[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 20 (Tuesday, February 29, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H532-H538]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND LEGISLATIVE AGENDA OF REPUBLICAN CONGRESS REGARDING 
                               EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Emerson). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the

[[Page H533]]

gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) is recognized for 60 minutes 
as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOODLING. Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about the 
accomplishments of the Republican Congress with respect to education 
and to address areas where we believe the administration is simply 
wrong in the proposals that they put forward for improving education in 
this country.
  The recent budget submission by the President included the same old 
pattern of creating new programs where Washington is in control and the 
people who know best at the State and local level are left out of the 
decision-making process. Before I came to the Congress of the United 
States, I was a high school principal and then a superintendent of 
schools, and I was both during the time when the well-intentioned 
programs of the 1960s, coming from the Federal Government, back to 
local educators, were supposed to have closed the achievement gap.
  It was very obvious that it was not going to happen. So when I came 
to the Congress, I knew what was wrong, I thought I knew how to fix it, 
but it was very, very difficult to talk about quality. It was very 
difficult to talk about giving flexibility to local districts who knew 
better how to make the changes than we did in Washington. And so for 20 
years, not very much changed. Even though in the first 10 years, every 
Head Start study indicated that it was not doing what we had intended 
it to do. Instead of being a program to have preschoolers become 
reading ready and school ready, it turned out to be a poverty jobs 
program, it turned out to be a baby-sitting program. And it was so 
obvious because we were talking about quantity, how many children could 
we cover rather than quality, and every time I would say, ``But if 
you're covering those children with mediocrity, you're not helping them 
at all.''
  First let me talk a little bit about what all Americans can agree 
upon in relationship to a basic education policy. All Americans agree 
that a high quality education for their children is important. All 
Americans agree that safe schools, good discipline, high academic 
standards, parental involvement and responsibility, well-prepared 
teachers, appropriate school buildings, access to higher education and 
training and assistance for children with special needs are certainly 
worthy objectives.
  Most Americans agree that decisions on local school policy should be 
determined locally. Most Americans agree that equitable funding for our 
schools is ideal. Most Americans agree that the role of the Federal 
Government is limited but necessary. Now, where do we, the Republican 
majority, disagree with the administration? The problem begins when we 
talk about you how do we achieve these goals.
  The President believes that the Federal Government should create a 
new program for every identifiable education problem. So in his State 
of the Union address, he said, hire more teachers. This is the Federal 
Government speaking. Establish Federal accountability measures. End 
social promotion, provide afterschool and summer school support. Shut 
down schools that do not perform, require teachers to have majors in 
the subjects they teach, require local school report cards, offer 
parents a choice of public schools their children attend. It took him a 
long time to get to that point. Support more charter schools. Require 
consistent discipline policies, and provide funds to build or modernize 
local schools.
  Now, we agree with many of the goals that the President has outlined. 
Where we disagree is that creating a new program every time you think 
you have an identifiable problem will not solve the problem, 
particularly if it is coming from Washington, D.C. with a one size fits 
all for the local school districts. So we agree with many of the goals 
the President has outlined, but we do disagree with the need to create 
new programs every year to address these goals.
  Why do we disagree? First of all, we have to understand that States 
and local communities are so far ahead of us when it comes to school 
reform, way ahead of anything that we can even think about on the 
Federal level. So States and local communities are already taking 
action to build new schools, repair old ones, hire new teachers, close 
schools that do not work, raise standards for teachers, offer public 
school choice, open charter schools, hold schools accountable for 
academic progress. We believe that the best way to support local 
schools and communities is by providing flexibility in how States and 
local governments use Federal funds, increasing funding for special 
education and sending more Federal dollars directly to the classroom.

