[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 76 (Tuesday, May 25, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H3589-H3594]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    PROGRAMS THAT WORK FOR EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, this evening I want to spend some time 
with my colleagues talking about an issue that is important not only to 
me and my colleagues on the minority side, but I think to all Members 
of this Congress and certainly to the people of America.
  The topic is education, an issue that we talk an awful lot about, but 
I want to talk this evening and share with my colleagues some examples 
of not only programs that work, but also people that are doing 
outstanding things for our children, certainly in my district and in my 
State.
  I want to talk a little bit about an innovative program that I 
visited a couple of weeks ago in Greensboro. It was a program called 
Reading Together. One of the things that I learned before I came to 
Congress, and I think we have all known it for a long time, but 
certainly it was pointed out to me very vividly while I was 
superintendent of schools, if one can teach a child to read by the time 
they are in the third grade, one has accomplished a great deal as to 
what we need to do to help a child learn and do well, and certainly 
make it in school and in the world.
  The Reading Together program is a program that is being piloted in a 
number of areas; I think it is in Pennsylvania, but also in Greensboro. 
What that program does is takes mentor students from the upper grades, 
and in this case they were fifth graders, and on a regular basis they 
are trained, they work with a trained teacher, and they come down and 
work with children who have difficulty reading in the earlier grades, 
normally in the first and second grade, and they become not only 
mentors, but they become tutors.
  I watched them for over an hour, and in this process, as those 
children worked and worked with young people, they had been trained; 
and when they finished the reading, they debriefed the young person 
they were working with, and then when the second graders went back to 
their classes, the fifth graders met with their teacher. They then were 
debriefed, talked about what had happened, how each child had done, 
made notes, kept a journal.
  These are things that very few adults do, and here we have young 
people doing them. I hear so many times people talk about our young 
people. They need to get out in the schools and see what is happening, 
the good things that they are doing, the outstanding jobs our teachers 
are doing. So I thought this was a good time to talk about these good 
things, as we are now all across America beginning to close down the 
school year.
  In my State, some of the schools were out last Friday and others will 
finish up this Friday, and many Members like myself will be speaking at 
commencement exercises. I did last week and will again this week.
  But I would like to share a program that really is working and making 
a difference. It is a pilot program that had been started really before 
I came to Congress, and it is working with some money through the U.S. 
Department of Education on a direct grant, and it is making a 
difference. The reading scores have improved dramatically.
  Students really work their way out of these classes and into the 
regular class. So that is what it is all about. We give a child some 
help, and then they can help themselves.
  Mr. Chairman, my friend from Maryland (Mr. (Cummings) has been out in 
his schools working, and is a great leader for education and a leader 
in this Congress. He has some excellent examples, and I would like to 
yield to him so he may share those with us.

  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding 
and thank him for his leadership in the Congress in reminding all of us 
how important education is.
  Mr. Speaker, I am a great believer in Dr. James Comer. Dr. Comer has 
a philosophy which I truly believe in, and he talks about the fact that 
a child can have the will, a child can have the genetic ability, but if 
a child does not have the opportunity, then that child is in trouble, 
he is going to have problems.
  I look at my own life. I started it off in special education. I was 
told I would never be able to read or write. But because of 
opportunity, because there were teachers who stood by me and told me 
what I could be instead of telling me what I could not be, because of 
my parents who were involved, and I know we are going to be talking 
about parents tonight and how important that is; but I can remember, I 
say to the gentleman, that when my father, who worked at Davidson 
Chemical Company, he would come to our PTA meetings. And he used to 
work in the evenings and his boss would let him come to the PTA 
meetings in his overalls, all greasy, but he would come in there and 
talk to the teachers and participate in the PTA meetings, and he played 
a significant role in our lives, and the teachers expected him to be 
there.
  But just going back to some of the things that the gentleman was 
saying a little while earlier, I too have been involved in these 
commencements and I have seen so many of our children who go through so 
much difficulty to get through high school and they make it, and it 
just makes one feel good to see those young people marching down that 
aisle and to know that they have truly accomplished something.
  I think it is important for us as Members of Congress to do what the 
gentleman said that he does and I do and I am sure many of our other 
Members do, and that is to celebrate our children's lives, to celebrate 
their victories.
  I think I was telling the gentleman a little bit earlier about a 
wonderful contest that we had in our State whereby our Department of 
Children, Youth and Family, the Governor's Department of Children, 
Youth and Family, sponsored a contest for the school that read the most 
books. Out of our 24 counties, I am very pleased to say, and out of our 
eight congressional districts, there was a school in my district that 
read the most books, an elementary school. The school is not located in 
the most affluent area, but these children made a decision that they 
were going to work hard; and they read these books and they had a way 
of making sure that they examined them, and they had to do little 
reports and whatever.

