Congressional Record, Volume 147 Issue 52 (Tuesday, April 24, 2001)

[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 52 (Tuesday, April 24, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3817-S3824]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

THE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ACT

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I would like to spend a few moments this
afternoon to bring our colleagues up to date on where we are on the
Elementary and Secondary Education legislation. Over these past 2 weeks
we have had an ongoing exchange of ideas and views with the
administration and our colleagues. We have been trying to continue to
find common ground and to make important progress.
We are very much aware that this is an issue that is not only a high
priority for the President of the United States, but also that it is a
high priority for every family in this country, and certainly among the
highest priorities for those of us on this side of the aisle.
We welcome the fact that we have a President who has placed education
at the top of his agenda. Eight years ago when the Democrats lost
control of the Senate, one of the first actions the Republicans took
was to rescind some of the funding of elementary and secondary
education. We also fought against attempts by our Republican friends to
abolish the Department of Education. But that was then and this is now.
We welcome the opportunity to find common ground so we can move ahead
and make a difference for the children in this country and for the
families across the Nation.
As we start off our debate on this issue, we have to understand the
importance of preparing a child to learn, even prior to the time they
enroll in elementary school. This is an area of very considerable
interest on both sides of the aisle.
Our colleague from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, has been a leader on
these children's issues. Senator Jeffords has made this a special area
of concern. And Senator Stevens has been very involved in early
intervention for children. It is enormously important to continue to
ensure a national commitment to have the nation's children ready to
learn, as we did and as the Governors did in Charlottesville some years
ago.
I am hopeful we will be able to do that in a bipartisan way in
Congress with solid legislation. We still have a ways to go, but we
have made progress. We also have to understand the very serious and
significant gap that still exists with regard to preparing children for
grades K through 12th.
We are still falling behind. We fund Early Start programs at
approximately 10 percent for the earliest types of intervention. And
for programs from birth to 3 years of age, we are down to either 2 or 3
percent. This is an area of enormous importance. We are trying to help
many children across the nation with this program. Hopefully, it will
make a difference.
Unfortunately there are going to be many children who will still fall
through the cracks unless we come back to revisit public policy and
resources for early intervention programs.
It is all part of a mosaic. We must give our full attention to these
efforts which are extremely important in preparing children for
elementary school.
I was disappointed that the administration zeroed out a very modest
downpayment in the Early Child Development Program that had bipartisan
support in the 106th Congress from Senator Stevens, Senator Jeffords,
Senator Dodd, Senator Kerry, many others on the Health Education Labor
and Pensions Committee, and myself.

[[Page S3818]]

We have reached some very important agreements on the reauthorization
of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, however, differences
over funding remain. We are in the process of negotiating language for
the legislation, and I expect that the earliest we could have this
legislation is late Wednesday or Thursday.
Money is not the answer to everything, but it is a pretty good
indication of the Nation's priorities.
Under the President's bill, there is a reduction in resources of $69
billion for the Nation. However, we will only see an extremely modest,
somewhat less than $3 billion, increase in the funding for programs
which are targeted on the neediest children in this country. It is that
kind of disparity which is of considerable trouble to many of us.
We agree that every child should be tested each year in grades three
through eight--not as a punishment, but so parents and educators know
where every child stands and what more needs to be done to help them
improve and achieve their full potential.
We agree to create tough standards for schools and hold them
accountable for improving student achievement.
We agree that where schools fail, bold steps are necessary to turn
them around, including requiring alternative governance arrangements.
We agree parents deserve more public school options to ensure their
children get a quality education.
We agree that literacy programs should be expanded so every child
learns to read well in the early years.
We share these priorities with President Bush and believe these
reforms will make a difference in our communities.
We are still working on how to increase the flexibility while
maintaining targeting and accountability. It is important that any
additional flexibility is tied to strong accountability, and strong
targeting to the neediest communities. We want to ensure that States
and school districts do not ignore the children who need our help the
most.
We are also working hard to increase accountability and support for
teachers. States and districts should be held accountable for putting
qualified teachers in every classroom, particularly in the neediest
schools. They should also have to provide professional development and
mentoring support for teachers so that teachers can make these new
tough reforms work.
We are also working to ensure that after-school programs are expanded
so that more children have the opportunity to catch up with their
schoolwork if they have fallen behind.
We are working to ensure parent involvement and that parent
involvement is a cornerstone for all the new reforms.
We are working to ensure schools and districts and States are held
accountable to the public through mandatory report cards that include
important information about how well their schools are doing.
We are working to ensure that the Class Size Reduction Program is
continued so children can get the individual attention they need to
succeed.
We are working to continue the School Renovation Program
so communities can ensure children are learning in safe, modern school
buildings.