                              {time}  1530

  When we became the majority, we set seven key goals, and those seven 
key goals are reflected in every piece of legislation that we have put 
forward. Those goals are on this chart.
  First of all, hopefully we have everyone now talking about quality 
instead of quantity; and as I said, it took 20 years to get that 
message across. The important thing was the quality of the program. It 
was very obvious in Head Start that you could not hire early childhood 
people, because there are not many, first of all, who are early-
childhood prepared, at $10,000. But the idea was let us see how many 
students we can get there, and we will use all the money to get the 
children there; and we will not worry about the quality of the program. 
In our last two reauthorizations of Head Start, with help from the 
Democrats, we have changed that; and we moved the programs toward 
quality.
  Better teaching. I have tried to impress upon the President over and 
over again, I do not care what he says about 100,000 new teachers. 
First of all, there are about 14,000 school districts, there are about 
1 million school buildings, so 100,000 does not go very far. But it 
does not matter whether your pupil-teacher ratio is 30 to 1, 20 to 1, 
10 to 1, or this famous figure, and I don't know where they got it, of 
18 to 1. That does not matter unless there is a quality teacher in the 
classroom.
  They went through this exercise in California, spent billions of 
dollars as a matter of fact, and what happened? They reduced the class 
size in the early grades; and in Los Angeles alone, 33 percent of all 
the new people they had to hire in order to put somebody in with these 
new classrooms they just created had no qualifications whatsoever to be 
teaching.
  Local control. If you do not have the local people very much 
involved, that includes parents, that includes administrator, school 
boards, I will guarantee you, there is nothing from the Federal level 
that we will do to reform and improve education on the local level. 
That has to be done on the local level.
  Accountability. Again, when I got two pennies from Washington D.C. as 
a school administrator, I had to make sure that even though it did not 
help at all it had to be spent according to the way the Federal 
Government said it had to be spent. So if I got $15 for this program 
and $1,000 for that program, do not ever commingle one of those 
programs or you are in real trouble with the Federal Government. Even 
though combining some of those programs would have produced outstanding 
programs, you just could not do it.
  Accountability. The auditors did not come to see whether as a matter 
of fact anything good was happening. They came to see where you were 
spending the dollars. I thought well, gee, we ought to be able to do 
something about that. But, do you realize, I found for those 20 years 
the most important thing was the money is going to the right place. It 
did not matter whether we were accomplishing anything.
  So accountability is one of our key goals. If we give you the 
flexibility in the local level, you have to show us that every child 
has improved academically. That is what it should be all about.
  Dollars to the classroom. Again, every time we create a Federal 
program, we create a Federal bureaucracy; and then that goes out, and 
they must create a State bureaucracy; and by the time the money gets 
down to the local school district, there is not much left. So, of 
course, we have been saying over and over again that 95 percent of all 
dollars should get down to that classroom.
  Then basic academics. We got carried away with so many fads, it was 
unbelievable, and got far away from basic academics. Now every piece of 
legislation that we bring forth to this floor includes the fact that we 
must return to basic academics.

[[Page H534]]

  Parental involvement and responsibility. The first and most important 
teacher has to be some adult in that child's home, whether it is a 
mother, a father, an aunt, an uncle. That is where it all begins, and 
that parent must be the child's first and most important teacher.
  So we seek effectiveness; we seek results in all Federal education 
programs. Federal programs should result in increased student 
achievement, or they should be eliminated. The whole purpose of Title 
I, and we have already spent $120 billion on Title I, the whole purpose 
of Title I was to close the achievement gap; and every study shows we 
have made no headway, after $120 billion and all these years.
  Let me then move on to what we have done in the 105th Congress and 
what we are trying to do in the 106th Congress. Of the many legislative 
accomplishments that occurred during the 105th Congress, I am proud of 
several bills that address those seven basic goals. Let me point those 
out.
  First of all, in a bipartisan and bicameral fashion, as a matter of 
fact, we dealt with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, 
the amendments of 1997. Here again, we were so overly prescriptive that 
it was very difficult for the local districts to really do the kind of 
thing that they needed to do to help the children with special needs.
  What we basically did as a matter of fact was take most of the other 
money that they had for all the other students and cause them to have 
to spend it on a program that we mandated and a program that we said we 
would send 40 percent of the excess costs, and we sent 6 percent by the 
time I became chairman. We will be up to about 15 or 16 percent this 
year. All that other money has to be raised locally and taken from 
every other program.
  First of all, let me indicate what we have done with the Individuals 
With Disabilities Education Act. In that reauthorization, schools were 
made safer for all students by improving the procedure for quickly 
removing dangerous students from the classroom. Parent participation in 
key decision-making meetings was strengthened. Mediation was offered to 
resolve disputes. Sometimes millions of dollars were spent on attorney 
fees with nothing accomplished as far as giving the child a better 
education.
  Costly referrals to special education were cut. Over-identification 
is a major problem. We will never get to 40 percent if they keep over-
identifying special education students. It is a disaster for the child 
who is over-identified and put into a special education class, many 
times with a mere reading difficulty that could be handled without 
becoming a special education student for life. Costly referrals to 
special education were cut, schools were given more flexibility, and 
most importantly, education programs for children with disabilities 
were improved.
  The Higher Education Act Amendments of 1998, I am very proud of 
those. With that enactment, students received the lowest interest rate 
on student loans in 17 years. The maximum student award under the Pell 
Grant Program was authorized at the highest level in history. The Work 
Study Program was expanded to address the literacy needs of the 
community. The Work Study Program would have been the ideal program 
without getting into AmeriCorp, which had to turn right around and set 
up a bureaucracy in Washington and several bureaucracies in every 
State, when all you had to do was say if you are going to get any work-
study money, you will do community service and you will determine what 
the percentage of that community service will be. That bureaucracy is 
already set up. You did not need to create anything new in order to do 
that.

