[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 52 (Tuesday, April 24, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3808-S3809]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EDUCATION

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I want to take a brief moment to speak 
about one element of the education issue which as we move towards the 
debate on the education bill will be discussed at considerable length 
in this Chamber.
  I want to lay out a predicate for this discussion. That involves the 
issue of what I call portability, or choice. Some have tried to place 
on it the nomenclature of vouchers, which really isn't accurate. But 
the issue is giving parents options in the educational system to assist 
them in ensuring that their children get an education which is of 
benefit to them and allows them to be competitive in our society.
  I think we all understand that the core element of success in our 
society is quality education. We especially understand that in New 
Jersey where we don't have a natural resource to mine or agricultural 
products. We don't have some unique physical characteristic that gives 
us the ability to create income as a result of that characteristic. The 
essence of what gives our State its competitive advantage is the fact 
that we have a lot of people who are well-educated, intelligent, and 
are able to compete successfully in a very highly technical society.
  That is a definition that can be applied to our country as we see a 
global market develop in all sorts of commodities. It becomes very 
clear that the theories of Adam Smith apply in our society and in our 
world today. There are certain products and certain capabilities which 
one society is better at than other societies. Fortunately, our society 
is best at those activities which produce the most wealth and the most 
prosperity. A large percentage of those products and capabilities 
involve technology. They involve intellectual capacity, and they 
require a strong education system to succeed.

  Regrettably, what we have seen in our society today is an educational 
system that has not kept up with the needs of our Nation. In fact, tens 
of thousands--literally hundreds of thousands--of kids in our 
educational system simply aren't being educated at a level which makes 
them competitive in this high-technology world. It makes them capable 
of being successful, which means when they leave school they have the 
capacity to compete with their peers in English and math and basic 
science.
  We have seen this regrettably for years and years. The situation 
hasn't improved a whole lot. In fact, we see in study after study the 
conclusion that our school systems aren't working that well in many 
parts of our country; that we are well behind other nations which we 
are competitors with in the international community in the 
industrialized world. We rank close to last in math and science. It is 
especially true of kids who come to the table of education who have a 
natural disadvantage of coming from a low-income background. Those kids 
are even further behind than kids who do not have that disadvantage 
coming to the educational table. In fact, as I commented in this 
Chamber before, the average child in the fourth grade coming from a 
low-income background reads at two grade levels from his or her peers.
  The same is true nationally. It is throughout the system. It is not 
just fourth grade. We have seen the dropout rate. We see the lack of 
capacity to be competitive academically on the low-income side, and 
especially the minority side in our urban areas is a staggering 
problem. It hasn't improved even though we have spent hundreds of 
billions of dollars in this country trying to improve the system. What 
can we do to change that?
  We are bringing out an educational bill on the floor with amendments 
to address a number of areas, and it has some very unique and creative 
initiatives. The President made it his No. 1 priority. He brought 
forward the debate and I think moved the debate dramatically down the 
road or significantly down the road towards trying to get a different 
approach to this issue, recognizing that we have not been successful 
with the way things have been working for the last 20 or 30 years. He 
has suggested that we give schools more flexibility, but in exchange 
for flexibility for parents, teachers and principals in the school 
system require more accountability, and that we hold that 
accountability to be applied not only to the norm but to every 
individual group within the norm, whatever their ethnic, race, or 
income background. It is basically a testing program that requires kids 
maintain that level of proficiency in their grade level.
  But what happens when you see a school system which continues to fail 
year in and year out? You may say: Who defines failure? The Federal 
Government? No. Failure is defined by the local school district or the 
State school board deciding what a child should know in the third, 
fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. It is not the Federal Government 
setting the standard. It is the local school boards.
  But we know literally thousands of schools in this country year in 
and year out meet the standards when it comes to teachers teaching kids 
in those school districts and those school buildings--standards which 
are set up not by the Federal Government but are set up by the local 
school districts or by the States.

