[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 20 (Tuesday, February 29, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S976-S979]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EDUCATION

  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I will speak this evening on an issue of 
great importance to the country and every family in America. That is 
the issue of education.
  For the past 4 months, the Republicans and Democrats on the Health, 
Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee have been working to come up 
with a bipartisan approach to the reauthorization of the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act. Sadly, those efforts have collapsed and we are 
being presented with a Republican bill, the Straight A's Act, which is 
essentially a block granting of critical programs and the amassing of 
Federal resources to be distributed with little accountability by the 
States.
  This issue is of great importance because education is what I believe 
is fueling the great economic progress we are making today. The 5-
percent growth in productivity in the last quarter recognizes the 
combination of American technology, which is a product of our ideas, 
our education, and the skills and talents of the American people that 
have been forged in the classrooms of America.
  Just as importantly, this recognition of the centrality and 
importance of education is shared by every American because they the 
mothers and fathers of this country, recognize that the future of their 
families, the future of their children, are dependent almost 
exclusively on how well they are educated. As a result, we cannot take 
lightly the proposals that are before the Senate with regard to the 
educational policy of the United States.
  There are some who do not think the National Government has a role in 
education. I disagree. We recognize, of course, the primacy of States 
and localities in terms of forging educational policy, but we do have a 
role at the national level. We have a role of providing both 
encouragement and support for local innovation and also support to 
overcome local inertia.
  We have seen that played out throughout our history. We have seen a 
situation where years ago the States were inattentive to the needs of 
low-income students, particularly minority students. That is one of the 
primary impulses for the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 
We have seen in the past where States were indifferent to the education 
of students with disabilities, and we acted properly and appropriately 
to do that. So we do have this national role and we have to carry it 
out conscientiously, recognizing that public education is the bulwark 
of our society and our country.
  Ninety percent of our students attend public schools. Public schools 
offer not only educational benefits but are the devices that bring us 
together, the common ground, the area in which one can enter and 
prepare to seize the opportunities of life without regard to race, 
creed, or ethnicity.
  It is this public education system that we must enhance, reform, and 
reinvigorate. I argue that the approach to do that is not through block 
grants. The approach is a careful consideration of the appropriate 
Federal initiatives, both in terms of resources and in terms of 
programs, that will help stimulate reform at the local level and help 
overcome the inertia and the political gridlock we see every day at the 
localities and at the States just as they see on certain issues in 
Washington.
  Again, I yield, as do all my colleagues, that the Federal Government 
is the junior partner in this partnership for education in America. We 
supply roughly 7 percent of all the resources; the States, the cities, 
and the towns supply 93 percent of the resources. However, we can do 
much, particularly in the area of focusing assistance on the neediest 
children and also, as I said before, to help invigorate our school 
system, to help accelerate reform.