  A performance-based organization was created within the Department of 
Education in order to improve, simplify, and streamline the cumbersome 
student aid process. This administration decided that 100 percent of 
student aid should be done through the Federal Government. Now, you 
tell me one program that we have done very well. I cannot name one, and 
I doubt whether you can.
  Well, obviously we could not become the biggest bank in the world; 
and of course, they got into all sorts of trouble with only having 
about 30 percent of the loans. So we tried to improve that, because we 
indicated that this body will move in that department and see whether 
they cannot straighten out the problems that are there, people who know 
how to deal with student aid.
  The enactment of the Head Start Amendments of 1998 I mentioned 
earlier. We spent $53 billion, and we never expected quality in the 
program. So for year after year after year, the children most in need 
who needed an early childhood program, who needed a program to help 
them become reading ready, did not get it. Not only did they not get 
it, but we left the parent out altogether, and in many instances we had 
to improve the parent's parenting skill, we had to improve the parent's 
literacy skills so they could be the child's first and most important 
teacher.
  We changed that with our Head Start bill. The first reauthorization 5 
or 6 years ago, I was only able to get 25 percent of any new money 
going to quality. The last reauthorization, with the help of the 
Secretary downtown, we got up to 60 percent, saying that these programs 
must improve. The Secretary has also closed a lot of programs that, as 
a matter of fact, were not doing the job. We adopted new performance 
standards and new measures by which we determined whether they are 
meeting those performance standards, and we required that the majority 
of Head Start teachers have a college degree.
  One of the problems we found in Title I, for instance, was that in 
one State, they used I think something like 60 percent of all that 
money to hire teacher aides, and that is no problem if they are doing 
things teacher aides would normally do. But do you realize that they 
did not even have to have a high school diploma? They did not even have 
to have a GED. In many instances they were actually doing the teaching.
  The enactment of charter school legislation has been very important, 
because it gives some parents choice in the public education of their 
children. I can take you two blocks from the Capitol and show you an 
outstanding charter school. But in that charter school, everybody knows 
what the rules and regulations are, parents included. Everybody knows 
that you are going to be well disciplined, everyone knows you are going 
to do your homework, everyone knows that the parent must be involved. 
And it has changed things completely for all of those children, and 
they have a long waiting list.
  Charter schools legislation signed into law increased the 
authorization level from $15 million to $100 million while curtailing 
the funds available to the Department of Education for national 
activities. We want the money to get out there where the local charter 
schools are. The legislation also encouraged more private capital 
investments into charter schools and ensured the charter schools 
received their fair share of the Federal education dollar.
  We passed the A+ Education Savings Account legislation. 
Unfortunately, it got vetoed. What a tragedy. If it had become law, the 
legislation would have allowed parents, grandparents, friends, 
scholarship sponsors, companies, or charities to open an account for a 
child's educational needs for attendance wherever that child could get 
the best education. Unfortunately, it was vetoed. We will try again 
this year.
  Prohibiting new Federal tests was very, very important. Again, it was 
a fast track effort put on by the administration to come up with a 
Federal test, which had to mean that there had to be a Federal program 
of what it is you are going to teach in order to use the Federal test. 
But where the administration was wrong, if you are going to test your 
students, first of all someone must determine what those standards are. 
If these are new, higher standards you are going to teach to, and 
certainly in the 21st century we have to do that, then you have to 
design those. Then you have to prepare the teacher to teach to the new 
standards. Then you have to test the teacher to see whether they are 
ready to teach to the new standards.
  Now, after you have done all that, then you get around to testing the 
student. Otherwise, you spend the $100 million that the President was 
talking about to tell 50 percent of our students one more time what 
they have heard all their lives: you are not doing very well. It would 
be so much better to

