[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 28 (Tuesday, March 6, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H642-H646]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CHILDREN AND THEIR EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from North
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Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee
of the minority leader.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to spend some time talking
about an issue that is very important to me and to the Members of this
Congress, I trust. I have a number of my colleagues joining me this
evening to talk about a group of young people who need champions and a
group who, because of their age, not because of their ability, are not
allowed to serve in this body so we have to be their spokesman and
their advocate.
Tonight I want to talk about our children and their educational
opportunities. I had the privilege of serving for 8 years as the State
superintendent of schools for North Carolina and work with some
wonderful people who deeply care about the education of our children.
Just yesterday, I was in Eastern Wake County working with some
tremendous people there, a lady by the name of Linda Johnson, who had
previously been a teacher and school board member, who had pulled
together three communities really to work together with children in a
program they called Lights on for Education. They have taken on the
monumental challenge in Eastern Wake County.
What they are about is by 2003 they have committed to have 95 percent
of their children in grades three through eight reading at or above
grade level by 2003.
{time} 1900
That is a monumental task, because reading is the key skill of all of
the trainings we need to have in education. But for these people to
come together, and what was so significant about that, and I want to
share it just briefly before I ask my colleagues to join me, is that we
have to understand that in North Carolina education is a State
responsibility, augmented by about 7 percent Federal money and maybe
about 20 to 25 percent local money, that is, local money from the
counties.
But in this situation, we had three mayors, Bob Matheny who is the
mayor of Zebulon; Lucius Jones, who is the mayor of Wendell; and the
Knightdale mayor, Joe Bryan, and we were joined by the superintendent
of schools for the county, Bill McNeil. It is unusual for three mayors
to come together to work on educational issues. Some people would say
it is unusual to get three mayors to come together, as difficult as it
is to get three Congressmen together; but they were willing not only to
put their political prestige on the line to help children, they were
willing to reach out into the community, get the business people
together, and we had a substantial number of the business community
working, Glaxco, Smith Kline hosted it on their campus; and we were
able to light a tree that will burn uninterrupted, we trust, barring
any natural interruptions of it, until 2003 when they have reached
their goal. I think that is what we need in every community.
But one thing I think is significant that I want my colleagues to
know about tonight, and that is so many times we say, we really need
local initiative, we need the local folks to take charge and do it; and
that is true. But if the people from eastern Wade County were here
tonight, they would say to us, that job would have been very difficult,
if not near impossible, had it not been for Federal money coming down
that was appropriated by this Congress last year, several million
dollars that are going to be used as the glue to pull all of this
together over the next 3 years to make a difference. It does take
money, folks. Certainly it takes effort, certainly it takes commitment,
but it is our responsibility to provide the leadership, and some places
cannot do it on their own.
I believe that we have a responsibility to be frugal. I was in
business for 20 years before I was State superintendent, and I can tell
my colleagues that it takes resources, I would like to remind my
colleagues from time to time. We won the Cold War, and we did not win
the Cold War on the cheap. We spent a lot of money. We spend a lot of
money on education; it is going to take more. We have over 53 million
children this year in the public schools in this country, and that
number is continuing to grow.
My State is not unlike any other State. We have spent money building
buildings, but we have great needs. I will talk about that more in a
few minutes. Even though we passed substantial bond issues, we are the
fourth fastest-growing State in America right now. Even though we are
only the 10th largest, we will be the fourth fastest-growing for
students entering high school over the next 10 years. So we can see the
challenge we face. We need money for infrastructure. I am going to talk
about that more.
Now, I would like to yield to a real strong leader on public
education, a person who came to this Congress 2 years ago and at that
point provided tremendous leadership in the area of science. He is a
scientist himself, he understands education, he understands the
commitment that all of us have to make to help, the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Holt).
Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr.
Etheridge), who knows firsthand about what it takes to have excellent
schools for our children. And he has talked about reading, and over the
past couple of years he has talked at great length and with great
effectiveness about the need for good facilities.
I would like to talk for just a couple of minutes about another
aspect of our public education, education in math and science. It is
important for our economics, for our national security, really for our
democracy, but also I would argue for personal well-being, because math
and science bring order and harmony and balance to our lives. It is
through math and science that children understand that our world is
intelligible. It is not capricious. It gives them the skills for
lifelong learning, really for creating progress itself.
Now, from evidence of all sorts that is available to us now, it is
clear that we are not providing the quality education in math and
science that we should to our children; and I think my friend, the
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) knows that very well.
