[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 103 (Thursday, September 7, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H7357-H7363]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              ISSUES REGARDING THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I welcome the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
Schaffer) who is going to be joining me tonight as we talk about some 
of the issues that we have dealt with on my subcommittee.
  I chair a subcommittee dealing with the oversight issues dealing with 
the Education and Labor Departments. We are going to kind of take our 
colleagues through what we have found in our investigations, and some 
of the things are quite disappointing. On the other hand, there are 
some things that have been very, very exciting.
  Let us start where we should, since we have responsibility for this 
agency, taking a look at the Department of Education here in 
Washington. This is a Department that spends approximately $40 billion 
per year. It also manages a loan portfolio in the neighborhood of $80 
billion to $100 billion. So this is an agency that, under its control, 
has about $120 billion to $140 billion. It is a pretty large 
corporation if it were in the private sector.
  Let us reflect back as to what we envisioned for an organization like 
this. In some ways, it matches what our Vice President Al Gore 
indicated early in the Clinton administration when he was talking about 
reinventing government, and that we saw these Federal agencies as 
representing the best in management practices, mirroring the best in 
management practices that one finds in the private sector.
  If these management practices are in the private sector, it would 
make a lot of sense for the Federal Government and the agencies within 
the Federal Government to learn from what is the best practices and 
incorporate those best practices. I think in many ways that was what 
the Vice President, Vice President Gore, intended with his assignment 
to reinvent government.
  In 3 weeks we will close another fiscal year. The disappointing thing 
is that, yes, the Education Department has been reinvented, but under 
this administration, it has been reinvented into something that none of 
us can feel very good about. Remember this is an agency that spends $40 
billion on discretionary funds, manages the loan portfolio in the 
neighborhood of $80 billion to $100 billion.
  What do we know? We know that, for the year 2000, the Department of 
Education will again fail its audit. It has failed its audit in 1998. 
It failed its audit in 1999. With testimony that we have received in 
our oversight subcommittee, it is clear that, once again, in 2000, the 
Department of Education will not have the internal controls, the 
internal systems in place that will enable it to receive a clean audit.
  If that is what the Vice President means by reinventing government, 
then it is time that we take another look at exactly what this should 
mean.
  When we have got an agency that does not get a clean audit, what does 
that mean in the private sector? I worked in the private sector, and I 
worked for a publicly held company. If one is in the private sector and 
one's independent auditors come in and take a look at one's books, and 
they indicate to one's shareholders, one's customers and to Wall Street 
that one's books are not an accurate reflection of what is actually 
going on in one's business, typically what will happen is the value of 
the stock will plummet, perhaps even the trading of one's shares will 
be suspended on the market. One will begin looking for a new chief 
financial officer. One may also begin looking for a new chief executive 
officer. Of course one would begin looking for a new person who said we 
are going to reinvent this company and make it the way that we would 
like it to perform. That is the private sector.
  Why would that happen? This is why companies go through and get an 
audit. This is why we push to have Federal agencies become auditable. 
We know that when the books are not clean, and when the systems are not 
in place, what one is doing is one is putting in place a system of 
behavior that is ripe for waste, fraud and abuse.
  That is why it is so critical in the private sector. That is also why 
it is so critical in the government sector. Because now approaching its 
third year of failed audits, what else do we know? Do we see a 
Department of Education that has the negative with the failed audits 
but everything else is fine? No. What we find within the Department of 
Education is a system that is full of waste, fraud and abuse.
  Let us also define exactly what the Department of Education is. The 
Department of Education does not educate any of our kids. Basically 
what it does is it manages this $40 billion in discretionary spending. 
This is money that it sent around the country. It manages this loan 
portfolio. So basically what it is, it is a bank that distributes 
taxpayers' money. What we now know under the Vice President's 
definition of reinventing government it does not do it very well, 
because the auditors say there is no clear indication that the way that 
the Department of Education reports its spending actually reflects what 
happens.

                              {time}  1845

  So it is a bank. It distributes funds; it manages loans. What it does 
not do is it does not educate our kids.

[[Page H7358]]