[[Page H535]]

take $100 million and help them do far better.
  We enacted the Workforce Investment Act. The first thing I discovered 
was that we had at least 100 or 150 job-training programs coming from 
the Federal Government, from all departments, from all agencies, with 
no one having any idea what the other was doing.

                              {time}  1545

  So we consolidated 60 of those Federal training programs through the 
establishment of three block grants to the States for adult employment 
and training, for disadvantaged youth, and for adult education and 
literacy programs. We emphasized long-term academic improvement and 
occupational training while eliminating numerous Federal requirements, 
including duplicative and costly planning, paperwork, and reporting 
requirements.
  We are not interested in the process. That is what they were 
interested in all the time before. We are interested in outcome. We are 
interested in accomplishments. We are interested in achievement. We are 
interested in results, not process.
  We enacted the Vocational Technical Education Act, that provides 
approximately 7 to 10 percent of the funding for vocational technical 
education programs for secondary students, with more dollars going 
directly to the local level. Again, we emphasized strong academics and 
State and local flexibility in the use of funds.
  Every time we talk about flexibility, we say to the local and State, 
show us how every child is going to improve academically and prove to 
us, and then we give them the flexibility to design the program to meet 
their specific needs at their local level.
  Passing the Dollars to the Classroom Act, this legislation 
consolidated 31 programs top down from Washington down to the State and 
then to the local government, and we consolidated 31 of those top-down, 
Washington-based Federal education programs into a single grant to 
States, giving State and local decision-makers authority in how to 
distribute the money within each State. And we said, 95 percent of it 
must get to the classroom.
  In the 106th Congress, as we started this 106th Congress, we began by 
reviewing the programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education 
Act. For more than three decades, the Federal government has spent in 
excess of $185 billion to the States through scores of Washington-based 
education programs. Has the enormous investment helped improvement 
student achievement? Unfortunately, we have no evidence that it has. 
After 30 years and more than $128 billion, Title I has not had the 
desired effect of closing achievement gaps between those who have and 
those who do not.
  That is why we must continue our commitment to quality teaching, 
greater respect for local control and increased flexibility, bolstering 
basic academics, sending more dollars to the classroom, and fostering 
parent responsibility and involvement.
  Our commitment to these goals was most clearly evident early in 1999, 
with the successful enactment of the Education Partnership Flexibility 
Act, known as Ed-Flex. Thanks to our efforts and with help from 50 
Governors, the President decided that it was a good idea, after 
objecting to it early on.
  Ed-Flex gives schools and school districts more freedom to tailor 
Federal education programs to meet their needs and remove obstructions 
to reform. It is designed to make categorical Federal programs work 
better at the local level. One size does not fit all. The local 
government knows best. But States will have to follow Federal 
priorities and requirements that may or may not address the needs of 
children in their State unless they have that flexibility.
  It is time to modernize the Federal education funding mechanism 
investment so it reflects the needs of schools and school districts in 
the 21st century. With the passage of Ed-Flex, we turned our attention 
to teacher quality.
  Let me just indicate that Ed-Flex was a possibility for 12 States for 
many years. When we passed a reauthorization years ago, we said to 12 
States, if they can prove to us that they can have the flexibility to 
get waivers from the Federal requirements and use those Federal dollars 
and improve the academic achievement of all their students, they may 
have that flexibility.
  A couple of the States really took advantage of that and did an 
outstanding job. Unfortunately, not all 12 took advantage, because it 
really takes a lot of ingenuity on the State and local level. They have 
to do the planning. No one is doing it for them. They have to determine 
how they are going to have every child improve their academic standing.
  The State of Texas I believe got more than 4,000 waivers. They now 
can show that their Hispanic and black students are above the average 
of all their students because they made that commitment. They said, 
give us the flexibility and we will show you that we can improve the 
academic achievement of all of our students.
  We all know that after parents, the most important factor in a 
child's academic success is the quality of the teacher in the 
classroom. We have passed the Teacher Empowerment Act, and it allows 
schools to find the right balance for teacher class size, not us, for 
teacher quality, not us, by giving schools flexibility in deciding how 
best to meet the needs of their teacher corps and enhance their 
professional skills.