  Money isn't everything; it is vitally important, but we also need a 
sense of direction or purpose, of national statements about what is 
critical to the Nation as well as critical to localities and to States. 
That, too, is part and parcel to our deliberations about the Elementary 
and Secondary Education Act.
  We should be providing resources for local communities. One of the 
problems with the educational policy in the United States is it is tied 
so closely to property tax that we can witness situations where good 
school systems, particularly school systems in urban areas that were 
models of efficiency and expertise decades ago, have fallen on hard 
times because their property base has evaporated. People have moved to 
the suburbs; the industries have left the central city and moved out. 
We can help, and we do that principally through title I programs.
  Again, as we help with resources at the local level, we cannot give 
up the idea also that we have to provide this spark of innovation, the 
spark of reform that is so critical to the efforts. I believe also that 
this is recognized by many people at the State and local level, that 
our Goals 2000 initiative several years ago helped essentially start a 
reform process that was inchoate at the State and local level and many 
places that needed resources, even if there was a sense of reform. This 
effort, this identification of reform together with resources helped 
stimulate productive efforts that are improving the quality of 
education. But I also would say we have a long way to go before we can 
satisfy ourselves that every student in America, every child in 
America, has access to excellent public schools. That should be our 
goal, a goal we must insist upon.
  Again, I am disappointed that efforts over the last several months to 
try to forge bipartisan compromise on the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act have failed, apparently, for the moment. Tomorrow in the 
committee we begin to debate a legislative proposal that is simply 
abdicating the responsibilities of the National Government to the 
States without any real accountability. That is a wrong approach.
  We have seen that because we have seen what the States have done in 
contrast to what the Federal Government has done in some critical areas 
of concern. I am not trying to suggest there is any type of nefarious 
plot at the States, but we all have to recognize they are under very 
special pressures in terms of allocating funds, in terms of local 
problems, a host of local issues that complicate their politics, and we 
have an opportunity sometimes to avoid those internecine fights that go 
on and provide direction that they welcome and they, in fact, in many 
cases expect.
  One aspect of this debate about Federal versus State perspectives is 
a report prepared by the General Accounting Office in 1998. It was 
found Federal aid was seven times more targeted to poor students than 
State programs overall. It found our effort to reach out and help low-
income students was disproportionately greater than State efforts. I 
think you have to ask yourself, logically, had we not acted in 1965 
with title I, and in Congresses subsequent to that date to help out 
low-income students, both in center-city areas and in rural areas, 
would they enjoy the limited success they have had to date? I am not 
suggesting we succeeded in that arena.

  I suggest you might find that same proportion of funding, those who 
are politically powerful in States, those suburban areas, those areas 
that themselves with property tax can fund schools, would do much 
better. In fact,

[[Page S977]]

our situation in center-city and rural areas would be much more severe 
without specified targeted Federal assistance--not a block grant, 
specified targeted Federal assistance.
  I should point out in the last reauthorization of the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act--I was a Member of the other body at that 
time--we were aware of some of the shortcomings and limitations and 
inhibitions in the title I program, and we made changes to streamline 
it and make it more effective, as we did with several other programs. 
The results from the last few years seem to suggest this combination of 
more programmed and efficient Federal support, together with State 
initiatives, have led to real improvements. We want to continue that 
partnership and certainly those improvements.
  There is another aspect, too, that affects the State and Federal 
Governments. I think sometimes we sit back and say: The States have it 
right; they know how to allocate and distribute funds. It turns out in 
over one-third of the States in these United States, people are suing 
the States claiming they are unfairly distributing their school aid. If 
we are going to turn around and give moneys to such a State without 
real accountability, without real direction, we, frankly, are running 
right into the teeth of those suits that are saying the States do not 
know how to spend their money fairly, wisely, or well; they are 
disadvantaging large parts of the population.
  I think there are many reasons why we can argue with great 
credibility and force that Federal programs and Federal resources, 
national policies, can complement, supplement, help States do things 
that, because of politics, because of resource limitations, because of 
a host of reasons, they would not do of their own volition.
  There is another issue, too, and it becomes, frankly, an issue that 
is much more specific to us today than it was 10 years ago or 20 years 
ago. We are in a global economy. Our competition is no longer between 
Rhode Island and South Carolina or Pennsylvania and Utah. It is between 
students in Singapore and in Japan and around the world versus American 
students. To suggest at this time there is not a national need for some 
direction, some support, some help to States to move forward their 
educational process is to disregard the global nature of the world we 
face today.
  There are examples, frankly, of where we have acted successfully with 
federally directed programs to set national policies with national 
resources to facilitate State reform. One I mentioned previously is 
Goals 2000. I participated in the drafting of this legislation in 1994. 
I would have liked to have gone much further in terms of 
accountability, in terms of many other things. But the sense of the 
Congress and the administration was let's get into the States' 
resources with a direction to begin to start reforming or helping their 
reform efforts. That took place. In fact, it has been acknowledged that 
Goals 2000 has been a force for reform in places such as Texas and 
Georgia and Vermont and elsewhere. Indeed, in 1998, in another GAO 
report, State and local officials stated:

       Goals 2000 funding provided valuable assistance and that, 
     without this funding, some reform efforts would not have been 
     accomplished or would not have been accomplished as quickly.