  What do we know about the failed audits? What do we see? What we do 
know is that it has a fairly elaborate process; that it has this $40 
billion, and if a local school district would like to get some of that 
to reduce class size by hiring teachers, to maybe purchase technology, 
to get integrated into the Internet, it is about a 192-step 
discretionary grant process. The application and approval process is a 
very long and expensive process.
  Now, with that kind of process, one would think it is foolproof. We 
would think out of those 192 steps, and by the way, this process used 
to be a whole lot longer but it was reinvented by the Vice President to 
only 192 steps, yet it still takes 20 weeks to get it done; but one 
would think, well, it is a good thing it has gone through that process 
because at least we will get it right. What are some of the examples 
and the reason we now know that that is not what is happening? 
``Congratulations, you are not a winner.''
  That is our Department of Education. The Jacob Javits scholarship. 
This is an opportunity where young people who are graduating from 
college have the opportunity to compete for and receive up to 4 years 
of graduate education from the Department, paid for by the American 
taxpayers. Linh Hua, a graduate student at the University of 
California, received a letter in February informing her that she had 
been selected to receive a Jacob Javits graduate fellowship. She was 
excited. If I were her parents or friend, I would be excited, because 
it means she is going to get $100,000 of education graduate school paid 
for.
  She immediately informed the director of graduate studies at her 
institution. He in turn trumpeted the good news to the entire English 
department in a news announcement. It is exactly what anyone else would 
do if someone in their own class, in their own department were being 
recognized by the Department of Education for their academic 
achievement and they are being rewarded.
  A few days later Linh received a message on her answering machine 
that she had received the letter in error. A mistake. The contractor 
working for the Department had erroneously sent award notification 
letters to 39 students informing them that they had won the awards. 
Thirty-nine students. Ms. Hua was crushed by the news. She describes 
her feelings in a letter to the chairman of the House Committee on 
Education and the Workforce: ``I think my heart snapped in half. News 
of the possible withdrawal was devastating to me, and I have not found 
words to break the news to my family and friends. How does one share 
such news and still hold her head up high? I continue to be visibly 
distracted from my work, family and friends, and will be in great 
emotional turmoil until I can trust that my fellowship will not be 
withdrawn. Surely you will agree that it is wrong for the United States 
Government to condone such treatment of its citizens.''
  Members of the committee agreed. At their urging, and due to a 
provision lawmakers had the foresight to include, I guess we knew when 
the Vice President reinvented the Department of Education that these 
types of mistakes might happen, that due to a provision lawmakers had 
inserted into the Higher Education Act anticipating such a mistake, the 
education department eventually agreed to award fellowships to these 39 
students. The cost for this mistake was $4 million.
  Reading, writing and robbery; a theft ring involving collaboration 
between outside contractors and education department employees operated 
for at least 3 years, stealing more than $300,000 worth of electronic 
equipment, including computers, cell phones, VCRs, and a 61-inch 
television set. It also netted from the agency, from the Department of 
Education, more than $600,000 in false overtime pay.
  Very simple scheme. The Department of Education employee in charge of 
purchasing filed all these purchasing agreements or purchasing 
contracts. There were no controls monitoring what this person did. This 
is why auditing companies say we are not sure that what they were 
actually doing, or reflecting on the books, actually reflected what 
they were doing.
  This individual ordered the materials and, rather than having it 
delivered to the Department of Education, they were delivered to these 
people's homes. What was in it for the phone guy? The phone guy was the 
one that was able to bill the Department for over $600,000 of false 
overtime pay. Who paid? The American taxpayer. Who lost? American 
students who were the ones intended to receive these benefits.
  The education department improperly discharged almost $77 million in 
student loans for borrowers who falsely claimed to be either 
permanently disabled or deceased. This did not come from our committee; 
this came from the inspector general's report. From July 1, 1994 
through December 31, 1996, fully 23 percent of all individuals whose 
loans were discharged due to disability claims were actually holding 
jobs, some earning more than $50,000 a year. A total of $73 million in 
loans was improperly forgiven.

  During the same period, the good news is that 708 borrowers receiving 
death discharges actually were earning wages. They were still alive. 
But their loans had been written off for a total of $3.8 million, a 
total of $77 million.
  September: failing Proofreading 101. In September 1999 the education 
department printed 3.5 million financial aid forms containing incorrect 
line references to the IRS tax form. The forms were incorrect, had to 
be destroyed, and 100,000 of them that had been distributed to schools 
had to be recalled. The cost of the error was $720,000.
  The list goes on and on about this mismanagement within the 
Department of Education. The disappointing thing is the Department of 
Education still has not been, as the Vice President would have 
described it, reinvented to a standard that hundreds of thousands of 
companies around America have to meet each and every day. They have 
clean books, a clean set of standards. Imagine the IRS going into a 
company and contesting their tax bill and saying, wow, we think you owe 
us some money, and the owner of the company coming out and saying, 
well, we reinvented our company last year so our books are not quite 
clean; but we think that our books roughly approximate what actually 
happened within our company. So based on those rough estimates and our 
books, we think that the tax that we paid you roughly reflects what we 
actually think we owe you.
  I do not think the IRS would show the same kind of sympathy that we 
have shown to the Department of Education.
  It is time for this Department to clean up its act and become 
reinvented. Actually, it does not even need to be reinvented. What we 
would like it to do is just to actually meet the standards that are out 
there in the private sector each and every day.
  I see my colleague from Colorado has joined me. I do not know if he 
wants to add on to some of these examples or talk about others. My 
colleague from Colorado and I have taken a look at the Department of 
Education and found the bad news, the bad news on the education front 
in Washington, that we have a Department that has responsibility for 
$100 to $120 billion and cannot get a clean set of books and is ripe 
with waste, fraud, and abuse; but the good news is what my colleague 
and I have seen as we have gone to 21 States and seen the great things 
that are happening in education in America today when we empower 
parents, teachers, and administrators at the local level to focus on 
educating their kids.
  We have seen tremendous things in the Bronx, in Cleveland, Milwaukee, 
Little Rock, Arkansas, L.A., Muskegon, Michigan. We have seen some 
great things in education as we have gone around the country. That is 
the exciting thing. And it is a sharp contrast to what we see here in 
Washington.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield now to my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado 
(Mr. Schaffer).
  Mr. SCHAFFER. I thank my colleague for yielding, and I also 
appreciate the examples that he laid out. They are very sad and they 
are very unfortunate that the Department of Education wastes and 
squanders and abuses the taxpayers' money to the extent that it does. 
But that is really no surprise though, Mr. Speaker. This is Washington, 
D.C., after all; and the Federal Government wastes, squanders, and 
loses money in virtually every department that the Federal Government