I am proud to have served for the past year on the National
Commission on Mathematics and Science teaching chaired by former
Senator, former astronaut John Glenn, including leaders from business,
industry, education, and professional organizations. The Glenn
Commission, as it has come to be known, released its report a few
months ago; and it identifies teaching as the key for dealing with the
problems that this country faces in math and science education. The
teachers are the key. The commission calls for major changes throughout
the teaching profession and within scientific professions and in the
institutions that produce our teachers. Our country must devote
attention to the quantity and the quality and the professional
environment of our teachers in math and science.
I cannot emphasize too strongly that in the next 10 years, we will
have to hire in the United States 2.2 million new teachers just to stay
even, not for smaller class sizes, just to stay even; and most of those
teachers, including all elementary schoolteachers, will be called on to
teach math and science; and many will feel inadequate to teach it
because of the preparation we make available to them, actually because
of the way we approach science and math as subjects only for
specialists, not for the general public, not for the general teacher.
We must address that.
But here is an example of the important role of the Federal
Government. There is a role. We cannot expect the school district of
Stockton in my district or the school district of Freehold to deal with
this national problem of recruiting 2.2 million teachers. This is a
national problem, it deserves national attention, and it deserves
national resources. And providing the training for these teachers once
they are hired and the continuing atmosphere of a good professional
development, that is going to require resources.
The President has talked about professional development of teachers
in his early statements on education, but if we look at his sketch of
the budget, we do not find it. So I think we have to step back and look
at what we as a country are planning to do to help in math and science
teaching and in reading and see that the resources are there. I would
like to have that budget in front of us now before we do anything else
to see whether we are dealing with need number one, education, and see
whether the resources are there in the budget.
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Mr. Speaker, I would ask my colleague if he agrees.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, that is a
critical point. The point where the gentleman is talking about
training, and teachers having worked with the schools and knowing, the
problem we face is daunting; but we can do it if we are committed to
it. First of all, not only do we need the training, we need mentors for
those teachers because today, in the first 3 to 5 years, we lose over
25 to 30 percent of those teachers; they leave, because the job is so
daunting and overwhelming. I stopped by a school this morning to have
breakfast, a national breakfast program with our children. It was cold.
I had on a topcoat. In North Carolina this morning it was very cold.
The chill factor was probably about 20 degrees or less, and guess who
was standing out in the cold with coats on to greet the children? The
teachers. And this was at 7:30 in the morning, they had already been
there for 30 minutes, because some of the children come early.
I think our colleagues need to understand that teaching is not just
teaching reading, writing, and math. I went into the classroom and had
breakfast with the children, kindergartners. As the teachers came in
with those children, they taught them how to stay in line, they go
through the breakfast line, how to carry their tray along, they go sit
down at the table with them, have breakfast with them, they watch them.
They are taught manners, taught how to do certain things. With
kindergarten, you have to start pretty early and build. Teachers do
that for 13 years, kindergarten through the 12th grade, not just those
details, but a myriad of other things.
I think we need to honor our teachers more, make sure that we
understand how tough their job is. We certainly do not pay them enough,
so we ought to at least give them the honor they are due, and I agree
with the gentleman.
Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I would say that
we must treat teachers as the professionals they are. When I talk about
a need for an environment in the schools of continual development,
professional development, it means mentoring teachers; it means time in
the day and in the week and in the school year for teachers to get the
professional development that professionals in other fields are
expected to get; and it means devoting resources to allow that to
happen.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I could not agree
more. I thank the gentleman.
When we think of that, there are a lot of ways we can help, the
Federal Government, the Congress. Too many times I hear people say,
well, that is not Congress' responsibility. The fact is that Congress
has a heavy responsibility, and we show up short time and time again.
Last year, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle talked about
children with special needs. I could not agree with them more. We ought
to fund the 40 percent we said we would fund and fund it now that we
have the money.
Mr. Speaker, I now yield a few minutes to my colleague who is new to
this Congress, but is not new to this issue, the gentleman from
California (Mr. Honda). He understands the need. If we fund that 40
percent, and he has already shared this with me many times, and I could
not agree more, we could free up a lot of local money, and I yield to
my colleague to talk about that.
Mr. HONDA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I really appreciate
this discussion on education, because I believe that the President has
made education one of the cornerstones of his administration for this
next 4 years.
