[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 157 (Tuesday, November 9, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14396-S14397]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EDUCATION

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, two major debates are taking place in the 
Congress and in the White House at the present time, two major debates 
relating to education.
  Tomorrow we are likely to take up an amendment to establish the 
Teacher Empowerment Act. And tomorrow we will almost certainly deal, 
finally, with the appropriations bill for Labor, Health and Human 
Services, an appropriations bill that includes billions of dollars for 
public education in the United States of America.
  There is a profound difference between the President of the United 
States and what I believe is a majority of the Members of both Houses 
of Congress over how that money on education should be spent. This 
morning's Washington Post summarizes that argument in quotations from 
our majority leader, Senator Lott, and the President of the United 
States.
  Senator Lott said:

       The big issue is, who controls it? Will Washington 
     bureaucrats assert and control where this money is used, or 
     will there be some discretion at the local level, based on 
     what local needs are, whether it's books or computers or 
     training for teachers, or for teachers themselves?

  The President of the United States, according to the Washington Post:

       . . . told reporters that the federal money for new 
     teachers does not belong to states and local school 
     districts. ``It's not their money,'' he said.

  What arrogance. The money does not belong to President Bill Clinton. 
This is money that comes out of the pockets of the American people 
across the United States, money they want to be used on the most 
effective possible education for their children.
  The American people believe very firmly that decisions relating to 
the education of their children can be made more effectively and more 
sensitively at home by elected school board members, by 
superintendents, by principals, by teachers, and by parents than they 
can be by bureaucracies in the Department of Education in Washington, 
DC, or even by that national superintendent of public instruction, the 
President of the United States.
  In fact, during the course of this debate over whether or not we 
should grant more authority to local school districts and to teachers 
and parents, a number of studies have come out on the question of 
whether the primary need in education in the United States is more 
teachers.
  One of them comes from my own State from the Joint Legislative Audit 
and Review Committee, the ``K-12 Finance and Student Performance 
Study.'' That study, just a little bit earlier this year, stated:

       An analysis of 60 well-designed studies found that 
     increased teacher education, teacher experience, and teacher 
     salaries all had a greater impact on student test scores per 
     dollar spent than did lowering the student-teacher ratio. 
     According to one researcher, ``Teachers who know a lot about 
     teaching and learning and who work in settings that allow 
     them to know their students well are the critical elements of 
     successful learning.'' Given limited funds to invest, this 
     research suggests considering efforts to improve teacher 
     access to high quality professional development. A recent 
     national survey of teachers found that many do not feel well 
     prepared to face future teaching challenges, including 
     increasing technological changes and greater diversity in 
     the classroom.
       The legislature's approach to funding K-12 education is 
     consistent with the JLARC [Joint Legislative Audit and Review 
     Committee] and national research. The legislature has 
     provided additional funding for teacher salaries, staff 
     development, and smaller classes, with more funding going to 
     support teachers and less for reducing the student-teacher 
     ratio.

  In fact, the chart accompanying this study shows that increasing 
teacher salaries is 4 times more cost efficient than reducing class 
size, increasing teacher experience is 4.5 times more cost efficient 
than reducing class size, and increasing teacher education is 5.5 times 
more cost efficient than reducing class size. Given this information, 
it is clear that the President of the United States is putting politics 
ahead of academic achievement for our children.
  There is another interesting statement on this subject written in 
April of this year by Andy Rotherham at the Progressive Policy 
Institute, an arm of the Democratic Leadership Council. He now, 
incidentally, works for the President. But he wrote in April:

       . . . President Clinton's $1.2 billion class-size reduction 
     initiative, passed in 1998, illustrates Washington's 
     obsession with means at the expense of results and also the 
     triumph of symbolism over sound policy. The goal of raising 
     student achievement is reasonable and essential; however, 
     mandating localities do it by reducing class sizes precludes 
     local decision-making and unnecessarily involves Washington 
     in local affairs.
       During the debate on the Clinton class-size proposal, it 
     was correctly pointed out that research indicates that 
     teacher quality is a more important variable in student 
     achievement than class size. In fact, this crucial finding 
     was even buried in the U.S. Department of Education's own 
     literature on the issue.

  Finally, another quite liberal organization, the Education Trust, 
agrees that we cannot afford to make schools hire unqualified teachers. 
Kati Haycock, executive director of the Education Trust, said 
yesterday:

       The last thing American children need--especially low-
     income children--is more under-qualified teachers. If the 
     White House hopes to ensure that the Class Size Reduction 
     program will boost student achievement, it should accept the 
     Congressional Republicans' proposal that would allow only 
     fully qualified teachers to be hired with these funds.
       Teacher quality matters, and it matters a lot. Highly 
     qualified teachers can help all students make significant 
     achievement gains, while ineffective teachers can do great

[[Page S14397]]

     and lasting damage to students. The difference between an 
     effective teacher and an ineffective teacher can be as much 
     as a full grade level's worth of academic achievement in a 
     single year. That--for many students--can make the difference 
     between an assignment to the ``honors/college prep track'' 
     and an assignment to the remedial track. And that assignment 
     can be the difference between entry into a selective college 
     and a lifetime at McDonald's.
       Yes, small classes matter, but good teaching matters more. 
     Our kids can have it all--smaller classes and better 
     teachers. But first, the adults in Washington need to put 
     aside the partisan bickering and remember what really 
     matters--the best interests of American students.

  This is exactly what we are trying to do. It is what we are trying to 
do in this last great appropriations bill: Saying yes, more teachers is 
a very important priority, but school districts ought to be able to 
decide that perhaps teacher training is even more important than that, 
or perhaps there is another higher education priority in their schools, 
in their communities, in their States.
  Tomorrow, when we debate whether or not to add to this bill the 
Teacher Empowerment Act, we will be doing exactly the same thing, 
saying we in this body in Washington, DC, do not know all the answers, 
that there is not one answer for 17,000 school districts across the 
country; and we ought to trust the people who are spending their lives 
educating our children.
  This is a vitally important debate, and one that the children can 
only win if we grant flexibility to those who are providing them with 
that education.

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