportunity to address 
that in the next several weeks. Yes, we have important responsibilities 
in protecting the privacy of individuals regarding to medical records, 
but that legislation is not ready to be considered.
  I really challenge the leadership on the other side to indicate to 
the Members what is on the possible agenda here that is more important 
for our attention, effort and debate than the issue of the education of 
the young people of this country. There is nothing. That is why this 
course of action, of effectively denying the debate and for the Senate 
to work its will in these very important areas, is so unacceptable--
unacceptable.
  We want to make sure that those families understand. You might be 
able, although I don't think they will be able, to have cloture, in 
effect denying Members the opportunity to consider those particular 
amendments on Monday. But you are not going to make this battle go 
away, because those amendments are going to be offered on other pieces 
of legislation--they make too much of a difference to families. They 
are not going to go away. It is the early part of this session. We are 
not in the final hours when you are able to jimmy the rules in order to 
deny the opportunity for people to bring these matters up. You cannot 
do that now. We are going to insist that we have this debate and 
discussion, and have the Senate work its will.
  I thank our colleagues today who have been willing to participate in 
this effort and have spent close to 3 hours or so in quorum calls 
during the course of the day when we could have been debating these 
issues. I hope we will not hear anymore from the other side about 
filibustering by amendment, because there are too many who have waited 
too long to try to at least get a result here in the U.S. Senate on 
some of these issues.
  I know, finally, that it is painful, evidently, for some of our 
colleagues to vote on some of these matters. We heard a lot of that 
this afternoon, ``We don't want to vote on it. It is painful to vote on 
them.'' That is, unfortunately, what this business is about. It is 
about choices and priorities, to a great extent. We have every 
intention of pursuing these issues. We are not going to be denied. I 
believe we will not have cloture on Monday. It will be up to them, 
then, whether we are to deal with these issues in the timely and 
reasonable way which we are prepared to do. But if that is not the 
case, I just want to make certain everyone in here knows--I know this 
from speaking to our colleagues who have worked so hard in so many of 
these different areas--that we are going to be quite prepared to 
advance these frequently, on each and every opportunity that will 
present itself.

  I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I will not resist the opportunity to 
make a few comments about what we have been doing here today. Both 
sides are very much interested in improving education. I don't think 
the enthusiasm of one side is outweighed by that of the other side, or 
vice versa. But the question of how to do it at this particular moment 
is the question with which we are faced.
  This side believes very strongly that we need to ensure when we vote 
for new programs, when we vote billions of dollars for the existing 
programs, we ought to know whether or not they are working. Our system 
is set up in a very logical way. Every 5 years we take a look at 
programs, and we reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education 
Act, which is up this year. It is the most important piece of education 
legislation we have. It is not something which should be ignored, 
saying, ``We don't need any hearings. We don't need to worry about 
anything. We know the answers already.''
  Let's examine where the ``already'' is, and what has happened. We had 
notice in 1983 that we had a terrible educational crisis in this 
country. The Nation at Risk report came out during the Reagan 
administration. The Governors got together in 1988, and they formulated 
the goals that we ought to be meeting. Here it is in 1999--and I sit on 
the Goals Panel--and there is no evidence that we have made any 
improvement in anything that is measurable.
  So why would we go racing out to fund programs about which we have 
had no hearings at this time? That is neither an appropriate nor a 
logical way to proceed. What do we know? We know a couple of things. 
First of all, we know from the experiences we have had with the 
experimental programs in six, and then twelve, States that more 
flexibility in existing program regulations will enable States to more 
efficiently and effectively use that money. All of the Governors say, 
``Please, help us and release us from the growing volume of burdensome 
regulation.'' That

[[Page S2270]]