We hope we can address all these issues and come to a bipartisan
consensus on them.
We must also know that reforms minus resources equals failure. You
cannot say education is your top priority and not put enough resources
in the budget to do the job.
We are disappointed in the President's budget. According to OMB,
President Bush's budget contains only a $669 million increase next year
for elementary and secondary education programs. That is an increase of
one-fifth of one percent of what we are spending on our public schools
today at the national, State, and local levels; we are spending $350
billion a year.
Testing and accountability are important, but they are only the
measures of reform, they are not reform themselves.
Investment without accountability is a waste of money, but
accountability without investment is a waste of time.
We need the resources to make sure that slick, easy, and quick tests
that have mostly multiple choice questions and which cost $3 or $4 will
not be developed. We want to make sure we have a quality teacher
teaching a quality curriculum to a quality test. That takes investment.
It is not just the money, it is the resources to do the job: well-
qualified teachers, thoughtful tests, good curriculum, the examination
of the tests and reporting back in a timely way.
At the current time, we are meeting only about 20 to 22 percent of
the supplementary services that are necessary for children. If we are
not going to have a significant increase in resources, we are not going
to be able to provide the good quality supplementary services for those
children who need them.
We know with a very modest increase--about $1 billion--we could
provide 1.6 million children with quality supplemental after-school
academic opportunities. Even if you take what was paid last year and
adding about $850 million this year, we are still only reaching about a
third of all latchkey children, ages 8 to 13, who go home alone in the
afternoon.
Resources are important because they are translated into substantive
issues that make a difference in advancing the quality of education for
children.
This chart compares the investments in ESEA programs for fiscal year
2001 to the Administration's 2002 proposal. In 2001, funding for ESEA
programs increased by $3.6 billion or a 24.2 percent. This
Administration has requested an increase of $669 million, which is only
a 3.5 percent increase.
Even with their willingness to go higher, it does not come close to
the increases in 2001. This recognizes that we are only reaching one-
third of all of the children who are disadvantaged or eligible under
the Title I program.
Look at the appropriations for the Department of Education. In 2001
there was an 18.2 percent increase, $6.5 billion. The Bush budget for
all the education, is increased by 5.9 percent or $2.5 billion.

The Department of Education over the period of the last 5 years shows
a 12.8-percent increase in resources. However the proposed budget
starts with a 5.9-percent increase in the Department of Education.
This is a time with record surpluses, when we are going to give back
$69 billion in tax reductions. There is a great deal of talk about
investing in education, but we are still not putting in the resources.
This chart is the State of Texas education equation. It shows that
from 1994 to 2002, school funding went from $16.9 billion to $27.5
billion, a 57-percent increase under Governor Bush. Interestingly, we
see an alarming increase in student achievement, from 56-percent of the
students performing at a proficient level on the State test in 1994 to
80-percent of students performing at a proficient level in 2000--
showing you cannot educate on the cheap.
The next chart shows the difference between the proposal the
Democrats support and the Bush budget. We know there are 10,000 failing
schools that need to be turned around. The best estimate is that it
costs $180,000 to turn around a school. There are 57 different,
accepted, scientifically evaluated ways in which schools can be
restructured and organized that have been found to have been
successful. Taking 10,000 schools and $180,000--that is, $1.8 billion--
to turn around the schools that we know are in need. With the other
proposal, effectively, we are leaving 7,556 schools behind.
We know what needs to be done. We know we have failing schools, and
we have ways of turning them around. We know we have unqualified
teachers, and we know what needs to be done to make them qualified. We
know we have an inadequate curriculum, and we know what needs to be
done to strengthen curriculum. We understand what will benefit the
children and the teachers and we know how to strengthen their needs
with supplementary services.
If we don't have the supplementary services, trained teachers,
effective tests, modern and safe schools, and smaller class sizes, then
we are failing ourselves. We fail ourselves when we fail to provide the
resources to ensure the nation's children with a sound education.
Finally, I hope during this debate we have some discussion about the
issue of IDEA. Full funding for IDEA will help

[[Page S3819]]

immeasurably in allowing special needs children to get additional
resources.
I hope we can move ahead with ESEA and get the commitment of
essential resources to meet these important needs. In doing the job, we
need to give children across the nation the best opportunities which we
all understand they deserve.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brownback). The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Clinton speak
next for 15 minutes and I be allowed to speak after for 10 minutes, and
the Republicans then be allowed to have the time they need to respond.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from New York is recognized.
Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague from
Minnesota. I associate myself with the remarks of the education Senator
from Massachusetts who so eloquently laid out our dilemma, the dilemma
that will be occupying the Senate as we move forward on this very
important debate.
People always talk about important debates, but it is fair to say as
we debate, we will set educational policy for our Nation for the next 7
years. There is hardly a subject we can think of that will have more
direct impact on our families, on our communities, on our economy, and
especially on our children. We are setting the stage for determining
how much we as a nation will do to make good on the promise of a
quality education for all children, and particularly for our country's
neediest children.
I first became involved in education reform back in 1983 with the
issuance of the report called ``A Nation at Risk,'' which was issued
under President Reagan's watch. Many took that call to action very much
to heart that we were a nation at risk. We began looking for ways to
improve education, to provide more resources to provide more
accountability measures. We have made progress over those last years.
When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was last reauthorized
in 1994, we sent a strong signal that although education was absolutely
a matter of local concern, it had to be a national priority; that we
all had to recognize we were failing our children by not providing
adequate educational resources and by not expecting them to do the very
best they could do. We put a high priority on academic standards, and
we worked to help teachers and administrators, parents, and communities
improve education.
The results of this strong Federal response to local and State
educational demands has been heartening. Mr. President, 49 States plus
the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have developed State standards
and are working to implement them. These reforms are producing results.
We often only focus on the negative side of the ledger about how much
we still have to do. I give some credit to the children and the young
people, our students, and their parents, and especially their teachers,
because we have seen progress. Reading and math scores for fourth
graders in our highest poverty school districts have improved by nearly
a grade level from 1994 to today. SAT scores are on the rise. More
students than ever are attending college.
We cannot rest there. We know there is still far more to be done. We
have too many children, particularly in our underserved urban and rural
districts, who are not reading at grade level. We have too many
children being taught by uncertified teachers, in overcrowded
classrooms, in crumbling school buildings. We cannot stand by idly
while these conditions persist. The issue is, what is the best way to
address them? How better can we equip parents, teachers, communities,
and our students to meet the tests of the 21st century?
I applaud President Bush for calling for greater accountability. I
agree with him on the importance of that. I was among the very first in
our Nation, in Arkansas in the early 1980s, to call for the testing of
students and the testing of teachers because I believed then we had to
know what we didn't know in order to make progress. We couldn't just
pretend that everything was fine and engage in social promotion and not
face up to the fact that we had children graduating from high school
who couldn't read a job application. We had teachers who had been
themselves passed through the education system who were unprepared to
teach the substance of what it was they were assigned to teach.
Accountability is key, to me. I have been a strong supporter of that.
In fact, I welcome the Republicans and I welcome the Bush
administration which has gone forward with accountability measures that
are like the measures Democrats have proposed for several years. Many
on the other side of the aisle resisted such approaches for many years.
In fact, they wanted to abolish the Department of Education. So I
applaud my colleagues on the Republican side for the progress they have
made in moving toward a common recognition that this is a national
priority that must be beyond politics and partisanship.

