Congressional Record, Volume 147 Issue 57 (Tuesday, May 1, 2001)

[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 57 (Tuesday, May 1, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4070-S4091]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

BETTER EDUCATION FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--
Continued

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I have been listening to the debate on
education reform for the last few days. I think it is interesting we
are talking about two different things. I hear Senator Wellstone and
Senator Kennedy talk about money. Everything is about money. We are
absolutely convinced if we don't have reform of our public education
system, throwing the rest of the Federal budget at it will not work. We
will not see improvements if we don't reform the underlying system.
Our public education system is failing. It is failing because there
is such a variation of standards. Some of our public schools are
terrific, but they are not all terrific. Some are even abysmal. That is
not the standard of quality for public education we should stand for in
this country. We are trying to reform the system so there will be a
standard under which any child in this country who is educated in our
public schools will be a child who can reach his or her full potential
so that no child will be left behind. We are trying to set a minimum
standard that every child must meet or, if the child doesn't, that we
will give that child help.
We have seen the high school dropout rates. They are alarming in some
areas of our country. What is interesting, when we go to the root of
the problem and we talk to these young people who have dropped out of
high school in despair, there is a basic reason. The basic reason is
they can't read.
Why not go down to the third grade and catch these young people who
are having problems reading and give them a chance to have the full
ability to absorb the education they are receiving? If we shuffle them
from one grade to the next grade to the next grade, a social promotion,
and they still can't read in the 10th grade, who is surprised that the
children are frustrated? They are sitting in classes, trying to learn
algebra, math, science, history, and geography, and they don't have
third grade reading skills. Of course they are going to be frustrated.
What we are proposing is an accountability, a standard, that says
every child will be tested in the third grade. If that child isn't
reading at grade level in the third grade, we are going to hold them
back. We are going to give them tutors. We are going to give them the
tools they need to be able to participate in their education and in
this country the future.
That is what reform is. Reform is not just throwing more money at the
problem. Reform is getting parents involved, in getting teachers, in
getting principals involved, in letting the local school districts make
the decisions about what will be the best for the individual children
in that district. That is what reform is. It is not throwing money at
it and having regulations coming out of Washington, DC.
We are trying to set a standard by which every child in this country
will be able to read at grade level in the third grade. I think we are
going to see the test scores soar across our country if we can get over
the hurdle of talking just about money and start talking about reform.
Reform includes accountability. A lot of people wring their hands and
talk about tests: We don't want tests; we don't want too many
artificial tests; we don't want teachers teaching to the tests. If we
are testing for the basic skills, why wouldn't we teach to the test and
improve what the children are learning? If we teach to the test and the
test is fundamental reading, fundamental math, fundamental science,
fundamental history, then we need to have a standard by which to judge
what is happening in our schools.
Another reform is reporting, making sure that parents have the tools
and the information to make the best decisions for their children. In
fact, if a parent doesn't know how the school is doing and how the
children in the school are doing, how can they know their children are
getting the best opportunity that is available?
In my State, we have a report card. It is called the Just For Kids
Program. The test scores of every elementary and junior high school--
and we are going now through the high schools--in Texas will have a
report card that shows the test scores and how the test scores have
grown in that particular school. If that school is compared to other
schools in the same socioeconomic, demographic area and that school
does not compare well, the parents then have the information and the
parents will be able to say to the principal, wait a minute, why is
this school not performing? We want to give parents the ability to
question. We think by questioning, we can see improvements.
We are talking about reform, not money. We are talking about doing
things a different way. We are talking about reading at grade level in
the third grade so in the eighth grade the child will have the chance
to learn the higher math, the history, the algebra. We are talking
about accountability testing, to see if the children are keeping up, to
see if we can go to the heart of the problem, if there is one, and fix
it while we still have a chance, before the young person has, in utter
frustration, dropped out of high school. We get them at the lower level
and we give them the chance to compete.
We also have report cards. We have report cards so parents will be
armed with knowledge. Parents can go to the principal and say, why
isn't this school performing? That is the most powerful force we can
possibly have. If there is a coverup, if there is no test, if there is
nothing by which the parents can judge the performance, of course,
everyone is going to be silent and we will have continued failure.
These are the elements of reform that will make a difference in the
system. This is what we are talking about when we talk about doing
things in a different way in our country. We are not talking about just
throwing more money at it, although the President's plan does increase
education spending by over 11 percent, the largest increase of any part
of his budget.
Yes, we are going to spend more money but we are going to make sure
that the money goes directly to the school districts with standards
that we would ask them to meet. We would ask them to meet those
standards in their own way, not in some federally mandated way that
might not be right for the children in those particular school
districts.
I am very pleased that we are finally on this bill, and I hope we are
going to come out with something that will show the parents of this
country that there really is hope; there is hope for a different way;
there is hope for the future for their children in public schools.
Mr. President, I am now very pleased to yield the floor to the
Senator from New Hampshire.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask to proceed for 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise in support of a variety of sections
of this piece of legislation. I certainly want to second the comments
of the Senator from Texas, who has pointed out some of the significant
strengths of the bill.
Let me talk about one specific area that I think needs clarity, and
then some additional amendments I hope to offer to give parents more
options.
The question of quality education I think we all understand is
parental involvement. It is a good teacher, a good principal, but, most
importantly it is a parent who gets involved in their child's daily
activity of going to school and learning. Unfortunately, the Federal
role in education has historically undermined the ability of the parent
to be a participant in that activity. In fact, title I, as it has been
structured over the last 25-30 years, has been a school-based,
bureaucracy-based funding mechanism. It has not been directed at
benefiting the child so much

[[Page S4071]]

as benefiting the bureaucracy which in turn theoretically benefits the
child. As a result, I would argue that that is probably one of the
primary reasons title I has failed, and ``failure'' I define is the
fact that today the low-income child reads at two grade levels below
their peers, and that is the same level of inefficiency or inability
that the low-income child was reading at 20 years ago.
We have seen a huge amount of money spent on title I over the last 20
years--$120 billion--but we have seen, in fact, no improvement in the
performance of low-income children. So they have been, even though we
have been spending a lot of money on the program, left behind.
This bill tries to address that issue. One of the ways it addresses
it is as follows. It attempts to empower the parents, giving the
parents a little bigger say in how their children are taught. If you
are a parent and you are in a failing school, under today's rules, you
have no rights. Your child is stuck in that school and there is
virtually nothing you can do to help your child. Under this bill, what
we say is if a school fails in the first year, we are going to come in
with some additional resources to that school, significantly additional
resources, and we are going to try to help that school improve. But if
the school is failing in the second year, we are going to do some other
things to try to improve that school. We are going to replace some
people. We are going to try to dramatically improve the curriculum and,
again, we are going to fund that. But if by the third year the school
is still failing, we are going to say to the parent: All right, you
have the right to do something with your children to try to improve
their education because it is very obvious that you are not getting the
benefit you need as a result of the way the school is functioning.
Unfortunately, I would like to have accelerated that so it would
happen in the second year, but the agreement is that in the third year
if a child is in a failing school that has failed for 3 years, the
parent will have the right to get that child supplemental assistance
outside the school system so that if that child is failing in reading
or that child is failing in math, the parent, at the parent's option,
will be able to take their child and get additional assistance for that
child after school or maybe during recess time, however the school
wants to set it up, so that that child can go away from the school to a
Sylvan Learning Center, to another public school or to a private
parochial school for the purposes of getting remedial assistance in the
academic area where the child needs help.
The child still remains a pupil in the public school system. This is
not an option of leaving the public school system and going into a
private school system. Rather, this is an option of allowing the parent
to get supplemental assistance for that child and allow the child to
have the assistance he or she needs in order to bring the child up to
speed because he or she has been in this failing school now for at
least 3 years--they may have been in it longer--and they are way
behind. Under most scenarios, you are going to find they are way
behind. So this is an attempt to bring them back up to speed with
special tutorial support.

What does this mean? For the first time it empowers the parent to do
something when their child is stuck in a failing school. Who are we
talking about? We are not talking about middle class parents for the
most part. We are certainly not talking about wealthy parents. What we
are talking about for the most part are single moms, many of them in
urban societies, who have virtually no options for their children, and
we are going to give that single mother an option. We are going to
allow that single mother to take her child and get some assistance in
math or reading.
That language has been agreed to and put in this bill. Some have
called it choice. It is not a choice; it is sort of hybrid of choice.
It was an idea I came up with more than 3 years ago and got consensus--
in fact, so much consensus that folks on the other side are announcing
it was their idea. We are happy to have many authors of it because it
is a good idea. But it really is the first step in the effort to try to
empower parents.
The second step is equally important. It is not in the bill,
unfortunately. That is to take a few schools that we know are failing
and that have failed year in and year out and say to the parents of
those kids in those schools: We are going to give you a full option of
choice. We are going to put the pressure on that school to perform, and
if it does not perform we are going to allow you to put your child in
another school, either a public school or a private school. Under this
bill there is an option to take your child out and put them in a public
school after being in a failing school, but there is no option to go to
a private school.
Now, this is the classic choice situation. This is what we call
portability. The idea is instead of having the money go to the school
systems which have taken this money and produced year in and year out a
failing school, to say to the parents: The money is going to go to your
child; it is going to be strapped on the back of your child with a
backpack, and you can take that money and your child and you can put
them in a different learning climate. But when you do that, the
conditions are going to be that your child has to learn. That is the
only thing we are going to hold you to. Your child is going to have to
start to achieve as a result of leaving that school and going to
another school, whether public or private. Your child is going to have
to start achieving at the level that they should have achieved to be
comparable with or equal to a child in their grade level who is in a
school that is performing well.
We are going to expect academic achievement, and we are going to have
accountability standards expecting academic achievement for you, the
parent, having the right to take your child and the money that is
supposedly supporting your child, the Federal money--and, really, we
are only talking about low-income parents; we are not talking about the
general population--to another school.
Now, does this idea work? Yes, it does. This idea is already being
used in Milwaukee, for example, and it has been extraordinarily
successful. It is being used in Arizona, and it has been successful.
The fact is, there are a lot of school systems out there that are
willing to pursue this type of idea.
It should be noted that we are not going to suggest that this be done
unilaterally by the Federal Government or that the parent have the
unilateral right to make this decision. Rather, what we are suggesting
is that there be two conditions present. First, that before this option
of a choice or portability is given to the parents, the local school
district, the local elected public school district, must opt into the
program.
You will probably say that will never happen. It will actually
happen. That is what happened in Milwaukee. The local elected officials
who were responsible for education decided in this case that it wasn't
the school district but it was the town council that decided they
wanted to give parental choice. They wanted portability. If a local
elected board, which is charged with the education responsibility of
the children in that school district and, therefore, has the
responsibility for public education, decides that as one of the
elements of its educational system it wishes to give parents of kids
who are in failing schools where the school has failed for at least 3
years the option and the ability to move that child to a private
school, they will have that option but only if that idea is supported
by the public entity which has legal authority over the public school
system.
It is not a top-down decision. It is not even a unilateral parental
decision.
The second condition we have is that no title I money will be used
for this exercise. This will be a new funding stream so that the
portability initiative or the choice initiative--however you want to
call it--will not be a drain on title I funding in the school districts
but, rather, will be a separate funding stream that will be available
to the community that decides to opt into this.
So as to the argument that this is going to somehow undermine the
public school system, we punch a hole in that balloon by pointing out
that the public school system makes the decision to go down this road.
As for the argument it is going to undermine the funding mechanisms for
title I kids, we punch a hole in that by making it clear

[[Page S4072]]

that the funding mechanism is independent of the title I dollars and,
therefore, has no impact at all on title I.
Those two red herrings can then be set aside, although I am sure we
will hear a lot about them when the amendment is offered.
The real argument is, interestingly enough, by the Washington Post, a
paper with which I don't often agree, editorializing this last Saturday
in favor of giving parents some options--especially low-income parents,
and especially single mothers in urban communities who have no options
today as a result of giving them those options and bringing competition
into the school system, and it is competition that produces quality in
our society, whether you choose to go to a Burger King over a
McDonald's because of the competition or a McDonald's over the Burger
King. In education we have no competition today. We have no force for
improvement that comes from the marketplace or that comes from the
pressure of having to perform in order to get clients.
This will introduce that into the system, and, most importantly, it
will give hope to parents--in particular, single moms, especially in
urban communities, mostly from minority districts--hope that their
children will have the opportunity to live the American dream and that
their children will have the opportunity to be educated.
I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Alabama in allowing me
to go first.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama is recognized.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Hampshire
for his steadfast leadership on matters involving education. He has
served on the Education Committee, on which I serve now, for quite a
number of years. He is a champion and a visionary and a person who
really cares about children and wants to improve education in America.
He has been very successful in making that happen.
I had the opportunity last week to spend a day with Dr. Rod Paige,
the President's Secretary of Education. Dr. Paige is an extraordinary
individual. He has lived the kind of life we want to happen in America.
He grew up in Monticello, MS. His parents were both educators. He
played ball and coached at Jackson State. He then went on to become
dean of the education school at Texas Southern, and was on the school
board at Houston. Houston was looking for a new superintendent of their
education system. They were troubled about how they were getting along.
Things weren't going well. There are 207,000 students in that system.
It is the seventh largest education system in America that had a number
of children who had difficulty with the English language, with a
diverse racial and socioeconomic makeup. It was a real challenge.
When he took over, only 37 percent of the students in that school
system were passing the basic Texas test. He took it on with a passion
that this could not continue. He had been a dean of an education
school. He said: If I knew what I know now about training teachers, I
would have done things a lot differently when I was dean. But he still
took over that system, and it was in trouble.
He identified schools that were failing, and he did not allow it to
continue. He took action on failing schools. He cracked down on
discipline. He said we must have discipline. We cannot have a school
system that has a reputation that it is not safe to come to it and
where teachers continue to feel unsafe and where students don't feel
safe. He improved discipline dramatically.
He ended social promotion--the idea of just passing children along
even if they are not learning the basic requirements of that grade. He
said that cannot continue.
He began a rigorous system of testing--not because he wanted to harm
the children or because he wanted to pigeonhole students, but he wanted
to find out diagnostically as part of the education process where they
were academically.
He said quite convincingly that if a child reaches the fourth grade
and they are way behind in reading and math, they probably will never
catch up. You have a rare opportunity in those early grades to
constrict failure and turn it around. That is what he decided to do. He
did those things.
As a result, in 5 years, from 1995 to the year 2000, he nearly
doubled the number of students passing that basic Houston, TX, test. It
went from 37 percent to 73 percent, one percentage point below doubling
that figure in just 5 years.
I think that is an extraordinary achievement. He said he was able to
achieve some additional financial support, but not much really until
the last year after he had proven that he could achieve success.
What he said they did was the very thing I just mentioned. They did
not want to leave a child behind. How do you leave a child behind? You
don't test them. You let them go by law to a school that is
dysfunctional, that is not working, and that is not effective. You
won't let them go to any other school in the system. They don't have
money to go outside the system. You just say: Tough luck, child. We are
taking care of it. We are giving that school as much money as we give
the next school. But you have to go there even if it is a failing
school.
Dr. Paige said we cannot do that anymore. I know the Senator from New
Hampshire is a strong believer in choice. So is Dr. Paige. Most school
systems, I am sure, wouldn't adopt the option that we provide them. But
Houston did. Dr. Paige said: It did not hurt the public schools. It
made us better, and in fact after a period of years with our test
scores going up, our success rate going up, and our discipline problem
going down, the number of students coming to the public schools
increased. We were drawing people from private schools. He said public
schools can and will win the battle if they do the things necessary to
achieve success.
I will just echo that. I taught a year. My wife taught 4 years. Our
children attended public schools for most of their career. My two
daughters graduated from one of the big inner-city schools in Mobile,
AL. We were on the PTA and have a lot of great friends who are
teachers. I have visited 25 schools in Alabama this past year.
I think I have some appreciation for what education is all about.
Yes, we want to get as much money as possible for education. In fact,
the Federal Government has increased federal spending on education by
50 percent since 1994.
This year's budget has an additional 11.5 percent proposed increase
for education. But it is deeper than that. We have to ask ourselves:
What is happening with the money we are spending? There are States that
spend a lot more money than other States. There can be schools in the
same town, in the same system, receiving the same amount of money per
student, and one school is functioning well and maybe the another one
is not.
We have to ask ourselves: What is occurring in our school systems
that is not healthy? There is a legitimate concern that public policy
has responded to the system. We have tried to do what the system says;
and the system says, basically, we do not want testing and
accountability; we just want more money. Just give us more money, and
we will do better.
For the most part, schools in the United States have had increased
funding per student over the last decade or more. But, unfortunately,
the numbers have not gone up. The Federal Government has spent $125
billion in trying to narrow the gap between low-income students and
upper-income students, and the gap has not narrowed, it has widened in
some areas.
We still have very disturbing test scores in math and science that
show we are not competitive with the rest of the industrial world. I
think that is so obvious as to be without dispute.
What is it we are doing wrong in education? You go to Japan, and they
have classes with 50 or 60 children in a class. We have much smaller
classes than that, but our numbers are not where we they need to be. So
what is the problem?
I think Dr. Paige and the President's plan is focusing on a couple of
core events: Do not let a child fall behind. Leave no child behind.
Find out at the earliest possible time if they are not keeping up. Do
what needs to be done to then intervene. Do not let parents think that
just because Billy is going

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to school every day, that Billy is learning at a legitimate rate and
progressing effectively. Those tests will tell on the school. They will
tell on the students. And the parents will be much more engaged.
Alabama has done that. My State has stepped forward. It has one of
the toughest testing systems in America. It demands that students meet
certain minimum standards. The students are achieving more.
Some say: I just don't like these tests mandated by the Federal
Government. They direct policy in teaching and teachers have to teach
to the test. But if the test is a good test, and the test determines
whether or not a child can handle basic math or can read and write, and
teachers are teaching to that test, I say, well done. I say that is
progress.
We need good testing, developed by the States, that will test basic
reading and math improvement skills. If we know that, if we are
knowledgeable about whether or not they are making progress, then we
can help that child get even better. If they are not making progress,
we can confront it. If a teacher or school is consistently failing, and
not meeting those standards, perhaps at that point we need to confront
the leadership at that school. Maybe we can find better leadership and
improve those test scores. Because the American taxpayer, the American
citizen, is entitled to know whether or not their money is producing
results. How much more basic can it be? We are talking about giving
more money and having no accountability?
In the 4 years I have been in this body, I have learned that many of
our friends on the other side of the aisle say: You just want to send
more money to the schools without accountability. And I do want to send
more money to the schools with less strings and less paperwork. I
definitely believe in that. But the question is, what is
accountability? What do we mean when we say ``accountability''?