[[Page H7359]]

operates. It is just regrettable that the Department of Education is 
one of the worst.
  In the audits that the Congress requires various agencies to carry 
out, the Department of Education in 1998 could not even audit its own 
books. The books were so bad, so poorly kept, that they were just 
unauditable. And I remember the hearings that we held together, that 
the gentleman chaired, where we brought the Department of Education in 
and wanted to know where did the money go. We noted that they get 
billions of dollars, and we share the dream and the goal that these 
dollars should be spent on children in classrooms. We care about 
education and we want to see our children have the best resources, and 
really unlimited, if possible. And to a great extent that is possible, 
even with the money we are spending now. But the reality is not only do 
we know for certain that a tremendous proportion of the dollars that 
the American taxpayer spends never make it to the classroom, it is so 
bad that the Department could not even quantify that amount because it 
could not even balance its own books.
  It is spending money, Mr. Speaker, without the ability to track these 
dollars and let the American taxpayers know what it has done with those 
funds, those important revenues. So that I think the real message is 
that waste, fraud, and abuse exists in the Department of Education. It 
is graphic, it is ugly, it is miserable, it is unfortunate, and we want 
to fix that. And first of all, the way we fix these kinds of problems 
is by admitting them, openly and publicly, by talking about them and 
trying to find out how we fix these problems.

  The goal is not really to have more and better government. Our goal 
is to get resources to the children that matter most. I have five kids, 
three of them are in public schools right now. I know the gentleman has 
children as well that are in public schools, and we take this matter 
very personally, Mr. Speaker. Our goal and our mission is to fix 
government in a way that allows the money that the American taxpayers 
spend really get to the children we care about, the children that 
deserve a chance in America.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield for a moment, I will just 
correct one thing. My children are in a parochial school. So that is a 
little bit different.
  But if we are talking about reinventing, I go back to this other 
account that the gentleman and I have had some real frustration with, 
which is the grant back account. The gentleman and I have on occasion, 
may have called it, or I think others have referred to it, as a slush 
account. This is a $700 million account. The General Accounting Office 
went in and took a look at it, and out of this $700 million, which is 
supposed to be designated only for money that comes back from schools 
that have misused grants and it goes into this account and then those 
schools can reapply once they get things straightened out, out of the 
$700 million that is in this account, only $12 million of it was there 
under legitimate circumstances. The rest of it just kind of happened to 
find its way there. And when GAO said, how did it get here, they could 
not say how it got there. And when they spent it, they could not say 
where they had the authorization or where they had actually spent the 
money.
  Then, when we compare that definition of reinventing government, I 
mean where the real reinvention and the real excitement and energy in 
education is happening today, it is at the State level and it is our 
local schools who are integrating technology, who are focusing on the 
needs of their kids. I do not think my colleague was in the Bronx with 
me in New York when we went to Cardinal Hayes High School, but this is 
one of the toughest areas; and here is a school that has reinvented 
itself and is doing some great things. They are turning out some great 
students in one of the toughest areas of New York City. And there are 
local schools all over the country each and every day that are 
reinventing themselves.
  A lot of times, when we have talked to some of these schools, they 
tell us that the only thing that is standing between them reinventing 
themselves to the extent that they would like to, to meet the needs of 
their kids, a lot of time it is Federal rules and regulations that say 
they cannot go where they want to go.