  Again, had we simply back in 1994 said take this money and do what 
you like, without some structure, some framework, it would not have 
been as successful, I believe, as it has been to date.
  There is another area where we can play a critical role--it is a role 
we have played in the past--and that is educational technology. 
National investment in educational technology since 1994, in programs 
such as the Technological Literacy Challenge Fund and the Technology 
Innovation Challenge Grants, as well as the E-Rate, have led to a 
dramatic increase in the number of schools connected to the Internet. 
Again, these are very specific targeted national programs. Between 1994 
and 1998, Internet access in public schools increased from 35 to 89 
percent of schools. The percentage of public school instruction rooms 
with Internet access also increased during this time period from 3 
percent in 1994 to 51 percent in 1998.
  High poverty schools, which have long lagged behind wealthier schools 
in Internet access, were as likely to have Internet access as low-
poverty-level schools by the fall of 1998 because of these 
initiatives--again, appropriate. We are not supplanting State and local 
efforts, but we are identifying a national need to wire up to the 
Internet the children in the classroom, providing resources, direction. 
It gets done. It succeeds.
  There is still a need, in fact, for additional effort in that regard. 
That is why we are missing a real opportunity in this reauthorization 
to build upon the success of our technology initiatives. In fact, the 
gap between high- and low-poverty schools and the percentage of 
classrooms with Internet access does not seem to be stabilized. It 
seems to be a widening; there is a bit of widening at the gap. We have 
to continue to work to make sure that gap does not exist.
  My colleague from Maryland, Senator Mikulski, is often quoted talking 
about the digital divide; the fact that affluent students enjoy 
computer access at home and in classrooms. Low-income students do not 
have that opportunity. In the information age that digital divide could 
be decisive. So we have an opportunity to work now to build on prior 
success to ensure we truly close the digital divide.
  There is another area--this one, I think, is very emblematic of the 
dangers of reflexively shifting from targeted programs to block 
grants--and that is school libraries. In 1965, Congress enacted 
legislation in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which 
included specific provisions to assist school libraries to buy library 
material, principally books. But in 1981, with the advent of the Reagan 
administration, this specific program was thrown into a large block 
grant.
  Now what has happened? What happened is all the material that was 
bought in 1965 through the late 1960s and 1970s is still on the shelves 
and has not been replaced because when this library program was thrown 
into a block grant, local pressures took out the support to buy library 
books. It always seemed there was something else to crowd it out, some 
other immediate problem. As a result, what I believe is a strong 
national thought that children in our schools should have up-to-date, 
modern library books has withered away, and we can see the proof on the 
shelves of school libraries throughout this country.
  When I was talking about this issue several years ago, a librarian in 
a school in Arizona sent me a book. The title was ``The Constitution of 
the United States,'' by James Beck. But what I thought was interesting 
is that there was a foreword by the President of the United States, 
Calvin Coolidge. The book was written in 1924 and was still on the 
shelves in 1993.
  I went to law school. I think there were a couple of amendments to 
the Constitution after 1924.
  I would be hard pressed if I were a student in that school in Arizona 
to confirm or deny that fact.
  There is another book found in Boston entitled ``Planets, Stars, and 
Space'' which noted:

       Of course, the trip (to the moon) cannot yet be made. . . . 
     It may be necessary to establish a giant artificial moon or 
     satellite a thousand miles or so above the earth, from which 
     to launch the moon rocket.