The accountability that is in the bill that is proposed would ask
that we test our children every year from third to eighth grade. That
is designed to ensure that they are meeting high standards. But here is
where the rubber really hits the road. If all we do is order more
tests, if we do not combine those tests with the resources that are
needed to help the children who have been left behind, then we will
have, at best, a hollow victory and I believe, worse than that, we will
have committed educational fraud on our children, our teachers, and our
country.
The Bush plan orders more testing while providing only half the funds
needed to design and implement these tests. What would this mean to the
State of New York, for example? It would mean that of the $16 million
that is estimated to have to be spent to comply with these new Federal
requirements, our State would only get $8 million. So we would have to
find 8 million more dollars, take it out of something else--from hard-
pressed school districts, from teacher pay, from whatever other
important objective we are already trying to meet. We should not be
passing on an unfunded mandate to our States.
If it is a national priority, if it is a priority for this
administration to order these tests, then the Federal Government ought
to pay for these tests and make sure that, as the Senator from
Massachusetts pointed out, they are good tests; they are quality tests;
they are not just make-work kinds of tests.
Passing tough new accountability standards without the resources to
help our schools and students is similar to handing out thermometers in
the midst of an epidemic. The thermometers certainly can tell us that
there are a lot of sick people, but they do absolutely nothing to help
people get better. Unfortunately, the administration's proposal has
plenty of thermometers but precious little medicine to help our schools
improve. The administration has not even yet committed to providing the
Federal funds necessary to marry accountability with student
achievement.
We already know that despite the rhetoric, this is not an increase of
more than 11 percent; it is only 5.9 percent because the administration
tried to count money that had been appropriated last year. We are glad
to have that money, but let's have honest accounting about how much
more money is going in. A 5.9-percent increase barely keeps up with
inflation and population increases.
What also does it mean on the school level? Let's focus and ask
ourselves: If we pass this accountability measure, and everybody goes
home, pats themselves on the back, there is a big press conference, and
a big signing ceremony, what have we really done to help the districts
such as the ones I worry about in the State of New York?
In New York City, for example, we are facing a severe teacher
shortage. The city will need to hire approximately 40,000--that is
right, 40,000--teachers over the next 4 years. In addition, the
district is under a court order to place those certified teachers it
hires in the lowest performing schools. That makes sense because right
now we have uncertified teachers, ill equipped to teach, teaching
the children who need the best teachers. So the idea, which is a good
idea, is let's put the certified teachers in the schools

[[Page S3820]]

where the children need them the most.

But what has happened? Last week we learned from the chancellor of
the New York City schools that the certified teachers turned down the
jobs in the hard-to-teach schools. Why? Because those are the schools
that are already overcrowded; those are the schools that are crumbling;
those are the schools that hardly have a book in the library; those are
the schools without the computers connected by the cables they need to
be able to be functional, let alone to be accessible to the Internet.
We cannot in good conscience demand that school districts hire
certified teachers without providing the resources to help these hard-
pressed districts recruit and retain these teachers. And we have to do
more to make these schools attractive to certified teachers.
Answer me, why you would go into a very difficult school to teach
children who are under lots of stress at home and in their
neighborhoods if the school is not well equipped to give you the
resources you need to try to do a good job with those children?
I will be working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to
introduce a bipartisan teacher recruitment amendment. We all know if we
do not place the recruitment of our teachers at the top of our national
agenda we will have school districts that are barely able to open their
doors in the next couple of years. We will be asking people literally
to come off the streets and start teaching because we will not have the
teachers we need. I meet people all the time who want to be teachers,
but they will not, they cannot, and they should not work under the
conditions under which many of our teachers are asked to function.
I am also concerned about the proposal the President includes called
Straight A's. This is a demonstration project that would give 7 States
and 25 school districts the chance to block grant Federal dollars.
People are often talking about how important it is to give authority
back to the States, and I agree with that in most instances. But we
know from years of education research that block granting funds--which
means taking the Federal dollars and sending them to the State
capitol--means that those dollars do not get to the students and the
schools that need them the most in the amount that they should. They
get siphoned off in the bureaucracy of the State capitol. They get sent
to other places that do not need them but, for political purposes, have
the influence to get them. We should be targeting those hard-earned
Federal dollars to those school districts and those students who are so
far behind.
Right now in New York we know, because of a court decision, that the
children in New York City do not get their fair share of education
funding. So we should do everything possible to get the dollars to the
students who need them the most in the schools where the teachers have
a chance to try to help them.
We also know from research that smaller class sizes make a huge
difference, and the Class Size Reduction Initiative has worked wonders.
We now have teachers in New York who are federally funded who are
helping to lower class size. We have already seen positive results from
the school achievement scores.
We also know that construction funding to help schools repair their
buildings and modernize them and even construct the buildings they need
is very necessary. These two important programs, class size reduction
and school construction, are eliminated for all purposes in the Bush
administration proposal. I say this is a mistake, and I ask the
administration, with all respect, to please reconsider this decision.

