[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 42 (Tuesday, March 27, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H1178-H1179]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    PRESIDENT BUSH'S EDUCATION PLAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Keller) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KELLER. Mr. Speaker, as the only Member of Congress from Florida 
on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, I am proud to be an 
original cosponsor of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act of 
2001.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this important 
education reform legislation. This legislation will

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do three key things. First, we will invest an additional $5 billion in 
reading over the next 5 years for children in grades K through 2. This 
is critical since right now 70 percent of the fourth graders in our 
inner-city schools cannot read at basic levels.
  Second, we will require the States to conduct annual tests in grades 
3 through 8 in reading and mathematics. This is critical to ensure that 
none of our children somehow fall through the cracks. How many times 
have we turned on the television only to see a college athlete explain 
that he is not able to read even though he somehow graduated from high 
school?
  We are going to put a stop to that right here, right now in this 
Congress.
  Third, in exchange for pumping historic levels of money into our 
public education system, we are going to insist on accountability. 
There must be a safety valve for students who are trapped in 
persistently failing schools. Therefore, if a school continues to fail 
for 3 consecutive years, the student is going to have the option of 
staying in that school and receiving $1,500 to use toward tutoring or 
he could transfer to a public school or he could transfer to a charter 
school or even a private school if that is in his best interest.
  Now why do I support this legislation? Because I know it will make a 
meaningful difference in the lives of young people, and it will ensure 
that every child in this great country of ours will have the 
opportunity, whether he is rich or poor, to get a first class 
education.
  Now how do I know this to be true? Because we have already 
implemented these same principles, measuring performance and demanding 
accountability, in the great State of Florida. What happened as a 
result? We went from having 78 F-rated schools based on low test scores 
to only 4 F schools in the course of only a year.
  Let me give you two examples. First, in my district of Orlando, 
Florida, there is a school called Orlo Vista Elementary School. At this 
school, 92 percent of the children are from low-income families and 
they are entitled to receive the free hot lunch program. Eighty-six 
percent of the students are minorities. This school was rated as an F 
school by the State of Florida based on abysmally low test scores.
  However, after measuring the students' performance, pumping Federal 
title I dollars into the school, along with local school board money 
and State dollars, we were able to make sure that we cured the problem 
and that all children were able to read, write and perform math 
appropriately. As a result, the school went from having 30 percent of 
the children pass a standardized test in 1 year to over 79 percent of 
the students being able to pass that same test a year later. It is no 
longer an F school.
  Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of taking our U.S. Secretary 
of Education, Rod Paige, on a personal tour of this same Orlo Vista 
Elementary School in Orlando. I wanted him to see firsthand why the 
school was successful. I took him into a reading lab, and while there 
he observed a little 6-year-old African-American boy reading. This is a 
child who, 1 month earlier, was having problems with reading and was 
set apart.
  The student-teacher ratio for this child was one-to-one. As he leaned 
over the shoulder watching this little child read, he was blown away 
and so impressed. This child was flying through that book, reading as 
well as most adults that I know.
  We were making a difference. We caught the problem and solved it with 
a one-to-one student/teacher ratio.
  This particular situation in Orlando was not unique. For example, at 
Dixon Elementary School, which is up in the Panhandle in Escambia 
County, another F-rated school existed because of persistently failing 
test scores. Yet in one year, after implementing similar legislation in 
Florida, we saw the students go from only 28 percent being able to pass 
a standardized test to this year over 94 percent passing that same 
test.
  I genuinely believe that we can replicate the same success that we 
have had in Florida all across the United States by passing the No 
Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and I urge my colleagues to support this 
important education reform legislation.

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