One of the things that I found as a principal is that one of our jobs
is to identify youngsters who need special education and need to be
assessed. But that is not an obligation of the principal nor the
teacher, because we are just good guys. It is also a mandate by the
Federal Government. Public Law 94-142 requires everybody in schools to
be able to go out and seek youngsters who may need special education
services, and the PL 94-142 also said that they would fund the cost of
special ed at the level of 40 percent. Currently, in the past few
years, it has not gone beyond 12, 13, 14 percent.
What that does for local school districts, and I was on a board of a
local school district in San Jose, and we found that we had to struggle
very, very hard to come up with the general fund moneys to supplement
the funds that did not come from the Federal Government. What we find
ourselves in is a bind that we have this requirement, this duty to seek
out youngsters who need special education and also assess them and
cover the costs and then cover the costs for the services that they
would need. But we have to also use general fund monies to supplement
the lack of the money that is not coming from the Federal Government.
That puts the local districts into even more of a bind, because the
general fund money that are allocated to special ed becomes siphoned
off for services for other needs that the schools have to align the
costs to.
I think that what we have found ourselves in is fulfilling a mandate
without the funding. I believe that having mandates without the full
funding that we were promised is a disservice not only to the school
districts, but ultimately to the youngsters. This pits parents and
schools against each other, because we all have this great expectation
now to meet the needs of our youngsters, but not having the resources
to follow through.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, having served in the
State as State superintendent where you have districts with resources,
other districts without resources, I would be interested in the
gentleman's comments as it relates to the disparity even these
youngsters find. Because even though we have an obligation to serve
them, they are served in a disproportionate way, even though we are
serving, for a child who lives in a school district where we have
substantial resources available, they get quality because the IEP, or
individual education plans, have to be written for each one of these
students; and as we are writing those plans, we may have one-on-one
attention. I happen to support that, because I happen to believe that
these young people become committed, taxpaying, productive citizens in
American society. So I think we have an obligation to do it.
However, my point is, have my colleagues seen that in their
situations where some do not get the kind of attention they ought to
get just because of resources?
{time} 1915
Mr. HONDA. Mr. Speaker, many districts who do not have the local
resources to fulfill their obligation find themselves not being as
great of an advocate for the youngsters. They may want to, but they do
not have the resources to cover it.
There are other school districts who are well off, and they are still
battling with parents and trying to minimize the identification of
youngsters, because even in a well-to-do school district, it is still a
drain on the general fund, but the mandate is still there. What it
really does is pits parents against school districts, and that is not
healthy for a public school system.
I believe that what the gentleman mentioned, having an IEP for every
youngster, should be a right of every youngster before they even start
school, because what an IEP does is present all the needs that a
youngster has, and you can develop an educational strategy so that the
parent, the teacher at the get-go knows what they have to do.
From that point, you can have great expectations. You can have
accountability. You have benchmarks that we are all talking about, and
we are talking about accountability. We have not had the real tools
from which to judge the teaching and the youngsters. People say that
developing an IEP is very expensive, but then I guess how expensive is
ignorance.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. If the gentleman would yield, I think what the
gentleman is talking about is absolutely right, and what the gentleman
is really talking about is an investment.
Mr. HONDA. That is correct.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. It is an investment in our future, and an investment
in the future of this country because the dollar investment today will
return rich dividends in years to come.
One of the challenges we face not only of having the dollars to
develop the plan and help teachers carrying them out and do them
depending on the district, because if we funded the
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full 40 percent that we committed to, I cannot think of a better tax
break for local systems, for local taxpayers than to make sure that
every child in this country, not only special needs children but all
children, have a good education. That will take more off their backs
than anything else we can do from Washington this year or next year or
the year after.
Mr. HONDA. If the gentleman would yield, we also found in the penal
institutions and the juvenile justice systems, we found there is an
inordinate amount of folks in the penal system who have special ed
needs.
If we do it in the front end, we can save a lot of money in the
criminal justice system, the juvenile justice system, and divert and
invest our money properly and in a positive vein.
Let me just close, if I may, by saying that we still have an
obligation, we created that obligation with 94-142. We created that
expectation. We said to parents, when we passed that law, that your
children have a right to an equitable education, even if they have
special needs. We have to cover that.
If we fulfill that, our 40 percent, then that would allow the local
districts to be able to function at a higher rate and more efficiently,
but what concerns me this year is that the idea of creating a block
grant funding for education to our States, to me that dissipates the
direction of the funding that we need to specifically target to these
youngsters and to the school district.