The administration says that reducing class size with Federal dollars
and helping to construct and repair schools are not Federal
responsibilities. I know they are not totally Federal responsibilities,
but I do not think in today's world they are also solely local
responsibilities. The districts that need the help the most are not the
districts like the one I live in where, with very high property taxes
from affluent people, the children have everything they could possibly
dream of. But in so many districts, suburban taxpayers cannot pay
another penny to fix their schools and do what is necessary to have up-
to-date labs. In many rural districts they do not have the tax base to
do that, and in many urban districts they don't have the dollars
because they don't get their fair allocation from the State, and they
cannot tax themselves to be able to meet the needs of children for whom
English is not their first language, who come to school with
undiagnosed mental illnesses, who live in a system of deprivation and
violence and who cannot perform at the same level as the children in my
district.
Let's have a shared responsibility. That was the whole idea behind
the Class Size Reduction Initiative and School Construction Initiative.
If education is to be a national priority, let's invest in what we know
works--and we know reducing class size and providing good facilities
actually works--to make for better education.
I hope we will continue in the spirit that we began in the education
committee as we marked up this bill, in the negotiations that are
currently ongoing with the administration. But I am very concerned that
this particular proposal falls way short of what we need to be doing.
It falls short for a very simple reason. The administration would
rather invest in a large, fiscally irresponsible tax cut than in the
education of our children and particularly those who are most needy in
rural and urban districts.
I hope this will be reconsidered because this failure to properly
fund education, to me, is disappointing at a time when we have
surpluses, when we do not have to squander these surpluses on large tax
cuts that will go disproportionately to the already wealthy whose
children already attend schools that have all the computers, all the
bells and whistles, all the extra help they could possibly have.
Let's, instead, take a moment and step back. I hear a lot about the
greatest generation. My parents were part of the greatest generation,
the World War II generation. I think they probably have to take a
second seat to the greatest generation being the Founders of our
Country. But there is no argument that those who survived the
Depression, won World War II, and set the stage for winning the cold
war, were among the greatest if they were not the greatest generation
our country has ever seen.
We have been living off the investments and sacrifices of our parents
and our grandparents for more than 50 years. My father, who is a rock-
ribbed Republican, voted for higher school taxes because he knew the
education of his children depended upon good schools. We invested in
the Interstate Highway System. We set a goal to send a man to the Moon.
We had big dreams, and we worked to fulfill those dreams.
Today, at the beginning of this new century, it is up to us to make
the decisions, the hard decisions to invest in our children's
education. And shame on us if we do not make the right decisions. We
can pass a bill that is filled with testing and sounds good but 10
years from now we will still have children in overcrowded classrooms
and crumbling buildings who are being deprived of certified, qualified
teachers, and we will wonder what went wrong.
Let's instead be sensible about the best practices that we know work.
We have research. We have practical experience. We know what needs to
be done. The issue is, do we have the political will to make those
decisions?
I support working hand in hand with the administration in a
bipartisan way, with the parents and teachers and community leaders of
our country, to make education a real national priority. But I cannot--
I could not--support a bill that is a hollow, empty promise.
Let's do both. Let's increase accountability so we get better results
by making sure we have the resources to hold our children and our
teachers accountable. If we do that, then we will be setting the stage
to leave no child behind. If we do any less, then I think we have
missed a historic opportunity.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, could I ask the Senator one or two
quick questions?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. WELLSTONE. I have been very moved by what she said. On the
question of accountability and then the whole issue of unfunded
mandates, one

[[Page S3821]]