[[Page H3590]]

  But I say to the gentleman, I am going to go by there when they have 
the awards to celebrate with them, to say, hey, you did a good job. I 
think that those are the kinds of things that are so important.
  Again, I emphasize that I want to thank the gentleman, because as we 
watch the gentleman on this floor and all of the things that he does 
behind the scenes, his coming to this Congress has been very 
significant in that he has lighted the way we view education; and the 
gentleman has put it definitely out on the front burner and has made it 
something that is extremely significant, reminding us that if we 
support our children and work with them, we can make a difference.
  So I am going to yield back to the gentleman, but I will be here for 
a while, so I look forward to just listening him.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman mentioned the reading 
program, and I want to share one with him, if I may. It was something 
that we started maybe 2 years ago, and I shared this with the gentleman 
earlier.
  First, though, I want to tell a little story. We gave out an award we 
call the Golden Key Award for parent involvement, for the parents who 
got involved in the PTA, because I think this is the key to improving 
the quality of our schools and helping the teachers get the parents 
back in the schools.
  So that led to the issue of how do we engage the parents with 
students and really help the reading, because I believe that is 
important.
  When I came to Congress and was no longer superintendent, I wanted to 
keep that going. So we started what we call a Congressional Reading 
Program, for lack of a better word; I could not think of a better one. 
So what we do is, I have encouraged the students to read. I told them 
last year, if they would read 100 books, I would personally come and 
deliver a certificate.
  Well, I figured there would be a few books read, and I had just an 
outstanding principal in Anderson Creek. We had a number of others 
involved. We had probably a half a dozen schools in our pilot, but we 
only do it for kindergarten, first and second graders. We did not want 
to go much higher than that, realizing how many it would be. So we kept 
about six schools involved. They did an outstanding job.
  The reason I mention Anderson Creek is because they were one of our 
first pilots. They did it again last year. They must have had 300, and 
some children read 100 books, at least 100. Some of them read as many 
as 200 and 300. The significant thing was that when I went to give 
those awards a year ago, there were probably 400 parents, grandparents, 
aunts and uncles that filled up the gym.
  So I will go back this year to give the awards again. This year, 
there were 481 children who read at least 100 books. Several of the 
children had read more than 500 books. I mean, we are talking about 
children reading two and three books a day. They were not very big. We 
did not tell them how thick the books had to be. But the interesting 
thing was the number of kindergartners in this school, a lot of them, 
they received an award.
  Well, it is quite obvious to me that kindergartners, very few can 
read when they start, they do not read. But guess who read the books? 
The parents or the grandparents or the aunts or uncles, whoever. But 
what we do is, we get a significant adult involved with that child 
early and then we get the linkage to the school.
  So this year I delivered 481 certificates. We had more parents in the 
gym than it would hold. They were standing outside. They stood in line, 
a lot of them stood up, because they did not have seats, for almost 2 
hours because I stood up for 2 hours and handed out the certificates 
and shook the hand of every child in that school.
  Mr. Speaker, I only tell that story because I think every Member can 
do something like that.
  We ought to honor and encourage our children. It is not enough to 
stand on the floor of the House and point out the problems; there are 
plenty of problems in the world. But I think we need to go and honor 
and reward the good things that are happening.
  I have always believed that if one rewards successes, one will get 
more. If you let people know you encourage good things, more good 
things will happen.
  I was so pleased because I left there that day, and of course my back 
was sore from having to bend over to shake hands. When one is 6 feet, 6 
inches and shaking hands with little folks, one gets sore, but I felt 
so good. I was late for the next school; I had to deliver more 
certificates.
  We are now going to expand it.
  But these are the kinds of things all of us can do. It is not very 
creative, and the cost of a little certificate is not much, but for 
some of those children it was so important. We could tell in talking 
with the children and watching their parents who came up to take the 
photographs.
  The neat thing was the principal, a lady by the name of Alice Cobb, 
who is just an outstanding leader and a great educator, she was smart 
enough to understand how important it was to her children.