If you listen to many in this body, accountability is whether or not
an individual school gets the money that we appropriate and that they
do with it precisely what is said here. That is what they determine to
be accountability. We have 700 Federal Government education programs.
Can you imagine that--700? It is hard to believe.
So they say, you cannot consolidate those problems. You cannot send
the money down to an elementary school that wants to revamp its entire
reading program, to spend $20,000 to develop a program that will be
effective for the next decade to improve reading in their school where
they have a vision and a passion for it and they just can't wait to do
it. They don't have the money, and we say: No, you can't do that. You
have to spend it for one of our little 700 projects.
What I have learned is--and as I have thought about it--that is a
wrong view of accountability. Accountability is having a learning
curve. Are children improving? Are they better able to read now than
they were last month or last year? That is what accountability is. You
cannot do that without testing. Almost every school system knows that.
Virtually every school system tests, although there is a fierce,
dogmatic, determined group of advocates who resist testing in every
shape, form, or fashion. They fight it every way possible, with every
kind of possible excuse.
But I repeat again, if you love those children, if you want to see
them reach the highest and best economic and social potential in the
world, you want them to be able the read and write. You want them to be
able to do basic math. You want them to reach the highest possible
achievement in trig, in chemistry, and physics, and the highest form of
mathematics in their school systems. We want them to reach their
fullest potential. That will not happen if they are not progressing
steadily every year.
So I believe we can do better. I believe if we focus on learning, and
if we give our principals and our teachers more freedom to use the
Federal resources in a way most effective for learning, they will use
it that way. If we say: You will get even more freedom if your test
scores improve, such as they did in Houston, the children will benefit
from that additional freedom. I assure you, the local people will be
more willing to support a school that is showing progress than one that
is not showing progress.
I will share this story. There is a principal in Alabama named
Dorothy Robinson. A number of years ago, she was a teacher in a rural
school in the county in which I grew up. She also grew up there and
taught in Packer's Bend. We call it ``across the river.'' Packer's Bend
was an isolated area across the river from the main part of the county.
They had a small school, and it was in big trouble. Test scores were
not good. The school was not in good shape. The county was about to
close it. They said they would.
Dorothy Robinson said: Don't close it. Give me a chance. I believe I
can turn this school around. It was on academic alert by the State. It
was the smallest high school in the State. She started that summer, got
students together, and they helped clean up the school. They got
parents involved to an extraordinary degree. She called her teachers
together, and they decided they could improve test scores. They were
going to do the things necessary to make that school be an effective
educational institution. She worked at it, and was highly successful;
and 4 years later they were running test scores as high as any in the
county.
It was a really tremendous achievement done without any great
appropriation of money, done by leadership and a determination to hold
students accountable. She challenged them to be their very best. She
did not put up with excuses. And she moved them forward. In fact, the
superintendent of education in Alabama has now hired her to help him
set up programs for similar schools throughout the State.
Those kinds of improvements are happening in America. We need--as a
Senate, as a Congress, and as a U.S. Government--to develop policies
that help those success stories occur more often. We need to help them
decide what to do fundamentally; and that is, to find out whether
children are learning properly and to give those schools more freedom
and flexibility to do that. If the schools continue to fail to teach
our children, we need to give those children some option to reach
outside that school. Because it is wrong; it is not right at its most
fundamental level, to say to a poor child who has no other option but
to go to public school: You must go to this failing school. You just go
there anyway.

This is what we do in American today mostly. The President is saying,
if you can't get your school operating at the basic level, give them
some options, give them some choices. But fundamentally, if we do the
things Dr. Paige did in Houston, if we do the things Ms. Dorothy
Robinson did at Packer's Bend, every school can move to the highest
possible level. We can without any doubt substantially improve the
learning of children all over this Nation without any tremendous
increase in funding. It can be one of the greatest things this Nation
has ever done, not to leave a child behind, make sure every one is
progressing to their fullest potential.
We can do this. I am excited about it. The President was a Governor
of a large State. He ran for Governor promising to do something about
education. He achieved some great improvements in Texas education, and
he wants to do it for America. It is not a pipe dream, it is a vision
that can be achieved and made a reality. I hope this Congress will not
just continue business as usual, not just continue to function as an
arm of the establishment, but that we will confront our failure to come
up with innovative solutions for improvement and to increase
substantially the learning that occurs in classrooms in America, those
magic moments when a child and teacher gel and they learn. It is a
thrilling thing. We need to further that and not the bureaucracy.
I look forward to the continued debate on this. It is time to bring
this bill up and make some changes for the better in America.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I begin by complimenting the Senator from
Alabama and before him the Senator from New Hampshire, both of whom
made extraordinarily important points about the need for improvement in
our education in the United States and about the single ingredient that
can do more to enhance their performance than any

[[Page S4074]]

other single thing; that is, more choice, more freedom in our education
system, choice for parents so that their kids have a chance, and
freedom of local schools to experiment and to do what is in the best
interest of the kids in their local communities rather than having
policies dictated from Washington, DC.
In starting this process, I had very high hopes that we would be
considering legislation in this Chamber that embodied this concept of
choice, of more freedom for parents and students to go to the schools
that were succeeding rather than being relegated to the poorer schools
that characterize all too many of our communities today. I had hoped we
would be able to pass and enact legislation that embodied an entirely
new approach to education in our country.
Sadly, I no longer have those hopes because the bill that came to us
from the committee to the floor is a bill which does not embody all of
the President's ideas as he put forth. It is, in effect, the lowest
common denominator, a bill that represents the consensus of all of
those people who had anything to do with it and, as a result, instead
of embodying those new principles, those principles of reform, relies
far too heavily on the ideas of the past, the old model of Federal
education which assumed that improvement in student performance could
be secured through bureaucratic initiative alone. The old model ensured
that when policy details were hammered out, there was a seat at the
table for any special interest with a vested interest in existing
arrangements but literally no voice for students and parents.

Of course, the old education model was built on the premise that
Congress' commitment to expanding opportunities to the disadvantaged,
as well as to overall academic excellence, could be measured primarily
by how many taxpayer dollars were spent. I believe we need a new model,
and we should begin by recognizing that if we want to see revolutionary
improvement in education, we will need to consider the benefits of a
system that is more dynamic than the monopoly model in place today.
An old rancher friend of mine told me, if you want to get out of a
hole, the first thing you have to do is stop digging. The hole that our
educational system is in today means that we have to stop making it
worse by continuing the same policies. The only way we are going to
improve is if we allow freedom and choice of the local communities and
the parents to do what they think is best for their kids and for their
students.
We have to begin by declaring independence from special interests. In
covering other areas of public policy, the news media constantly
insinuate that politicians are putting the well-being of the special
interests that help their campaigns ahead of the consumers' well-being.
That pretty well sums up the relationship between many politicians and
the defenders of the status quo in education. We need a debate about
the premise that more spending equals better results in education
before we pass legislation influenced by that premise.
In fact, the history of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
makes it clear that spending more taxpayers' money does not buy better
results. As an alternative hypothesis, I submit we will improve
education to the extent that we provide more freedom for families to
obtain the kind of education they know is best for their children. I
hope we will legislate accordingly.
Let's look at the state of elementary and secondary education in our
country today. America is not educating a workforce that meets the
needs of the 21st century, let alone the needs of each student. Last
year Congress authorized the issuance of 297,500 new visas for highly
skilled temporary workers to come to our country, and we had just
raised the ceiling 2 years before. The reason? Not enough qualified
American workers were available to fill the jobs in the new American
economy. This situation is not likely to reverse itself based upon
current trends.
The results from the third international mathematics and science
study show that American high school seniors rank 19 out of 21
industrialized countries in math and 16 out of 21 nations in science.
Over the past decade, the number of college degrees earned overall has
increased by 25 percent, but the number earned in the fields at the
heart of the new economy--engineering, computer science, and things of
that sort--has grown by only 1 percent.
Moreover, too many people are being left behind in our education
system: 37 percent of fourth graders test at the so-called below basic
level in reading. That means essentially they are illiterate. For
Hispanic fourth graders the proportion is 58 percent. For African
American youngsters it is 63 percent. That is unacceptable. Only a
third of all fourth graders have attained proficiency in reading. Since
1983, over 10 million Americans have reached the 12th grade without
having learned to read at a basic level. Over 20 million have reached
their senior year unable to do basic math.
As President Bush has repeatedly noted, too many of America's most
disadvantaged youngsters pass through public schools without receiving
an adequate education. The President has correctly identified these
shortchanged young Americans as victims of the soft bigotry of low
expectations.
For some the response to these problems will be to call for more
money. I might note that Republican majorities in the Congress have
provided more money; for example, a record increase of 18 percent last
year. We will see even bigger increases this year given the priority
President Bush has placed on this in his budget. But simply spending
more money on schools and school personnel has not produced educational
improvements.
Since 1965, real per pupil expenditures have increased from less than
$3,000 to more than $7,000. During the same period, reading scores on
the National Assessment of Educational Progress have been static. So we
have well more than doubled the spending per pupil on education, and we
have no improvement in the test scores. Between 1960 and 1995, average
class size fell from 25.8 to 17.3. Inflation-adjusted average salaries
for U.S. public school teachers grew 45 percent from 1960 to 1995. Over
that same period, SAT scores plummeted.
As Secretary of Education Ron Paige has noted:

After spending $125 billion over 25 years, we have
virtually nothing to show for it.
Education special interests and the politicians who represent them
have lost the battle. Their last resort is to say we are not spending
enough money. But we don't need a bidding war. What we need are reforms
that will bring results.
President Bush's original plan contained a number of worthwhile
reforms in existing education programs. It called for cutting Federal
redtape while bolstering accountability through meaningful assessments.
In addition to its accountability provisions, that plan contained a
modest school choice provision. To the President's great credit, the
Bush blueprint recognized that competitive pressure, and the threat of
it, is essential to triggering the meaningful accountability that can
spur improvement. That is the insight upon which we should be building.
We know that the benefits of education freedom are real and they are
dramatic. One talented researcher, Harvard's Caroline Hoxby, has found
that expanding choice raises the demand for teachers with initiative
and strong academic backgrounds. Currently, these are the teachers most
likely to leave the profession.
Professor Hoxby also found that when families are given a real choice
of schools--as, for example, they have been in Cleveland and
Milwaukee--significant improvements in test scores, graduation rates,
and future incomes are registered by the students who leave their old
schools and by those who stay because those schools have responded to
the challenge of competition and have improved accordingly.
Unfortunately, efforts to ally public policy with an agenda of
promoting freedom in education have had only limited success. I am very
proud that Arizona was ranked No. 1 last year on the Manhattan
Institute's Education Freedom Index, which ranked all 50 States. My
State's reforms, for example, have led the way with the type of reforms
I think we need at the Federal level, including the most liberal
charter school law in the country, a law

[[Page S4075]]

that has led to the opening of more than 400 charter schools in
Arizona, which is about a third of all the charter schools in the
country; open enrollment, which allows parents to enroll children in
any public school and has the funds to follow the student; finally, an
idea I plan to propose as a Federal policy--a tax credit that offsets
contributions Arizona families make to organizations that help give
students the opportunity to attend a school of their choice.
This tax credit proposal builds on an idea that has already taken
off, thanks to private philanthropists. In 1997, two distinguished
business leaders, Ted Forstmann and John Walton, invited applications
for 1,000 partial tuition scholarships for families in the District of
Columbia. Nearly 8,000 applications were received. In 1998, they formed
an organization called the Children's Scholarship Fund to apply the
idea on a national basis. They planned to offer 40,000 scholarships,
and 1.25 million applications were received.
This is an idea whose time has come. It is a concept Americans
embrace. As impressive as these numbers are, these testimonials were
offered by parents who have been pleading for better options.
One mother said the following about her experience:

We would not be able to afford this without your help. Our
daughter is really excited to be learning spelling and
grammer (which was not being taught in public school). She's
an aspiring writer and thinks this is great. My son has
autism, and his new school had more services in place for him
on the first day of school--without me even asking--than
we've been able to pull out of the public school in six
years! They both love their new schools and are doing well.

Here's another mother's testimony:

I am so excited that my son has been chosen to receive a
scholarship . . . One evening I sat on my bed and cried
because I really wanted him to attend a private school but I
know that I cannot afford all of the tuition. Therefore your
scholarship fund was my only hope.

Yet another mother wrote,

I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for this
opportunity to send my children to a private school. As a
low-income mother of four wonderful children with great
potential, I would not be able to provide this change for
them without your help.

This particular mother goes on to say,

I have chosen a school that will help nurture the seeds of
greatness in them. I am sure that with this opportunity to
succeed, my children will be successful and contribute
greatly to society in the future.

In 1997, leaders in my state settled on a plan to help the private
sector to satisfy that vast unmet demand for options.
They instituted a state credit that allows Arizona residents to claim
a dollar-for-dollar income tax credit for donations to school tuition
organizations--like the Children's Scholarship Fund.
Thanks to that program, 4,000 Arizona students--nearly all of them
from disadvantaged backgrounds--have received scholarship assistance
that has made it possible for them to enroll in a school of their
choice.
The number of organizations offering scholarships in the state has
shot up from two to 33.
Arizona's leaders understand the need for adequate resources for
education.
Last fall, Arizona voted to spend an additional $438 million on
education.
But first they laid the predicate to ensure that the money would be
well-spend by reforming the system.
We should do the same.
If we define success as success in sending more of taxpayers' money
to sustain a system that cannot improve and will not change, we may do
great things for the buildings and personnel involved in education, but
we will have left behind the children.
We should be judged by our willingness to make changes that promote
innovation, competition, and parental choice--in short, freedom.
Those are the changes that will ensure no child is left behind.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask, of the hour I have, I be allowed
to take 10 minutes as in morning business to introduce a bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The remarks of Mr. Wellstone pertaining to the introduction of S.
805 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. WELLSTONE. Perhaps the best way to talk about this legislation
and why I have been opposed to the way we are proceeding, is to do two
things. I will start by reading. I don't want to plagiarize. I was a
teacher.
I say to my colleague from Rhode Island, I can be relatively brief
and do this in 15 or 20 minutes--is that not brief? I was a teacher;
that, for me, is brief. I know Senator Reed from Rhode Island has come
to the floor.
I will speak about what we are and are not doing in this legislation,
first of all, by quoting Jonathan Kozol. Jonathan Kozol has
unbelievable credibility because this man has written some of the most
eloquent and powerful books ever written about children and education.
I don't think there is any question about it. It is what the book
reviewers say. It is what people in education say. Jonathan's first
book was called ``Death at an Early Age'' and was about him having lost
his job as a teacher in Boston for assigning a poem by Langston Hughes
because the children were all African American, and he wanted them to
know about Langston Hughes.
He has written so many books. I will quote some of what Jonathan
Kozol has had to say about this legislation and where we are heading.
His words are better.
He starts out:

Standardized tests in the third grade measure 7 years of
learning for privileged children, but only 4 years for lower
income kids who got no Head Start opportunity.