                              {time}  1900

  So we have got a department in Washington that has reinvented an 
agency that cannot deliver. If the Vice President is really interested 
in reinventing education and reinventing government, what the Vice 
President needs to do is the Vice President needs to take a look at the 
reinvention and education that is going on at the local level.
  We have been to 21 different States. That is where the excitement is. 
That is what the focus is on, kids and learning, rather than 
bureaucracy and paperwork.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, and that is the real message that I hope 
our colleagues will ponder, that we frankly do not look to the U.S. 
Department of Education, the Federal Government, to define the terms of 
quality in education across the country.
  We do have 50 individual States, each a laboratory in and of 
themselves; and each that we see is free to be innovative, to weigh the 
risks of new programs and new ideas against the successful models and 
the record of their 49 counterparts and colleagues throughout the rest 
of the country. And States are in a better position to act more swiftly 
than the Federal Government is. States are closer to the people.
  The elected officials are much more accountable than the bureaucrats 
down the street here from where we are here at the U.S. Department of 
Education. That is the front line. The States are the front lines of 
education reform.
  And States differ. Some States have a more decentralized approach 
where local school districts are able to innovate each further at a 
more local level. Some States are a little more centrally controlled at 
their State capitals. But in no case should we ever not be willing to 
trust the future of our children and their ability to grow 
intellectually to a small group of folks here in Washington, D.C., over 
at the Department of Education whose goal today, facilitated by this 
centralized governing types down at today's White House, to collect 
this authority and power in Washington, D.C., to define the terms of 
quality, to define how a dollar will be spent in a classroom.
  And of course, with the track record of the U.S. Department of 
Education, it is the last organization we should trust to get the 
Nation's precious resources and tax dollars to the children that we 
ultimately care about most.
  This is an important topic for the whole country. The USA Today 
newspaper, I do not have the date on here, it was just a few days ago 
and I ripped this out of the bottom of the newspaper, this is a survey 
among Web users, and the top five problems in our society according to 
a survey of Internet users and of the people that they surveyed on the 
Internet, 37.7 percent identified education as the number one priority.
  I contrast that with, again five priorities total, the next one was 
Government intrusion into people's lives. That was down at 10.2 
percent. Then you have crime, political corruption, and rising health 
care costs, which trail just a few percents behind that. But given the 
huge number of individuals that responded, an overwhelming majority 
identified education as their top priority.
  We are hearing this around the country that parents care about how 
much money they are spending on taxes, they care about the corruption 
and the lack of integrity we have seen in the White House over the last 
8 years. They care about a strong national defense, they care about 
foreign policy, they care about the environment and health care and all 
the rest. But education repeatedly as a topic comes up as the number 
one concern among the people we speak with and have heard from as we 
travel around the country.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if we build off of how education is being 
reinvented around the country, recently my colleague and I were in 
Minnesota where they are talking about a plan that really reinvents 
some of their spending and focuses it around parents by giving them tax 
credits and tax deductions. So Minnesota is working on a reform plan.
  Then we have been to Arizona, Michigan, California, at least three 
States

[[Page H7360]]

and two of them leading the way on charter schools, Arizona and the 
State of Michigan. And that is helping to improve all of education 
within those States. But they are experimenting with charter schools.
  Then my colleague and I were in Florida together for a hearing. We 
were in Tampa. The State of Florida has taken it one step further where 
they are now actually creating charter school districts so that a whole 
school district can apply for a charter which says, our relationship 
now with the State is very, very different. We are not going to focus 
on bureaucracy and paperwork and process for a greater degree of 
freedom. What we are only going to focus on is learning.
  And then Illinois has reached a unique arrangement with the Chicago 
public school system, which is one of the largest school systems in the 
country; and for all intents and purposes, they have created a large 
charter school relationship with the City of Chicago for their public 
schools. And again, what they said is, let us forget about all these 
categorical programs, because the only thing that we really want to 
focus on, so the State of Illinois rather than now funneling a whole 
bunch of separate checks to the City of Chicago, now really sends them 
two, sends them one for general operating and one for special 
education. And then what they say, on a yearly basis, we are going to 
come back and we want to review with you the actual results of kids' 
learning.

