[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 52 (Tuesday, May 2, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E611-E612]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    FEDERALIZATION OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. HENRY J. HYDE

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                          Tuesday, May 2, 2000

  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, the April issue of the Phyllis Schlafly Report 
contains a penetrating analysis of education issues that now confront 
Congress.
  I hope my colleagues will give this material the careful attention it 
deserves.

             [From the Phyllis Schlafly Report, April 2000]

              Why the Public Schools Are Being Federalized

       Congress is about to pass legislation that will federalize 
     every local school district and spell the end of local and 
     state control of America's public school classrooms. Mindful 
     of Ronald Reagan's words, ``You can't control the economy 
     without controlling the people,'' Bill and Hillary Clinton 
     have found the way to control the economy by controlling 
     America's schoolchildren.
       The plan started with the passage of Bill Clinton's two 
     1994 laws, the Goals 2000 Act and the School-to-Work Act, and 
     we were moved further in the same direction with his 
     Workforce Investment Act of 1998. Now, with the Elementary 
     and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), H.R. 2/S.2, the Clintons 
     are about to complete the nationalization of the public 
     school classroom.
       This massive education bill is the eighth successive five-
     year plan to increase academic achievement by providing 
     ``compensatory education'' grants to schools with high 
     concentrations of low-income children. It is more ambitious 
     and comprehensive than the Clintons' discredited 1994 health 
     care plan.
       A holdover from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation, 
     the ESEA has already spent more than $116 billion. According 
     to the Federal Government's five-year $29 million 
     longitudinal study concluded in 1997, the ESEA failed to 
     achieve its objectives.
       Unable to make the argument that ESEA, with its current 
     price tag in excess of $10 billion per year, will raise 
     academic achievement of poor children, the Clintons designed 
     this ``stealth'' legislation with very different objectives. 
     Pretending to ``educate to high standards,'' ESEA mandates 
     that all 50 states agree to implement a one-size-fits-all 
     education plan. (Sec. 1001(a)(1))
       How? The bill calls for mandated ``statewide'' minimum 
     competencies for all children.'' That's code language for the 
     disastrous and discredited Outcome Based Education (OBE). 
     (Sec. 1111(B)(4)(A,B))
       OBE (also called performance-based education) is measured 
     by ``criterion referenced tests'' that assess students 
     against a low threshold of achievement (formerly associated 
     with the letter grade ``D''), rather than by ``norm 
     referenced tests'' which measure how well students master a 
     body of knowledge in comparison with other students (such as 
     the ACT, SAT, GRE, Iowa Basic, and Stanford Achievement 
     tests).
       ESEA's purpose is to tie schools to the floor of minimum 
     achievement rather than to the ceiling of educational 
     excellence and possibilities. The oft-repeated phrase ``all 
     children will learn'' really means that all children will be 
     taught only the low level of learning that is actually 
     reached by all children.
       The term ``minimum competencies'' doesn't sell well to 
     parents and the taxpaying public, so as linguistic bait-and-
     switch occurs through the bill. ``Standards'' means minimum 
     levels, ``accountability'' means accountability to the U.S. 
     Department's of Education and Labor, ``integrated 
     curriculum'' means integrating of training into the school 
     day, and ``local control'' means control only over 
     implementing the nonacademic job-training system but not over 
     standards, content or testing.
       Not only does ESEA force OBE and criterion referenced 
     testing on every local school district in the nation, ESEA 
     cements into place the goals of nationalized curriculum, 
     nationalized testing and national teacher certification, 
     which were envisioned in the 1994 Goals 2000 Act. ESEA also 
     continues the radical changes required by the 1994 School-to-
     Work Act to guide schools away from a knowledge-based system 
     and toward training for Jobs selected by local Workforce 
     boards.(Sec. 1111. Sat Plans)
       School-to-work is the Clintons vision of controlling the 
     economy. Students will be pigeon-holed into jobs to serve the 
     best interests of the local economy as decided by the 
     bureaucrats, not into careers chosen by the student.
       ``But,'' Congress proclaims, ``the Goals 2000 and School-
     to-Work laws are sun setting!'' Nothing could be further from 
     the truth.
       While those laws are about to expire, all 50 states adopted 
     them and ESEA requires that states certify they have adopted 
     ``challenging content standards and challenging student 
     performance standards * * * with aligned assessments.'' That 
     is bureaucratic jargon for continuing the 1994 Goals 2000/
     School-to-Work mandates.(Sec. 1111)
       ESEA has already moved far in the legislative process 
     because Congress was hoodwinked by the bills doublespeak 
     language and only now is beginning to understand that the 
     Goals 2000 and School-to-Work laws have morphed into ESEA. If 
     ESEA passes in its current form, every public school district 
     will be forced to continue implementation of the 
     revolutionary restructuring required by the 1994 laws.
       ESEA is not stand-alone legislation but works in tandem 
     with other federal, state and local programs to mesh 
     curriculum, graduation requirements and public funds into 
     state-filed, federally-approved Unified Plans under the 
     Workforce Investment Act. Under the guise of education 
     ``reform,'' all traditional public school curriculum, testing 
     and teaching methods are being replaced with a job training 
     system modeled after failed socialized economies in Europe.
       ESEA will fulfill Bill and Hillary Clinton''s dream of 
     national economic planning fed by a federalized workforce 
     training system domiciled in the public schools. ESEA is the 
     capstone of their plan to restructure our American system 
     away from free enterprise,

[[Page E612]]

     academic achievement in schools, and the freedom of 
     individuals to select their future occupations.


             Clinton''s Plan for Education and the Economy

       The following graphic, distributed by the Minnesota 
     Department of Children, Families and Learning (DCFL), 
     explains how School-to-Work is a government plan to interlock 
     public school ``reform'' of curriculum with workforce 
     preparation (job training) and economic development (national 
     economic planning). This official state publication states 
     that the School-to-Work mission is ``to create a seamless 
     system of education and workforce preparation for all 
     learners, tied to the needs of a competitive marketplace.''
       School-to-Work means that the mission of the public schools 
     is no longer to educate children to be all they can be, but 
     instead to train students to take entry-level jobs as needed 
     by the global economy. The different motivations of several 
     special interests perfectly mesh in School-to-Work: the 
     Clinton Administration economic gurus (Marc Tucker, Ira 
     Magaziner and Robert Reich) who say they want America to 
     imitate the German school-to-workforce system, the Clinton 
     Administration education activists (particularly the teachers 
     unions and Education Department bureaucrats) who want to 
     control the school system, and the multinational corporations 
     that seek a poorly-educated but well-trained labor force 
     willing to work for low wages to compete with low-paid 
     workers in the Third World.
       The master plan to federalize education and tie it into the 
     workforce originated with the now infamous ``Dear Hillary'' 
     letter written on November 11, 1992 by Marc Tucker, president 
     of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE). 
     It lays out a plan ``to remold the entire American system'' 
     into ``a seamless web that literally extends from cradle to 
     grave and is the same system for everyone,'' coordinated by 
     ``labor market boards at the local, state and federal 
     levels'' where curriculum and ``job matching'' will be 
     handled by counselors ``accessing the integrated computer-
     based program.''
       Rep. Bob Schaffer (R-CO) correctly analyzed this letter as 
     ``a blueprint for a German model of education that would be 
     forced upon the people of America.'' He said this ``moves the 
     country toward a government-owned centralized education 
     system from kindergarten past college.'' He placed this 
     letter in the Congressional Record on September 25, 1998. It 
     is most easily accessible on Eagle Forum''s website: http//
www.eagleforum.org.



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