  Literally thousands of schools are not cutting it this year. They 
have not cut it for years in sequence. In some of our urban areas, 80 
or 90 percent of the schools simply are not teaching the children in 
those school systems at a level that the local school district or the 
local school board or State school board defines as educational 
proficiency.
  A parent who has to send their child to that school says to 
themselves: What am I to do? My child started in this school in the 
first grade and the school was failing. Now my child is in the fifth or 
sixth or seventh grade and the school is still failing. My child has 
passed through a system which simply wasn't teaching them what they 
were supposed to be taught, and everyone knew that child wasn't 
learning what they needed to learn.
  What can the parent do under our present rules? The parent can do 
virtually nothing to try to help their child unless they happen to come 
from a reasonably high-income family. Then they can take the child out 
of school, or even a moderate-income family if they have a Catholic 
school system somewhere or a religious school system somewhere that has 
a low cost and have their child go to that school. But for most low-
income families in our urban communities, their options are 
nonexistent. If you are the single mother with two or three kids, or 
even one child, and your child is trapped in that school system, you 
are saying to yourself: How is my child ever going to have the 
knowledge they need in order to be successful? How am I going to get my 
child to a point where they can read and do math, where they can step 
out of that school and get a good job, and where they aren't going to 
be assigned to a situation where they cannot compete in our society 
because they haven't been taught? That single mother's options are 
nonexistent today.
  Some of us on our side of the aisle, and a few on the other side of 
the aisle, have suggested giving parents some options. Let's say to a 
parent whose child is locked in the school that has failed year in and 
year out--we are not talking about all parents. We are just talking 
about parents in low-income families, and single moms trying to make a 
living. They have a job. They are sending their kids to school. Their 
kids are in a school that doesn't work. Let's say to those parents that 
we have some other options. After 3 years in that school system that 
has failed, the parent will have an option to use the special money 
which the Federal Government sends to that school system to benefit 
low-income children, which obviously isn't doing any benefit.
  You, the parent, will have the ability to take a proportion of that 
money and have it follow your child to another school, either a public 
school or a private school, where your child will have a chance to 
succeed. Your child will have a chance to participate in the American 
dream rather than to be locked out of it because they are in a school 
that does not work.

[[Page S3809]]

  This concept has been demonized. This concept has been vilified. This 
concept has been aggressively attacked, primarily by the liberal 
educational establishment in this country, essentially the leadership 
of the labor unions. Why is that? This concept of giving parents whose 
kids are stuck in failing schools--low-income parents, most of them 
single parents, most of them women--an option to do something to try to 
bring their kids out of that destitute situation, why has it been so 
attacked by the major labor union movement in this country which 
controls the teachers' unions? Primarily because it is the first step 
to what is known as competition.
  Competition is an evil term when it comes to the liberal educational 
establishment in this country. I am not really sure why it is an evil 
term. If you go out to buy a car, you decide on buying that car because 
there is competition. Competition has produced the one car that does a 
better job of what you are interested in than what somebody else has 
built. You buy a Ford over a Chevrolet or a Chrysler over a Chevrolet 
or maybe a Chevrolet over a Chrysler because you decide they build a 
better product that meets your needs more appropriately.
  Competition has been the essence of what has produced quality in the 
area of products in our country. They will say, this is not a 
Chevrolet; it is education. No, it is not a Chevrolet. This isn't cars. 
This is service. In the area of service you do exactly the same thing.
  If you have a doctor who you think is not taking care of you or your 
family correctly, you go to another doctor. If you have a dentist who 
is not taking care of you correctly--maybe he drilled into your tooth 
and did not give you any novocaine which caused you a little pain--you 
go to another dentist.
  For service providers, the same is true right across the board in our 
country. The only place where service isn't provided in a competitive 
way in our society with any significance, outside of pure Government is 
in public education. As a result, regrettably, when a child is locked 
in a failing school, the parent has no options. That is not fair. It is 
not fair to that child. It is especially not fair to the low-income 
parent in America. It is not fair to the urban poor in America that 
their children are the only children who are subjected to this lack of 
ability to have a chance at the American dream because we have a 
society which demands that they attend a school that fails year in and 
year out.
  So we have suggested, let's give these parents and these kids a 
chance. Let's take a small percentage of the funds and allow the parent 
to use those funds to bootstrap that child into some other educational 
venue where they think they can do a better job, where the parent 
thinks they can do a better job. It can be a public school or it can be 
a private school.
  This is an idea that has caused great disruption obviously in the 
educational community. But let me point out it is working today with 
State and local dollars. It is working in the city of Milwaukee and in 
the State of Arizona. They allow the State tax dollars and the local 
tax dollars to follow the child to the educational venue, the 
educational place they wish to go. It works very well.