  So those are the kind of reforms and the reinvention that is taking 
place at the State level. We have tried to do the same thing here in 
Washington by creating charter States where States can have a different 
relationship with the Federal Government that says we are going to do 
this as a pilot program, hopefully with 10 States, by giving them 
freedom to move dollars around from program to program; and Washington 
is no longer going to be going through these 219 steps for grants and 
audits and those types of things. What they are going to do is they are 
going to say, as a Federal Government, we are going to reinforce what 
you are trying to do at the State level, which is to focus on learning 
with children. That is where we need to go.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, it is an interesting thing. What we are 
really talking about is treating States like States rather than 
subjects of a centralized Federal Government.
  Power was always meant, even by our Founders, to flow from the bottom 
up, not from the top down, in America. But with respect to the 
Department of Education, it was about the 1970s when President Carter 
occupied the White House that we saw the Department of Education begin 
to take that authority from States.
  So here we are today on the House floor talking about the liberty and 
freedom that States deserve and rightfully possess to build schools 
that reach out to children and talking about that almost in 
revolutionary terms. We have to wage a small war here in Washington 
simply to allow States to be treated like States.
  And my colleague is right, we have seen all across the country great 
approaches. Governor Jeb Bush in Florida and Lieutenant Governor Frank 
Brogan in Florida have really led the way at providing real liberty and 
real freedom to local communities. And they do that based on results.
  Those States that hold children in the greatest peril, school 
districts that are failing in Florida, are the first places they have 
started in Florida to begin to provide educational opportunity to 
parents. So you have parental choice in those districts.
  I remember the woman we heard from, the mother from the inner city, I 
cannot remember what city she was from, but we heard her testimony in 
Tampa, and she came and said, you know, my school was failing. It was 
rated poorly by the State and failed a couple tests in a row. And the 
response from our State was to let me, the parent, decide where to send 
my child to school.
  Now, she could have chosen to send her child to the same failing 
school, but she, like most parents, wanted something better. And so, 
she drove her child to a different neighborhood not too far from where 
she lived and found a school where her child was thriving. And she was 
almost to tears I remember in front of the committee with joy thanking 
the State of Florida, Governor Bush, Lieutenant Governor Brogan for 
passing this program in Florida that allowed this parent to be treated 
like a real customer for the first time and a program that allowed her 
child to be the center of attention, the center of emphasis in 
education, not the government school building, not the government 
employees who are part of a failed system, but to put children first.
  That is a model that I think we are pushing for throughout the 
country and would like to encourage, but it needs to be driven by 
States.
  I will provide one more example as to why we should not look to 
Washington to reform.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, before my colleague goes there, yeah, the 
testimony that we had in Florida from that mother was awesome and a 
sharp contrast to the testimony that we received a couple of years 
earlier in New York City, where I believe a father came in and 
testified and said, 5 years ago I knew that the New York City schools 
were some of the worst schools in the country. But they had a 5-year 
plan to improve; and I had no choice, I had to send my child to the 
school that they told me she should go to. He said, it is now 5 years 
later and the schools are no better and, if anything, they may be 
worse, and they have got a new 5-year plan. I have no choice. But what 
if this 5-year plan does not work any better than the last one? Then I 
have had my child in a failing school for 10 years, and I am going to 
lose my child.
  And as excited and as close to tears as the woman was in Tampa 
because of the positive things that were happening, we saw the same 
thing in New York City on the other side, a father almost coming to 
tears saying, I have no choice. I know the schools are not any good, 
but have I got no choice and that is where my son or daughter is going 
to have to be. And what hope does my child have if they are going to be 
in a school that cannot teach them and that is where they spend the 10 
or 11 years that are key and formulative in enabling them to get the 
basics?

  So it is about people. It is not about bureaucracies. It is about 
parents. It is about kids, and it is about parents wanting to have the 
best opportunities for their kids, whether it is in the Bronx, whether 
it is in Cleveland, or whether it is in Tampa or whether it is in 
Colorado or Michigan.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. And parents do want the basics for their children. I 
think most parents understand and if given a choice would choose the 
kind of schools that build for their children the kind of intellectual 
foundation that allows them to learn more and at exponential rates as 
they grow older and begin to grow in an academic setting.
  I have got a question for my colleague, and that is the three R's. In 
Michigan I assume the 3 R's means about the same thing as it does in 
Colorado. What do the three R's mean to people in Michigan?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reading, writing, and arithmetic.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. My parents, oddly enough, were educated in Michigan and 
grew up there. My father became a school teacher and that is what took 
him to Cincinnati, Ohio, where I was born. He taught all of his life 
until he just retired a few years areas ago.
  When I grew up and went to school in Ohio, the three R's meant 
reading, writing, and arithmetic. That is what my father taught in the 
classroom, as well. And when I moved out to Colorado, that is the kind 
of education I was looking for for my children were schools with 
reading, writing, and arithmetic, the basic, most fundamental 
foundational of learning.
  I mention all that and I kind of refer to the three R's that way 
because today, September 7, the Secretary of Education made a speech, 
it was his annual back-to-school address entitled ``Times of 
Transition,'' he made the speech today before the National Press Club. 
I was going through this before I came over to find out what the 
Secretary of Education, and this is the person, for those who are 
unfamiliar, is the person who is the head of the U.S. Department of 
Education, this is the guy who is in charge.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Who for 8 years has been in charge now. I think he is 
the longest serving member of the President's cabinet and has been 
there since

[[Page H7361]]

day 1 almost and in 3 weeks will deliver the third set of unauditable 
books, or a failed audit, to the auditors.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. That is right. And before I get to this, I will also 
add to that, what these failed audits represent is money failing to get 
to children in American schools. That is what matters the most.
  Anyway, here is what he says today, the Secretary of Education, in 
his speech to the National Press Club: ``We need to focus on what we 
like to call the three R's over at the Department of Education.'' You 
would think it would be reading, writing, and arithmetic like it is 
everywhere else in America. No, the three R's over at the Department of 
Education is relationships, resilience, and readiness. That is what the 
emphasis is over at the Department of Education.
  Now, relationships, resilience and readiness are important things. I 
have no doubt about that. But in a Nation that squanders and wastes as 
much money as it does by giving it to the U.S. Department of Education 
and allowing that agency to get by without the ability to balance its 
books and the inability to get those precious dollars to children and a 
Nation that is lagging behind our international competitors in math and 
science, that is not right.