  That is copyright 1957, and that was in a school library recently.
  From my own home State, there was in a school library a book entitled 
``Ms. MD'' which stated only men could enroll in Brown Medical School, 
and the tuition--this really dates it--was $2,800 a year.
  The effort to block grant the library program led to the 
deterioration and destruction of the library program, and as a result 
there are thousands of schools across the country that have books so 
out of date that if parents saw them, they would recall their child.
  I hope we can change it. In this authorization, contrary to block 
grant, we can try to develop another library approach to assist 
libraries in buying not just books but CDs and all the media we need 
for an information age.
  The other presumption is--in addition to the fact there is a 
presumption in some quarters that the States know how to spend the 
money--all of the successes are because of local initiatives. The 
reality is there are too many

[[Page S978]]

failing schools in America, and the people directly responsible for 
these schools--we all admit it here--are the States and localities. I 
think that somewhat undercuts this notion of infallibility at the local 
level and supports the notion that at the national level, our ideas and 
our initiatives and complementary activities have a place and a 
purpose.
  There are about 8,000 schools across the country which are failing 
their own standards set by their States--not national standards but 
State standards. Ask yourself: What is happening? Why are these schools 
not being reformed?
  What has happened in our proposal, and I hope we can deal with it in 
the ESEA, is we are asking for more accountability by the States. We 
are asking them to tell us: What are you going to do about these 8,000 
schools? How are you going to fix them? Do you need additional 
resources?
  We are not trying to be prescriptive--one way to do it--but we want 
accountability. That, too, is going to be decisively lost if we simply 
turn over large block grants to Governors and say do what you will 
because doing what they will has led to 8,000 schools across this 
country failing their students, failing the parents, and failing the 
Nation. We should not tolerate that.
  There is another area that is important that represents, in many 
cases, the clash of conflicting priorities at the local level and 
results in a poor educational environment for students. That is the 
issue of school modernization. There are schools in this country that 
are literally falling apart or so out of date that they impair the 
educational experience of children.
  There are schools in my communities in Rhode Island that were built 
in 1876 and in 1898. In 1876, George Armstrong Custer lost a battle at 
the Little Big Horn. Much has changed since then, except children are 
still walking and busing to this school in a community in Rhode Island.
  In the wintertime, the way they regulate the heat is they open the 
windows because once they turn that boiler on, it gets so hot that the 
only thing they can do to cool it down to room temperature is to open 
the windows. There is a trailer outside, but the trailer is not a good 
place to put computers because it is not fully air conditioned, not 
well ventilated. This is one example. These examples are replete 
throughout the entire country.
  In Rhode Island, 81 percent of schools report a need to upgrade or 
repair a building to good overall condition. Again, this is an area 
where national assistance can be very helpful. There is not a weekend--
and I go home every weekend--where I do not run into someone--a parent, 
a school committee person--who says: You know what, we sure could use 
some help fixing up our schools.
  This is not some plot hatched in Washington, DC, to take over 
elementary and secondary education. This is what people intimately 
involved in elementary and secondary education in our communities want 
us to do, but we will not be able to do it if we simply bundle up the 
money in a block grant and give it to the Governors.
  I talked a good bit about some of the problems we have in our school 
system, some of the problems we have in terms of our response in the 
Senate to these issues. But I would be remiss if I did not mention some 
of the good news because of our efforts over the last several years.
  It turns out that high school students are taking tougher 
mathematical and science courses because this notion of increased 
standards which began with the Governors' conference years ago and 
certainly were highlighted by the efforts of President Clinton, 
certainly underscored by the Goals 2000 Act, certainly reemphasized in 
the last reauthorization, this is leading to students taking tougher 
mathematical and science courses.
  These increased participation rates are cutting across different 
lines of income, ethnicity, and race, which are very good signs for our 
country. Student mathematical achievement is improving. Between 1982 
and 1986, students improved their achievement in mathematics, as 
measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
  There is some good news, and it is the result not of the absence of 
the National Government from policy or solely because of the presence 
of national programs; it is because of this partnership that has been 
worked out, somewhat fluidly and sometimes roughly, over several 
decades between local initiatives and national complementary 
initiatives.
  I could go on about student achievement. It is improving but not 
enough. Certainly, in international comparisons, we are not where we 
want and must be.
  The other item is we have seen some of these improvements in math and 
science and some in part--I do not want to overstate this--might be 
attributable to a specific Federal national initiative, and that is the 
Eisenhower Professional Development Program established in 1984 to 
increase the quality of math and science teaching by giving math and 
science teachers opportunities to develop their expertise and 
understanding and to develop their techniques to teach; again, part of 
what I hope is good news about improving mathematical scores in this 
country.
  Had we been presented with a bill in the HELP Committee which would 
have given us the opportunity to talk seriously about issues of 
programmatic content and national priorities, there are some things I 
would have liked to emphasize. I will mention them.