Think about that for a moment. In other words, the wealthiest
children typically receive 3 years of rich developmental preschool
education at an average cost of about $15,000 a year, while half of the
eligible children of poverty don't even get one year of Head Start.
And in the poorest areas, as Jonathan's last two books have been
about the PS 30 school in the South Bronx, 75 percent of the children,
not one of whom comes from a family with an income of over $10,000 a
year, are excluded from Head Start. So any standardized tests given in
the third grade is not a test of ``school's success.'' ``It is a test
of wealth or poverty. A third grade test for children whom we rob of
Head Start is not school reform but punitive hypocrisy.''

Those are the words of Jonathan Kozol. Believe me, I wish they were
my words. I agree with them. That is why I come to the floor and state
I could not believe I heard some colleagues on the other side talking
about how, if the schools do not succeed after 1 or 2 or 3 years, then
there will be severe consequences, and on and on and on. I will say it
again. Some of the harshest critics of these teachers in these schools
could not last 1 hour in the classrooms they condemn. But at age 8, let
us be clear about this, for these third graders, this is not a test of
school success. It is a question of which kids by age 8 had rich
prekindergarten education--which kids were able to come to school ready
to learn. How many children were challenged, nurtured, and all of the
rest. So basically you have one group of kids who had it all. You had
another group of kids who did not even have a chance to be in Head
Start because we fund Head Start at 50 percent of what is needed for 4-
year-olds even less for three year olds and only 3 percent of what is
needed for 1 and 2-year-olds. And the Head Start program is to do
what--to give children from disadvantaged backgrounds a head start.
Jonathan's conclusion: A third grade test for children or for the
school, which is also supposed to be a reflection of how the teachers
do, is not school reform but ``punitive hypocrisy.''
I will offer an amendment that will say that we will not mandate
these tests in every school, in every district, in every State until we
fully fund title I.
Another amendment is going to be we should not do it until we fully
fund Head Start. I will be interested to see how colleagues vote.
Jonathan Kozol goes on and says--``and, please, this is my battle
cry. This is my plea. This is my prayer.'' He says: ``Nationally
enforced testing with no national guarantee of equal opportunity to
pass the test is ethically unjust.'' I would like to see a Senator come
out here and argue with me on

[[Page S4076]]

that. So you have school funding for pupils in the poorest school
districts of America that range around $6,000 per child, and you have
school districts in the richest communities that range in the area of
about $24,000 per child. In New York City, poor kids in the Bronx last
year got $8,000 to pay for their education while children in the
wealthy suburbs got $18,000 to $20,000. Teachers in the richest
districts got $20,000 more in annual pay than New York City teachers.
So the White House bill will test the poor against the rich and then
announce that the poor are failing. Federally required tests without
federally required equity amounts to clubbing these children over the
head after systematically cheating them. I want to say this in this
Chamber because that is exactly what we are doing. That is exactly what
we are doing. We know in advance which kids will fail. So this is a
plan not for reform, not for equality, but for guaranteed humiliation
children.
I am sorry, I know where ``leave no child behind'' comes from. That
is the mission statement of the Children's Defense Fund. I heard a
colleague--I will not use names because we are not supposed to be
personal--come to the floor and say the money is not the answer. We
need to give the children tools to do well. And then this colleague
jumped to talk about the tests. Does the test assure a good teacher?
Does the test assure that we are going to be paying teachers well so we
have good teachers? Does the test assure a smaller class? Is the test
the tool that brings about the technology in the schools or the good
textbooks? Does a test rebuild a crumbling school building? Does the
test assure that the children come to kindergarten ready to learn? The
test does not assure any of that.
We cheat these children. We do not even fully fund Head Start, and
then we fail them and club them over the head and we call this reform.
I want nothing to do with this unless we are going to have an honest
commitment of resources.
My friend Jonathan Kozol goes on to say that the testing advocates
assume that teachers are afraid--I have heard some of this discussion--
to be held accountable. He says this is a liability against the future.
And he is right. No good teacher--I have two children who teach. I am a
proud Jewish father. I think they are great teachers--No good teacher
is afraid to be held accountable for what she does or what he does with
children, but it is manifestly unfair to ask accountability from
teachers when the Congress is unwilling to be held accountable for its
behavior in shortchanging kids and basically cheating them from the
hour of their birth, and then clubbing them over the head with a
punitive exam.
Senators should be ashamed to go along with this.
Now, I am going to make one other point from Kozol, although I could
go on and on. This excessive testing is degrading and it is distorting
instruction. Teachers, and I quote from Kozol, are turning to robotic
drill and grill routines because they are terrified of sanctions--loss
of funding--if their student scores are not high enough. And this
mandate from the Federal Government, an unfunded mandate, is going to
require every school and every school district, every child from age 8
every year to be tested. And what is going to happen is the teachers
are not going to be able to encourage the students to have questions.
They are not going to be able to encourage curiosity or humor or
delight of any kind. All those trips to the museum and all that art and
all that music and all of those other activities, they will go by the
wayside as everybody will be drill teaching to drill tests. And this
passes for reform?
I wish there were more colleagues present so they could get angry at
me. I think people in these school districts, people down in the
trenches think we are crazy. I go to a school about every 2 weeks and I
do not find people coming up to me, whether it is in rural or whether
it is suburban or inner city, saying we need more tests. I have people
come up to me and say: God, we need more teachers, or we need more
counselors; we need affordable housing because our third graders are
moving three and four times during the year and it is hard for them to
do well in school.
It is hard when the children come to school hungry. It is hard when
they come to school with an abscessed tooth because they do not have
any dental care and can't afford it. We need afterschool programs. Why
can't you invest in Head Start, child care, and make sure the kids are
kindergarten ready. We need smaller class sizes. Our buildings are
dilapidated. I wonder how U.S. Senators would do if the toilets didn't
work, or if it was cold during the winter, or there was no air
conditioning, or we didn't have access to the fax, or we didn't have
the books we needed, and we didn't have adequate facilities. How would
we do as Senators?
A lot of children are having to learn under these conditions.
That is what I hear about. I do not hear people coming up to me
saying: Please, Federal Government. Mandate that we have tests every
year.
But this is what we call reform.
Then, to add insult to injury, the estimates that we are getting from
our States is, wait a minute; to do the testing the right way, if there
is a right way, is going to cost at a minimum over $2 billion. Some
estimates are as high as $7 billion. The White House has a few hundred
million dollars for this.
Whatever happened to my Republican colleagues' outrage about unfunded
mandates?
In addition, in St. Paul, MN, after you get to a school where only 65
percent of the kids are low income, or, say, 60 percent, there is no
title I money left. We fund about 30 percent of the children who can
get the help.
The President is calling for a total increase of $670 million or
thereabouts because we have to have these Robin-Hood-in-reverse tax
cuts with over 40 percent of the benefits going to the top 1 percent.
Now we hear we are going to have several hundred billion over X number
of years spent on the Pentagon. Then there will be missile defense, and
all the rest.
Where are the resources?
My final point today is that I am disappointed. I said before we
actually brought this bill up, and certainly before we proceed with
this bill I am going to keep saying this. We should have an agreement
on some of the policy questions that I know Senator Reed and others are
going to talk about, and also whether or not there is going to be a
commitment on resources because this will just be a mockery. Senators
will rue the day they voted to mandate this and made every State, every
school district, every school, every kid, and every teacher go through
this and they did not provide the resources for IDEA and for kids with
special needs or for title I or so kids can be kindergarten ready. You
will rue the day.
Democrats, my colleagues, this is not reform. You should stand up
against it. If there is not a commitment--I don't mean authorization, I
mean the commitment of resources, appropriations, and I mean now--we
should fight this all the way. We should say to people in the country:
God knows we are committed, but we are not going to let this be an
unfunded mandate, where you will have to raise your property taxes.
As Jonathan Kozol said, we are not going to have a Federal mandate
for testing without a Federal mandate of equal opportunity for the
children to get a good education to do well.
So I will offer an amendment to title I which says that the new
testing set to go into effect in the school years 2005 and 2006 shall
not be required to go into effect in that year unless title I has been
appropriated at $24 billion, nor will it have to go into effect in
subsequent years until such sums are necessary are appropriated to
fully fund title I.

This is put up or shut up time. If you are serious about
accountability, but you are equally serious about making sure children
have the same opportunity, then I think you should vote for it.
There will be seven test quality amendments, which are really
important so that we do this right.
I have another amendment that says the assessment should be used for
diagnostic purposes only.
That is basically what we are talking about right now. That is what
we should be using the tests for, diagnostic purposes. Let's not talk
about using these tests to start bashing these kids over the head and
these schools and teachers over the head.

[[Page S4077]]

Finally, a transition teaching amendment that I have been working on
which will be a bipartisan effort which expands and enhances the
current transition teaching program to ensure that funds are targeted
to the high-poverty and high-need school districts. The program will
ensure funds are used on activities that have proven effective in both
recruiting and retaining teachers. This is critical because so much of
the need for teachers is rooted in the high attrition rate in the
field. 73% of teachers in Minnesota leave the field for reasons other
than retirement.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the notes that Jonathan
Kozol sent to me be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Standardized tests in 3rd grade measure seven years of
learning for privileged children, but only four years for
low-income kids who got no head start opportunity.
The wealthiest children receive typically three years of
rich developmental preschool, at average cost of $15,000 a
year, while half the eligible children of poverty get not
even one year of Head Start and, in the poorest urban areas,
75 percent are excluded from Head Start.
Any standardized test given in 3rd grade, therefore, is not
a test of ``school success''--it is a test of wealth or
poverty. A 3rd grade test for children whom we rob of Head
Start is not ``School Reform'' but punitive hypocrisy.
Nationally enforced testing with no national guarantee of
equal opportunity to pass the tests is ethically unjust.
School funding per-pupil ranges from $6,000 in the poorest
districts of America to $24,000 in the richest. In the New
York City area: poor kids in the Bronx last year got $8,000
while children in the wealthy suburbs got $18,000 to $20,000.
And incidentally teachers in the richest districts get
$20,000 more in annual pay than NYC teachers.
The White House bill will test the poor against the rich--
and then announce ``The poor are failing.'' Federally
required tests without federally required equity amounts to
clubbing children over the head after systematically cheating
them.
We know in advance which kids will fail. So this is a plan,
not for reform, not for equality, but for guaranteed
humiliation of our victims.
We will learn nothing from another layer of tests that we
do not already know. Kids in the Bronx, for example, already
take six standardized exams beginning in 3rd grade: three
sets of tests in math and reading each, year after year.
These tests, according to the principal of P.S.30, take up
one quarter of the year. Twenty-five percent of teaching time
is lost to tests, pre-tests, and test preparation.
In other words, one-fourth of the school budget is already
being wasted by repetitive exams. Another set of tests will
simply waste more money. Every week devoted to a test is a
week of lost education.
Some of my colleagues in the Senate are under the
impression that ``tests'' represent a ``form'' of education.
They do not! Tests do not teach reading: Only well-paid
teachers in small classes do. ``Testing'' is a symbolic
substitute for ``educating.'' Don't substitute a symbol for
the real thing.
Kids who are cheated of Head Start, Title I, small classes,
and well-paid teachers learn absolutely nothing from a
national exam except how much their nation wants to punish
and embarrass them.
Standardized tests are the worst kind of tests, but these
are inevitably the ones the White House will require, because
they are the easiest to compare numerically.
Many of the brightest kids can write beautifully and read
perceptively but cannot regurgitate answers for a multiple-
choice exam.
A friend of mine once taught to a student, a boy named
Anthony from New York City. He failed every standardized exam
he was given, but today is in college because his teacher
took time to read his stories!
Nationally standardized exams will stereotype boys like
Anthony as ``failures'' and convince them to drop out of
school before we even recognize their gifts. No standardized
exam will ever identify the true potential of a gifted
child--only his ``test-taking savvy.'' We'll lose too many
kids as a result.
Standardized exams will also take the highest toll on poor
black and Latino kids.
The most poorly funded urban districts are overwhelmingly
black and Hispanic. Giving more tests, instead of more
opportunity, will simply drive more minority children out of
school and push larger numbers of black adolescents into the
streets--then into the prison system.
New York already spends 10 times as much to incarcerate a
child in juvenile prison (nearly $90,000) as to educate that
child in public school. In California, prison guards get
higher salaries than teachers. Testing without educational
equality will increase the prison population while it
demoralizes and stigmatizes kids of color.
Testing advocates also assume that teachers are afraid to
be held ``accountable.'' This is a libel against teachers.
No good teacher is afraid to be held accountable for what
she does each day with children.
But it is manifestly unfair to ask ``accountability'' from
teachers when Congress is itself unwilling to be held
accountable for its perfidious behavior in short-changing
kids to start with--cheating them from the hour of their
birth--then clubbing them over the head with one more frankly
punitive exam.
``One-way accountability'' is unacceptable. Senators, we
should be ashamed to go along with this.
Excessive testing is already degrading and distorting
instruction. Teachers are turning to robotic ``drill-and-
grill'' routines because they're terrified of ``sanctions''
(loss of funding) if their students' scores aren't high
enough. The White House plan will make this even worse.
Teachers are increasingly afraid to encourage questions,
curiosity, humor, or delight of any kind during the school
day because they're being told that every minute must be
calibrated to an item that may be on an exam.
Urban schools, as a result, are being turned into pedagogic
bootcamps in which children lose not only equal opportunity
but also all the joy and sweetness that should be a part of
childhood. In this way, we rob the poorest kids twice.
And it seems that the best teachers hate the testing agenda
most. They will not remain in public schools if they are
forced to be drill-sergeants for exams instead of educators.
Hundreds of the most exciting and beautifully educated
teachers are already fleeing from inner-city schools in order
to escape what one brilliant young teacher (a graduate of
Swarthmore) calls ``Examination Hell.''
The dreariest and most robotic teachers will remain. The
glowing and passionate teachers will get out as fast as they
can. Who will you find to replace these beautiful young
teachers?
This is another way of robbing urban and poor rural
children of the opportunities that Senators give their own
kids.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I yield such time to the Senator from
Rhode Island as he requires. I will reserve the remainder of my time,
if there is any, for parliamentary remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I thank Senator Wellstone for his articulate
and very passionate discussion of the issues today. I, too, am
concerned that we are moving forward on legislation that has not yet
been finalized. Technically, we voted this morning to proceed to S. 1,
this piece of legislation. But we recognize and understand that this
piece of legislation, the committee print, has already been overtaken
by events and negotiations, and that what we will ultimately be
confronted with on the floor is still being written.
When there are so many important and outstanding issues that have yet
to be resolved, it is, indeed, premature and, I think, unfortunate that
we would begin this debate.
S. 1, the committee bill, was carefully and thoughtfully considered
in committee, and it represents accommodation between the
administration's proposal and the ideas of the committee members in
both Republican and Democrat caucuses. I hoped it would come to the
floor as the vehicle by which we could discuss educational reform in
the United States. But as I indicated, this has been overtaken. The few
hundred or so pages, for all practical purposes, are irrelevant.
What is being discussed today is how we will deviate from the agreed-
upon committee print. That committee product represented a balancing of
several important principles.
First, there was the principle of enhanced accountability, the
principle that I recognized, indeed, in the last ESEA reauthorization
in 1994 and fought strenuously for to increase accountability,
recognizing that unless we had agreed-upon educational standards and
ways to evaluate those standards, we were not going to make significant
educational progress in the United States.
The second principle is flexibility, to give the States more
discretion and authority to ensure that their plans are developed,
carried out, and evaluated.
The third principle is increased resources, because without adequate
resources, testing and flexibility will lead, in my view, to very
little progress, and may be even detrimental, as my colleague from
Minnesota suggested.
But today we still do not have a resolution of the funding. We have
an agreed-upon authorization number in this bill. But we have not seen
the administration come forward and pledge the same kind of resources
that they

[[Page S4078]]

are about to announce for the Department of Defense and for other
areas.