                              {time}  2200

  So she had a video camera going, digital video camera, through all of 
it so she could photograph every child in the video. Of course, as we 
know, one can print that out on paper. She sent me a whole stack of 
stuff she had done.
  I know the type of person she was, that she had given every child a 
photograph when they got their certificate. There are some things that 
we do not think about sometimes. Those of us who are in public office 
appreciate being acknowledged. Just think what we will do for a plaque 
or certificate. So a child will do good things, and schools understand 
that.
  I hear people sometimes belittle some of the good things teachers do 
and call it woman fusses. If you are a child and you need someone to 
say you look good today when you do not feel good, when you are not 
real sure you look good, someone to tell you you are a nice child or 
they love you when nobody at home may be telling you that, it may make 
the difference in that child's life. All of us can talk about things 
like that to make a difference.
  We have to require the academics of every child, make them achieve 
the most they can do. We do that in North Carolina. We require it. We 
assess each child. We have a tough curriculum. But at the same time, 
all of us need to be loved, and every child needs that. If you do that, 
you encourage, you give them love and you give them tough love when you 
have to, you can get a lot.
  That is what the gentleman is talking about with the program he was 
just sharing in his district. We can do a lot of those things.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I agree with 
him. As the gentleman was talking, I was thinking to myself that we 
spend a lot of time on this floor and we spend a lot of time in 
committee, but the kind of things that the gentleman is talking about 
costs very little.
  We are always worried about how much money we are spending, spending. 
We just allocated quite a bit of money for the war in Kosovo. But the 
fact is, is that taking some time, just taking some time and 
celebrating, that is what we are doing. First of all, we are 
encouraging our children to read. Then when they have done that, we 
take time to celebrate their victories.
  I have often said to parents in my district that there is nothing 
greater that we can do as adults, nothing greater than creating 
positive memories in the minds of children.
  One of the things that I have to always remind myself of is that 
children think differently than we do. Those certificates will last 
those children until they die. They will go with them. That is 
something that they can look back on and say that ``I was recognized by 
one of 435 Members of the House of Representatives.'' Not a lot of 
children in our country can say that. That is very significant.
  I have given certificates to children, and then parents will let me 
know, grandmothers let me know, ``You know what? You presented a 
certificate to my child 7 years ago, and it is still up there on my 
child's wall. It is up there on that wall to remind my child that she 
was recognized or he was recognized at an early age.''
  That leads me to another point. I would like to really have the 
gentleman's comments on this. I had an opportunity to visit a school 
not very long ago where a teacher, the principal

[[Page H3591]]

said ``We really want you to see our best teacher.'' We had gone 
through several classrooms. My staff and I had gone through several 
classrooms.
  When we got to this last classroom, it was a second grade class, and 
this was on a Monday. So the principal said, ``Well, Ms. Jones, what 
are you teaching today?'' She said, ``Well, I am teaching the material 
that we tested on Friday, this past Friday.'' So the principal said, 
``Well, why are you doing that? I mean you already had the test.''
  The teacher said something that will stick in the DNA of every cell 
of my brain forever. She said, ``Every child in my class should have an 
A, and not everybody got an A.'' That really touched me, because I mean 
she got it. She understood. She wanted all of her children to rise. She 
did not want some As, some Bs, some Cs and some Ds. She made it clear 
that ``I am going to make sure that all of my children rise so that 
they can move on to the next level.''
  I think sometimes what happens is we are so busy trying to categorize 
our children that maybe, just maybe we do a disservice. One of the 
things that research has shown over and over again is that a lot of our 
children, the children that we talk about, the little kindergartners 
and the first graders, they have so much enthusiasm and they are so 
anxious to learn. Even when they are in that little 0 to 3, 2 and 3-
year-old range, they are like little sponges and they are just grabbing 
information, and they are excited and jumping up and down.
  But research has shown, as they get a little bit older, get to that 
fourth and fifth grade, a lot of times that enthusiasm for some reason 
goes down. I mean the gentleman from North Carolina having been an 
educator and the head of education for his State, I would just like to 
have his comments on that.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from Maryland is 
absolutely correct. I have often said that children come to public 
schools across this country, and certainly in my State, from a number 
of backgrounds; and they do not all come.
  This is where I get frustrated. I used to get frustrated at the State 
level, and I get frustrated here with some of my colleagues when they 
want to talk about and start criticizing the schools, because when they 
start doing that, they are criticizing our children.
  My colleagues have to be careful because schools are children and the 
professionals that are trying to help them. They come from a variety of 
backgrounds, from a variety of experiences. But all of them do not come 
in top dollar for the same level of knowledge and experiences when they 
come to school. So they come, as the gentleman says, at different 
levels. That teacher understood it.
  What the educators are talking about, when they say ``I want them to 
all have As,'' they are talking about mastery, so they are mastering 
the subject. There is a difference in learning and mastering. Most of 
us can get a bit of knowledge on the computer. If we get training here, 
all of us have computers in our office, and we have staffs to have 
mastery. A lot of us just have cursory understanding so we can turn it 
on and retrieve a little bit of information. If we want to get a little 
bit further, we have to call and get help.
  What those teachers were saying to the principal and to the 
gentleman, I want all my children to be able to have mastery on this 
computer. I want them to be able to use it, not just turn it on and 
call for help. They want to be able to go and get all the data that it 
has in it.
  I have often said that not all of us learn at the same speed. We 
forget that sometimes. It takes longer for others, and they still get 
it. If one watches students, if one ever notices, there will be some 
who we say they are slow. The truth is they are not as interested in 
school as others. They may not bloom until they get to be sophomores or 
juniors in high school sometimes. Sometimes it happens even after they 
leave high school.