I am hoping that we will be able to persuade our colleagues and the
administration that special education needs to be very clear in its
funding and as its direction and its target.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for
his comments.
Let me just add to that point when the gentleman talks about block
grants, I served as a State legislator and chaired the Committee on
Appropriations before I was superintendent. I happened to have been in
the general assembly in the 1980s, when we had our last major tax cut
and that blocked to us, and all that meant was we are going to send in
money but we are going to cut it.
The truth is, in schools or other agencies, we have a responsibility
to help fund. The last thing they need is to be block granted or have
grants they have to deal with. You cannot hire teachers on block grants
and grant funding.
The truth is when you hire a teacher or any person to work with
children, you have to have enough to sustain that investment, the money
has to be a continuous stream, otherwise you cannot hire people and
sustain them.
The gentleman mentioned this whole issue of the penal system. It
reminds me, and I just said this a number of times in my State, we have
prisons that are nicer in this country than we have public schools in
some places. That is wrong. It ought to end. It ought to end right now.
We have the ability in this Congress to do something about it,
because we have the resources. I introduced legislation that the
gentleman from California (Mr. Baca), my colleague, signed last year.
We are going to introduce it again in the next week or so along with a
number of our colleagues.
I have here a flier that was done last year. It says ``America Has
Come A Long Way Since The One-Room Schoolhouse.'' It is a nice-looking
one room schoolhouse. The only problem is, in some cases, we have moved
to this, less buildings that are not up to code, that are not what they
ought to be, and a lot of times just trailers out behind the main
building.
The gentleman mentioned the issue of children. I was in a meeting
yesterday where someone was talking and we had a group of children in
front of us, and the word these days is leave no child behind, and all
of a sudden the Speaker said which one of these children do you want to
leave? That is really the answer.
Talk is cheap. You have to work to get it done.
Mr. Speaker, I want to yield to the gentleman from California (Mr.
Baca), my colleague, who has been a real hard worker on this issue. He
has committed to making sure children have a space to learn and a good
environment for his comments on this issue.
Mr. BACA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I want to thank my
colleague, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge), for
putting education as the top priority.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is the number one area that we should
probably invest in. When we talking about investment, when we talk
about resources, we talk about our future, and our children are our
future. But we have got to invest in education, and we are not
investing enough dollars.
When we look at President Bush making his statement that no child
should be left behind, well, if no child should be left behind, then
that means we ought to invest in education. We look at the amount of
children in publics schools, over 53 million in our public schools
alone.
We look at California, over 6 million children in our public schools.
If we do not invest in education, what is going to happen to our
children? That means investment not only from preschools but investment
in our K through 12. If we take the preventive measures, we save in the
long run.
Just as it was recently discussed about the prisons, we are investing
more money in building prisons and incarcerating individuals. Had we
invested early in education, we would have saved the taxpayers money.
We would have had productive citizens that would have gone out into our
communities, worked, become taxpayers, but that meant that we invested.
That means that no child was left behind. That means that in the
classroom, where right now we have approximately 30 to 45 students per
teacher, this is uncalled for. The ratio should be less.
As we begin to recruit, a need for more teachers, a demand for 2.3
million teachers nationwide. In California alone, we need over 25,000
teachers that we need to recruit. What does that mean? Teacher
training, teacher recruitment, teacher development.
What does that mean? Our institutions have to work. With that, as we
begin to recruit teachers, we need to have the infrastructures. We need
to have schools that are built to accommodate. If, in fact, we want
every child to learn, we must put them in an environment where they can
learn.
The teacher must feel that environment, and it is very difficult when
a teacher goes into the classroom and they have 30 to 35 students in a
classroom, and you look at the construction buildings, you look at
inadequate chalkboards, inadequate computers, inadequate faucets, leaky
roofs, when you look at what is going on, we want to make sure that the
atmospheres are good, that the teacher feels good, that the students
feels good, and we create the kind of construction that is necessary
for our children to look good, that they can look at any neighboring
school and say we have schools that are built like any others. We have
the technology that every other schools have.
We want parity with anyone else, because we feel that we can learn.
We want to have the same dreams that every other child has, but the
dream will only come to reality if, in fact, we provide the tools and
the instruments.
My son is a teacher in junior high. He currently is going out and
buying supplies at Colton Junior High School, Joe Baca, Jr., but yet he
is also a baseball coach, and he is going out and buying all kinds of
equipment, everything else, because we are not providing a lot of the
resources.