argument I heard the Senator make was we have to provide the funding
for the actual tests to make sure these are high quality, which means
we should not confuse accountability, testing, and standardized tests
as being one and the same thing; is that correct?
Mrs. CLINTON. Yes, it is.
Mr. WELLSTONE. The second point I want to make and I want to be sure
we are clear about is that it would also be an unfunded mandate, even
if you provided the funding for the administration of the testing,
without the investment in our children and our schools to make sure
each and every child had the same chance to achieve and do well in
these tests. Then I tried to remember what you described it as. You
said it was hollow, and you said it would be an educational fraud. That
is fairly strong language. I will put the Senator on the spot, but
could I ask her why she feels so strongly about this point?
Mrs. CLINTON. Certainly. My feelings go back many years. As the
Senator knows, children have been my passion for more than 30 years. I
have worked on improving and reforming education for nearly 20 years. I
know how difficult it is, today, to try to help many of our children
achieve educational competence.
The reason for that is that we are not living in the same world in
which the Senator and I grew up. It is harder to teach our children.
Our children come to school with more problems and more stress. They
are exposed to many more things than we ever faced.
We have to understand that if we don't really provide the resources
to reach the children as they are today, not as we wish they would be,
not as we thought they were back when I was sitting there with my hands
folded and listening to every word, but as they are today with all the
other pressures that are on families and children, then we are not
going to have the results and the kind of achievement to which the
Senator from Minnesota is referring.
But there is no reason we have to make this choice. It is not an
either/or choice. We have the resources to assist our local districts
so they do not have to reach any deeper. Many of the districts from my
State can't afford to raise their property taxes any more.
I was on Long Island last night talking to a group of about 1,000
people. I explained to them, if we have this large Federal income tax
cut, and then we have these unfunded mandates for education, where is
the rubber going to hit the road? It is going to hit the road in the
local property tax levies.
I would rather be, I am sure, part of an administration that gets to
take credit for cutting income taxes than the poor souls down at the
local level having to vote to raise property taxes in order to meet the
mandates they have put on them. I think we should not be raising false
hopes. We should be looking at how we help every child be successful.
Mr. WELLSTONE. When I go back to Minnesota, I try to be in the
schools every 2 weeks. For the last 10\1/2\ years there has been
concern about the testing, especially standardized tests; people have
to kind of teach within a straightjacket. But what about the issue? I
ask the Senator from New York because this is also, I think, part of
her passion and part of her work. I hear a lot about two other things:
The IDEA program, which isn't within ESEA, but it seems to me that we
have to be very clear with some kind of trigger amount so that testing
doesn't take its place unless we fully fund IDEA, because that is
really a threat and a strain that a lot of districts feel. The other
one is prekindergarten.
With all due respect, I want to get the Senator's opinion. If we
start testing kids at age 8, I might argue at age 12 or 13, ``Schools,
what have you done?'' But at age 8, I would argue that much more of
what will explain how that child is doing is what happened to the child
before kindergarten. Where is the administration, if the administration
is going to talk about leaving no child behind? Where is the community
in early childhood development to make sure that these children are
kindergarten ready? Shouldn't that all fit within what is defined as
reform?
Mrs. CLINTON. I think my colleague is absolutely right, because if we
are looking at the comprehensive reform, we cannot leave out the
funding of IDEA. We can't leave out doing something to help parents
understand their obligations to be a child's first teacher and provide
quality preschool.
I hear so much about the IDEA program, otherwise known as the special
education program. I hear it mostly in suburban districts,
interestingly enough, because suburban districts have activist parents
and they know the law. The law is that we have to provide an education
for every child. And I support that law. It was the first project I
ever did for the Children's Defense Fund. I went door to door in
communities back in--I hate to say--1973 to find out where the children
were because they weren't in school. We found a lot of children with
disabilities who were being kept out of school.

I am a 100-percent supporter of mainstreaming our children and giving
every child a chance. But we are bankrupting a lot of our suburban
school districts. We are saying you have to provide special treatment
and education for children who need it and deserve it. If that means
you have to shut down the band program or only have one physics session
or do away with art, that is the tough choice to make.
The Federal Government said in the 1970s that you have to provide
this education. Furthermore, it is not only, as our colleague Tom
Harkin likes to say, a Federal mandate, but it is a constitutional
mandate to provide this quality education. The Federal Government is
going to tell districts they have to provide special education. Where
is the full funding so suburban districts and all other districts can
try to keep up with their expenses?
I could not agree more with the second point the Senator made. Those
of us who have been parents read to our children. We take them to
museums. We get them a library card. We monitor their television. We
worry about any kind of childcare arrangements. We know those early
years make a difference. Why don't we make a commitment based on the
resources we now have about the brain to do more to provide quality
preschool opportunities both at home and outside the home so that more
children can come to school ready to learn? That might be the very best
investment we could make in terms of long-term academic success.
Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Senator from New York.
In the time I have remaining, I would like to make the point that I
think this is truly a matter of values and truly a matter of
priorities. Either we are going to be talking about close to $2
trillion in tax cuts--most of it Robin Hood in reverse. Again, if
somebody wants to prove me wrong, about 40 percent of the benefits go
to the top 1 percent of the population.
Any day of the year, I would stake my reputation back in Minnesota on
being able to say, as opposed to those Robin-Hood-in-reverse tax cuts,
that I am going to be a Senator from Minnesota who is going to insist
that if we are going to say a piece of education legislation is the
best, we had better make it the best for our children. That means there
is a commitment to making sure kids are kindergarten ready. That means
we live up to our commitment to fully funding the program for children
with special needs, which is getting to the 40-percent level and not
the 14-percent level. That means we ought to be moving toward fully
funding the title I program for kids who come from disadvantaged
backgrounds. That means we ought to be funding afterschool programs and
we ought to be talking about teacher recruitment. We ought to be
talking about how we can provide the supportive services.
I say to Senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, that you will rue
the day you voted for a piece of legislation that mandated that every
school and every school district in your State every single year had to
have tests, starting as young as age 8 and going to age 13, and you did
not at the same time vote to provide the resources so that those
teachers and those schools and those school districts and, most
important of all, the children had the tools so they could succeed and
do well.
I will tell you something. I hope my colleagues on the Democratic
side will draw the line on this question. It seems to me that before we
proceed to this kind of legislation, before we talk about a piece of
legislation as being reform, we should say we want to make sure there
is a commitment of resources. Before we have this mandate on all of our
States and all of our schools, we ought to make sure we have provided
the funding. If we can't

[[Page S3822]]