                              {time}  1915

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. For our colleagues, the information is clear on 
international testing. The U.S. comes out somewhere between 17th to 
19th out of 21 industrialized countries. That is not good enough. That 
is not good enough for my kids. That is not good enough for your kids. 
On this, this is something that I am very selfish about. It is time to 
reinvent education so that our kids score the best in the world, and I 
hope everybody else in the world is on the same level as what we are; 
but it is unacceptable to have the rest of the world 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 
it is kind of like, hey, where is the U.S.? we are down here 17th, 
19th. It is not good enough, and it is unacceptable.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. My point being is that in a Nation where we have 
unacceptable national test scores in comparison to our peer nations as 
industrial countries, in a country where we know we have problems in 
education in America, Americans would expect and should expect the 
leader of the U.S. Department of Education to acknowledge that we have 
a problem, we have got to get serious about it, and we have got to get 
focused on fixing it. The way that we usually do that back in your 
State and the State I grew up in Ohio, and the State I live in now, 
Colorado, and in virtually all other States in the union is we start 
focusing on the basics, getting the money to children and start 
focusing on reading, writing, and arithmetic. We can add to that a 
little bit, science and history and so on and so forth. But over at the 
Department of Education, as of today, our new goal is to redefine, to 
reinvent the three Rs to be relationships, resilience, and readiness. I 
am not making this up, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. You get what you measure. If the Department of 
Education is now measuring relationships, resilience, and readiness, 
that is probably what we will get, at least from the programs and the 
emphasis, the programs that the Education Department funds. If that is 
reinventing government, I do not want it. I mean, I want my kids to 
know reading, writing and arithmetic. They need the basics.
  Under the Department's definition of the three Rs, if we focus on, I 
cannot believe these three, relationships, resilience, and readiness, 
when we focus on those three, we get the fourth R, which is what we 
have also seen as we go around the country, we get remediation. When 
you focus on relationships, resilience, and readiness, we are going to 
get remediation. What is remediation? What remediation is, and this is 
when we have gone to our colleges and we find that one of the fastest 
growing programs on college campuses today is remediation because kids 
entering college cannot read or write at a ninth or 10th grade level or 
an eighth, ninth or 10th grade level, which means when they get to 
college they have got to be remediated to get their learning up to that 
level. And if remediation is one of the fastest growing programs on 
campus today, then it is time for us to reevaluate as to whether 
relationships, resilience, and readiness are what we need to be 
focusing on.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. I do not want to denigrate these concepts. These are 
important things, obviously. But for anyone in a position such as the 
Secretary of Education in the Clinton administration is, for anyone to 
be in the position that he is, to define for the Nation these goals as 
a replacement for the basics in education, it is an indication of why 
we are in trouble in America and why the U.S. Department of Education 
is frankly incapable of being part of the solution. It nine times out 
of 10 is actually the source of the problem. We just need to let 
professional teachers do the job they are trained to do and let parents 
have the liberty and freedom to place their children in the kinds of 
academic settings that earn the confidence of knowledgeable, loving 
parents. These are the people, after all, who know the names of the 
children and care about them most. I guarantee you that the Secretary 
of Education does not know the names of my kids, and he would have a 
good fight on his hands if he wanted to presume he cared about them 
more than I did.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. But this is reinventing government from maybe the Vice 
President's perspective, I am assuming that this is the position of the 
administration, this is the longest serving Cabinet member; and this is 
how they have now reinvented government, moving from the Department of 
Education which should be saying our, I would think close to our only, 
our most important goal is academic excellence for each and every one 
of our children and we are not going to leave one behind and we are 
going to allow every child to achieve their full potential.
  What we are now going to have under these measurements is a bunch of 
children who are going to have great relationships, they are going to 
be able to get along well, they are going to be prepared for not being 
able to have the basics and they are going to be able to bounce back 
and be resilient. This is not brain surgery. The Department of 
Education should be striving for academic excellence in each and every 
school in this country.