If this is truly the No. 1 domestic priority in the United States--
the education of our young people--then we can put our money where our
mouth is; we can put the resources to work. To date, we have no real
resolution. So, we are in danger of having a testing scheme and
flexibility but without the resources to make it all work.
But in addition to that issue, there is still the issue to be
resolved in terms of accountability. What I think we would all concede
is a tough accountability standard within this legislation is now being
watered down and diluted because, frankly, it has suddenly dawned on
many people, particularly the State education officials and Governors,
that real accountability costs money, and not just Federal money.
When we really measure the progress of education and the progress of
individual schools throughout this country, and we commit to making
these schools all successful, we are not just talking about some extra
Federal dollars, we are talking about a profound shift in spending at
the State and local levels, to make sure that truly no child is left
behind. So it comes as no surprise to me that suddenly, having figured
it out, the States are very concerned about accountability.
So you have three major issues which form the core, the foundation of
this legislation, that are now in flux subject to continuing
negotiation. In that context, I believe it is inappropriate to proceed.
That is why I voted this morning not to proceed to the bill, so we
could wait until we have real language we can talk about, debate, and
study before we consider the bill in the Chamber. We should wait until
we have real resources committed--not just reauthorization language but
a real commitment to appropriations. When we do those things, then I
think we are ready to move forward. But we have, in any case, taken up
this debate.
We have seen over the last several weeks and months an attempt to
work on a bipartisan basis to develop legislation, understanding that
when we came to the Chamber more controversial elements would be
introduced, such as the Straight A's Program, which is essentially a
block grant for the States rather than categorical programs. There
would be discussions on school vouchers and charitable choice. We
understood that those issues would be debated in this Chamber. But the
assumption was at least we would start with the language we had worked
on, the language we agreed upon, the language in the committee proposal
of S. 1. That, again, seems to be overtaken by events, overtaken by
pending negotiations, and, as a result, rendering this particular
version of the legislation obsolete as we begin.
We have seen in these negotiations language on some of the
controversial elements, but we have not seen a resolution yet. For
example, with regard to Straight A's, this is a proposal that
essentially would provide a block grant to the States to operate the
educational programs without regard to the categorical provisions of
existing programs.
One of the problems of the Straight A's proposal is that it is not
yet clear whether States participating in this program on an
experimental basis could use Federal resources for vouchers. I think
that is an important point that should be resolved before we consider
it in this Chamber, not hurried in while we are still in the midst of
the debate.
Also, there are additional problems we have. It is not quite clear
whether key provisions with respect to title I will still be part of
the Straight A's Program if the State is operating under one of these
pilot programs.

One of the provisions that is particularly important is parental
involvement. In the 1994 ESEA reauthorization, in title I, we
understood that parents were a critical aspect of education. But the
existing title I law before that was merely suggestive of parental
involvement. So in 1994, we put in real requirements for parental
involvement, authorizing the States to use a certain amount of their
title I moneys--in fact, we directed them to use it for parental
involvement, to develop parental involvement plans.
I believe the title I moneys, the title I program, should be infused
with parental involvement. But as the current draft of the Straight A's
seems to suggest, they are going back, prior to 1994, and making
parental involvement simply something that might be done, could be
done, should be done. I think we know enough about the role of parents
in education to make this an important part of education, not simply an
optional provision of educational policy in the United States.
As I mentioned before, there still is this issue of accountability.
What will be the standards? Who will set the standards? It is clear
that there will be increased testing. This testing raises significant
questions. Most of the States, if not all the States, engage in rather
elaborate testing already. Most of the States are acting under the
provisions of Goals 2000.
The 1994 ESEA reauthorization embarked on a very elaborate process of
setting State standards: What a child should know, developing
evaluations so those standards are tested, and imposing a scheme of
evaluations--not every year for every child, but a scheme that made
sense to a particular State.
Now we are saying, no, one size does fit all for every child, every
year, for grades 3 through 8. That puts a lot of practical pressure on
the States because if you are trying to harmonize your standards with
your evaluation, it takes time. Some States have found out it is not
practical to give a test to every child every year because the tests
have to be very individualized to capture all the nuances of those
standards.
My sense is--and I have talked to educational experts in the States--
the sheer requirement to test every child every year for grades 3
through 8 will inexorably leave the States to adopt standardized
testing which may or may not capture the standards in that particular
State. So this testing regime could unwittingly move away from one of
the central elements we all agree on--standards carefully thought out
and evaluations that measure those standards.
In these ongoing discussions, there is also included the notion of
supplemental services, the idea that in failing schools there will be
money given for supplemental services. It seems to me that raises a
very profound question: Are you interested in merely giving a few
children this option, because given the caps on this program, all
children, even in the failing schools, may not be able to realize this
program? Or are you interested in fixing the schools so that not only
that class of children but succeeding classes of children will enjoy
excellent education in a reformed, revitalized school? It seems to me
we are diverting resources from the main point, to fix our schools,
giving some children access to some supplementary education
alternatives. That is another issue.
Then there is the issue of charitable choice, which will come up,
which raises profound issues about civil rights. What is the policy if
we are going to use this approach by encouraging charities and
religious groups to become more involved, more directly involved in
Federal funding? Does that impose requirements on these groups to
recognize civil rights laws in hiring? Does that impose requirements in
the type of curricula they can use?
All of these are very difficult questions, and they have to be
addressed. I believe they should have been addressed as best we could
before we brought this bill to the floor.
There are some other practical issues here, too. It goes back to the
overarching concern. The overarching concern is, who is going to pay
for all this? It has been estimated by the National Association of
State Boards of Education that testing alone of every child in grades 3
through 8 could cost between $2.7 and $7 billion over 4 years. That
type of money is not in the appropriations language I am seeing in the
President's budget. That type of commitment is certainly not there. And
that is just for testing alone. That is just to diagnose the problem.
But we all recognize that simply identifying children who are falling
behind and schools that are falling behind is just the first step, the
hardest step of fixing the problem.

As my colleague from Minnesota pointed out, we hear time and time
again money is not the problem. Well, it is a refrain we seldom hear
from other departments when they come in and say they have to confront
new issues, new changing forces in the

[[Page S4079]]

world. The classic example is the problem with defense. We are all
reading this week that it is likely the Secretary of Defense will
recommend an increase of $25 billion a year in defense spending to
adjust to new threats, new technologies, new opportunities. I am not
hearing anyone say to him: Money is not the problem. Reorganize,
evaluate your forces better.
Resources is not the sole answer, but it is an important part of
dealing with the issue. So we have to do that.
Again, we are not seeing that type of commitment, that real
commitment. Without that real commitment, we will not be able to
attract the kind of teachers we need; we will not be able to provide
continuous professional development so that teachers stay current on
teaching techniques; we will not be able to fix school buildings so
that children believe they are going to a place that is held in esteem
by their community, a place that is treasured enough so that it is
maintained. If you go to the schools in many parts of this country
today, you find they are decrepit, that they are obsolete. They are
places that no one would go voluntarily and certainly no one would go
with the sense of excitement and joy that every child should bring to
school. We will need more money to fix those schools.
We are going to proceed on this debate. One of the presumptions of
this debate, for those who are suggesting that we engage in a regime of
testing without adequate resources--one of the presumptions is the
sense that our schools are failing America. There is another
perspective. The perspective is that this Congress and preceding
Congresses, State Governors, and State assemblies have for years and
years been failing our schools. We have not been giving them the
resources they need. We have not been recognizing that educational
problems today, in many cases, result from problems of health care for
children, problems of poverty for children, problems of housing for
children. Until we recognize these issues and until we confront these
issues, not just rhetorically but, more importantly, with real
resources and a real commitment, to say that our schools are failing
America is missing a much larger point.
What have we done truly to give these embattled teachers and
students, these difficult schools, the help they need to succeed, not
just a mandate to test and evaluate, but the support so that every
child goes to school ready to learn? That was the first core principle
of our reform movement, which President Bush's father began a decade or
more ago.
There are still too many children going to school without adequate
health care, coming from homes that are dangerous because of exposure
to lead in paint on the walls. There are still too many children who
will fail because they don't have these types of supports and these
types of help. As we consider this bill, we have to recognize that
group as well.
There are many things that will be debated in the course of the next
few days in terms of education reform. I hope we can debate and I hope
we can successfully adopt provisions that will decrease the size of
classrooms throughout the country, knowing that children perform better
when they have a smaller ratio between the teachers and the students. I
hope we improve the quality of the physical condition of our schools--
better classrooms, modern classrooms, and safer schools. I hope we can
improve the quality of our teachers and principals by providing real
professional development. I hope we can improve our school libraries,
and add additional school counselors. If we can do that, then we can
take this legislation and make a real contribution to the quality of
education in the United States.
I hope we can do that. I hope we can do that on behalf of the
thousands and thousands of youngsters who are going to school today and
the generations to come.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brownback). The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time from
4:15 to 6:15 be equally divided between the two leaders or their
designees for postcloture debate. Further, I ask unanimous consent that
Senator Carper be recognized first for up to 15 minutes, to be followed
by Senator Enzi for up to 15 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The
Senator from Delaware is recognized.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, my grandparents were born around the
beginning of the 20th century and lived for much of the 20th century.
In the early part of the last century, my grandparents and their
generation--actually my parents and their generation--were able to find
jobs and become employed not so much because of the strength of their
minds but because of the strength of their backs.
As we moved throughout the 20th century, the time came when more and
more it was important that we knew how to read and how to write, knew
how to do math and eventually to use technology, if we were going to
get some of the better jobs available in our country. As we now move
into the 21st century, that will be only more true.
The last century has been called by some the American century. If the
21st century is to be another American century, it is important that
our young people have the kind of skills that will enable our employers
to be successful in an increasingly competitive world marketplace.
I believe among the reasons we have been remarkably successful as a
nation over the last century is that we have taken our core democratic
values, our democratic principles, combined those with the free
enterprise system, and added to that a belief in free public education
now for just about everybody in our country. Blending those disparate
elements together, we ended up with an economic engine, as we close one
century and walk into the next, that is, frankly, unrivaled by any
other on the face of the Earth.
That was yesterday's news. The question is, How are we going to fare
for the next 100 years? For the past decade or so, we have heard
increasing cries of concern that too often the skills our young people
are bringing out of the high schools from which they in many cases
graduate are not preparing them for college, not preparing them
adequately for the workforce. We have heard calls from all levels of
government, particularly State and local, to do something about it.
As a Governor for the last 8 years, I know full well we have done a
lot more in the States than just wring our hands and cry in anguish. We
have done a great deal to try to ensure that my children and the
children of the generation of kids in school with them and those to
follow, when they graduate with that diploma, will really mean
something. It will mean that they do know how to read and understand
what they have read, that they do know how to do math--in some cases
pretty complex math--they know how to use technology, they know how to
think, and they are prepared to go on to be successful in college and
in the world and in life.
Throughout the country over the last 7 years--maybe the last 8
years--States have been involved in adopting academic standards. What
is an academic standard? It spells out in a State such as Delaware, or
any other State, what we expect students to know and to be able to do,
such as standards in math, science, English, social studies, and in
other subject areas as well. If you look at the 49 States that have
adopted standards, most of them spell out clearly what they expect
their students to be able to do in math, science, English, and social
studies.
In recent years, maybe a bit more than half of our States have
developed tests to measure student progress in the standards in math,
science, English, and social studies that those States have adopted.
They give those tests usually every year. In our State, it is annually
in the spring, and it is given to students in grades 3, 5, 8 and 10.
Now, almost half of the States have taken the next step toward
developing accountability. What is accountability? There is a lot of
confusion about what is accountability. Accountability says there ought
to be consequences--some positive and some maybe not so positive--for
students who fall short of the mark or for those who do well or for
schools or districts that fall short or do well. There ought to be
accountability for parents as well and also for politicians and for
educators.

[[Page S4080]]

As we take up the education debate in the Senate this week, we are
literally trying to figure out what is the appropriate Federal role
with respect to the education of our children. My boys play soccer in a
YMCA rec league in Wilmington, DE. They play on a variety of fields
around the city of Wilmington. One of the fields is a field that is not
level. In fact, if I can use this folder as an example, about half of
the game they are running downhill on this one field. Teams like to be
running downhill. At the end of the first half, they switch and they
have to go in the other direction. The team running downhill for the
first half ends up having to run uphill for the rest of the game.
A lot of kids in life don't have the luxury of changing sides of the
field. For a lot of their lives, they play the game running uphill. The
role of the Federal Government, for kids who spend a whole lot of their
lives running uphill, is to try to level that playing field a little
bit. For the kids born in tough situations, maybe with parents not
engaged in their lives, or who don't value education, or maybe they
don't even have parents, we must make sure those kids aren't hopelessly
behind when they walk into kindergarten at age 5. If they are
hopelessly behind and are coming from a real difficult situation in
their home lives, they may need help to catch up with their other
classmates.
I don't think anybody in Washington expects the Federal Government to
be the primary funder or mover and shaker in education in America. That
is not our role. Our role is to try to level the playing field and to
help ensure that States adopt academic standards for their students,
and that not just some kids have a chance to meet the rigorous
standards but that all kids have a chance to meet the standards their
States have adopted.
As we debate this issue this week, and perhaps next week as well, we
are trying to figure out what can we do that is helpful, that builds on
the reforms being adopted and implemented in the States. It does no
harm; in fact, it does a lot of good.
We have to consider that between 0 and age 5, kids will learn about
half of what they know in their lives. If we waste the first 5 years,
it is tough to get them back. We know that there is a lot more we can
do in terms of parent training. A lot could be done in our States with
respect to ensuring that healthier babies are born and raised. We can
try to provide assistance with respect to quality child care and
programs such as Head Start and make sure kids - and parents--are given
a bit of a boost at the age of 3 or 4 and find themselves better
prepared to be successful at the age of 5.
Those are appropriate roles for the Federal Government. When kids
walk into kindergarten at 5, what is an appropriate role? The Congress
and the President have said it is to provide hope in smaller class
sizes.
We have also said it is important to provide extra learning time for
kids who need extra time. We are joined in the Chamber by Senator
Specter of Pennsylvania and Senator Graham from Florida. Senator
Specter may be able to learn a little faster than the Senator from
Delaware, but the Senator from Delaware can learn, too. I might just
need some extra learning time.
One of the things we have done in Delaware and in other States,
through programs such as title 1, is we provide extra learning time for
kids who need it to reach the academic standards that have been set.
We also know that one of the best things that could happen to ensure
that a kid is successful in school is to have a terrific teacher such
as Mrs. Anderson, my first grade teacher, and Mrs. Swane, my fifth
grade teacher--teachers who really make an impact. Mrs. Anderson helped
me read at the age of 5 and 6 in my first grade class. We need teachers
who love kids, who can teach and who know their stuff. One of the
things that we can do at the Federal level, working with State and
local school districts, is to help recruit the best and brightest to be
teachers, to make sure they have the tools that will at least help them
have a shot at being successful in the classroom and to ensure that
their professional development continues.
Another area where the Federal Government has been involved is in
technology--trying to infuse technology into public school classrooms.
Delaware was the first State to wire a public school classroom for
access to the Internet. I think we have the best ratio of computers to
kids in the country. We spend a lot of money to train teachers to use
the technology effectively in the class, to integrate technology into
their curriculum, to bring the outside world into the classroom and
make the learning come alive.
I am pleased that the legislation coming before us focuses, in part,
on technology. One of the best things it does is to say we encourage
teams in schools across America to figure out how to work at their
schools, how they can incorporate technology into their curriculum.
That is a perfectly appropriate role for us.
Among the other things we can do is provide some help when students
are disruptive. An amendment will be offered later this week by John
Kerry and myself that will say if a school district wants to use some
of the moneys in this legislation for establishing alternative schools
for chronically disruptive students, they would have the ability to do
so.
Lastly, our legislation, in providing for accountability and
consequences for schools that do well and those that don't do well,
says we want to put schools on sort of a 10-year glidepath to making
sure that all the students are able to come closer to meeting the
standards set by their States, and each year that a school district
fails to meet the State's own progress chart--imagine a stair step, if
you will, of 10 steps. The first year that happens, the school gets
some extra money for assistance. The second year, if they fall short,
we provide more technical assistance. By the time the fourth year
comes, we require that school district to institute public school
choice to provide, for that child who is in a failing school, their
parents an opportunity to send them to another public school that is
not failing or to take advantage of extra learning time provided, in
some cases, by a private vendor after school.