  There are stories, and I am sure there are Members right here on the 
floor of this House who would say that they went into the military or 
went somewhere else and came back. Many times, those who came out of 
the military, they had 2 or 3 years to adjust. All of a sudden, they 
came home and realized, ``I did not apply myself when I was in school. 
I really need to settle down and get focused.''
  Today with a lot of young people who go into youth service corps or 
something else and leave school, and all of a sudden they say, gosh, 
``I did not apply myself. I wish somebody would give me a quick kick in 
the slacks to understand what I needed.'' That is at that level.
  But at the early years, where those youngsters are such sponges, and 
they really do want to learn. They come with bright eyes. If you watch 
those little ones, they all have bright eyes. They are ready to learn. 
They are ready to go.
  There is something that we are learning more every day about the 
brain and how much children can learn and their capacities, and we are 
doing away with a lot of the myths we used to have, because all 
children can learn. Let me repeat that again. All children. It makes no 
difference what their economic, their ethnic, where they come from, or 
where they are going, all children can learn. They can learn at very 
high levels. They may have different learning styles.
  Dr. Comer has a great program. We used him a number of times in North 
Carolina. We had a number of his projects in our State. I think he does 
just a wonderful job in showing that we need to bring the family 
nurturing the youngsters. Because if a youngster comes in in less than 
a nurturing background or comes to school hungry, and if someone tells 
us the child does not come, I can assure my colleagues they can go any 
place, most places in this country where they will see a child come in 
on Monday morning, and I am going to break the stereotype here because 
a lot of folks think when we are talking about youngsters, we are 
talking about children from economically deprived backgrounds. It may 
be children who just have not had a chance to eat, and it may be upper 
middle class neighborhoods many times, parents who have the resources. 
They do not take time to eat, and they grab something from school.
  Certainly there are those who, after Friday afternoon, who get a 
regular meal during the week, and Friday is the last really regular 
warm meal they get until they show back up on Monday morning.
  My wife works in the child nutrition program in my home county and 
has for a number of years. She said one can really tell it when school 
is out for the summer. A lot of the children are reluctant to leave 
because they know something is going to be missing. School is a safe 
haven for them, but it also provides for them a real nurturing 
environment.
  We have had some problems recently in some of our schools. But, by 
and large, they are loving, caring, nurturing places for people who 
really make a difference.
  We had a program, and I will come back to the question the gentleman 
raised again in a minute, that we started really in 1992, called 
Character Education. It was not unique with us. There is nothing really 
new under the sun. We borrowed a lot of things. We borrowed this from a 
professor at Vanderbilt and from a number of other folks. But Character 
Education is about teaching those things that we can all agree on that 
children ought to know. Rather than add it on as an add-on in the 
classroom, one really teaches it as an integrated part of the 
curriculum.
  So in 1995 we got a grant, wrote a project, got a grant from the U.S. 
Department of Education, and it started in Wake, Cumberland and 
Mecklenburg Counties, our three larger counties. A lot of other 
counties, Nash County, Johnston County, Harnett and others picked it 
up.
  But what we do in that process is the community goes through a 
meeting with parents, and the community says here is some of the basic 
issues; in this case, this two, four, six, eight, nine issues that they 
agreed on in Nash County. I think Wake is about the same. 
Trustworthiness. Most folks will not disagree with that. Respect, 
responsibility, caring, fairness, citizenship, perseverance, courage, 
self-discipline.
  They teach this every single day in some part of the curriculum in 
every single school. My colleagues say, well, why is that important? 
When we get bogged down in arguments of whether