  Listen to the mayor of Milwaukee, who happens to be a very active 
Democrat, and he proselytizes on this issue about how good it has been 
for the kids in the inner city, to give them a chance to be more 
successful, a chance to live the American dream. Remember, we are not 
proposing--and this is critical to understand--a unilateral Federal 
program that comes into the State, comes into the community, and says: 
You must allow the parent to have portability, to have those dollars 
follow the child.
  What we are saying is this: We are going to put on the cafeteria line 
of Federal programs an idea. You, the local school district, you, the 
State, if you decide to, through your elected officials--and it is key 
to underline that; through your elected officials--can take off that 
cafeteria line the idea of portability, having the dollars follow the 
child. So it is going to be a program which is totally controlled by 
publicly elected officials. It will be only at the discretion of 
publicly elected officials who control the public educational system.
  So if the public education system in Milwaukee wants to use the 
Wisconsin dollars and the Milwaukee dollars, and then wants to also use 
the Federal dollars, they can do that. But if the public education 
system in Chicago does not want to use Federal dollars or local dollars 
or State dollars in order to give parents the option, then it will not 
happen.
  This is not a unilateral exercise. This is an exercise which is 
related to the local community making the decision, through its locally 
elected officials, who control local education. So it is not some huge 
scheme that is going to be settled on the community from above.
  Why shouldn't we say to the city of Milwaukee: All right, you have a 
program that you think is working very well. You are taking your State 
tax dollars, you are taking your local property tax dollars, and you 
have set up a program where those dollars follow the child. But, 
unfortunately, you, Milwaukee, today, under our law today, cannot take 
Federal dollars and follow the child. Your Federal dollars have to go 
to the public school system. They have to go to the public schools, and 
it is not in relation to how many low-income kids there are in the 
schools--and there can be some low-income kids who do not get any 
dollars for education--but, rather, it is in relationship to some 
arbitrary formula settled back in 1976 that simply happens to be a 
formula based on political expediency today.
  Why shouldn't we say to Milwaukee: We are not going to do that any 
longer, Milwaukee. You have made a decision as to how you think you can 
educate your children. We are going to let the Federal dollars follow 
the local and State dollars. Specifically, in Milwaukee, if you decide 
to do it, we are going to allow you to use these dollars with 
portability, so the parents can have options; the same with Arizona.
  That is what we are proposing. It is really not radical at all. It is 
not a Federal initiative demanding we have a national program on 
``vouchers,'' a word that has been made a pejorative term. It is a 
program that suggests that local communities and States may decide that 
parents, who have their kids in failing schools, where those schools 
have failed year in and year out, can do something for their children 
that will create some competition in the educational market, something 
which is fundamental to the American society in producing quality. It 
is a program that suggests that those school districts which have made 
those decisions locally or statewide, through their elected leaders, 
will have the option, with our Federal dollars, to do the same.
  That idea has retained huge resistance; the resistance isn't 
rational. The resistance is political. It is driven by a desire 
basically not to allow competition, not to allow creativity in our 
local school districts, but to drive the process of education from 
Washington, so that an elite few can decide for many how education is 
pursued nationally.
  We are going to discuss this at greater length as we move down the 
road on the education bill. But I thought it would be appropriate at 
this time to at least lay down the foundation for the predicate of the 
debate because it is grossly misrepresented in the press, not because 
the press does not understand the issue but because the presenters to 
the press maybe want to misrepresent. I believe it is appropriate to 
maybe begin to make clear for the record what is being proposed.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair, in his capacity as the Senator from 
Wyoming, asks unanimous consent the calling of the quorum call be 
rescinded.
  Without objection, it is so ordered.

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