  Mr. SCHAFFER. These are good goals, but they really mean a lot more 
if you are smart on top of that. There may be some citizens, some of 
our constituents perhaps, who would prefer that relationships, 
resilience, and readiness as the Clinton administration states should 
be more important and the goal of education rather than reading, 
writing and arithmetic, science, history and all the rest. I think 
there ought to be a school for those parents. I think there ought to be 
places around the country where teachers who agree with Secretary 
Riley, where Secretary Riley can send his grandkids, I suppose, where 
people who agree that these concepts are more important than real 
learning can send their own kids.
  The problem is you have somebody with a goofy idea here in Washington 
that wants to impose these values on your children, my children, 
everybody else's children and it is just wrong. We do not get to vote 
for Secretary of Education. This is an appointed person. He does not 
hold town meetings in my neighborhood like I do or in your district 
like you do. He is not accountable to anyone in my district or anyone 
who is a parent of these kids who he thinks should be focusing on 
relationships, resilience, and readiness.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Let us cut the Secretary a little bit of slack. We know 
exactly what he is talking about. Relationships. When you go into the 
workforce today, you recognize that many companies today are talking 
about participative management; they are talking about team concepts, 
being able to work in groups and those types of things and that is the 
relationship factor. But also coming out of a company that focused very 
heavily on teamwork, participative management and those types of 
things, you also knew that for somebody to get on the team, they had to 
have the basic skills to do the job and the assignment that they were 
given as part of that team. They did not get on the team because they 
could really relate well to you and because they were ready and because 
they were resilient. They were on the team first and foremost because 
they had the skills to do the job that was required, and the teamwork 
part came second.

[[Page H7362]]

  But the first criteria was do they have the skills to get the job 
done? And I think in some cases that is maybe where the Secretary is 
just moving off track here, is we have got to work with our kids to 
make sure they know the basics before we move on to some of these other 
issues.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. I think these nutty ideas that come out of the Clinton-
Gore administration provide a more clear emphasis on the need for 
choice, for parental choice, for parental involvement in academic 
settings. That is frankly where the liberals in the Democrat Party and 
the more moderate and conservative Members who are on the Republican 
side of the aisle differ with respect to our approach on education. We 
on the Republican side genuinely believe that we can trust parents. We 
genuinely believe that when you elect a local school board member to 
make decisions about what the curriculum should be, about how much a 
teacher should be paid, about whether a scarce tax dollar should be 
spent buying a new bus or repairing the roof or maybe giving the 
teacher a pay raise, that those are the folks that can be trusted.
  We do not need to be second-guessing them every day here in 
Washington, D.C. That is the real battle that takes place. It is 
unfortunate that so often it is misrepresented in the press or by our 
opponents or the media, in other words. Our goals are probably 
fundamentally the same. We want to build an education system in America 
that helps children. We favor a decentralized model that is 
decentralized right down to the last school, even beyond that, even for 
those who want to educate their children in their own homes, in their 
church school, or wherever they want to educate them. We want to allow 
this marketplace of competitive ideas to take place, versus our 
Democrat friends, the Clinton-Gore model of centralized authority here 
in Washington where left-wing ideas out of their bureaucratic agencies 
come to define the failing terms for children all across America.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think what we are also saying is that by empowering 
parents, that if in the local community you have got a school 
superintendent or a school that says, our model and our priorities, we 
are going to match what the Department of Education, what Secretary 
Riley is promoting, our school is going to focus on relationships, 
resiliency and readiness; and if you have got another school saying we 
are focused on the basics and when your children leave our school, they 
are going to be at class proficiency or grade proficiency in reading, 
writing and math and, as a matter of fact, our objective is to have 
your kids at one or two levels above grade proficiency in each of those 
areas, a parent at that point in time should have the option of saying, 
for what I really want for my kids, that is the school I want to go to. 
Maybe some will choose the Secretary's model, and they will have the 
opportunity to go to that type of school. But we should not have a top-
down approach from Washington saying this is what every school district 
is going to focus on.

  Mr. SCHAFFER. You mentioned earlier, in 3 weeks the U.S. Department 
of Education is going to announce that they have failed another audit, 
that once again they have done a poor job of accounting for the 
billions, almost $130 billion that they manage, that they cannot 
account for it very well, the kind of audit that would result in a 
private company's stock crashing through the floor.
  Yet our Department of Education, after coming to Congress and saying 
we cannot audit our books, then when they did bring us an audit for the 
subsequent year, 1999, they got an F. Now they are going to bring us 
another audit that they will fail again. That is a tragic event. It is 
important to note, though, because what such rampant and wholesale 
mismanagement of funds really represents is, one, a tremendous amount 
of sacrifice by the American people who work hard to pay taxes and send 
them here to Washington, D.C. in hopes that we are going to do 
something responsible with them. Secondly, it suggests that people in 
Washington do not take those tax dollars seriously. Third, it suggests 
that people in Washington do not take the children seriously who are 
affected by this waste, fraud and abuse in the Department of Education.
  Finally, what it suggests is that there are billions of dollars that 
American taxpayers send to Washington, D.C. that will never get near a 
child, who like every child in America is repeatedly exploited by the 
bureaucracy here in Washington to get one more dollar out of the 
taxpayers' pocket for the children. Yet some of those folks over there 
have no intention of doing anything different that will result in those 
dollars really helping children. That is what we are here to try to 
fix. That is what we want to help. As we travel around the country, 
that is what we hear school board members say. They do not say, spend 
more on education. They say, get the money to us. We know what we are 
doing. We are trained for this. We are elected for this. We know your 
children and we are professionals. Just get us the money and get out of 
the way and we will produce results. And when we do that, we know that 
they are right. Schools do perform better when they have fewer strings, 
fewer regulations, fewer government agents and bureaucrats snooping 
around in their files and in their classrooms and getting in the way.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. And they will have a clean audit.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Yes. And with fewer responsibilities and more dollars 
passing through to the States and the school districts, it will be 
easier for the, I do not know how many accountants, hundreds of 
accountants over there in the Department of Education to be able to 
come back to this Congress and say, the money got to children, we can 
show you, we can prove it, congratulations, job well done. We are a 
long way from that goal, but that is our dream.