[[Page H3592]]

or not we ought to have prayer in school and all these other issues, 
that tends to be divisive. This is not divisive. We can agree on these, 
on all those issues.
  If we look at those issues, those really are the kinds of issues that 
build communities, that build respect, that make a school what it ought 
to be.
  In the process of putting this in, what we have found in some of our 
schools, I visited a school down in Johnston County, in Selma. I went 
in and talked with a principal. He said, ``Oh, yeah, it is working.'' 
He said, ``Our dropouts went down like 48 percent. The number of 
suspensions were down, in half.'' But he said, ``The significant thing 
was children have more respect for one another, for their teachers. And 
what we saw was our academic scores went up.''
  So why would that happen? Very simply. We look at those issues. We 
are building trustworthiness. Pretty soon we have respect one for 
another. Children get to talk about those things in the classroom as a 
part of math, as a part of algebra or science or whatever they are 
doing.
  So all of those things start to fit. Pretty soon, we find out that we 
are back to some of the things we used to do years ago in our schools, 
that we sort of bumped out, and now it is catching on in other places.
  But we will be talking about some of these and having an opportunity, 
as my colleagues well know, in the weeks to come we will talk about the 
education budget that will come up. There will be those that say we do 
not need the Department of Education. We do not need those monies over 
there.
  I am here to tell my colleagues, having been a former superintendent 
of school at the State level, that was a grant, and every penny of the 
money went to local schools, and it made a difference.
  Now after we have been a pilot, we are putting it in in all of our 
schools, and it will now be used across the country, and the Department 
has become a clearinghouse.
  Those are the kind of things that really make a difference. We take 
those sponges and start feeding them good stuff like this, along with a 
rich curriculum, and encourage them and reward them, pretty soon we 
start seeing the pressure that used to build that is not there, but the 
learning environment goes up. But it takes a long time to make a 
change.
  Some people want to, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) and I 
understand this, that many times we want to pass legislation and have 
instant results. Last time I checked, about the only thing that is 
instant we can get is coffee and tea and those things we buy that are 
instant.
  Children take a while to grow and to really make major changes in 
education. It really takes 8 to 10 years because it takes a child about 
12 to 13 years to get through school.