We say if a school is failing after 4 years, that school has to be
reconstituted as a charter school or turned over to a private sector
vendor to run that school or simply the school is reconstituted with a
new administration and new faculty. But while we call for some serious
steps in our accountability plan in this legislation to require public
school choice when schools are failing children in some cases, and to
require as one of three options the establishment of charter schools,
transforming existing schools into charter schools, those are options
that cost money.
One of the amendments that will be proposed by Senator Gregg, myself,
and others is legislation saying if we are going to mandate public
school choice, we need to provide assistance. If we are going to
require, as one of the three options, turning a failing school into a
charter school, we need to provide resources there as well.
Let me close with this point as I approach the end of my 15 minutes.
I honestly believe there is more before the legislation that we will be
debating this week to unite us than divide us. Most Members, including
Democrats and Republicans, and I believe this President, understands
the need to invest more money in programs that work to raise student
achievement, targeted to kids who need the help the most. I will not
quarrel whether 10 percent, 15 percent, or 20 percent increases, or
more, are enough, but we all understand we need to invest more
resources targeted to the kids who need it, in programs that work to
raise student achievement.

The second area where we are in agreement, generally, is that the
money we provide from the Federal Government should be provided
flexibly. We should not try to micromanage what is going on in the
schools. We should say, here is the money to use; target it for kids
who need it most. You figure how to best use it in your school and
school district to help your kids.
As we provide more money and we provide the money more flexibly, it
is critically important we demand results, that we call for and require
accountability. There have to be consequences. They do not have to be
negative. There have to be consequences to make sure we are not
throwing good money after bad money.

[[Page S4081]]

We will debate a lot of issues in this Senate Chamber this year. For
my money, I think for our taxpayers' money, this is maybe one of the
most important issues we will consider. It will go probably as far in
determining whether we will continue to be the superpower in the world
we have today 100 years from now. All the rest that we do, we can
debate and decide.
I look forward to joining my colleagues in this debate, doing what is
best for kids. The approach we take, I hope, is what I call the ``tough
love'' approach, demonstrated when we took up welfare reform 5 years
ago. A certain toughness in the approach was adopted and there is a lot
of love and compassion, as well. There will be a similar approach. We
will be successful and our children will be successful not just in this
debate but in what follows.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, at the outset I commend my distinguished
colleague from Delaware for his statement on the issues of flexibility
and local control and accountability. In a few months in the Senate he
has made a distinct contribution. It is good to share the train with
the Senator from Delaware. I have done so with his distinguished
colleague, Senator Biden, for many years. Those hours on the train
enable some Members to learn more about each other and to come to
bipartisan agreements on a great many of the issues. At the outset, I
compliment the Senator from Delaware.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. ENZI. I rise today to support S. 1 and to talk about the motion
to proceed on which we have gotten cloture and are now debating, with
some limitations on each Senator's time, but still debating whether to
proceed on debating education.
I haven't heard anybody who hasn't said that education is the most
important thing on which we have to work. For a week we didn't get to
debate education. Now we are only getting to debate proceeding to
education. We ought to be talking about the issues and the amendments
and getting a bill done and through here.

Talking to the folks back in my school districts, right now what they
are concentrating on is the end of the year, graduation for seniors.
Immediately after that happens, they need to be planning for next fall.
We are talking about elementary and secondary education
reauthorization, which is where we outline in what programs schools can
be involved. Don't you think they kind of need to know that when they
start planning for fall? If they do not know by the time they start
planning for fall, then they have to delay what we are talking about
for a year. So it could be a year and a quarter before any of the
reforms that all of us agree on can go into effect.
When I listened to the debate this morning, the discussion was over
how much money would be put in this bill. This bill is not an
appropriations bill. This is an authorization bill. This is where we
talk about what programs can be done. Later we talk about how much
money to spend on those programs.
One of the reasons I find it particularly fascinating that the
Democrats have done a little filibuster on the amount of money is that
this is the first time the Republicans have been in charge when we have
gotten to do a reauthorization of education. I have to tell you, we are
really excited about it because there is some tremendous potential in
education out there.
We are talking about the amount of money in the authorization bill. I
find that particularly interesting because I went back to see how much
they talked about money the last time this was authorized. The last
time this was authorized the Democrats were the majority and the
President was a Democrat. Do you know how much additional money they
insisted be put in for the authorization of programs? No additional
money. Money was not part of authorization. The Democrats have been in
the reauthorizing lead for 35 years, and the amount of money has not
been the issue in the authorization bills.
So what is the difference now? A little chance to pound on the
Republicans and reduce the amount of civility and bipartisanship that
has already been shown on this bill. That should not happen.
The plain truth is that without reform any increase would be just
another drop in the $400 million--$400 billion; I have to start
thinking in these Washington terms--a drop in the $400 billion
education bucket. If money were our answer, we would not be here today.
So we did not talk about it for 35 years. We did not talk about it the
last time.
The Federal Government provides 6 percent of the education dollar. We
force 50 percent of the paperwork. We are the time waster generators.
So we are going to increase that a little bit. Even under most
circumstances it will not get much higher than that, and that is
because we do expect the States to make the major effort. That is where
the people live. That has been the tradition and the method for funding
education.
This is a difficult area. One of the reasons it is difficult is
because everybody has been to school, so that makes each of us and
everybody who listens to any debate on education an expert. We do have
people in our lives who have influenced us tremendously. Some of the
greatest influence we get is in that period of time we spend in school,
which is some of the most contact we get with adults when we are kids.

Besides having gone to school, I also get some input from my
daughter, who is a seventh grade English teacher in Gillette, WY, an
outstanding English teacher. I am really pleased with the progress she
makes with her students. I get to see that firsthand and hear about it.
I have to say, while she has been teaching, she has also earned two
master's degrees. She just finished up the master's degree in
administration so she can at some time be a principal. She would much
rather be a teacher, but she has seen where a lot of the money goes.
We do need to get more money into the classroom for teachers so we
can recruit and retain good teachers. My wife has a master's degree in
adult education and emphasizes education quite a bit.
Some of my best mentors in my life have been people with whom I
worked in the legislature who worked in education. On the State level,
it is a much bigger deal than it is here because that is where the
money comes from and that is where the decisions are made for the kids.
Even at the State level what they do is defer the decisions, some of
which we are trying to do, to the school boards themselves. That is a
very important trend, and that is provided for in this bill.
We are not talking about the amount of money, although some would
like to distract the discussion so it talks about the amount of money.
We need to be talking about how we are going to educate our kids, how
we are going to reform the process.
I do, first, want to applaud the entire committee for unanimously
advancing this important bill before the full Senate. We did invest
tremendous resources in attempting to reauthorize ESEA last year, and I
am pleased we made it our first priority this year. I am also impressed
with the support of the new administration in seeing President Bush's
No. 1 priority take the next step in the legislative process. In the
history of Presidential initiatives, I believe the work of this
administration will serve as a model for bipartisanship on policies of
national significance.
Frankly, I was stunned to hear the suggestions last week that our
President has not taken any bipartisan initiatives. At both the staff
and principal level, the White House has been actively engaged for
weeks on negotiating this powerful education reform bill that we have
before us today. I applaud the product. I thank all the parties for
their investment of time, energy, and willingness to compromise--the
necessary ingredients for bipartisanship without which we would not be
advancing the bill today.
This is my fifth year on the Education Committee. The normal
Education Committee process is to have a markup that lasts 2 to 3 weeks
and then come out along party lines. This, one of the most innovative
bills that we have worked on, took 2 days and it came out unanimously.
That has to be a record for the Education Committee on any of the bills
with which we deal. That is bipartisanship. Unanimous is about as close
as you can come.

[[Page S4082]]

This education reform bill, the BEST Act, reflects an understanding
of the variation in needs between urban, suburban, and rural schools.
The bill arguably addresses the concerns of all stakeholders in our
children's education, and it does so in a bipartisan way. I believe the
bill has struck meaningful compromise and reflects a strong but
appropriate role for the Federal partnership in elementary and
secondary education.

The State of Wyoming has invested tremendous amounts of time and
money in developing high standards for learning. That has been a
priority for quite a while--high standards of learning, reliable
assessments, strong parental involvement, and other research-based
education innovations. The BEST Act builds upon that work and
solidifies the shared commitment to academic achievement for all
children.
The State of Wyoming also has a Web site where you can check on the
grades of any of the schools. They take the testing they do and they
show how well, by school, the report cards come out for those schools.
So they have had strong assessments.
The State of Wyoming is currently facing a crisis in education. We
call it a teacher shortage. It is not about class size. It is about
teachers' salaries and a dwindling supply of qualified educators,
particularly in light of the new high standards which the students must
meet, which are on this Web site. But this is a problem for which the
Federal Government can help provide a solution.
Under title II of our bill, the focus is not only on preparing
teachers but on helping schools recruit and retain high-quality
teachers. Reducing the class sizes will be an allowable use of funds
under this title, if that is the unique need of the particular school.
I have to say, in Wyoming a lot of the schools have small class
sizes. Even if they combined all of the classes into one class, it
would be a very small class. We have some very small towns in Wyoming.
It has been very important through this process to maintain the
capability for those small schools to operate as well.
This bill also emphasizes the need to improve the access to education
technology and to use it in the process of improving academic
achievement. I like to think our State is a forerunner in that. Again,
that is because of our distances. It is a way that kids who are not in
our urban centers--and our biggest urban center is now 53,293 people--
will still be able to get a diversified education.
The goal of eliminating the duplicative administrative application
process and allowing schools to have one pot of funds for the range of
technology uses, including teacher and administrative staff teaching,
will make a difference. The digital divide will shrink and technology
will become even more relevant as an educational tool.
I have to divert for a moment and talk about some of the innovations
in technology.
About 10 days ago I happened to tour a school that deals with migrant
workers. I found that they had received a grant for laptops. The
laptops are assigned to these children of migrant workers, and I
suspect to other workers as well. But it has all of the course work on
it. It plugs into a modem that dials an 800 number to give their
homework to the teacher to grade. It allows them to talk on line with
the teacher. There is also an 800 phone number they can call to talk to
the teacher. It is a very successful program. It was started with an
old blue school bus that went around to migrant worker camps and
followed the migrant workers. They gutted the bus. They put in a desk
and some folding chairs. They started a school. They have progressed
now to the point where they can accommodate a lot more kids using this
laptop network and some teachers who can be accessible at any time the
students have an opportunity for it.
There are some technological innovations out there that will help
rural students and ones who move a lot. They are included in this bill.
Very importantly, the bill clarifies the purpose of the President's
requirement that States expand existing assessments and take on the new
practice of participating annually in the NAEP test, which is the
National Assessment of Educational Progress test, which many States,
including Wyoming, currently administer to students.
These clarifications go a long way in addressing the fundamental
concerns by all parties that the Federal Government not enact
additional unfunded mandates and that the States continue to retain the
flexibility to design their own standards of learning for students
versus nationalized standards or tests. We will have to debate a little
bit this interaction between anything that looks like a national test
and a State test which follows the things kids in that area of the
country need besides their basic education.
While it is not a part of the reauthorization, we would be remiss in
meeting our commitment to the education of all children if we did not
also prioritize funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act.
As we advocate meaningful education reform, I look forward to the
continued support for strong increases in funding of IDEA but recognize
that is part of the appropriations process and not part of the
authorization process. Fully funding this important but costly Federal
requirement is as critical as requiring academic success in our
classrooms. It is something we have been working toward and will
continue to work toward.
Throughout the consideration of the different elements of the BEST
Act, I plan to discuss in more detail those that will most help
Wyoming's children succeed.
In spite of increases in the Federal investment in elementary and
secondary education, it does remain a fraction of the overall
expenditures--less than 10 percent. I think the figure being used here
is 6 percent, and also 7 percent has been used.
I remind people that 50 percent of the paperwork is generated by our
very small funds. We force people to spend a lot of time for the money
that comes from the Federal Government.
I had a high school principal who took a leave of absence and came
back to Washington to work in my office for a semester. He spent most
of that time down at the Department of Education. He had been filling
out these Federal forms for what seemed to him a lifetime, and he
wanted to know what happened to them.
Let me tell you what the results were. He was pleased to find out
that the forms are scrutinized in detail, that every ``t'' has to be
crossed and every ``i'' has to be dotted; everything has to be on the
form. He was disappointed to find out that was the last use of that
form. It isn't used to help any kid anywhere, but it maintains a job in
the bureaucracy in Washington for that person who is making sure the
form is completely filled out. That is not helping any kid in my State.
If they do not put that information together and package it somehow
so it is helpful to them, we ought to eliminate the form--actually, a
lot of forms. I mentioned that 50 percent of the paperwork is generated
in Washington.
We have to help the schools maximize their dollars. I believe we can
help improve our kids' academic experience because of this.
Planning for next year requires quick passage. I mentioned that. If
we don't have quick passage, we are getting past the planning stage for
the next academic year; we will be forced to have the reform kick in 1
year later.
We need to get on with this process. I hope we can have everybody get
on board, end the filibuster that is in process, compromise on some
time, and get the bill debated and move on to a better treatment of the
kids of this country.

I look forward to seeing this bill overwhelmingly adopted by the
Senate and signed into law as quickly as possible. We cannot afford to
shirk our commitment to reform and putting children first.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the
quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from New York that I do
have a unanimous consent request I want to offer. I believe that we
will be having

[[Page S4083]]