They should not have to reach into their pockets. We should make sure
that when we have a bond bill and it becomes very difficult in some of
our communities to pass, that we do not have the kind of schools
that need to be built. We want to make sure that every school has
adequate funding, that we provide the funding not only for
construction, the funding for teacher training, the funding for
recruitment, the funding for accountability.
Accountability, when people talk about it, accountability is already
at the local level. You have school board members that are elected.
They have the responsibility at the local level to hold the
accountability in how those dollars are spent. But we want to make sure
that every child has access to education, that every child has an
opportunity to be what they want to be.
The only way it is going to be done is if we invest more money in
education, provide more money in construction, provide more money for
teacher training, provide more money for teacher
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development, provide opportunity for our children, invest at the
beginning, not in our prisons, but invest in education from the
beginning. Then we are going to have a society where individuals are
going to go out to be governors, Presidents, Congressmen, assemblymen,
businesspersons; they will have an opportunity to fulfill those dreams.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California. I
think the gentleman reminds us if it were not for public education,
most of us would not be here either.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), my
friend who serves on the Committee on Education and the Workforce. He
has been an outspoken advocate for education and a real champion.
Mr. KIND. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina, my
friend, for yielding to me.
I saw the conversation taking place on the House floor and I wanted
to join my friends and also commend my friend, the gentleman from North
Carolina, the former State superintendent of the school system there,
for his leadership and expertise that he has provided us in this
Chamber on education issues.
I wanted to also thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Baca), my
good friend, for his energy and tireless effort in promoting
educational programs here in Congress during his term. But I, for one,
was very, very happy during the last campaign that there was so much
discussion and focus on education issues whether it was Vice President
Gore or Governor Bush.
I think it elevated the sense of urgency that many of us feel in
regards to our education investments as a Nation, but I just wanted to
add during this conversation tonight a very important piece of the
puzzle as we move forward on reauthorizing the elementary and secondary
education bill in the Committee on Education and Workforce this year,
and that is virtually every school district throughout the Nation is
facing a common challenge, and that is the rising costs of providing a
quality education to students with special needs, special education
costs.
We have a bill at the Federal level called Individuals With
Disabilities Education Act, IDEA, and when it was passed back in the
1970s, there was a commitment on the Federal level that we would at
least provide 40 percent of the expenses to local school districts and
educating these children with special needs.
We have not done a very good job of living up to that obligation,
that responsibility at the Federal level. I am sure every
representative in this House could go home and find stories that they
can share with us in regards to the rising costs of special education.
Let us face it, with the advancement of medical technology and health
care today, we are putting our children on a collision course with
school funding at the local level, because many of the kids now who
normally would not have survived and lived to join the public education
system are doing so, and with that brings added costs and expense.
If we can get one thing right during this education debate this year,
it is fully funding IDEA, providing the 40 percent cost share back to
local school districts, so they have more flexibility, more resources
in order to educate these children, but also to do and implement the
type of reforms that we are demanding of them, to improve student
performance in the classroom.
This is more than just good policy, this is a civil rights issue.
These children deserve to have access to a quality education, like any
other child in this country. So we have a special obligation, I feel,
in this session of Congress to try to get to that 40 percent level.
Even though we had a 27 percent increase last year in the last budget
in regards to IDEA funding, it still only puts us at roughly 14 percent
or 15 percent of the 40 percent level where we really should be. It
would require an additional $11 billion or so to get the full funding
this year, but it is a question of budgetary priorities, where we feel
investments need to be made as a Nation. I could not think of any
better place to start than with our children in the education system,
helping local school districts, increasing their flexibility by
providing them these resources that the Federal Government has promised
throughout the years but has failed to deliver upon.
Hopefully we will be able to get that aspect of education done in a
bipartisan fashion during this year in Congress. The litmus test, quite
frankly, will be the administration's first budget request that they
are going to send out and where they place special education funding on
their list of priorities, from there, then, hopefully, we will be able
to establish the broad-based political coalition that I know exists in
the House based on previous debates and votes that we have had in order
to get this piece of the puzzle done for education.
{time} 1930
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Wisconsin is correct.
We have the resources to do it this year. There is no reason that we
cannot start down that road and make it happen. If we really want to
have a better world, it has been said if you want a better world, you
share it with a child and they will build it. We have that opportunity.
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