  First, we have to improve the quality of teaching in the United 
States. We just had an amendment by my colleague, the Senator from 
Maine, Ms. Collins. It was a very good amendment because it talked 
about allowing teachers to get more tax benefits for their investment 
in professional development, for taking courses in graduate school, and 
buying material. That is a good effort. Frankly, that is just the 
surface.
  If we want to improve the performance of teachers in our schools, we 
have to go into the classroom. We do not have to send the teachers 
necessarily to graduate school. We have to go into the classroom. We 
have to embed professional development as part of the daily life of the 
school. That is not being done across this country.
  What we have in many places is what I experienced as a child when I 
went to school, and that is the proverbial teacher's institute. It was 
the one day we celebrated because there was no school or no holiday. 
They just took the day off. Teachers went to a big conference center, 
listened to a speaker, chatted about all sorts of things, and that was 
professional development.
  It does not work that way, particularly nowadays. They have to make 
professional development part and parcel of the school. They have to 
have senior teachers and principals involved in the professional 
development of their teachers. They have to have the flexibility to get 
substitute teachers into the classroom so teachers can get out and 
observe other teachers teaching. This is a national priority.
  We should be able to give the States both financial assistance and a 
sense of direction about the best techniques, if you will, give them a 
spectrum, a menu of things from which they can choose. But we cannot do 
that if our fixation is just ship the money down to the Governor. We 
have to improve the quality of professional development.
  A 1998 study in California found that the more teachers were engaged 
in ongoing curriculum-centered professional development, holding school 
conditions and student characteristics constant, the higher the 
students' mathematical achievements.
  We know from the data, if you can embed professional development, put 
it in the life of the school, you can improve performance. That is what 
it is all about, not winning debating points but ensuring that the 
performance of students in the classrooms of this country improves and 
improves dramatically.
  The teachers themselves recognize this. One in five talk about the 
fact they need more professional development, that what is being 
required of them by the States is inadequate. In fact, I believe the 
statistic would probably be higher if you pressed and probed more. So 
that is an area to which I would like to be able to devote attention. I 
am sure I will offer an amendment in the committee, but it is starkly 
different than the approach of simply shrugging our shoulders and 
saying: Let the Government figure it out.

[[Page S979]]

  We have ideas. We have an obligation to take what we see across this 
country and try to move States forward to do something that would 
improve the quality of education.
  There is another area that is important. That area is parental 
involvement. The national PTA did a survey of public school parents and 
found that 91 percent believe it is ``extremely important'' for parents 
to be involved in their children's school, but more than half of the 
parents stated that schools need direction about how to make parents 
true partners in their children's education.
  The overwhelming view of parents is they need to be more involved in 
the school. But a significant number say the schools are deaf to their 
concerns. They do not have the programs or the attitudes or the 
policies that will get parents into the schools.
  This is particularly the case when you get to areas where there are 
low-income students because the reality is many times their parents 
have an unsuccessful educational experience. It is not as if school was 
a good place for them. There are also practical problems in many urban 
areas, and some rural areas, about language difficulties, about 
reaching out to parents in their own language to get them involved in 
the lives of their children. We have not, as a nation, been able to 
develop the kinds of policies and programs that assist States and 
localities in making parents real partners in their children's 
education. I hope we could do that. I hope we could do that by using 
ESEA to start thinking about ways we can jump-start parental 
involvement at the local level.
  Again, you can always fall back to the point: Why is this not 
happening if the States have the vision, the resources, and the 
commitment to do it? Why should we tolerate it continuing in such a 
deplorable way if there is a lack of resources, vision, or commitment 
at the local level when we know it should and must be done?
  As I mentioned, I would love very much to be able to take out some of 
those antiquated books on the library shelves of America and replace 
them with modern books that talk about the fact that we have landed on 
the Moon, that include all the amendments of the U.S. Constitution. 
Again, we will not be able to do that if we are simply block granting 
our educational dollars.
  There is also a program that is based upon one State's experience 
helping another State. The States have long been described as 
laboratories of innovation and experiment. But I think we have a job, 
and that is to disseminate all that good work, making it available 
throughout the Nation, giving other States the incentive or the ideas 
or the resources to put in place what some States have succeeded so 
well in doing.