                              {time}  2215

  Mr. CUMMINGS. I want to thank the gentleman for what he just talked 
about. When the gentleman presented that list, those are also the 
things that build character. That is what character is all about, when 
we look at that list, trustworthiness and respect.
  But that leads me to something else also. We have, certainly in the 
last few weeks, this Congress and our Nation have become very, very 
upset about what happened in Littleton, Colorado, and what happened in 
Conyers, Georgia; and I think all of us have been searching for 
answers, as parents first and legislators second, trying to search our 
souls to try to figure out how can we bring a peace and a needed 
tranquility to our schools so that our children can learn and feel safe 
in school.
  And one of the things that I guess has truly impressed me is a school 
in my district called Walbrook Senior High School. Walbrook is an inner 
city school and had had quite a few problems. They brought in a 
principal, a fellow named Andrey Bundley, Dr. Andrey Bundley; he is 
about 38 years old. And while other schools were putting up metal 
detectors, he was taking them down, and he did it with the very kind of 
things the gentleman just talked about.
  What he said was, look, young people, let us create an environment of 
safety. This is before all of these events just happened or came about. 
But he said, I want to create an environment of safety, and he talked 
about the very things that the gentleman has there. He just said, we 
are going to be responsible for each other, we are going to respect 
each other, we are going to trust each other. He said, there is no such 
thing as a snitch because what we want to do is create an environment 
where we all feel safe.
  So what I have done, taking a note from the gentleman's own notebook, 
I have created what I call the U-Turn Award. This is an award that we 
are presenting to schools that have been able to turn their schools 
around. And we are going to be presenting it on June 1 to Walbrook and 
to their principal, Dr. Bundley.
  When I walk through that school, and the gentleman and I talked about 
this a little earlier, a person can walk through a school and in 30 
seconds to a minute they can tell a lot about the principal. And when I 
walk through that school now, all the children are in their classes or 
they are moving peacefully through the halls. They are very respectful 
of each other.
  Dr. Bundley, on my last visit, just stopped some students in the hall 
and he said, what kind of school do we have here, and they said we have 
a school where we respect each other. As Pollyanna-ish as it may sound, 
the fact is that is what it should be all about, reminding our young 
people.
  And these kids are a little older now, because we are talking about 
high school, but reminding them that, as he says, if we all want a safe 
school, then we are all going to make sure we create an environment of 
safety and we are all part of that environment. The students have as 
much say as the principal has to say.
  And then what he found was that a lot of these children, while their 
homes may not have been like that, when they got these lessons, 
acquired these lessons at school, he found them taking them into their 
homes. Because the parents would say, I am surprised, Johnny always 
talks about this trustworthiness and this responsibility.
  What they discovered was that once they began to do that and they 
took down the metal detectors, they discovered that by having that type 
of responsibility, that trustworthiness, that looking out for each 
other, that that is sort of valuing the family, the family of the 
school, and it felt good. It felt good that they could sit in that 
classroom.
  And the next thing that happened was, other people were recognizing 
it. And that is one of the most important things about this recognition 
that the gentleman talked about.
  When I was in school, we felt so proud of our school. And one of the 
reasons we felt so proud was we always had people coming in, the Mayor 
would come in sometimes, the Congressmen would come in and would 
recognize what we did. So that creates a certain pride, and that is why 
when the gentleman talks about the awards that he gives, I think that 
is so special and so important. Because by coming in there and saying, 
look, gang, you are really doing a great job and I recognize you; and 
even tonight, the gentleman mentioning the schools that he has 
mentioned, and my mentioning the schools that I have mentioned, that 
word will get out. And I guarantee that somebody will be on a P.A. 
system tomorrow morning saying, guess what, in the Congress of the 
United States of America our school was mentioned or our school was 
highlighted.
  But something else will happen, too, and that is that there will be 
other schools that will say, ``Well, the next time I see Congressman 
Etheridge standing up, I'm hoping that he will talk about what we 
did.''
  And something else will happen through this dialogue, and that is, 
other Members of Congress and other State and local officials will look 
at this and say, well, hey, maybe we can do some of these same things.
  Because truly we all have to work together to make our schools work. 
So I take this moment to congratulate Walbrook Senior High School for 
what they have done. And, again, it is just so interesting that when 
the gentleman mentioned that list of items just a moment ago, it is the 
same list, almost identical to the very things that Dr. Bundley at 
Walbrook talked about.
  I yield back to the gentleman.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. I thank the gentleman. And the truth is, like I said

[[Page H3593]]

