[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 33 (Wednesday, March 22, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1589-S1590]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                            EDUCATION REFORM

 Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues, Senator 
Lieberman and Senator Evan Bayh, for their leadership on this important 
issue. I am proud to stand with them and several others in support of 
an outstanding piece of legislation, one which calls for us to reinvent 
the federal funding stream, reinvest in our children's education and, 
perhaps most importantly, hold the system responsible when it fails to 
work for our kids. Over the past year, we have worked together with 
individuals and organizations from all fifty states, in an effort to 
craft a bill which reflects the concerns of all those involved in 
elementary and secondary education in America. We spoke with parents, 
teachers, principals, administrators and, most importantly, the 
students. In doing so, we came to this rather simple conclusion, we owe 
our children more than we are giving them. The future of this country 
depends on how well we are able to educate our children and prepare 
them for the changing global marketplace. In order to raise academic 
achievement in our public schools, we must put the priority of federal 
programs on performance instead of process, on delivering results 
instead of developing rules and on actively encouraging bold reforms 
instead of passively tolerating failure.
  It is true that the Federal Government only contributes 7% to the 
overall spending in elementary and secondary education. But it is an 
important 7%, the portion which is directed to the most needy and 
challenged children. We must begin to use this $13 billion annually as 
leverage to promote national priorities such as quality teachers, 
smaller schools, lower teacher pupil ratios and raising the academic 
performance of minority and disadvantaged students. By streamlining the 
many different programs and funding streams currently under ESEA, over 
sixty to be exact, into six goal oriented titles we put the day to day 
decisions of education back where it belongs, at the local level.
  With this added flexibility, we propose to double our contribution to 
Title I schools. As many of us know, Title I funding is essential for 
bridging the ever increasing gap in the quality of education available 
for the rich and the poor. In Louisiana, this would mean a $100,000,000 
increase to support existing Title I programs as well as additional 
funding to develop and implement new and innovative strategies for 
improvement.
  Of course, we all agree that those who are in the class room should 
be qualified and confident to teach the subjects they are assigned to 
teach, yet we must ask ourselves what are we doing to ensure that they 
are. What are we doing to attract the best and the brightest to the 
classroom? This bill would increase the funding available to states for 
the professional development of teachers to $3 billion. With this 
money, states could develop and maintain programs to address the 
increasing national teacher shortages and retain the quality teachers. 
It supports efforts like Troops to Teachers and other transitional 
teaching programs. Most importantly, it requires that those who teach 
our children are competent to do so.
  And finally the third and final R--Responsibility. Our proposal calls 
for the Federal government to rededicate ourselves to the basic 
principles of accountability and consequences. In my view, 
accountability is an essential ingredient in any recipe for success.

  As parents, how many of us would offer to pay our child a $10 or 
other incentives for every F they received on their report card? As 
investors, how many of us would double our investment in a company that 
continued to show poor earnings? Yet this is exactly what we continue 
to do in public education at the local and state level, we continue to 
fund failure and we do not reward progress. It is time to change that 
approach, it is not working. This proposal gives local educators the 
freedom they need to meet their specific needs, since they know best 
what their students require. However, it also requires that they meet 
specific performance measures--with real consequences for failure.
  I am proud to say that Louisiana has been a leader in the call for 
accountability in public education. According to a recent report on 
accountability, ``Louisiana has one of the Nation's most comprehensive 
accountability systems including ratings and consequences for schools, 
exit tests for students to graduate from high school and monetary 
rewards for successful schools.'' By using the carrot and stick 
approach, Louisiana has begun to see some positive results. A recent 
National Assessment of Educational Progress study found that Louisiana 
was one of only seven states that achieved significant gains between 
1992 and 1994 in the percentage of fourth graders reading at proficient 
level or above.
  In 1994, we decided, as a nation, that states should be held more 
accountable. Therefore, we attached Title I funding to standards based 
assessments to force states to take a long hard look where improvements 
needed to be made. But we did not go far enough in making sure that the 
consequences for not meeting these assessments were real. Under Three 
Rs we do. Right now, regardless if a state or local agency is making 
the grade, they receive equal funding. We aim to change that. Like a 
parent, we need to encourage schools to strive to achieve. We need to 
begin to reward them for A's not F's.
  We also make accountability mean more than statewide tests. We create 
a funding structure that encourages states to implement an 
accountability system which includes report cards that summarize the 
performance of individual schools; targeted assistance to help schools 
improve; rewards for schools with high performance and the authority to 
close or take over and reconstitute schools that don't get better over 
time. In other words, real accountability.
  Also, this proposal ensures that state and local educational agencies 
have systems for additional or specialized

[[Page S1590]]

assistance for children who are struggling to perform. Implementing a 
policy to end social promotion before ensuring appropriate school 
accountability and the opportunity for all students to learn in well 
equipped schools with high quality teachers is fundamentally unfair and 
must be stopped.
  In closing, I would again like to thank my esteemed colleague from 
Connecticut. Because of his leadership and insight, this bill promises 
to bring about great change in public education. It is a bold step in 
the right direction. A step I am happy to join him in making.

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