  With the first group of the 100,000 teachers, no requirements were 
made that they had to have anything other than the ability, I suppose, 
to get up in the morning and go and report to the school, nothing else. 
So what they found in those first hirings, as a matter of fact, they 
found an awful lot of people who went into that classroom with no 
qualifications whatsoever.
  This act allows schools to find that right balance, whether they need 
in-depth in service training, and not some of the nonsense that goes on 
where they take an afternoon off or an evening off and somehow or other 
they are going to improve the quality of teaching, but in depth.
  I can give an example of how that works. I recently visited in 
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, an advanced physics-calculus combined 
program. That would not have been possible several years ago because 
they would not have had the teacher in that classroom that could 
possibly have handled that assignment. But because of the opportunity 
for a couple of those teachers to go to an in depth program two summers 
in a row for the entire summer, they have one of the most outstanding 
combined programs I have seen in advanced calculus and physics. Again, 
the quality of the teacher made the difference.
  I like to remind all of my Congresswomen here in the Congress that 60 
percent of that class were women. Only 40 percent were men.
  The Teacher Empowerment Act holds schools accountable by ensuring 
that these funds are used to increase student achievement through high 
quality teaching, and ensures that parents are given information on the 
quality of their child's teacher.
  When I was negotiating with the administration at the end of last 
year, as we were going through this budget process and got into this 
100,000 teacher business, the very day we began negotiating a New York 
newspaper, the entire front page said, ``Parents, you are being 
cheated. Do you recognize 50 percent of all the teachers are not 
qualified to teach in the subject area in which they are teaching?'' 
That made it a little bit easier to get my point across when I was 
trying to make them understand that it is the quality of the teacher in 
the classroom, not necessarily the pupil-teacher ratio.
  Most importantly, the Teacher Empowerment Act is not a Washington-
knows-best program because it allows schools to spend these funds on 
what meets their individual needs.
  The third piece of legislation that successfully passed the House was 
the Student Results Act. This legislation authorizes and reforms Title 
I. We are working at the present time on the whole reauthorization of 
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
  Unlike the way we have done it in the past, in the past we usually 
said, we will just take this whole lump and just give it more money, 
and somehow something is going to happen that is going to be better. We 
said, we are going to look at each individual program in the Elementary 
and Secondary Education Act. We are going to see how

[[Page H536]]