some Senator from the other side of the aisle to discuss it with me
briefly. It should not take too long. I thank the Senator for her
courtesy in letting us do this now.
Mr. President, obviously we need to go forward with the discussion,
the general debate, and the amendment process on the education reform
package. Earlier today, the vote on the motion to proceed was an
overwhelming 96-3. I thought that was a clear indication that we were
ready to go to S. 1, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
I had the impression that we would have time spent this afternoon
discussing education--not actually on the bill because time is allowed
postcloture to talk about the bill in general, but that we would be
able to go to the bill itself and begin debate on the bill at 6:15 or
6:30 this evening and tomorrow we would actually be into the amendment
process. That seemed a fair way to proceed.
I am being told now that there is objection to us even proceeding to
general debate on the bill itself. Also, I have the impression--and I
am glad to see Senator Daschle in the Chamber; maybe he can clarify
this for me--part of the reason is, Senators do not want to go to the
bill and begin the amendment process until the substitute has been
offered because they do not want to offer an amendment to the
underlying bill and then have to offer it later to the agreed-to
compromise bill. But I would be glad to ask consent or work out an
agreement that any amendment that is offered before then would be
applied to the compromise managers' amendment that might be offered
later.
My concern, I say to Senator Daschle, and to Senator Kennedy, who I
see just coming into the Chamber, is that a lot of good work has been
done. It has been bipartisan. The administration has been involved. It
has been understandable that it took some more time. My attitude on
that is, if more time is needed, let's take it. But now we are on the
verge of going through a second week without actually getting on the
bill.
I know a lot of Senators are going to want to speak in general debate
and will have amendments to offer, and it is going to take some time.
The idea that we could spend, hopefully, time tomorrow on general
debate and begin the amendment process, decide how we are going to deal
with perhaps amendments on Friday, and begin to make progress seemed to
be a very positive thing.
So I hope we can go to the bill and begin debate on it this
afternoon, tonight, and then be prepared to have more time tomorrow in
general debate, if we need to, and then go to the amendments.
Before I ask consent, I will yield to Senator Daschle to see if we
can get an agreement worked out so that if there are amendments that
are offered, they would apply to not only the underlying bill, S. 1,
but to any compromise amendment that is agreed to. I did discuss that
with Senator Kennedy, and he did not think that would be a problem.
I would be glad to yield to Senator Daschle for a response.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I appreciate the majority leader
yielding. Let me say, he has attempted to reach me earlier, and I have
been tied up in important meetings. I did not know he was trying to
reach me until just a few minutes ago. But I apologize for not getting
back to him sooner.
Mr. LOTT. I understand. We both are running from meeting to meeting.
Mr. DASCHLE. Senator Lott and I talked about this very question last
week. I understand his desire to move to the legislation. I said I
would be supportive of an effort to do that. But there are two
outstanding issues. The one that we talked about last week, and
continues to be a very big concern, is what kind of a commitment we can
get from the administration on overall funding. I had indicated at that
time when we discussed this matter last week that even though that is
critical to all of us, and even though many of our colleagues believe
more strongly in that than any other question, that I was prepared to
move to the bill even if we had not yet completed our discussions with
the administration and our Republican colleagues about that, in spite
of the fact that many of our colleagues were very concerned about
taking that approach.
The second issue, of course, has to do with having the language. The
majority leader puts his finger on one of the concerns we have, but
there are two. The first concern, of course, is what happens if you
offer amendments. And, of course, that is subject then to a unanimous
consent agreement that we accommodate Senators who have offered
amendments in good faith. And I guess there isn't the confidence, at
least right now, that we might even be able to get a unanimous consent
agreement that allows Senators the confidence of knowing that even
though they are amending the substitute that they have not yet seen,
that it would be accommodated if ultimately we agreed to that
substitute.
So I think the larger question is one that many of our colleagues
have expressed to me personally, even as late as in the last half-hour,
and that is that they are just uncomfortable moving to a bill for which
we have not been given any information. I think a lot of our
negotiators are talking back and forth, and they are attempting to
resolve the outstanding differences.
The problem is that I will say at least 90 percent of our caucus has
not seen even the first draft of the substitute. They are
understandably concerned about committing to a motion to proceed before
they have had a chance to even look at it. I think what I made clear to
the majority leader last week was that we had to at least resolve the
language issue before we could make the motion to proceed.
I also supported, as 95 of my colleagues this morning did, the motion
on cloture to proceed. But I am very uncomfortable asking my colleagues
to accept language that they have not seen yet. I am told that we are
very near this point of agreement that would then allow us to print a
document that we could share with all of our colleagues and I think
substantially increase the confidence levels about what it is we are
agreeing to on the motion to proceed.
So I hope that our colleagues could work extra hard in the next few
hours and through the night and present us with an agreed-upon
substitute tomorrow that we could share with our colleagues on both
sides of the aisle so that we could all vote for the motion to proceed.
I think there would be a strong vote for it. But that is really the
essence of my concern.
I am willing to put aside, for the moment, the funding question, even
though, as I say, I cannot tell you the depth of feeling there is in
our caucus about proceeding without some agreement. But I think it is
very difficult for us to agree on a substitute prior to the time we
have even seen it.
So I again reiterate what I thought I expressed to the majority
leader was my concern last week, and that would be the reason we would
have to object at this time.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I could respond, Senator Daschle
mentioned to me last week that there was a need to see the language. I
passed the word that certainly that should be made available. I am
surprised. While I have not been directly involved in all the
negotiations, I thought that everybody was familiar with all that was
going on and that basically Senator Kennedy and others have the
language, know the language, and if there is any outstanding language,
they would know what that is.
So for a week we have been saying, let's share the language, and
let's move on. Maybe the problem is that the language is continuing to
be modified. But how long does that go on? We talk about the regular
order, the legislative process. The way you usually do it is you call
up a bill, and a managers' amendment is offered, amendments are
offered. I do not know if we can ever get every word agreed to. I
assume there are going to be Senators on both sides of the aisle who
are going to offer some amendments to make further changes.
But my urging would be--on both sides of the aisle--let's give them
the language. Somebody has some language somewhere. I am being assured
Republicans are not hiding in the corner, holding back language that
they won't share. If there is anything that Senator Kennedy is not
aware of, I am

[[Page S4084]]

not aware of it. I would urge that we get that language agreed to.
Mr. DASCHLE. I ask the majority leader if he would yield for just a
short response?
Mr. LOTT. Sure.
Mr. DASCHLE. The majority leader is right. I think part of the
language is agreed to, and I think a lot of our colleagues have seen
that. But I think it is fair to say that both sides of the aisle would
agree that a very significant part of this whole effort is the issue of
accountability. And it is on accountability that we are still hung up,
that we have this moving target. We have evolving language that still
has yet to be nailed down.
Were it not for the fact that accountability is so important, I think
there would be a lot more interest in trying to see if we could resolve
this matter. But it is a key question. Because it is, and because this
moving target seems to be one that continues to change as we go from
hour to hour and day to day, that is the issue.
However, I will join with the majority leader, I would love to see
both sides come together, finalize the language, and offer amendments
if we are not satisfied with it.
Mr. LOTT. I have always observed in a legislative body you have to
have a closer. You have to have somebody who says: This is good enough;
let's go for it. We have had all of last week and now half of this
week. We continue to negotiate.
I guess I will have to assume some responsibility because if I had
known we were not going to be able to go to the education bill--the No.
1 priority in almost everybody's mind in the country--we could have
been considering other legislation.
I have continued to hope that with one more half day, one more day,
we could get going; we could have a full debate and offer amendments.
If I had known we were going to be stalled out on education, I would
have gone to other issues, and maybe that is what we ought to do now.
If I understand correctly, Senator Daschle indicates he doesn't think
this idea that any amendment would be considered to be applicable to
the bill or the substitute, that we might not get an agreement to do
that, but would it help if we could do that?
Mr. DASCHLE. Again, that would help a good deal, but that does not
solve the other problem. There are many on our side who feel so
strongly about this issue of accountability that they want to be able
to see the language prior to the time they are asked to vote on the
motion to proceed.
I have to respect the wishes of those colleagues who have made that
fact known to me. Clearly, it would help if we had that language. It
would solve part of the problem.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: How much time is
remaining postcloture on the motion to proceed?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. It will take 1 minute to calculate.
Mr. LOTT. I assume there must be 24, 25 hours remaining.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Twenty-six hours 15 minutes.
Mr. LOTT. I guess if we run off all of that time, it would be
tomorrow night or Friday before we could get to general debate on the
bill. I hope we will not have to do that. Maybe there is some plan to
have language available tonight for some press conference announcing
that language tomorrow. Is there some indication that maybe we could go
to the general debate in the morning? Do we know? I guess what I am
asking is, are we going to have to run off the full 24 or 25 hours?
Mr. DASCHLE. If the majority leader will yield, that is not my
expectation. As I said, both sides have been working to try to resolve
the outstanding difference. I was hoping by now we would have resolved
it. I was hoping we would be able to say that we now have a draft we
can share with everybody. Unfortunately, that is still not the case. I
can't imagine that this is going to go on much longer.
Mr. LOTT. Could I inquire of Senator Daschle, would it be his
recommendation that we set aside education and try to go to other
legislation for the balance of this week? I hate for us to let the rest
of this evening, tonight, and tomorrow go without making progress on
education or any other bill. If he thinks we should consider that,
maybe he and I could talk after we leave here.
Mr. DASCHLE. I would be happy to talk to the majority leader about
possibilities we might entertain.
Mr. LOTT. I confess, what I am trying to do is to put pressure on all
parties, not just on the Democratic side or the administration,
everybody. Let's come to some sort of agreement one way or the other.
Let's get started.
I had planned to ask unanimous consent that we would yield back all
time and proceed to the bill itself at 6:15, but it is obvious Senator
Daschle believes now that he would be in a position to have to object,
so I will not go through that exercise.
I do emphasize to all that everybody agrees we have a monumental,
historic opportunity to get major education reform and increases in
funds for education. I hope we can get to the bill itself within the
next half a day at a very minimum.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I appreciate the dialog that just
occurred between the leaders because, certainly, it is critical that
the debate on education commence and that we do everything within our
power to provide more resources, greater opportunities, and
accountability to our children around the country.
As a new Member to this body, I am one who shares the concern about
actually seeing the language of the bill and trying to be sure that we
know what it is we are debating and that the people back in our States
who we represent have a chance to be part of this debate by being able
to read and study and provide comments about what it is we are
considering in the Senate. I know it may, from time to time, be a
little frustrating, but until we actually have a bill with language
that will determine the future of education funding from the Federal
Government for 5 to 7 years, it is a wiser course for us to be prudent
and thoughtful and to wait until we actually know what it is we are
debating and what the potential impact of these provisions could be on
the lives of real children. After all, this debate is going to set the
stage for how much or how little we as a Nation will do for elementary,
junior high, middle, and high schools.
I am particularly concerned about the impact we will have on our
neediest children, those who are too often left behind. We still have
too many children who are not reading at grade level and who are being
taught by uncertified teachers, and too many who are in overcrowded
classrooms and dilapidated school buildings. I know that all of us on
both sides of the aisle agree that we can do better than this. We can't
just sign a blank check or decide that we can proceed on bill language
we have not even seen and discharge our responsibilities to the
children we represent in this body.
Many of my colleagues and I have serious concerns about the substance
of the bill. For example, the block grant demonstration program, so far
as we are aware of it without having seen the language of it, does not
target enough funds to our highest-need districts and will mean less
control for local school districts on how best to invest their Federal
education dollars. Because we have not yet seen the final version of
the bill we are considering, we don't know whether there is a genuine
commitment to devote the resources necessary to make the promise of
greater accountability a realistic outcome.
Just as we expect teachers, administrators, and students to abide by
a high standard of accountability, we should bring our backroom
negotiations to the floor of the Senate for all of us to hear. That is
why I voted to proceed with the bill. But we should do it on the basis
of an actual bill. I, for one, am willing to wait and to be patient
until we actually get the bill and then to proceed in an expeditious
manner.
If we look at where the negotiations are and what we are attempting
to achieve, we have a great opportunity to accomplish some very
important goals for the people of this country. We all share the goal
of improving our Nation's schools. We agree that everyone should be
held more accountable for turning around failing schools. There is a
bipartisan agreement that is very strong for ensuring that all children
should be taught by high quality teachers and that parents should know
the

[[Page S4085]]

quality of the schools their children attend.
This bill, so far as it is reported to us, does a tremendous job of
strengthening accountability. I applaud Senators Kennedy and Bingaman
for leading the negotiations that have resulted in important
accountability provisions.
Some have asked: Why don't we just call it quits. Let's just put in
more accountability. Let's just test our children every year from third
through eighth grade. We don't need to do any more than that.
I ask: What is it we are attempting to achieve? If all it does is to
put more accountability on the already existing testing systems that
every one of our States have employed, what is it we hope to achieve?
The answer is that in order to have real accountability, we have to
marry those accountability measures with targeted additional resources,
invested wisely, that will really make the difference as to whether the
tests actually create better educational outcomes.
Resources would make a difference for children such as Delano Tucker,
a fifth grader from PS 41 in the Bronx, who wrote me that his entire
fifth grade class was asking for help to improve education. Here is
what Delano said:

We need more books, but we can't do that without more
money. My second reason is we need more teachers because
classes are too crowded. The third reason is children are
passing without knowing how to read.

We don't need to get a bunch of experts or Senators who can come up
with a better analysis than what Delano just gave us. We need better
teachers, more books, less crowded classrooms, and we should not be
passing children who don't know how to read.
Resources would make a difference for the nearly 168,000 children who
go to school every day in overcrowded classes in New York City. We are
losing teachers every single day because teachers can't teach in the
kind of circumstances that we are presenting for the state of education
in many of our cities.
One New York City parent recently shared her thoughts with me,
writing that:

I am a parent of two young children--one in kindergarten
and one in third grade. They are both bright, but they suffer
from learning difficulties, in part, because they are trying
to learn in classes of 28 children. They are unable to get
the individual attention they need because they are competing
for the teacher's attention with so many.

How can we expect children in classes that are that crowded, given
the difficulties and issues that children bring to school today, to be
able to get the same quality of education that we know works so well
when classes are smaller in the early grades?
Resources would have made a real difference for the fourth grade
teacher at the 82-year-old Mechanicville Elementary School, just north
of Albany, NY, who last year was struck in the head by concrete from
the ceiling as she was teaching because the school was in such
disrepair.
My colleagues and I have heard similar stories from students and
teachers in every State around the country. Although education is, and
always will be, a local issue, it has to be a national concern. Some of
the most severe problems in education today require national solutions.
I think that is why we are here today debating education.
How will investing in school repairs and renovations help to raise
student achievement? I think the answer is self-evident, especially if
you have a teacher hit in the head with concrete falling from the
ceiling. We know from research that children benefit when they attend
school buildings that are in good physical condition.
A 1996 study of large urban high schools in Virginia found that
student achievement was as much as 11 percentile points lower in
substandard buildings as compared to standard buildings.
Another study found that the quality of air inside public school
facilities may significantly affect students' ability to concentrate.
In fact, the evidence suggests that children under 10 are more
vulnerable than adults to the types of contaminants found in school
facilities. We have seen reports and studies about working conditions
in urban schools, concluding that they ``have direct positive and
negative effects on teacher morale, their sense of personal safety,
their feelings of effectiveness, and on the general learning
environment.'' That kind of scientific conclusion is reinforced by the
experience of students in Mount Vernon, NY, who go to school with air
ducts that are so old and so clogged up and filled with pigeon and rat
droppings that they can't even breathe decent air; or the students in
Cohoes, NY, who go to a school that banned the use of chalk because
they have inadequate ventilation, and the chalk dust would hang like a
curtain in the air.

Too many of our students are trying to learn in cramped trailers such
as in this photo taken in Queens. These may be so-called ``temporary''
trailers, but they can end up representing a big part of a child's
educational experience.
Too many of our children are in hallways with many distractions and
far too little room. This photo represents a common sight in schools in
New York. This is not a classroom. This is a hallway. The children
aren't in a classroom that you and I remember, where there is a chalk
board, a teacher's desk, and the desks of the children, and bulletin
boards with pretty displays. This is a hallway and this is their
classroom.
I don't know how much longer we can keep hearing stories about
hallway classrooms, falling concrete, conditions in the classroom that
are unhealthy, and not recognize that we should be helping our school
districts, many of which cannot possibly afford to raise their property
taxes. We can't ask hard-pressed parents to put even more money into
the property tax base. We should be helping the parents in those school
districts.
During this debate, I will do everything I can to urge my colleagues
to support Senator Harkin's efforts to include authorization for an
emergency renovation and repair fund that would certainly make a
difference for some of the schools we just saw.
I will also be offering my own amendment to examine the impact of
dilapidated schools on the health of our children. It is simply
unacceptable in America in the beginning of the 21st century that our
children should have to attend schools that not only impair their
ability to learn but even make them sick.
Mr. REID. Will the Senator from New York yield for a question?
Mrs. CLINTON. Yes, I will.
Mr. REID. It is my understanding that the Senator from New York has
had experience in the past in dealing with issues such as we are trying
to deal with here. Is that true?
Mrs. CLINTON. Yes, that is.
Mr. REID. Would she tell the Senator from Nevada some of the things
she has worked on in the past?
Mrs. CLINTON. As the Senator points out, I have been involved in
improving education and reforming our accountability measures since
1983, when ``A Nation At Risk'' was first issued by then-President
Reagan's Commission on Education. I was one of the first in our country
to ask for much stricter accountability, to test not only students but
also teachers, and to hold schools to a very high standard. If they did
not succeed in passing 85 percent of their children beyond a level of
acceptable learning outcomes, the school would be in danger of being
taken over. That was 18 years ago.
So there is really nothing new in what we are discussing today, as
the Senator from Nevada knows so well. We want to do the best job we
can in raising standards; yes, we do. That is something many of us have
worked on, and we have actually seen some positive results in some of
our schools over the last 18 years. But we know there have to be the
kind of conditions in learning circumstances in our classes, in our
schools, that will enable these accountability measures to be
successful.