do that, then this becomes very hollow. If we can't do that, then this
piece of legislation I believe does nothing but set up the schools and
the kids and the teachers for failure.
My colleague was saying get it down to the school level. I sometimes
think what we have been doing has a sense of unreality to it. If you go
down in the trenches, and especially it you go to the schools, a lot of
the inner-city neighborhoods and rural areas, you have kids on free or
reduced lunch programs. You have homes where sometimes they have to
move two or three times a year. You have schools that are crumbling,
schools that don't have the resources, schools that don't have the
laboratory facilities, and schools that don't have the textbooks. Now
what you are saying is you are going to have tests and state with
precision the obvious: Guess what. Children who come to school hungry,
children who come from families who don't have adequate housing or are
even homeless, children who are not kindergarten ready, children who do
not receive all of the good stimulation and all of the nurturing that
they need to have before kindergarten, those children who come to
schools without the facilities, without the best teachers, without the
salaries for the teachers, we are going to find out through tests that
those children and those schools aren't doing as well as a lot of other
schools which have all the resources in the world with which to work.
That is what the test does. Absolutely nothing--not without the
resources.
I can say this from the floor of the Senate. It sounds a little
jarring. But in a lot of ways I think the best way you can move to
vouchers is to design a system where you guarantee over the next 4 or 5
years that many schools are not going to succeed because you don't give
them the resources. Then you can state with precision the obvious; that
is, the children who come from low- and moderate-income backgrounds
with the least amount of help to do well are continuing to do poorly.
The schools are continuing to do poorly because they do not have the
resources. Then you use that as a reason for an all-out broadside
attack on public education.
Some of the harshest critics of these teachers in these schools
couldn't last an hour in the classrooms they condemn. I have never met
a teacher and I have never met a parent who has said to me what we need
is more and more tests, tests, tests.
I have had a lot of people in Minnesota talk to me about the IDEA
program, the title I program, afterschool programs, how we can make
sure kids are kindergarten ready, and how we can make sure we have the
best teachers and get the resources to the teachers and have the
support for the teachers and the kids.
We have a budget from the President of the United States of America
who says education is his No. 1 priority, and it is a tin cup budget.
How are you going to realize the goal of leaving no child behind on a
tin cup budget? At the moment, I agree with Senator Clinton. I think it
is an educational fraud bill. Without the resources to back the
rhetoric, it becomes nothing more than symbolic politics with
children's lives.
I will oppose it with all of my might until we get resources to
invest in our children--all of our children.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15
minutes in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we will be turning to the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act reauthorization bill soon. I want to speak a
bit about the subject of education.
This will be an interesting debate and one that is very important for
our country. All of us come to the Senate from different backgrounds
with different interests. I happen to come from a small town of about
300 people in the southwestern corner of North Dakota, down by the
Montana and South Dakota border. I graduated in a high school class of
nine.
That little high school in Regent, ND, where I went to school, held
its last prom this year because the high school is not going to be
continuing any longer. In order to have a prom in a school that small,
they have to gather a fair number of classes. That is the only way to
have a prom in a school that size.
I was saddened to read that, because of the challenges facing rural
areas of North Dakota, schools are seeing fewer and fewer students
coming into the school system. In my State, we had 16 counties that had
fewer than 25 births in a year, and in almost all of those counties
they have at least two school systems. Divide up those births 5 or 6
years from now and see how many children are going to enter first grade
and see what the challenges are for those schools. They are very
significant.
Despite having gone to a small school, I always felt I got a very
good education. It was not a fancy school. It was a school with a
library no larger than a coat closet, but we had teachers who cared,
and it was a school that provided an awfully good education.
Even though all of us have different backgrounds, we also share
common goals. All of us want the same thing for our country. We want
our country to do well, our children to be well educated, our country's
economy to grow and provide expanded opportunities for people.

In this debate, we are going to talk a lot about what is wrong with
education. That, I guess, is the nature of things in this country. We
talk about what is wrong and how we will fix it. We almost never catch
our breath to talk about what is right. In fact, when you listen to
people talk about what is wrong with education in America, you wonder
how on Earth this country became what it has become.
Anyone who has done any traveling throughout the world understands
there is not any other country like this. Go to Europe, Asia, South
America, Africa--just travel and ask yourself: Have I visited a country
with the same conditions that exist in the United States? Is there a
country quite as free as this, as open as this, with an economy as
strong as this, where every young child goes into a school system which
allows him or her to become whatever his or her God-given talent
allows? That is what our school system provides our children.
This is not true in many other countries in the world. By the eighth
grade, often other countries have moved kids into different tracks
where only selected children have an opportunity for higher education.
A lot of countries do that.
Our country has said for a long while that we believe in universal
education. All children in this country, no matter their background,
ought to have the opportunity to be whatever their God-given talents
allow them to be.
Yet when hearing this debate, one wonders what has allowed this
country to be as successful as it has been? This is the country, after
all, that has split the atom and spliced genes. We have invented radar
and the silicon chip. We have invented plastics. We learned to fly, and
then we built airplanes. We flew those airplanes, and then we built
rockets. We took those rockets to the Moon and walked on its surface.
We cured smallpox and polio. We discovered how to create a telephone
and then used it, invented radios, television, computers.
One almost wonders how on Earth this happened in a country like this
with an education system that some say has totally failed us.
The reason all of this has happened is the education system has not
failed this country at all. There are some significant challenges and
some significant problems in certain areas of our education system, but
by and large this education system has been the most productive in the
world for a long period of time.
If one wants to evaluate where the world-class universities are, by
far 80 percent of them are in the United States of America. We house
the world-class universities in this country.
Let me talk a bit about the status of this country's educational
system.

[[Page S3823]]

Some say we have an educational recession. The President, during his
campaign, said that, among others.
Yet reading achievement is up in this country. The National
Assessment for Educational Progress, called NAEP, says that during the
last decade, reading achievement has significantly improved in all
grades tested.
Are there some challenges in some schools in this country with
respect to reading skills? You bet your life there are, and we need to
address them.
But on the average, reading skills are up. Mathematics and science
achievement is up. NAEP scores in mathematics have improved during the
past decade, and in science NAEP reports scores have increased
significantly for older children in the last decade.

