[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 26 (Thursday, March 9, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1372-S1373]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EDUCATION

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, during the course of the last 2 weeks, the 
health committee has been dealing with the vitally important subject of 
education and has been engaged over a period of many hours in the 
writing of a bill extending the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 
of the United States. That writing process, in my view, has been highly 
constructive. It has also been ignored by the press of the United 
States and, therefore, by most of the people of the United States. It 
does not deserve that fate.
  Education is a vitally important subject, and the Federal role in 
education, a role that has increased markedly over the course of the 
last several decades, is at a crossroads in the course of that debate--
a debate which I hope next month will proceed to the floor of the 
Senate.
  This is truly a defining moment in our history in Congress. We have 
an opportunity to greatly improve and change the direction of Federal 
Government funding for schools all across the United States of America. 
We get this opportunity only once every 4 to 6 years, when the 
reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act comes 
before us.
  I am convinced we will do that job best by listening to our 
constituents who have an immediate concern with education--an immediate 
concern because they are the parents of our public school students, an 
immediate concern because they are teachers in our schools, and an 
immediate concern because they are principals or elected school board 
members in those schools; in other words, people whose lives revolve 
around the education of the next generation of American young people.
  I am going to try to do my part during the course of the recess over 
the next 10 days by once again spending a considerable amount of my 
time visiting schools in the State of Washington in Bellingham, Mount 
Vernon, Spokane, and Colfax, carrying on a tradition I have used 
increasingly over the course of the last 3 or 4 or 5 years.
  What I found during those visits is that each school is different 
from every other school. They are united only in the concern of the 
people who work in those schools for the future of our children. Some 
of those schools need more teachers. Some need teachers who are better 
paid to compete with outside opportunities. Some need more classroom 
space. Some need better teaching for the teachers. Others need more 
computers. But different as those needs are, present Federal policy 
says here is what you must do with the money we provide you in 
literally dozens and perhaps hundreds of different narrow categorical 
functions, each of which requires a bureaucracy in Washington,

[[Page S1373]]

DC, to look over applications and to run audits, and each of which 
requires a corresponding bureaucracy in our States and in our local 
school districts to ask for the money and to account for how it is 
spent.
  I have proposed, and a majority of the members of the health 
committee are now proposing, to add to this Federal formula a bill that 
I call Straight A's to inject what I consider to be some common sense 
in the way in which we help our schools in Washington, DC.
  Straight A's will give to States all across the United States an 
opportunity to change from a process of accountability to a performance 
accountability. Instead of spending their time filling out forms to 
show that they have spent their money exactly as Congress has dictated, 
a State which elects to come under Straight A's will be able to take 
one to two dozen of these narrow categorical aid programs, combine them 
into one, and get rid of all the forms and most of this process 
accountability on the basis of one's promise. That promise is: Let us 
do what we think best for our kids, and we will do a better job. Our 
kids will do better. We will have standardized tests in our States and 
we will prove they are doing better, because we are allowed to make 
more of our own decisions or you can cancel the whole thing and take it 
back. It is as simple as that.

  It is the provision of trust in people who are putting their lives 
and their years into the education of our kids, the people who know our 
kids' names, rather than a group in the Department of Education in 
Washington, DC, or in this body which so often seems to feel it can and 
should act as one nationwide school board.
  I have heard a lot from the defenders of the status quo over the 
course of the last 3 years. One of the first who criticized my earlier 
proposal said: My gosh, if we let them do that, they will spend all the 
money on swimming pools. Another said it might be football helmets.
  All of them had one common thought: We don't dare let our educators 
and our school board members make up their minds; They would make 
mistakes; We know more than they do; We know more than the people in 
your hometown, Mr. President, in Kansas, or my people in the State of 
Washington, or the constituents of the Senator from the State of 
Virginia. Somehow we know the cure for 17,000 school districts across 
the United States.
  The biggest of the present Federal programs is title I, originally 
passed 35 years ago to narrow the gap between underprivileged children 
and privileged children. The gap has not narrowed in that 35 years. Is 
it not time we give some of our States and some of our school districts 
the opportunity to say they think they can do it better? We think those 
right on the ground in our schools can do it better than taking 
direction from the Senate, the House, the White House, and the 
Department of Education in Washington, DC.
  That is the opportunity we 100 Members of the Senate are going to be 
given very soon, I am convinced, by the action of a committee under the 
leadership of the distinguished Senator from Vermont, Mr. Jeffords, and 
other dedicated members of that committee. I am disappointed the work 
they have been doing for the past couple of weeks has not gotten wider 
publicity and attention than it has received. I am now convinced that 
committee is going to present the most profound reform, the most 
hopeful new direction in the field of Federal education policy than we 
have received in a generation.
  All 100 Members are going to have an opportunity to make those 
changes ourselves. I look forward to that opportunity. I congratulate 
the committee for the work it has already done.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The distinguished Senator from Virginia is 
recognized.

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