well it is doing. If it is not doing well, we are going to get rid of 
it, or find a way to improve it so it does well.
  In the Student Results Act, we reformed Title I education for the 
disadvantaged and many of the other categorical K through 12 programs 
by targeting at helping disadvantaged children.
  The Student Results Act was put together with four overarching 
principles in mind: quality, accountability, choice, and flexibility. 
For too long we have maintained low expectations for Title I and the 
disadvantaged students it serves. We really do not expect enough from 
any student, unfortunately, but it is particularly true in the case of 
disadvantaged students.
  We have spent nearly $120 billion, as I said before, in Title I since 
its inception, yet it continues to be the subject of study after study 
pointing to its ineffectiveness. We failed to focus enough on quality 
reforms, and with enactment of the Student Results Act, we usher in a 
new era of high expectations for all children and for children served 
by this key program.
  In many Title I schools, the most disadvantaged children are taught 
by the least qualified teacher and teacher aides. The Student Results 
Act makes it clear that disadvantaged children deserve the same high 
quality teachers and teacher aides as all other students.
  The Student Results Act includes other quality reforms, like 
rewarding excellence by allowing States to reserve up to 30 percent of 
their new Title I funds to provide cash rewards to the schools if they 
are making substantial progress in closing that achievement gap.
  Finally, the bill reduces bureaucratic overhead and ensures that more 
dollars reach the classroom than ever before. As the saying goes, we 
want to make sure more of this money gets into the hands of classroom 
teachers who actually know the names of the children in the classroom.
  In order to ensure quality, we need to have accountability. We retain 
State and local standards and assessment provisions that are part of 
current law, and we applaud the efforts of States and localities to 
build strong standards-based systems. We build upon these important 
provisions by ensuring that vital information about the academic 
performance of Title I schools is provided to parents and the tax-
paying public.
  The bill does not provide for more accountability to the Federal 
government. It does insist upon more accountability to parents. We 
intend to shine a bright light on the Title I program and give parents 
real, understandable information about how their children and their 
schools are performing.
  For those programs that do not meet the test of high quality and 
increased accountability, we have included new and innovative public 
school choice provisions in the bill. Why should children have to go to 
a failing school when everybody is reporting that it is a failing 
school? The Student Results Act says that children attending schools 
classified as low-performing must be given the opportunity to attend a 
higher quality public school in their area. This enshrines in law a 
very simple commonsense concept: Children should not be forced to 
attend failing schools.
  The Student Results Act sends a powerful message to failing schools 
throughout this Nation that enough is enough, they must improve or 
their children will leave to attend another school.
  Finally, on October 21 the House passed a far-reaching education 
reform bill called the Straight A's Act. For those States or school 
districts that choose to participate, it is not a mandate, but if they 
choose to participate, Straight A's will fundamentally change the 
relationship between the Federal government and the State. Straight A's 
will untie the hands of those States that have strong accountability 
systems in place in exchange for meeting student performance 
improvement targets.
  This sort of accountability for performance does not exist in current 
law. States must improve achievement to participate in Straight A's, 
and if their scores go down for the first 3 years, they get kicked out 
before the 5-year agreement that they thought they made with the 
Federal government. We are not going to wait 5 years. Currently, 
nothing happens to States that decline for 3 years.
  Straight A's frees States to target all of their Federal dollars on 
disadvantaged students and narrowing achievement gaps. Under current 
law, States could not target more Federal dollars for this purpose. 
They could not combine any of the funds coming from the Federal level 
for different programs. This legislation will reward those States that 
significantly narrow achievement gaps with a 5 percent reward, an 
incentive that does not exist under current law.
  With the enactment of Straight A's, all students, especially the 
disadvantaged students who were the focus of Federal legislation in 
1965, may finally receive effective instruction and be held to high 
standards.

                              {time}  1600

  For too long, States and schools have been able to hide behind 
average test scores and to show they are helping disadvantaged 
children, merely by spending more money in the right places, and that 
must come to an end when States participate in Straight A's, if they so 
choose to participate.
  States and school districts must focus on the most effective way of 
improving achievement, not on just complying with how the Federal 
Government says they have to spend their money. Schools should be free 
to focus on improving teacher quality, implementing research-based 
instruction and operating effective after-school programs.
  Federal process requirements have huge amounts of paperwork for 
people at the local level and distract from improving student learning. 
Madam Speaker, as I said before, we want to hear about results. We are 
not interested in process.
  I would encourage everyone to listen carefully when people talk about 
accountability. Are they talking about accountability for process, 
making sure States and districts meet Federal guidelines and 
priorities, the checkoff system, or are they talking about 
accountability for real gains in academic achievement? Will achievement 
gaps close as a result, or will States just have to fill out a lot of 
paperwork about numbers of children served without any mention of 
improvements?
  By giving States a choice to do so, the opportunity to build on their 
successes and improve the achievement of all of their students, the 
Federal Government can lend a helping hand rather than a stranglehold.
  We started the year with Ed-Flex, which passed with overwhelming 
bipartisan majorities of both houses and is now law. As I said, Ed-Flex 
provides for flexibility to all 50 States to control how they design 
Federal programs and help them adapt to their own unique needs.
  Next, we followed up with the Teacher Empowerment Act, which passed 
the House with bipartisan support. And the bill emphasizes the single 
most important factor in improving education in this Nation, which is 
the quality of the teaching force.
  We then moved to the Student Results Act, a bill to extend Title I 
and other programs targeted at the disadvantaged, which also passed the 
House with overwhelming bipartisan support. That bill emphasized 
quality, accountability, school choice and increases local control and 
flexibility.
  Finally, the House passed our Straight A's bill, that gives States 
and localities unprecedented flexibility in return for accountability.
  How about the rest of the 106th Congress? Well, we will have to 
conclude our reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education 
Act with bills targeted at improving some of the major education 
programs beyond Title I; school technology, drug free school, impact 
aid and the Title VI block grant and a bill to improve the literary 
skills of all Americans.
  One of the problems we have had over the years is we have not thought 
in terms of family literacy. We sort of put an adult literacy over here 
and a children's literacy over here. I will guarantee you we have 
learned you cannot break the cycle of illiteracy or functional 
illiteracy, unless you deal with the entire family. And you see, 
functional illiteracy today is not what it was 10, 15 years ago. 
Functional illiteracy today in our society in this 21st