Mr. REID. I will ask one final question to the Senator from New York.
We know that there has been talk from the other side saying throwing
money at the problem doesn't solve anything. The Senator from New York
realizes that. But would the Senator also acknowledge that money is
going to help some of these problems?
Mrs. CLINTON. As the Senator knows, when somebody says money doesn't
make a difference, they are talking about somebody else and somebody
else's money. Every one of us in this body goes to the extra length of

[[Page S4086]]

making sure that our children and any children we care about are given
those kinds of resources that will enable a child to learn.
Money is not the only answer to what we need to do if we are serious
about zeroing in on those children most in need. Most of our schools in
this country are doing a fine job.
I live in a district in New York that is one of the best in the
entire country. Many of the other districts in our suburbs and rural
and city areas are producing good students who care about learning. Our
real problems are in those areas with concentrated poverty.
I have seen the Senator from Connecticut come into the Chamber. He
has a passion about getting our resources targeted where they can do
the most good. So to anybody who says money is not the only answer, of
course, I say money is not the only answer, but money helps when
married to accountability and invested in getting rid of conditions
such as the ones I am showing here on the picture where there are so
many children in this classroom, where it is impossible for even the
best trained teacher to be able to communicate effectively with these
children. This is a classroom where the children are coming from
backgrounds where English is not their first language, coming from
concentrated poverty, often difficult family situations.
So when somebody says we don't want to throw money at it, I say,
that's right. I want to target money to make sure we clean up our
dilapidated classes and schools and that we provide lower class size so
that the teachers who are willing to go into our hard-to-teach areas
will be able to have a decent chance to reach these children; to
recruit and retain teachers who come in with idealism and find
themselves in situations such as this and within a year or two are
gone.
For me, there isn't a contradiction here, as the Senator from Nevada
knows so well. We need to have the kinds of accountability that is
effective and will work but without the resources we are not going to
be successful.
We are going to find, as I have said in the past, that we are just
passing out thermometers in the midst of an epidemic. We are going to
find that everybody has a raging fever, but we don't have the resources
or the will to help them get well. We can do both. That is what this
opportunity provides.

I appreciate the concern of the Senator from Nevada. We have to have
a good debate. It is only fair, if we are asking that we invest more
dollars in education from the Federal Government, we be able to justify
the use of those dollars and we tell our constituents and our
colleagues where they will go. I have pointed out they go to helping
clean, repair, and construct schools we need. Second, they go to
reducing class size. The situation shown in this picture is
unacceptable.
We are under court order in New York City to have only certified
teachers in the classes. That sounds great, and I am for it, but in
order to have certified, qualified teachers go into a situation such as
this, we will have to make a contract with these teachers that this
situation will improve; they will find they will have a chance,
actually, to teach; otherwise, they will vote with their feet and
either leave to go to a suburban district where they are paid a lot
more, in a lot better situation, or they will leave teaching
altogether.
I am not talking about something that is anecdotal. We have research
from Project STAR in Tennessee that demonstrates children assigned to
smaller classes in grades K-3 received better grades, higher test
scores, and were less likely to drop out of school or be held back
through their entire educational careers. This is a research study that
has gone on for 15 years in the entire State of Tennessee. I applaud
the State because they made the investment to evaluate what they were
doing.
We found that the children who benefited the most were poor and
minority children. By all means, test them and find out if they are
failing. But be fair and give them a chance to succeed. That is what we
are calling for when we ask for reduced class sizes.
We know if we don't recruit teachers we will not be able to continue
teaching anybody. Right now we have a national crisis when it comes to
recruiting and retaining teachers. There isn't any more important
factor than teacher quality in improving student achievement. Yet if
you are a young teacher placed in a situation such as this, if your
classroom is a hallway, as I have seen in some schools in New York, a
closet, that makes it very difficult to teach.
I recently heard from a constituent in Farmingdale, NY, who told me
their elementary school alone needs 16 new teachers for kindergarten.
In Buffalo, 231 teachers retired last year, compared with an average of
92 retirees in each of the preceding 8 years.
We can't just mandate that school districts go out and hire
certified, qualified teachers without providing some resources to make
that possible. We tried that in New York City. The court order said
hire only certified teachers and put those certified teachers into the
classes where the kids are most at risk. So the school district went
out, hired 2,000 certified teachers, assigned them to schools as
depicted in this picture and the previous pictures, and the 2,000
certified teachers wouldn't take the job. Who can blame them? They are
certified teachers, qualified; they pass the tests; they have taken the
courses; they are assigned to a school where the conditions to teach
are impossible.
If we are going to say let's only have certified, qualified teachers,
then for goodness' sake, provide help to districts such as those I
represent so we can actually recruit and keep those certified,
qualified teachers. I strongly believe this bill should include a
teacher recruitment section. I am working with a bipartisan group to
offer an amendment to help school districts meet the demands for
certified teachers.

Let me turn now to title I. I would like to paint a picture of what
full funding for title I means for the children of New York City.
Yesterday, several of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle
came to the floor to talk about the failure of title I to improve
student learning and dismissed the idea that fully funding title I
could result in increased student achievement.
I want to be sure the American people have the facts about title I.
The real fact, as presented by the independent, nonpartisan
Congressional Research Service, is that in fiscal year 2001 Congress
provided school districts with only one-third of the resources needed
to fully serve eligible students in order to help close the achievement
gap. Even with this limited Federal investment, our school districts
have shown real gains in reading and math.
In 1999, the Council of Great City Schools found fourth and eighth
graders in urban schools boosted their performance in reading and math.
In fact, 87.5 percent of the urban school districts showed reading
gains in Title I schools and 83 percent showed math gains. Moreover,
the study found that the percentage of title I students in urban
schools below the 25th percentile had been declining over 2- and 3-year
periods while the percentage of title I students between the 25th and
50th percentile was increasing.
There are those who will still deny these facts and make the claim
that title I doesn't make a difference. I often think Washington is the
only evidence-free zone in our country. The facts are the facts. Title
I does make a difference. Imagine the results if cities such as New
York, Buffalo, Rochester, or Syracuse were able to assist all our title
I eligible students rather than just a third of them. It would mean,
for example, in New York City, we could lower the current threshold and
serve an additional 99,295 children. The city could invest in
strategies that work better. We could provide extended time initiatives
that we know make a difference with children. We could expand early
literacy intervention, and intervention strategies, have classroom
professional development for teachers.
As we look at the bill, we need to look at a full investment in title
I. It is not just a game of imagination but a real investment in
student improvement that will pay off down the road. I will support
Senator Dodd and Senator Collins in their efforts to include full
funding of title I in this bill.
Finally, let me touch on the issue of testing. In 1983, I called for
student tests, high-stake student and high-stake teacher tests. I take
a back seat to no one when it comes to using testing and other measures
of accountability to find out how well we are

[[Page S4087]]

doing and hold ourselves accountable. But let's be sure the tests are
actually going to accomplish the purpose for which they are intended.
We need to look at how children do from year to year, to help teachers
modify and individualize curriculum, and provide parents with timely
information. We have to make sure that if they take a test in the
winter, they get the results that winter, not the following fall when
the children have moved on. We have to help schools know what the
standard should be so they are not teaching to the tests but they are
trying to measure the standards they have set. And we have to help pay
for the tests.
In New York alone, it would cost $16 million to comply with these new
Federal testing requirements. Only $8 million would be provided by the
Federal Government; the other $8 million is from scarce State
resources. We need to be sure we are fair to our States. If we are
going to mandate testing, let's not make it an unfunded mandate. Let's
provide the resources needed. If we do develop and implement the tests,
we need to have the resources to ensure that our children from the most
disadvantaged circumstances can pass and excel in those tests. I think
that means smaller classrooms, modern schools, quality teachers.
As we go forward in this debate, I hope we will think hard about the
impact we will have on our children, and that we do everything we
possibly can to make sure we don't just pass a bill but we really do
provide the resources to reform education and produce better results
across our country.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. How much time remains on each side?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). Twenty-five minutes
remains on the Republican side and 22 minutes remains on the Democratic
side.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? If no time is requested, it
will be deducted from both sides equally.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for
the quorum call be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I would like to be notified when I
have taken 3 minutes because I think it is very important that we
discuss education reforms.
I think all of us have the same goal. Every one of us believes that
public education is not meeting the standards we envisioned for this
country when we established public education as the basis for
democracy. The question is, How do we do better? We have been adding
more money for education for the last 50 years, but we have not seen an
improvement in test scores or in the actual quality of education of our
children who are graduating from public schools.
There are some public schools that are terrific. Those are the
schools where parents and teachers and principals work together, where
there is an openness, where the principal welcomes the parents to be a
part of the process. But the schools that are failing are the schools
that are afraid of accountability. There are teachers who do not want
to have tests. Why don't they want to have tests? You can only assume
they are concerned that they will not pass and that their students will
not pass. That is not acceptable.
We have to have accountability. We have to have information for
parents. Parents must know which schools are failing. If those schools
are failing, we need to know how to bring them up to the higher
standards. The best way to do that is to look at other schools that are
alike in demographics, to allow them to see what the good schools with
those demographics are doing: What are they doing right? That is what
our reforms are meant to do.
We are focusing on accountability. Yes, it will hurt in some ways. It
will hurt if you fail. But wouldn't we rather have a failure early in a
school career, so we can correct it and give that child the real chance
in life? Or do we want to continue social promotions with failing
programs so the child never has the chance to reach his or her full
potential? I do not think that is what we want. We want to let the
child succeed. To do that, we need accountability. We might need
failure so we know what the problems are and we can bring them up to
standard.
That means we need to support the programs that work. We need to
reduce bureaucracy. We need to increase flexibility. We need to empower
parents. There is an absolute tie between parents who are involved and
students who are successful. That is not based on the intellectual
capacity of the student. When the parent is involved, the student does
better.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has elapsed.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I am going to yield the floor and
suggest the absence of a quorum because I have two more speakers on our
side. Until I hear they are not going to make it, I am going to reserve
their time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for
the quorum call be dispensed with.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask to be notified when we have 15
minutes left. I assume that will give me about 7 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair will do so.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I would like to talk about what the
President's education plan does. The Democrats are claiming they have
offered more spending on education. In fact, the President has proposed
an 11.5-percent increase in overall education spending for fiscal year
2002. This is an increase of $4.6 billion, to almost $54 billion next
year.
Included in this spending increase are key areas that we think will
target the young people who need the help the most. It triples funding
for children's reading programs, because we know if a child cannot read
at grade level, that is a child who is going to fail. There is no
question about it. Time after time after time, when high school
dropouts or junior high school dropouts have been talked to and
listened to, the problem is they can't read. Of course they are
frustrated if they can't read. Of course they miss the key points in a
history lesson or geography lesson or a math lesson. If they can't
read, they don't have a chance. So we are targeting the spending
increases at reading programs at the very earliest level.
That is why we want to test at the third grade level to see if a
child is falling back at the third grade, because we can catch that
child, we can save that child, if we can test at the third grade and
give the child the extra help so he or she will have the chance to read
at grade level and compete and absorb what is being given as their
educational opportunities.
A 30-percent increase is in this budget for Hispanic-serving
institutions and historically black colleges and universities. Those
are two areas that are doing great work. I have worked very hard for
Hispanic-serving institutions because I know if we put the money there
and we give them the counseling they need in those universities, we
will have good, productive citizens. Our high school dropout rate among
Hispanics is the highest of any ethnic group in our country, and that
is unacceptable. So we want to go for the Hispanic-serving institutions
and give them that extra help so they will be able to graduate their
young people into the good jobs that are available in our country.
The historically black colleges and universities do great service. I
am going to give a graduation speech this weekend at Paul Quinn
College, a historically black college that is doing a wonderful job of
educating young people. They have a program at Paul Quinn College where
the young men go out and mentor the high school students in some of the
disadvantaged areas of Dallas. It enriches both the student who is
being mentored and the mentor himself.
I see my colleague, Senator Collins, has arrived. I am going to ask
her to talk about this subject because she is one of the leading Senate
experts in

[[Page S4088]]

this education field. She is on the committee. She is making the
contributions. She knows this bill, and she knows what it can do for
public education.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, let me start by thanking my good friend
and colleague from Texas for her kind comments and for her leadership
in this area. I have enjoyed working with her on a number of
educational issues. We will be bringing one up later this week.
No endeavor is more important to our Nation's future than ensuring
that all children receive a good education. In a real sense, the future
of our country rests on the shoulders of our Nation's educators and
depends upon the decisions we make today on how best to educate our
leaders of tomorrow. I believe that this comprehensive education reform
bill may well be the most important legislation the Senate debates this
year. I am hopeful that we will pass a bill that keeps the
inspirational promise made by President Bush ``to leave no child
behind.''

In many cases, education is the difference between prosperity and
poverty, hope and despair, dreams fulfilled and lost opportunities.
Between Silicon Valley and Wall Street, many Americans still live in
the shadows of the new prosperity. Education is the best, perhaps the
only way, to close the every-widening economic gap in America. Indeed,
the economic gap in America is largely an education gap. And, education
is the best way for us to stoke the fire of our nation's economic
engine.
The President deserves tremendous credit for making education his top
priority and for setting a goal that inspires us all. This should not
be, and I hope will not be, a partisan debate, but rather a bipartisan
discussion on how we can best achieve the goal of leaving no child
behind. I am convinced that, working together, we can help states,
communities, local school boards, educators, and parents improve our
public schools significantly.
The Better Education for Students and Teachers, or BEST, Act is an
excellent start. The BEST Act demands a great deal from all of us. It
would require parents, teachers, principals, superintendents, school
board members, state legislators, governors, and federal officials to
work together to ensure that our children reach high standards of
academic excellence. It would give our schools more flexibility in
spending federal funds while holding them accountable for what really
counts: improved student achievement. The legislation requires schools
to answer the fundamental question: ``Are our children learning?''--
rather than, ``Was that federal paperwork completed correctly?'' It
changes the focus from paperwork and process to results and
accountability.
During the past four years, I have visited more than 60 schools all
over the State of Maine, from Kittery at the southern tip, to Jackman
in the west, Rockland on the coast, and Fort Kent in the north. I have
seen firsthand the excellent work of Maine dedicated teachers. The
quality of instruction taking place in Maine schools is impressive, and
it is producing results. Maine's scores on national tests prove that
our State's public schools are among the best in the nation. Moreover,
Maine's public schools strive to provide a good education for all of
our children regardless of their family income or where they live in
our State.
A report issued last year by the Council of Chief State School
Officers shows that, low-income students in Maine are performing nearly
as well as the average of public school students in our state. Yet even
in Maine, nearly one in four students has not acquired a level of
literacy that is acceptable by most standards. Even in our strongest
states, too many children are being left behind!
Eighteen years ago, the landmark study, ``A Nation at Risk,'' warned
of declining performance in American schools and turned the nation's
attention toward reforming public education.
Today, however, too many schools, particularly in our inner cities,
continue to fail to provide a solid education to their students.
Although the United States spends more than $660 billion a year on
education, nearly 60 percent of our low-income fourth graders cannot
read at a basic level.
The Federal Government takes a secondary role to States and
communities in terms of funding and overseeing our public schools, and
that is how it should be. The Federal role is, nevertheless, important,
particularly for helping disadvantaged students.
Unfortunately, Washington has not always been helpful, nor has it
been successful in achieving that goal. After spending $125 billion of
title I funding for disadvantaged students over 25 years, there is
little to suggest that we are making progress in narrowing the
achievement gap. Fewer than a third of fourth graders can read at grade
level. If you look more closely at test scores, over time, you will
notice the better students improving their performance while the worse
students are getting worse. You also see a persistent achievement gap
between students from a disadvantaged families and their more affluent
peers. Although title I was created to put economically challenged
students on even ground with their peers, recent data from the National
Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) prove that the program has not
achieved the goal of narrowing the gap in achievement.
A state-by-state analysis of scores from the National Assessment of
Educational Progress, the only test to measure student achievement
nationwide, reveals troubling statistics that should give us pause,
and that should cause us to ask what we should do differently. Many of
us believe that more money and more resources are needed, but we can't
pour more money into a failed system. We need to increase the dollars,
but we also need to demand change.