earlier, there is nothing really new. You sort of borrow ideas and you 
redo them, but this came from people that had worked somewhere else, so 
we put it in, expanded it and made it work.
  The gentleman talked about his schools, and I talked about Anderson 
Creek, I have been to, and Broadway, and the other schools in Lee 
County and up in Wake, but we are going to get a chance in this 
Congress in the next few weeks to show what kind of mettle we are made 
of, too. Because as the gentleman knows, we introduced a bill last week 
to create 30,000 more counselors to put in our schools across this 
country, that are badly needed, and 10,000 more resource officers to be 
out there to assist and help these young people in these areas where it 
is needed.
  Because certainly in our middle and high schools there are not enough 
counselors to meet with them and counsel and help them with all the 
assessments. The others that are out there are doing all the paperwork. 
That is just one little piece; it will not solve all the problems, but 
it will sure help.
  I trust before this Congress adjourns that we will also have a chance 
to deal with the issue all across America that we are all facing, in 
rural and inner cities and certainly in our growing communities, and 
that is this issue of school construction, an issue we can do something 
about it. I have a bill on it, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) 
does, a number of others do, and I trust we will pass something on 
that.
  There are great needs. There is no question about it. And as an 
example, in Wake County, one of the counties I represent, they have 
grown 29.9 percent since 1990. And every county that touches it has 
grown in double digits. A small rural county, 29.7, adjacent to it. 
They cannot run fast enough to keep up. They are passing bond issues 
and they still cannot keep up. And I think it is time, if we really 
believe what we say up here and we really believe education is 
important, I happen to believe it is one of the most important things 
beyond our national defense that we have to put out, we are going to 
have to step up to the plate and take care of that issue.
  We can do it on a one-time basis through the tax code to really help 
these States and localities meet the needs. Because as the gentleman 
well knows, over the next 10 years we will see some of the fastest 
growth at our high school levels in the history of this country, 
because we are going to see the ``baby boom echo,'' as they are calling 
it. The baby boomers are having children, and that growth is going to 
come, and we have an obligation, I think, to help meet that need.
  I would yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. As the gentleman was talking about school construction, 
one of the things that we recently did in my district, we had to get 
new computers, and so we decided to take our old computers and give 
them to one of our public schools. And the amazing thing about this 
situation is, when we gave those computers, we did not know how bad off 
that school was.
  The school had 1,600 students and they had 260 kindergartners. And 
the interesting thing, out of that 260 kindergarten children, they had 
one computer. One computer. And what the principal and the teachers 
would do, they were very innovative and they were able to rotate those 
260 kids around one computer.
  Now, what we did in our district is, just last week, we gave nine 
computers. And we were able to clean them up and get them to these 
kindergartners and these first graders. But I wish the gentleman could 
have seen how excited they were about those computers. And one of the 
things that we said during our press conference was that we were 
encouraging other businesses and other government agencies, before they 
just toss those computers away, to look at our schools.
  When a school has a total of 1,600 kids and one computer in this day 
and age, that is not very good. I look at my office, and we do not even 
hire folks unless they are pretty efficient and effective with regard 
to using a computer. And I mention that only because I thought about 
the fact that my office had gotten EPA a few months ago to give some 
computers, but the school was so ill-equipped and so old that they did 
not even have the proper electrical circuits to use the computers.
  So that goes back to what the gentleman was saying, and I yield back 
to the gentleman.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. That is absolutely true. And that is why when we talk 
about school construction and renovation, and I should have added 
renovation to it, and someone says, well, the building I went to was 
fine, they are not even being honest with themselves when they say 
that, because the truth is, if there is a building and it is not wired 
for computers, it has to be done.
  Now, there is a program that we did in North Carolina, and a lot of 
States have done it, where the community actually goes in and helps 
rewire the buildings. And that is all well and good, but those 
computers need to be networked. They need stations in the classroom. 
And if we do not allow children that access, it makes no difference 
where they come from, whether the inner cities or rural areas, that 
becomes, in my mind, one of the real problems we have in this country.
  There might be those who would say to that, we do not really need the 
computers, we need to teach them to read and write. Well, give students 
a computer, and they will learn to write. People tell me, we do not 
have computers; we cannot write. Today, with computers and sending e-
mail, people are doing more writing today than they have ever done in 
their lives. There are fewer clerical positions and more managers are 
using that.
  So my point is that for children, when we put the computers in a 
kindergarten classroom, the students just start to shine. They 
absolutely shine. And the point the gentleman made about donating his 
computers, I gave mine, we gave some of ours out of our office a couple 
of weeks ago, and I would encourage other Members of Congress to do so. 
All they have to do is get permission. They can do it when they buy new 
ones.
  There are a lot of them out there. But I would hope they would turn 
them over pretty quickly so they can get good equipment and not get 
worn-out equipment. Because the last thing schools need is old, worn-
out equipment. They all upgrade them.
  I will share this story with the gentleman, because there is a 
program going on, and actually this Congress helped fund it last time, 
though I was not aware of it, but we have a couple of schools that 
actually take the computers, they get the internal parts from one of 
the, I am not sure which computer firm they get it from, and they 
actually rebuild the computers so they are up to date with the new 
standards and all the speed of the new computers. And they are letting 
the young people do it in school as part of their vocational classes.
  So when that youngster comes out of school, not only can they operate 
a computer, they can help build one. And they have a job as a 
technician available to them just like that, and they make good money.
  So there are things we can do to help if we will be creative and 
innovative.
  And there is no question that if we have just one computer to even 25 
children, that is not enough. We tried to put them in North Carolina, 1 
to 50, and we realized that would not work. Then we upped it to 1 in 
25. But really they should have five in a classroom, where there are no 
more than 25 students. Then when they start working in stations, there 
is tremendous results. The teacher can work in other areas while that 
child is working on computers.
  The gentleman has been in classrooms, as I have, I am sure; and 
especially if there are enough computers, they are over there just 
working at it, going to it, just doing all those things. And the neat 
thing about a computer is, what the child is doing can be instantly 
assessed. They get instant feedback, and that is so important.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. And they love it. They actually love it.
  I assume we are beginning to run out of time here.
  Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Tancredo). The gentleman has 18 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. As I was listening to the gentleman, I was thinking 
about how great this country is and how blessed we are to be here, and 
I could not help but think about all the things

[[Page H3594]]

that the gentleman and I have talked about tonight. And the gentleman 
said something to me earlier that just really touched me.