is all we are trying to do. It is something we can do quickly, now, and 
get action immediately.
  Second, where is the greatest need for resources right now in this 
country? It is at the local level. The programs that are being 
discussed are dealing with matters which are primarily being addressed 
at the local level. But where Federal support is needed most is where 
we promised it would be provided back in 1975-76 when we passed the 
bill to open up vistas for children with disabilities so they had an 
opportunity for the kind of education which was appropriate for them. 
We guaranteed--quote-unquote, I suppose, from a Federal perspective--
that we would provide 40 percent of that funding. Yesterday's Supreme 
Court case has greatly, incredibly worsened that situation by requiring 
that not only do we have to provide an appropriate education at the 
State level, but also that somebody has to provide the health care to 
ensure that when that child is in school, he or she receives the best 
health care to enhance their education.
  Where is that burden going to be? Right now it has just been placed 
right at the local level, where it remains if we do not do something 
about that as soon as possible. What we have been saying today, and 
what we have been dedicated to as Republicans for the last 3 years, is 
that we must ensure that those communities that are trying to provide 
educational opportunity for children with disabilities have money 
enough, as promised to them by the Federal Government, to enable them 
to meet those needs.
  It would take $11 billion to raise that level now to what we promised 
back in 1976. What we are saying is, before we go off into untried 
programs which have not even had hearings, we ought to provide that 
money immediately or make it available for the process of 
appropriations immediately. So, we will take the money that is in these 
programs that are untried--the authorizations--and say: Give it to 
where it is really needed, to the local governments and the States so 
they can provide an education for the young people, all of the young 
people, which they cannot do by themselves because the demands are so 
high and because we have failed to provide to them the $11 billion they 
are entitled to under our promise.
  So I implore, my good friends on the other side, we are not trying to 
in any way hold anything up. What we are trying to do is to get a 
straightforward bill passed which will immediately help the States to 
maximize their resources. That's what we want to do. Instead, rather 
than being able to take this small step forward, we are having to go 
through this whole process of being asked to adopt all these programs 
about which we have no evidence whether or not they will work.
  The Department of Education now is spending, I think, $15 billion 
under Federal programs supporting elementary and secondary education, 
and we do not know if they are working. As far as we can tell, little 
or nothing is working. So we have to get in there and make a careful 
examination of these programs. That is what we should be doing--and 
what we are doing--through the reauthorization process. We have already 
had hearings to find out what is working, what is not working, and why 
is it not working. We will have further hearings to explore these 
issues. I cannot even tell now, from reading reports, from research, or 
anything, what impact this money is having. Before we start new 
programs with large sums of money, we ought to at least know whether 
the ones we are supporting now are working. We simply cannot go 
charging off to try to grab scarce resources to fund programs that are 
not effective.
  We in no way are trying to hold things back. We want to give help 
immediately to the States in order to loosen up existing resources to 
help the local communities improve their schools.
  I really get a little bit excited when the claim is made that we are 
trying to stop things from happening, when our whole purpose here is to 
try to make available to all 50 States the opportunity to improve their 
ability to deliver quality education. Then, we must have the hearings 
we need so we can go forward responsibly in reviewing Federal efforts 
in elementary and secondary education in their totality and do what our 
job is supposed to be.
  Some examples: The program which has been mentioned with respect to 
afterschool activities is one which I authored in 1994 and which was 
enacted as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 
reauthorization bill that year. That program--21st Century Schools--
already exists. The President has embraced it as his own. He now thinks 
it is a great initiative, after previously refusing to put any money in 
it at all. I am happy that that program is now funded and is likely to 
receive further funding increases. I am also aware that the President 
would like to see changes in the program, but this is not the time to 
try to suddenly put them in place. We need to go through the regular 
authorization process. I am anxious to do just that, but I want to do 
it right.
  We are just trying to proceed in an orderly fashion. I hope that we 
have an opportunity, even tomorrow, to move this bill forward. We can 
pass it tomorrow. Then, let us put all our effort into hearings on 
elementary and secondary education so that when we do things, we know 
what we are going to do, and hopefully we will find some things that 
will work.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The majority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, the 
Senate has now been debating the pending education flexibility bill for 
approximately a day and a half. There has been some good debate. A 
number of Senators have been able to speak on behalf of this very 
important bipartisan legislation that is supported by the President and 
supported by the bipartisan National Governors' Association. I am 
pleased that we have it up early in this session, and I am pleased that 
we made some progress.
  But while progress has been made on this vital piece of legislation, 
I am beginning to sense now that there is a feeling of gridlock on the 
part of our Democratic colleagues, if they are not successful in 
offering nongermane amendments or if they are not able to offer them in 
the way they would like to. I hope this is not true.
  I know there is a genuine effort on both sides of the aisle to work 
through a way we can get to completion of this legislation in a 
reasonable time next week, so that we can move on to the next bill that 
will be considered, including the emergency appropriations supplemental 
bill which was, I believe, reported out of the Committee on 
Appropriations this afternoon.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, in order to assure prompt passage of the 
bill, I now send a cloture motion to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:


                             Cloture Motion

  We the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of 
Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring 
to a close debate on amendment No. 31 to Calendar No. 12, S. 280, the 
Education Flexibility Partnership bill:
  Trent Lott, Jim Jeffords, John H. Chafee, Robert Smith, Thad Cochran, 
Arlen Specter, Slade Gorton, Mitch McConnell, Richard Shelby, Bill 
Frist, Larry E. Craig, Jon Kyl, Paul Coverdell, Gordon Smith, Peter G. 
Fitzgerald, and Judd Gregg.


                            Call Of The Roll

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory 
quorum under rule XXII be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LOTT. Under rule XXII, this cloture vote will occur then on 
Monday, March 8. I ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote occur at 
5 p.m. on Monday and that there be 1 hour prior to the vote to be 
equally divided between Senators Jeffords and Kennedy for debate only.

[[Page S2271]]

  Mr. KENNEDY. Reserving the right to object, will the leader ask for 2 
hours equally divided? Is that agreeable?
  Mr. LOTT. I think that is fine, Mr. President. I amend my request to 
that effect, with the time equally divided.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LOTT. Again, I hope progress can be made on the bill. There have 
been some proposals going back and forth, and we will continue to work 
on those, hopefully later on tonight. Tomorrow morning, Friday, when we 
are in session, there will be a recorded vote, hopefully by 10:30 a.m., 
and we will then give the Members a report on what action, perhaps, has 
been agreed to beyond that.
  I know Members from both sides of the aisle will be working on this. 
If progress is not made, then we will go forward with cloture. If 
something can be worked out--and I think it can; I hope it will be--
then certainly we can take action to vitiate this cloture vote.

                          ____________________