For example, let's look at the scores. There has been virtually no
change since 1992 in fourth grade reading scores. As you can see from
this chart, the line is flat despite the increase in expenditures over
this 30-year period.
The analysis found that only two states--Georgia and Massachusetts--
reduced the gap between white students and black or Hispanic students
in fourth-grade math. No state did so in eighth grade, leaving gaps as
wide as 56 points in Washington, DC, and 35 points in New Jersey. In
reading, only Delaware reduced the gap.
Overall, only 32% of fourth-graders were deemed to be ``proficient''
or better in reading in 2000. Nearly four in 10 students nationally
continue to read below a basic level, meaning they have serious
problems understanding even simple texts.
Sixty-three percent of African-American fourth-graders, 60 percent of
children in poverty, and 47 percent of children in urban schools fell
``below basic'' in their skills, meaning they have less than even a
``partial mastery'' of the material.
Again, look how flat these scores are, whether you are looking at the
4th graders, the 8th graders, or the 12th graders. This is the system
that cries out for change. We have increased the amount of money we are
spending. I support more investment in education. But we need to face
the reality that what we have been doing in far too many cases has not
been working. It has not focused on improving student achievement or on
ensuring that every child gets a good education.
The Federal Government has spent a great deal of money on education
programs over the past 35 years without a great deal to show for it.
These statistics show that a new approach is needed, and a part of that
new approach needs to be an increased focus on reading and literacy.
These results are particularly distressing given that researchers in
recent years have reached a consensus on the best practices to teach
reading. The research, however, has yet to find its way into many
classrooms.
This is one reason why the Reading First Initiative in S. 1 is so
very important. We need to put proven teaching methods into the hands
of our educators. We know that if our classroom teachers are not
offered extensive training in the area of literacy, then many of our
children will not learn to read to the best of their ability. The
Reading First Initiative makes professional development a top priority
and it establishes an early reading intervention program that, I
believe, will make a real difference.
I have worked extensively with the President and the Department of
Education in this area, and I am very

[[Page S4089]]

pleased with the results that we have come up with. Earlier this year,
I introduced the Early Reading Intervention Act to address the urgent
need to improve reading skills. The reading portion of the BEST Act is
a synthesis of the President's plan and my legislation.
It simply does not make sense to test a child's reading ability for
the first time in third grade and discover the child's reading skills
are far below his or her peers, when, at that point, the chances of the
student learning to read at grade level by the end of elementary school
are less than 25 percent. Yet, that is what occurs far too often with
far too many of our children. By contrast, if a child is tested and
receives help in kindergarten or first grade, that child has a 90 to 95
percent chance of becoming a good reader. Since reading is learned more
easily and effectively during the early grades, it makes sense to
identify reading problems and language-based learning disabilities
early when intervention can make a difference.
Our goal--the goal set forth by the President--must be for all
students to read by the third grade. By achieving this goal, we can
decrease the number of students who will need special education and
ensure that every child--all of our students--have the necessary tools
to handle the curriculum in the future years.

An investment of $5 billion to ensure that every child in America can
read by the third grade is a serious and long-term commitment. It is a
significant first step toward improving our Nation's failing report
card for the best way to ensure that no child is left behind is to
ensure that every child knows how to read.
I am also very pleased that the BEST Act contains the Rural Education
Initiative, which I introduced with my colleagues, Senators Conrad,
Gregg, Enzi, Hutchinson, Roberts, Dorgan, Burns, Hagel, Allard, and
Thomas. This important legislation will give small rural school
districts more flexibility by allowing them to combine small,
categorical grant programs into a single grant that can be used to
target local needs. It will also provide these rural schools with
supplemental funds to compensate them for their inability to compete
with larger school districts for a number of Federal education grants.
As I look forward to the important education debate ahead, I see
great opportunity. I see a constructive debate not about whether the
Federal Government has a role to play in educating our youth but about
how it can best promote excellence in all of our public schools and for
all of our children. I see a President with a vision for how we can
reshape and reinvigorate our educational system and a commitment to
doing what it takes to help our students succeed. And I see Senators,
all of whom have listened to those who know best--our parents, our
teachers, our school board members and our administrators back home who
have ideas on how to make the BEST Act even better.
Now is the time for us to lay a new foundation for the education of
America's youth. It is time for us to seize this tremendous opportunity
and to unite behind the inspiring goal the President has set forth of
leaving no child behind.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. JEFFORDS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time under the control of the majority has
expired.
Mr. JEFFORDS. The minority manager has offered me 5 minutes of his
time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Vermont is recognized.
Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, first of all, I commend the Senator from
Maine for not only her excellent presentation but for her work on the
committee. She is an invaluable member of our committee. I want to give
her the accolades she deserves for what she has done to help us during
this difficult time of trying to define how we can best improve the
educational capacity of our Nation.
Today, the Senate begins its consideration of the Better Education
for Students and Teachers Act. The BEST Act is an opportunity to
combine our efforts with those of President Bush to guide the course of
the No. 1 issue facing our Nation today: the education of our children.
The BEST Act represents a bipartisan blueprint for meaningful education
reform. We are putting forward an elementary and secondary education
initiative that provides the necessary tools for every child to receive
a quality education.
The BEST Act will strengthen accountability across the board to
improve student performance, expand assessment programs so that parents
and schools will have an accurate measurement of how well their
children are learning, provide the funds necessary to prepare, recruit,
and train highly qualified teachers, develop reading programs to ensure
that all students will be able to read by the third grade, create
partnerships for States and colleges and universities to strengthen K-
12 math and science education, and provide for emerging technology
activities that will boost student achievement.

BEST builds upon current law and requires States to create a single
accountability system which will provide the mechanisms for moving all
students toward proficiency. States must assess students in grades 3-8
annually in mathematics, reading and science. The results of these
assessments will provide parents and the public an effective, highly
visible measure of success and failure. Just as parents receive report
cards to see how their children are performing in school, they will now
be able to get report cards to see how the school is performing for
their children.
If schools are not measuring up to the standards, BEST requires
States, local education agencies, and schools to improve overall
performance. These tough, new accountability standards are the
cornerstone of BEST.
BEST creates new programs to help our children learn to read at an
early age. These programs are Reading First and Early Reading First.
President Bush has set as a goal for the Nation that all students be
proficient readers by the end of the third grade. This is critically
important. An engineer will tell you that without a deep and strong
foundation, you cannot build a tower. An educator will tell you that
without strong and deeply rooted reading skills, you cannot reach a
high academic level. Young students who cannot read--with speed,
accuracy and understanding--are likely to fall further behind from
their peers in reading ability and in all other subjects. Research has
proven that the sills which make learning to read possible develop at a
much earlier age. The Early Reading First demonstration program in BEST
will provide preschool-age children who are 3 and 4 years old with the
opportunity to gain the important language and pre-literacy skills
identified by rigorous research.
BEST also recognizes that an investment in better teachers is an
investment in our Nation's young people. Children can make greater
academic gains if they have a knowledgeable and caring teacher leading
their classroom. The bill takes a flexible approach that allows States
and educational agencies to adopt successful models that will best meet
their needs. Previous programs are combined to lessen the burden on
schools and States. BEST puts an emphasis on innovative professional
development program to maximize opportunities for teachers. At the same
time, the bill requires professional development to be tied to
effective strategies for increasing teacher performance and student
achievement. BEST demands strong accountability in combination with
effective approaches to get the best from our teachers and students.
Student achievement in the United States has fallen behind many other
countries in the areas of math and science. BEST includes important new
initiatives designed to improve upon performance here.
An enormous improvement in math and science education at the K
through 12 level is necessary if today's students want good jobs and
the U.S. wants to stay competitive in the world economy. If American
students are not prepared to fill high-tech jobs that require advanced
math and science skills, then those jobs will go elsewhere or people
will come from other countries to fill them. To achieve this, BEST will
allow for the establishment of math and science partnerships between
institutions of higher learning, States, and

[[Page S4090]]

school districts. These partnerships will help our teachers become more
effective, improve student achievement, and help keep our economy
strong and vital.

BEST will also provide assistance to help eliminate the digital
divide in the nation's schools. It is very important that we not
separate technology from learning. Technology must not be used for it's
own sake. Technology must be used to improve student outcomes. BEST
contains strong accountability provisions to ensure that this occurs.
We are faced with an opportunity to do what is right for the children
of our country. We have a chance to improve their education, and to
improve their lives. This bill increases accountability in the
education delivery system on all fronts. It provides strong new
assessments to ensure that all of our children are well served by their
schools. It authorizes the necessary resources required to have first
rate educational opportunities available to all children in this
nation.
Mr. President, we are starting today on bringing forward the
President's proposal which is the cornerstone of the future of this
Nation's ability to improve its education. I praise the President for
bringing this very excellent bill forward. We have worked hard on it on
the committee. I am confident we will pass it and that it will become
law.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Voinovich). The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak
until someone from the Democratic side comes to reclaim their time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman of
the committee that is going to bring forth the education bill. I am
very optimistic we are going to have a bill. I thank him for working so
hard in a very bipartisan way to produce a bill. The reforms are pretty
well agreed to. Both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are coming
together to say: We need a change. Business as usual in our education
system is not going to cut it anymore. There are too many children
falling behind and nobody in this country wants that to happen. Every
one of us knows our democracy depends on a well-educated populace.
Most people would agree that the variations in the standards of our
public schools across the country mean we are not succeeding in the
mandate for a quality public education system. That is why Chairman
Jeffords and Senator Kennedy, Senator Collins, Senator Frist, Senator
Gregg, Senator Hutchinson of Arkansas, Senator Sessions of Alabama, and
Senator Enzi have worked so hard to make sure this bill does not fall
by the wayside.
I am a little frustrated that it has taken so long to get this bill
to the floor. After all, this is a bill we have debated before. We
actually debated it last session. It was not passed. We are back again.
Surely there are divisions, but let's get the divisions out there.
Let's get them out there. Let's make the decisions and let's reform
public education so that every child in our country will have the
opportunity to reach his or her full potential with a public education.
That is our goal.
Mr. President, I ask the Senator from Oregon if his State has a
testing program with accountability that would be something we would
want to have as a nation. Has he had experience with accountability in
the State of Oregon?

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, we do have testing. I do not
think it is on the scale that we are contemplating in this bill.
What I hear, as I travel the State of Oregon, over and over again
from parents is: We would like to give more resources to education. We
would like more accountability for that. We would like better results
for that.
I commend the Senator from Texas and others on the committee, Senator
Collins, and our friends on the Democratic side who are focusing on
some very significant reforms in this bill. If I can cut through the
arguments I am hearing, as I have listened and presided today, often we
tend to confuse what we are about, whether we are about developing a
system of employment for adults or whether we are about developing a
system for educating children. If we can keep the focus on educating
children, there are all kinds of things that become possible in terms
of testing, not just kids but teachers as well, to make sure we are
delivering results, that we are giving parents more choices so we give
their children more chances.
In a nutshell, that is what I want to vote for: more resources but
also more reform. If we do that, the American people will look at our
work as Republicans and Democrats and thank us for generations to come.
There is not a single thing we could do more significantly for the
future of our country, for the parents and their children, than to
provide more resources and to demand more reform. We keep our
stewardship then.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. I thank the Senator from Oregon. That is why
President Bush has worked so hard to make this a priority to say that
there is nothing more important we can do than to provide a quality
public education for every one of the young people in our country.
I ask the Senator from Oregon if he would like the floor. If so, I am
happy to yield.
Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I gave my speech because of the
question of the Senator from Texas. I thank her for that opportunity.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. I thank the Senator from Oregon. I am pleased that
he, too, is committed to reform. All of us know that if we are going to
give every child a chance, we are going to have to make some changes.
And some of those are going to be hard changes, there is no question
about it.
Some of the people who are in the system today don't want testing.
They don't like testing. I can understand that. But what is the
alternative to accountability? What is the alternative to finding out
what is wrong in our system?
If we can't admit that we have some weaknesses in the system and try
to correct them, we will never get any better. What we want to do is
find the weaknesses in the system and correct them while there is still
a chance.
Let's correct the reading weaknesses in the third grade rather than
in junior high school because we will have wasted years if we are not
able to give a child a chance with the full capability to read in the
third grade. Instead, if we wait until junior high school, we have
wasted 6 years--6 years. Why would we do that?
It is time to take the bold steps. The President has asked us to do
so. We have a bipartisan, general consensus in Congress, and I think it
is time for us to act. I don't see any reason to start saying, well, if
we amend one bill, then maybe we are going to have a substitute and
what would that do to the amendment? Come on, can't we figure that out?
Can't we say that all of the amendments passed by this Senate will go
on to the final bill after the amendments are made, and if there is a
substitute, they would go to that substitute? That is not rocket
science. If we can't figure that out, then we have no business being
here.
So I think it is time for us to act. We are wasting time. We have
been talking about going to the education bill now for a week and 2
days. We are going to lose another day today if we don't start
immediately to actually debate this bill. I hope that we will do that.
I want to outline a few more of the points of the bill, and I think
this is a very important one. The plan is going to allow students who
are trapped in failing schools to leave those schools by using title I
funds to transfer to a higher performing public school or a private
school if that is passed. I would like to see that because I want a
parent to have all of the options. I don't want only parents who can
afford private schools for their children to have the best. I want
every parent to have the best. What could be more frustrating for a
parent than to see their child in a school that is not performing and
know that that child is never going to have the full chance in life and
the parent can't change the school because the parent can't afford a
private school or a parochial school. Why would we do that? We have the
alternative.

[[Page S4091]]

In addition, education savings accounts will be increased to $5,000
and expanded from K through 12, not just college anymore.
We also include additional dollars for States to use to control
violence and other crimes in schools because there is no doubt that in
our country, if children are not safe and secure in their schools, they
are not going to have the optimum learning environment. No doubt about
it, they must have secure schools and drug-free schools.
Parents will be given a greater flexibility for their child's best
interest. School districts will be given greater flexibility. This will
be accomplished by decreasing administrative costs and paperwork. When
I do townhall meetings in my State, teachers come in and say: Get rid
of the paperwork. Let me teach. Let me spend my time with the students
finding out what they need and helping them learn.
One teacher came to a townhall meeting that I had with a stack of
papers this big and said that is what she had been working on all week.
Instead of being in the classroom or counseling children after class,
she was filling out forms this thick. That is not what is going to
improve public education. It is the attention a teacher can give to
children, to assess what their weaknesses are and bring them up to
speed.
We are going to provide technology assistance, and math and science
instruction will be reemphasized, as well as basic literacy.
Partnerships between schools and higher education institutions will be
encouraged, and new Federal initiatives such as Reading First K through
12, and Early Reading First Preschool will offer States incentives to
implement rigorous literacy education.

We have solved a problem in my home State of Texas. The University of
North Texas has an accelerated math course for high school math
prodigies, so that high school students with math aptitude can go to
the University of North Texas and take college courses and get their
high school degree with accelerated capabilities to go into college.
This is so that you don't hold back the students who are already beyond
high school competency. You give the child a chance to grow at his or
her level and competency capability. It is quite exciting. I would love
to see that happen all over our country, where an innovative, higher
education institution would offer programs for high school students. I
hope we will be able to encourage that by passing the bill that is
before us.
We are also going to try to help teachers help themselves. They
deserve recognition and assistance. The President's plan will allow
teachers to make tax deductions of up to $400 to help defray costs
associated with out-of-pocket classroom expenses. I don't know a
teacher that doesn't spend money from his or her own pocket to try to
help the child get the tools the child needs in class, the crayons, or
a ruler, or a tablet to write on, because the child comes to school
without the proper school supplies. Many times, the child's family
doesn't have the money for the school supplies. The teacher digs in her
pocket and puts the money out and buys the supplies for the kids. That
teacher does it because that teacher is dedicated. But we want to help
defray those out-of-pocket costs. We want to give those young people
the opportunity to have everything they need but not at the personal
expense of the teachers. We don't pay teachers enough for the work they
do anyway. The last thing we should expect is for them to defray the
cost of their young people's school supplies out of their own
pocketbooks.
Mr. President, as I close today, I want to say that there is nothing
more important that we will do in this session of Congress than to
reform public education, to make sure that public education gives every
child the opportunity to reach his or her full potential. Yes, we think
private schools are great and, yes, parochial schools are great, and
they are a part of the option that a parent might have. But what we are
responsible for is to make sure that every child has access to a public
education that is quality and that competes with any other school in
the world. That is what will keep our democracy strong, and that is
what will fulfill our responsibility as Members of the U.S. Senate.
I can't wait to get to this bill because I have some amendments I
want to offer that would provide creativity for our school districts,
that would try to encourage more people to come into the classroom with
expertise in an area--maybe not a teaching degree but someone with an
expertise. I want to offer single-sex school classes in public schools
as another option, which is now available in private schools but not in
public schools to any great degree. I am going to talk about those
amendments later.
I want to get on to this bill so that we can pass these reforms and
so that the next school year that starts in September will be a school
year that is different from the past 25 years and will have more
options and more creativity and more capabilities for the young people
of our country to excel.
I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I join my colleague in entreating to get
this bill moving. I am proud to serve on the committee. It is badly
needed.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. I respond to the Senator from Virginia and mention
that he, as a very senior member of the Senate, asked to go on the
Education Committee because of his interest in improving our public
schools. I appreciate he made that a priority. His contribution is very
much one that has helped this process this year.
Mr. WARNER. If I may say to my colleague, at the time our conference
was allocating that last seat, I knew of the interest of the Senator
from Texas. She extended to this Senator certain courtesies I shall not
forget, enabling me to have that as my third committee. I thank the
Senator.

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