Students were better prepared for college throughout the 1990s.
Scores on both the SAT and ACT climbed steadily. Mathematics SAT scores
are at an all-time high. The average SAT math score increased from 509
in 1992 to 514 in 2000. Verbal SAT scores improved over the same period
from 500 to 505.
Some say if you compare the SAT scores in the United States to the
same scores in other countries, the United States ranks well down the
list or that our scores have decreased over time. But those people are
not comparing apples and apples. Only the best students in other
countries are taking the ACT and SAT, while in our country a majority
take them. Thirty years ago, only the top 25 percent of U.S. students
would take the SAT tests. Now, perhaps the top 60 or 70 percent of the
universe of students take the same tests. Would you perhaps get a lower
score on average by taking 70 percent of the universe instead of taking
the top 25 percent? Yes.
But compare the top 25 percent now to the top 25 percent 30 years
ago? What do you find? Higher test scores. You need to compare like
comparisons if you are going to make judgments.
Our students are taking tougher courses. Between 1992 and 1997, the
number of high school students taking advanced placement courses in all
subjects increased by two-thirds, from 338,000 to 581,000.
It is hard to make the case we are in an educational recession.
I have two children in school. They study hard. They do their
homework. They do not necessarily enjoy doing that every night, but
they do their homework. They are in a good school with great teachers.
The fact is that is true in much of this country.
There is a very simple formula to determine whether education is
going to work, and it is true in every neighborhood in every school in
this country. To make education work, we need several things: One, a
student who is interested in learning; two, a teacher who knows how to
teach; and, three, a parent who is going to be involved in that
student's education.
When those three elements are present, education works and works
well. When they are absent, we have great difficulties.
I know from firsthand experience that there are some schools with
significant challenges. I visited an inner-city school that had
significant challenges. I knew that at the front door. I walked through
metal detectors, saw security guards, watched teachers try to deal with
a series of problems in the class. Those problems were identical to the
problems of the neighborhood surrounding that school: poverty,
dysfunctional families, a whole series of issues that those children
then brought to that school.
Some weeks after I visited that school, I read in the paper there was
a shooting at that school. That was a few years ago. Some kid bumped
another kid at a water fountain, and the other kid took out a pistol
and shot him, despite the fact they had obviously gone through a metal
detector as they walked into that school.
If schools are not safe places of learning, they are not going to be
good places of learning, so we must deal with that issue.
We need good teachers, students willing to learn, parents involved in
education, and a safe environment in which students can learn.
In addition to that, in this debate, we are going to have to
understand that we have a responsibility as a country to send children
through classroom doors into classrooms of which we can be proud.
Children cannot learn in classrooms that are not modern.

I have toured schools, especially Indian schools attended by children
for whom the Federal Government has a trust responsibility to educate.
This is not an option. Yet these Indian schools where desks are 1 inch
apart, classes are so crowded you just cringe when you see them pack
these kids into those classrooms. These are schools where you cannot
hook up a computer because the facilities are so old they do not have
the capability of supporting a computer; schools where you would not
want to send your child to school because it is in such disrepair.
Is that a good safe place in which to learn? The answer clearly is no
and we need to do better. We need to deal with the issue of school
construction. We built schools all over this country just after the
Second World War. The GIs came home, they married, had children, and we
built schools all over this country. Many of those schools are now 50
and 60 years old and in desperate disrepair.
None is in greater disrepair than the schools on Indian reservations.
I talk about that a lot because we have so much to do in those areas.
We have a responsibility to deal with these crumbling schools around
the country. If we will have a first-class education, it ought to be in
a first-rate classroom.
Second, we also know from experience and from research that children
learn best in classrooms of 15 to 18 students. I have had children of
mine in classrooms in mobile trailers, the temporary classrooms with 32
and 34 kids. It doesn't work well. We know that. We know a teacher who
is teaching 15 to 18 children has much more time to spend individually
with those children and does a much better job. We have a
responsibility to try to help and do something about that as well.
At the Federal level, we only do niche financing for education. Our
schools are financed, by and large, by State and local governments and
especially by local school boards. No one is suggesting we change that.
But we ought not brag in this country, as some are wont to do, that
we don't have any national objectives for our school system. It is not
a source of pride, in my judgment, to brag that we do not have or want
national standards or objectives for our children to meet upon their
graduation. We ought to aspire to meet certain objectives. Of course we
ought to have national objectives we aspire to reach.
In order to do that, some feel strongly we ought to improve our
school buildings. This Congress can provide funding to help local
school districts meet their construction and repair needs. We ought to
reduce classroom size and provide funding to do that. We ought to do it
in this legislation, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
reauthorization.
President Bush is correct when he talks about the need for testing.
Many have stood for years on the floor of the Senate saying we need to
have some testing. People also need to know what our schools are
producing, how our schools are doing. I will offer an amendment dealing
with the issue of school report cards. Many States have them. But there
are no standards for school report cards and no parent can understand
how their school is doing. They know how their child is doing because
they get a report card every 6 to 9 weeks. But how is their school
doing? Is this school doing a good job of educating that child? How
does this school relate or compare to another school? How does our
State compare to another State? What are we getting as taxpayers for
the investment we are making in these schools? We have a right to know
that. We have a right to get report cards on our schools. All parents
have that right. All taxpayers have that right. I intend to offer an
amendment on that during the consideration of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act.
There is so much to say about education. Let me mention two stories
that illustrate the value of education.
I toured a refugee camp one day in an area near the border between
Guatemala and Honduras. It was some while ago when Honduras was having
a lot of terrorism and difficulties. At this refugee camp, the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was running a refugee camp and
had people living in tents. As I was going around the camp, viewing the
conditions, there

[[Page S3824]]

was a fellow, probably in his mid-sixties, who could not speak English
but he knew I was a visitor to the camp. He beckoned to me and wanted
me to come with him. I asked the guide from the United Nations what the
fellow wanted and the guide said: I think he wants you to go into the
tent area. So we did. He reached under his cot for some of his
belongings, which is all he had. He had a cot and a couple of
belongings stored under a cot in the refugee camp. He reached under the
cot and pulled out a book. It was an education reading primer book in
Spanish. It was the Spanish version of the ``See Dick Run'' book we
would have had in first grade. He was, for the first time in his life,
in his mid-sixties, being taught to read. He wanted to show me, a
visitor, that he could begin to read. He pulled out the book and began
to read in halting Spanish, ``See Dick Run.''

