[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 23, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S430-S431]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            EDUCATION REFORM

  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am very pleased that President Bush 
today has sent forth to the Congress a package of education reforms 
that carries through on his promise to make improving the education of 
our children his top priority. I believe the program he has proposed 
sets forth the basis for a bipartisan reform bill that I hope we will 
very shortly consider.
  Last August, President Bush traveled to Maine with, Roderick Paige, 
now his Secretary of Education, and met with educators from my State. I 
was extremely impressed with his heartfelt commitment to improving the 
education of all the children in America, and with the progress that he 
has made in the State of Texas on what is perhaps the greatest 
challenge our country faces; that is, narrowing the achievement gap 
between disadvantaged, low-income children and their more advantaged 
peers.
  We know today that 70 percent of the fourth graders in the highest 
poverty schools cannot read at the basic level. That is both shameful 
and unacceptable, and it is a compelling reason why I so strongly 
support the President's pledge to leave no child behind. I am 
particularly pleased that his education package contains two provisions 
that will be very helpful to my home State of Maine.
  I am very proud of Maine's public schools. We do very well in 
providing a quality education for all of our children. But we, like the 
Presiding Officer, have many school districts that are very small. They 
find it very difficult to cope with the rules, redtape and paperwork 
that apply to literally hundreds of Federal programs. The President's 
proposal would allow school districts to consolidate many of these 
programs and use the money for their most pressing needs. One school 
may need to hire more math and science teachers. Another may need to 
have computers in the classroom. Still another may need to provide a 
new program for gifted and talented programs. Yet another may have new 
construction needs. By allowing more flexibility in the use of Federal 
funds, President Bush has sent a strong signal that he trusts parents, 
teachers, and local school boards to know what is best for their 
students and give them the flexibility they need while holding them 
strictly accountable for improved student achievement. Isn't that what 
really counts?
  We want to be certain that our children are learning. What we don't 
need is too much or our educators' attention diverted to whether or not 
they filled out some Federal form correctly. I am very pleased that is 
an important focus of President Bush's election package.
  I am also delighted that he has included legislation authored by 
Senator Kyl of Arizona and myself that will allow teachers to have a 
tax deduction of up to $400 to help defray the costs when teachers, out 
of their own pockets, buy supplies for their classrooms. We all know 
teachers do this every day. Indeed, according to a study by the 
National Education Association, the average K-12 teacher spends $408 
annually on classroom materials. By enacting our proposal, we can send 
a message of appreciation to teachers who are so dedicated to their 
students that they reach deep into their own pockets to buy supplies to 
enhance

[[Page S431]]

their classrooms. We ought to help these dedicated professionals defray 
the costs associated with such classroom expenses.
  I would like to see that bill broadened to allow all teachers to 
deduct the costs of professional development courses they undertake at 
their own expense. I know in the State of Maine we have many dedicated 
teachers who, at their own expense, pursue their education to make them 
even better teachers. I think we should help defray those expenses as 
well.
  I look forward to working as a member of the Health, Education, 
Labor, and Pensions Committee, with the Presiding Officer, Senator Judd 
Gregg who has been such a leader on this issue, our distinguished 
chairman, Jim Jeffords, and with many on both sides of the aisle who 
are committed to the goals and the challenges the President has set 
forth for us today. The President has challenged us to ensure that 
every child in America, no matter where she lives or the income level 
of her family, will have the very best public education possible. I 
intend to answer the President's challenge.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield any remaining time of my 5 minutes 
to Mr. Gregg, the Senator from New Hampshire.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from New 
Hampshire.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maine for her 
courtesy. I also wish to thank the Senator from Illinois for his 
courtesy in allowing us to go in front of him even though he has been 
waiting.
  I want to join in congratulations of the President for putting 
forward his education package and fulfilling a promise he made during 
the election, which was that education would be the President's first 
legislative initiative. As such, he has put together a package which 
has many very strong points which will significantly improve our 
educational system in this country. The package, as I would describe 
it, can be divided into four elements.
  First, it focuses on children. It sees children as the fundamental 
element of our educational system, which seems only logical but 
regrettably has not been true over the last few years. In fact, over 
the past 20 years we have spent over $127 billion on title I, but 
rather than spending it on children and having it be child focused, it 
has been institution focused or it has been bureaucracy focused. The 
President is shifting that title I money towards the child.
  Second, the President is proposing much more flexibility to local 
school districts, to the teachers, to the principals, and, most 
importantly, flexibility to the parents because they are the folks on 
the front line who are most concerned about the child's education and 
who understand how best to do that.
  The educational system changes from not only State to State, not only 
community to community but literally classroom to classroom. The needs 
within a classroom are different. The needs in one first grade 
classroom in the community are different from the needs in the first 
grade classroom in another town in New Hampshire. Flexibility is 
extremely important. That is a major element of their initiative.
  Third, the President has focused on academic achievement. What an 
important goal. But it is, unfortunately, a goal we have forgotten. In 
fact, we have forgotten it in such a way that today our low-income 
children aren't achieving at all. As I mentioned yesterday on the 
floor, the average fourth grader from a low-income family is reading at 
a second-grade level, below his peers, even though we have spent 
literally billions of dollars focused on that low-income child. 
Academic achievement is critical.
  He has pointed to the fact that the academic achievement of the child 
begins by having the child reach school ready to read. He has committed 
a huge amount of resources and a number of new programmatic initiatives 
to make sure that when our children get to school they are ready to 
read because, as he has pointed out, if you leave a child behind in the 
first grade, that child never catches up; they fall further behind.
  The fourth element is one of the core elements of his proposal. He 
has talked about accountability. We are no longer going to send funds 
out to the communities without expecting results. We are no longer 
going to tolerate a system which leaves children behind, which says to 
children: We are simply going to shuffle you through the system; we are 
going to use the money for whatever happens to be the need for the day; 
but if it doesn't improve the results, we are not going to be held 
accountable. We will teach new math, and if you don't learn any math, 
that doesn't matter. If we teach you any methods of reading, and if you 
don't learn, that doesn't matter; you will shuffle through the system.

  The President has said that from now on we are going to expect 
academic achievement and we are going to hold the systems accountable 
to results in academic achievement.
  Those four goals are the right goals: Focusing the effort on the 
child, giving flexibility to the people who know how to educate so they 
can educate well, expecting academic achievement, and holding the 
school systems and the administrators accountable for academic 
achievement. I congratulate all those initiatives. This is a huge 
conceptual package with a lot of different initiatives performed in a 
variety of different ways.
  I also hope we focus on moving down the educational road, the issue 
of special education, and the fact that we as a Republican Congress 
have committed our effort to try to fully fund special education. 
Certainly I hope that will be carried forward. I know this President is 
committed to that approach, also.
  Nothing will free up local dollars more effectively and make more 
dollars genuinely available for good education than if the Federal 
Government pays its fair share of special education so the local tax 
dollars can be used where the local community thinks they can most 
effective be used.
  This package is a call to arms for an improvement in our educational 
system. It lays out specific guideposts of how to get there. I 
congratulate the President for putting it forward.

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