  One program in Rhode Island is called the Child Opportunity Zones, 
COZs. These are places within schools that bring together all sorts of 
social services, mental health services, child care services, and 
social work services. It is designed to assist the family, recognizing 
that the success of a child is dependent not only on his or her innate 
talent, and the teachers and the facilities, but also in the support 
and the participation of the whole family. If the family has problems, 
that child will likely have problems. Indeed, one of the things that 
has changed since my education is that family life in so many parts of 
this country has been terribly complicated by social problems, health 
care problems, issues that are not educational but decisively impact on 
the ability of a young child to learn.
  I am encouraged that the President has sent up his budget proposing 
increases in Head Start. I have colleagues such as Chris Dodd who are 
working valiantly to improve early childhood education. All of these 
things coming together recognize the fact that today, in so many 
places, it is not the educational problems holding children back; it is 
the health problem; it is the mental health problem; it is a host of 
problems that are outside the strict purview of what we used to think 
of as educational policy.
  This COZ program is very successful in Rhode Island. It brings these 
disciplines to one place in the school. It gives families easy access 
to all of these disciplines.
  Once again, this is an example of how the experience of one State--
highlighted, illustrated, and disseminated by national legislation--can 
benefit the entire country. I would like very much to be able to work 
on that.
  Finally, we come back to a major issue which will preoccupy all of 
us. That is this issue of accountability. Block grants, without 
accountability, are an abdication of our responsibility not only to 
have good educational policy but to the taxpayers. We cannot hand over 
millions of dollars with the assumption that States and localities are 
doing it right, when we know in some cases they do not invest enough in 
low-income education, that in some cases States and localities will not 
provide the kind of innovative change that is necessary for this new 
century.
  We have to work hard to ensure we have accountability standards that 
work. I know Senator Bingaman has been a champion of this issue in the 
Senate. I worked with him as a Member of the other body in our 
reauthorization of the prior Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I 
anticipate, if we have a chance--and I hope we do--that both in 
committee and on the floor we will push hard for accountability. So we 
have a lot of work to do. It is national work. We simply cannot walk 
away from it.
  Unfortunately, the approach that I see the Republican majority taking 
is effectively walking away from it, to hand it off to the States, to 
step back and say it is not our job, not our role, when, in fact, we 
can and should be a partner, the junior partner but a partner, in this 
effort to improve education throughout the United States.
  We have made progress. Statistics are encouraging in relation to 
student performance, but we will give up this progress, I fear, if we 
do not innovate, if we do not continue to support local initiatives, 
and if we do not continue to try to overcome the local inertia that 
leads to 8,000 failing schools, that leads to a malapportionment of 
dollars between poor students and more affluent students.

  It is a national role that we have long had. It is increasingly a 
national priority, as we face a world of international competition, as 
we face a world where the future of our families literally depends upon 
the quality of the education that our children receive.
  I hope that in this great debate we will, in fact, be able to talk 
about libraries, talk about child opportunity zones, talk about 
improving the accountability, and talk about how we can put technology 
into classrooms, not simply to walk away from this issue with the 
assumption that the States can and will do it.

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