                              {time}  2230

  My colleague said that what we need to do is make sure we talk about 
the positives. So often I think what happens is that we hear the 
negative stories and we do not hear the positives.
  Right now probably tonight all over this country and for the next two 
or three weeks young people are going to be marching down aisles of 
auditoriums and some of them will have graduation in churches. And 
these young people have achieved a lot.
  I look at some of the students in my district, the graduation I just 
attended. A young man had cancer throughout his last 3 years of high 
school, and he is graduating with honors. Then I think of a young lady 
whose mother had died of AIDS, and she took care of her brothers and 
sisters for 2 or 3 years and now is graduating with a very, very high 
average, over 92 average. I really think that, and that is why I say my 
colleague is absolutely right, we have to look at all the wonderful 
things that our children are doing.
  As I have said to many audiences in my district, these are the 
children that come from our womb. They are the children that have our 
blood running through their veins. And if we do not lift up our 
children, who are we going to lift up, I mean if we really think about 
it? I think that we, as a Congress, have to continue to find innovative 
ways to lift our children up so that they can be the best that they can 
be.
  Every time I see a group of children come here to the Capitol, and I 
saw my colleague talking to a group just in the last week or so, I look 
at those children and I ask myself, Where will they be 5 years from 
now? Where will they be 10 years from now? Will they be sitting in the 
Congress? Will they be teachers? Will they be lawyers? Will they be 
doctors? Or will they have dropped out?
  And I know that we as adults have a tremendous responsibility to do 
everything in our power to make their lives the very best that they can 
be. Because when we really think about it, if it were not for adults 
that gave us the guidance, we would not be standing here right now. If 
it were not for the teachers that taught us to read and write and do 
arithmetic, we would not be here right now.
  So I think we have to continue to say to ourselves, look, it is not 
enough to talk, but to go out there and do the kinds of things that my 
colleague and I have talked about this evening. And again, I applaud my 
colleague for all the wonderful things that he has done and I thank him 
for sharing this evening with me and sharing these ideas. Because I am 
going to take a lot of the ideas that my colleague just talked about 
now, and I have got to tell him, I might not give him the credit for 
them when I take them, but I am going to use them. But I want to thank 
him for his leadership.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for his 
help and for being here this evening.
  Let me close and say to my colleagues that this thing of education is 
no one has a lock on all that needs to be done. We have thousands of 
teachers across this country who every day go into those classrooms and 
fight the battle of ignorance day after day. They do it without a great 
deal of pay, but they deserve forever our gratitude and our thanks.
  The children who will soon be following us as doctors and lawyers and 
teachers and preachers and, as I told a group that graduated the other 
night, if they slip up, they might become politicians and become 
congressmen and governors, but the truth is they are great youngsters 
and we have an obligation to be better role models. We really do.
  Because most of them, most of them, are great youngsters. We hear 
about those problems. And I think we have an obligation to make sure 
that we honor those who do well and encourage those who want to do 
better and challenge those that slip up. And I think if we will do 
that, they will do better, we will be prouder of them. And that means 
that we have an obligation here to make sure that we shepherd the 
resources we have, that we do fund the education budget to the extent 
that we can and stretch it a little bit when we have to. Because there 
are a lot of places in this country where, as my colleague has pointed 
out, there are not enough computers. We can help.
  The school buildings are not as safe as they ought to be, 50- and 60-
year-old buildings that are not air-conditioned, that are not wired 
well. We can do better. In our Nation, in having the boom time we are 
having today, if we cannot fix them today and provide those resources 
for a good environment for children to learn, if we tell a child school 
is important and then he rides by a $40- or $50-million prison to go to 
a $3-million school, he has already figured out what is important in 
that community.
  We can do something about that. We can make that school an 
attractive, inviting place to go if it is well-lighted. And lighting is 
important if we are talking about learning.
  So let me thank my colleague for joining me this evening in this 
special order.

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