[[Page H537]]

century is if you cannot read, write, comprehend on a 12th grade level, 
and that is a functional illiterate.
  We have to do much more, and we have to do it jointly with the entire 
family. Family literacy is what we need to talk about. Priority will be 
given to proposals that increase flexibility and the operation of 
Federal education programs.
  We will attach a higher priority to support local schools in their 
effort to make their schools safe, drug free and orderly, as we 
streamline technology needs and applications.
  Madam Speaker, we will work to promote literacy for children and 
their parents. We will expect quality research that will benefit local 
schools and improve the quality of education for all children. At the 
end of the reauthorization process, we will have a much improved 
Elementary Secondary Education Act. The programs we include will be 
those that ensure that our children will receive a quality education 
by, again, emphasizing those seven key goals that I originally 
outlined: Quality, better teaching, local control, accountability, 
dollars to the classroom, basic academic, parental involvement and 
responsibility.
  Let me take a quick look at the President's budget. I have it up 
here. We have some real differences. Here on my chart is what we 
believe. Here is the President's side of this chart. I want to talk 
very briefly about this.
  As I indicated, the Republican-sponsored Teacher Empowerment Act, 
which got bipartisan support, compared to the President's teaching to a 
higher standards initiative is the best example of our fundamental 
difference in philosophy.

  We say quality first, highly qualified teachers in every classroom. 
The administration says quantity before quality, put more teachers in 
classrooms, no matter whether they are qualified or not.
  We say flexibility with accountability. We give you the freedom if 
you show us that you produce results. The administration says reduce 
freedom, increase requirements. We say State-design standards and 
assessments. The administration says federally-designed, one-size-fits-
all; the national test as an example.
  We say State and local schools design school discipline standards. 
The administration says, discipline standards determined by Washington 
bureaucrats who probably were never in a classroom as an adult beyond 
higher education.
  We say increase IDEA funding. As I mentioned before, when the 
Individuals for Disability Education Act was passed, the local school 
districts were led to believe that if they participate in that program 
and make sure that children with disabilities have an equal opportunity 
for a good education, the Federal Government will supply 40 percent of 
the excess funds to educate a special needs child.
  Madam Speaker, we have to understand if a school district's average 
per pupil expenditure might be $7,500, a special needs child may be 
$15,000, may be $20,000, may be $100,000, the local school district has 
had to pick up most of that extra expenditure, even though we said we 
would send 40 percent of the excess costs.
  Well, depending where you are, just in a small city, like I 
represent, in York, Pennsylvania, if we were sending them 40 percent of 
excess costs, they would get a million dollars extra every year. They 
could talk about teacher quality. They could talk about pupil-teacher 
ratio reduction. They could talk about improving their school 
buildings, because they would be getting what was promised.
  And for 20 years I pleaded and pleaded and pleaded and pleaded and 
got nowhere. Finally, we started making some improvements. But not 
because of the President's budget, because the last 2 years he sent a 
budget up that reduced our spending on special education, if we 
consider the number of new students that come in and we include 
inflation.
  Fortunately, by the time we were finished going through the 
authorization process and the appropriations process, we have 
dramatically increased that expenditure so that those local school 
districts then can get this money and spend it on the special needs 
children, without totally raising all of that money on the local level 
and taking it away from every other education program.
  Our Teacher Accountability Act supports local decision-making, 
provides greater flexibility, reforming the tenure system, tests 
teachers, provides for signing bonuses or differential pay for teachers 
in high-needs subject areas, provides incentives to teachers with a 
record of success in helping low-achievement students improve their 
academic success, helps them recruit fully qualified teachers, rewards 
schools and local education agencies for reducing the number of 
unqualified teachers that are teaching in their schools, helps them 
hire quality teachers and provide quality professional development.
  Now, contrast that, again, with what the administration would do. The 
new Washington control programs address many of the same issues that I 
just mentioned, but the programs will be directed by bureaucrats in 
Washington and not based on peculiar needs of each local school 
district.
  Washington will decide who receives the funds. Washington will decide 
the amount of funds that are needed to address a specific problem. 
Washington will dictate how the funds must be spent.
  We are moving in the right direction, and I am hopeful that by the 
time we finish reauthorization of the Elementary Secondary Education 
Act we, in the near future, will begin to see a closing of that 
academic achievement gap. Something that was well intentioned with the 
legislation in 1965; unfortunately, it has not worked.
  This is a chart indicating just what we have been able to do, what 
the President has said in relationship to the funding for special ed 
and what we were able to do in the House and the Senate in the 
appropriation process. Here we see 1997, and the yellow is the 
President's request. The orange is what we were able to do. We got up 
above $3 million in 1997 for special ed money going back. In 1998, this 
was the President's request. This is what we were able to do in the 
Congress.