                              {time}  1730

  I am about ready to yield back the balance of my time, and I did not 
know if my colleague from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) wanted to talk about 
any other issues tonight.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, there is one topic I would like to bring 
up only because we have adjourned and there is no business left for the 
rest of the week, and we will be back next week; but I wanted to point 
out a piece of legislation that was introduced by the Democrats prior 
to our 1-month recess. It was a bill introduced on July 19 by the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).
  This is a bill, and I will just read the title of it, it is H.R. 
4892, to repeal the Federal charter of the Boy Scouts of America. This 
is a bill, Mr. Speaker, I hope we will all focus on and look at its 
pernicious motives and also take a look at the legislation's effort to 
try to pull the rug out from underneath one of the most important civic 
charitable organizations in our country, the Boy Scouts of America.
  This is a bill that is designed to end the Boy Scouts of America. 
This is an organization that for many, many years, I think 1916 was the 
year the Scouts was started, I have some statistics on the 
organization, 90 years ago, that for many, many years has trained and 
nutured many young boys and has taught them to become responsible young 
men and adults in our community and in our society; and because of the 
intolerance, because of the bigotry of some Members of Congress, they 
have seen fit to go on a rampage to try to eliminate the Boy Scouts of 
America and revoke their charter.
  It is irresponsible, and I hope it is something that our President 
and Vice President and others will speak out on and let us know where 
their sentiments lie, what their positions are, where they stand with 
respect to the Boy Scouts of America.
  I have one son who is a member of the Boy Scouts. It is a remarkable 
organization that has made a dramatic difference in his life. And this 
is all about the Boy Scout charter and its mission to try to promote 
the morals and values and teaching skills that will help them 
throughout their lifetimes.
  And for anyone here in this Congress or throughout the rest of the 
country to attack the Scouts for such a noble mission is just 
inexcusable and one that I assure all of those Scouts who are concerned 
about the issue and others who are concerned about the future of the 
Boy Scouts that there are many Members of Congress that will rise and 
come to the aid of this important organization.

[[Page H7363]]

  This is an issue that the critics of the Boy Scouts somehow suggest 
that the organization lacks a certain amount of diversity, which is not 
true. If we just go to the Boy Scout Web site and look at their policy 
statement on diversity, it says more than 90 years ago the Boy Scouts 
of America was founded on the premise of teaching boys moral and 
ethnical values through an outdoor program that challenges them and 
teaches them respect for nature, one another and themselves. Scouting 
has always represented the best in community, leadership and service.
  The Boy Scouts of America has selected its leaders using the highest 
standards because strong leaders and positive role models are so 
important to the healthy development of youth. Today, the organization 
still stands firm that their leaders exemplify the values outlined in 
the Scout oath and law.
  It goes on, on June 28, 2000, the United States Supreme Court 
reaffirmed that the Boy Scouts of America's standing as a private 
organization with the right to set its own membership and leadership 
standards.
  The Boy Scouts say here in their policy statement that Boy Scouts of 
America respects the rights of people and groups who hold values that 
differ from those encompassed in the Scout oath and law, and the BSA 
makes no effort to deny the rights of those whose views differ to hold 
their attitudes or opinions.
  It goes on, it is a very nice statement, one that I think the Scouts 
should be proud of, and that all of us here in Congress should keep in 
mind when this unfortunate legislation makes its way through the 
process to revoke the charter of the Boy Scouts of America, because the 
Democrats have decided that this is an organization that no longer 
warrants support from the Congress and from the Federal Government.
  So my message to Members is there is a large and growing coalition of 
us who will rise to the defense of the Scouts and do everything we can 
to make sure that the young men that are part of the organization are 
led by competent, capable, trustworthy leaders that are able to conduct 
themselves in a way that is consistent with the Scout oath.
  I just want to mention that, Mr. Speaker, for the Record it is a very 
serious issue and it is unfortunate that we have to have this debate, 
and I think it is going to probably escalate in terms of the intensity 
as time goes on.

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