He had a huge smile on his face after he finished the first two
lines, looked up at me with only two or three teeth, someone who was
living in great difficulty, in a refugee camp, with perhaps not enough
to eat, never having had an opportunity for education, and he was so
enormously proud of being able to learn.
Education, even at the later stage of his life, was so important to
him that he wanted to show a visitor he was learning to read. Think of
that.
The second story is one I have told my colleagues about before, but I
will tell it again because it also describes how important education
is. It is the story of a woman who was a janitor at a tribal college,
cleaning the bathrooms and the hallways of a tribal college. Her
husband had left her. She had four children and was over 40, with no
means of support except this job as a janitor. She wanted to go to the
college somehow so she could earn a degree and find a better job. The
day I showed up to give a graduation speech at the tribal college, this
woman was a graduate of the college. She had pulled herself up by the
proverbial bootstraps and gotten an education and was no longer the
janitor of the school. She was wearing a cap and a gown and a huge
smile because, despite it all, and through it all, with all the
adversity in her life, she had become a college graduate. You could
read ``pride'' all over her face. It is something she had done for her
own future that no one will ever take away from her. She invested in
herself against all the odds.
Education means so much to people at every stage: When they are
retired, when they are 40, when they are 20, when they are 10. We are
talking about the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act. There is not much that is more important for this
country than to improve this law for America's kids. There is a lot on
which we can agree, some we will disagree on in the coming days, but I
hope at the end we can look at this bill and say we did something very
important for this country's future.
I will take the floor later in the debate and offer a couple of
amendments I have described. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). The Senator from
Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business
for 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. MURRAY. I commend my colleague from North Dakota for his
eloquent statement on education. I come to the floor today to join a
number of Democratic Senators who have been here this afternoon to
speak about the issue of education which is going to come before the
Senate this coming week. I share their passion and their concern as we
look at reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
It is critical we understand we all share the same goals. President
Bush stated very rightly that no child should be left behind. Everyone
in this body wants to make sure that no child is left behind. The
Elementary and Secondary Education Act is our opportunity to do that
because, as we all know, education is the key to a child's future. If
they know how to read, they will make it in this world. If they can do
math, they will be able to move on. If they can converse, they will be
able to get a job and be successful. That is our goal for every single
child.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act that is being worked on
now has a number of compromises in it. It is not everything everybody
wants, but the one concern that I want to express adamantly to this
body before we bring this bill to the floor is the lack of available
resources. It is so easy to say we set standards, we set goals that we
demand our children and their schools reach. But if we don't provide
the dollars for them to be able to reach those goals, we are simply
putting out a mandate, an unfunded mandate, to districts which means
the kids will fail. There is no doubt that if you want a child to learn
to read, you have to provide the resources for a teacher who is
capable. You need to make sure the class size is small enough, that the
child has enough personal time with the teacher, an expert, to be able
to learn to read.
It is not magic. It takes a qualified teacher. We want to make sure
all of our kids pass the annual tests. Just giving tests as required in
the bill does not assure the students will do better. I fear it means
without the backing of the resources behind it, so the children can
learn what is required of them to pass the test, the children will fail
and drop out of school. And, yes, 5 years from now we may have a higher
percentage of kids doing better on tests but nobody will be testing the
kids who didn't make it, who dropped out, who failed, who are not in
the school system anymore. Those are the kids we cannot leave behind.
Without the resources that are so important for success, and a
commitment from this White House to have the resources available, we
will have failed America's children if we move this bill forward.
We know what works in public education. Any one of us who has been to
a school recently knows what makes a difference. A teacher makes all
the difference. A good teacher and a good principal makes an incredible
difference. A parent who is involved makes an incredible difference.
Unfortunately, that doesn't happen in every school. A lot of classrooms
don't have qualified teachers. That is a concern. It doesn't happen
just because we mandate it. It happens because we provide the resources
to recruit good teachers, to help school districts hire them, and to
make sure that every child is in a classroom with a qualified teacher.
We know the facility that a child learns in makes a difference. I
have been in classrooms, as I believe several of my colleagues have,
where children are wearing coats, where there are buckets catching
raindrops, where there is no electrical outlet for the children to even
plug in a computer much less have a computer, where there isn't even a
restroom facility in the building; they have to go outside across the
way to get to one.
How do you expect a child to learn in that kind of environment? It
does not happen. Unless we put investments into bringing our buildings
up to code and providing a partnership at the Federal level for those
districts and schools that need it the most, we cannot expect children
to learn. We cannot require that children only pass or move on if they
have the best teacher and the best classroom and the best facility. If
we do, we will have failed numbers of children in this country, and
that is really the wrong policy.
I will have much to say about many of these issues as we move through
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the coming days or weeks.
But I just want our colleagues to know that the worst thing we can do
is pass an Elementary and Secondary Education Act without adequate
funding for the requirements we are making, because several years from
now we will have every school district, every school administrator,
every school board member, every parent, and every teacher at our door
saying you passed an unfunded mandate down to us. Instead of recruiting
good teachers and building our classrooms and working hard to teach our
kids, we are failing them because the only thing we are doing is
providing testing.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask consent to speak in morning
business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________