  In 1999, we can again see we went up. And in the year 2000, the 
present year that we are in, we are now up to $5 million that will go 
back to these local school districts.
  IDEA funding is probably the most important thing we can do to help 
local school districts because it gives them, then, the opportunity to 
use the hard-earned tax money that they have to go out and get for 
their entire education program.
  As I mentioned, my small city of York would receive a million dollars 
extra. Let me talk about a couple of the other areas.
  Los Angeles, for instance, they actually receive $23 million. If they 
got the 40 percent of excess costs, they would get $118 million. That 
would free up $95 million that they must raise locally to meet these 
Federal mandates.
  Chicago, $41 million. If they got their 40 percent they would get 
$212 million. It would give them $170 million. And they have taken 
great steps in Chicago to try to improve that school system to make 
sure that all of those children have an opportunity to achieve and get 
a piece of the American dream.
  New York City, $41 million. $212 million, 170 million if they got the 
40 percent.
  In Miami, they receive $10 million. With 40 percent, they would get 
$55 million. That means a 44 million increase.
  Washington, D.C., right where we are, they get $3 million. If they 
got the 40 percent, they would get $15 million. $12 million locally in 
order to improve the academic achievement of all their students.
  In St. Louis, they get $2 million. If they got 40 percent, they would 
get $10 million, and that is again a dramatic increase for them to use 
to improve their schools locally.
  So large cities across this country would see a dramatic increase; 
and, therefore, we do not have to go out and tell them we want them to 
reduce the pupil-teacher ratio, we want them to have a qualified 
teacher, we want them to improve their school building. They would have 
the money to do it. We take that money from them with our mandate 
because we do not send what we promised we would send.
  Again, I hope by the time we finish the reauthorization of the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the

[[Page H538]]

near future, we will see that gap closed. It is tragic to see as many 
as 50 percent of our students not receiving the education they will 
need to compete in the 21st century.

                              {time}  1615

  Last year I had to cast one of the worst votes I had to cast. We 
needed to change our immigration laws so that we could bring qualified 
people in to do the jobs that exist in this country, in this high-tech 
21st Century. What a tragedy. What a tragedy. I hope no one will ever 
have to cast a vote of that nature in the future, because I hope we 
will do something about making sure that that 50 percent that are not 
getting an opportunity to get a part of this 21st Century American 
dream will get that opportunity.
  The answers are at the local level with State efforts. We are here to 
add assistance. We should not be here to complicate the problems that 
they have on the State and local level. I think by the time we pass the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act and it becomes law, we will be 
on the right road to ensure academic achievement for all students no 
matter where they live, who they are, no matter what their disability 
may be. All will have an opportunity for a quality education.

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