[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 76 (Tuesday, June 5, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5809-S5811]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            PUBLIC EDUCATION

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, sometime later this afternoon we will take 
up legislation on which we have been working for the better part of the 
last month; that is, to define as best we can the role of the Federal 
Government with respect to public education in this country.
  There are a number of points about which Democrats and Republicans or 
independents disagree. There are also a number of areas around which we 
can rally and around which we can agree. I want to take just a moment 
to address some of those points.
  In this country, the role of the Federal Government for the last 30 
or 36 years has been really to level the playing field for young people 
from especially disadvantaged backgrounds to make sure they have an 
opportunity to be successful when they walk into kindergarten at the 
age of 5. We do that through programs that provide nutritional support 
for children; programs to try to ensure that healthy babies are born; 
to try to ensure that children who can benefit from Head Start have a 
chance to be in that prekindergarten program; to try to ensure that 
children in the elementary years and beyond have the opportunity to get 
extra help in reading, if they need it; if they need extra help in 
mathematics, they will get that assistance, too; to try to ensure that 
we recruit some of the best and brightest young people to be our 
teachers; and to better ensure that not only do those teachers go to 
the wealthiest school districts in our country but they go to those 
districts in which the need is the greatest.
  The Federal Government has for almost four decades sought to ensure 
that all children who enter our schools, whether they are in Delaware 
or the other 49 States, have a real chance to be successful.
  There are 49 States in America today which have established rigorous 
academic standards, spelling out clearly what they expect students to 
know and be able to do. More than half the States today offer or 
require many of their students to take tests to measure the progress of 
those students towards their State's academic standards in math, 
science, English, social studies, or a variety of other subjects. 
Almost half the States in America today have worked to put into place 
accountability systems. By that, we simply mean consequences for 
students who do well or do not do well; for schools that do well or do 
not do well; for educators who do well or who do not do well.
  I think we agree here in our Nation's Capital between the Congress, 
across the aisle, and with the President that there is an important 
role for the Federal Government to play.
  We agree that it is important for the Federal Government to infuse 
more resources into our schools. We agree that it is appropriate that 
those schools adopt rigorous academic standards--not standards we set 
in Washington but standards adopted in the 50 States--in core academic 
subjects such as math, science, English, and social studies.
  We agree, first of all, on the idea of more resources. Some would 
have enormous resources and others more modest. We agree on the premise 
that more resources need to be invested.
  Second, we agree on the need to invest those resources with more 
flexibility for the States, with greater flexibility for school 
districts and the schools.
  This past week, during the recess, I was in several schools in 
Delaware. I will mention one of them, a little elementary school in the 
town of Seaford, DE, in the southwestern part of our State, roughly 100 
miles from here--not even that as the crow flies.
  In meeting with the school principal and a number of the teachers, 
they have a host coordinator who helps students succeed. That is a 
person who coordinates the efforts of 50 mentors in that school. That 
is a person who is there as a paid staff member from the Delaware 
department of--we call it the kids department. It is the department 
that represents families and provides services to families.
  One of the things I heard in that visit is something I want to share 
with my colleagues today. This school takes money, raised by local 
school property taxes--they are local funds, and they receive State 
money and Federal money--and what they are about is trying to raise 
student achievement so that all the kids in that school will be able to 
read at grade level, write at grade level, do math at grade level, do 
science at grade level, or do better than that.
  I was struck when I heard how West Seaford Elementary is using extra 
time/money to be able to provide the resources and the help that kids 
need to read better or do math better. I was struck how they are using 
title I money with some of the flexibility legislation that this body 
gave them under the education flexibility legislation adopted roughly 2 
years ago.
  I was struck to hear how the State's State employee from the kids 
department works at that school every day as the go-between for the 
school and a family or families in crisis. This is a family crisis 
therapist who knows the social service network and knows how to take a 
family and a child who is hurting and get them the help they need.
  The point I am trying to make is this--I have taken a long time to 
make it. When we set rigorous academic standards for schools--when we 
say to them: We expect you and your kids to reach those standards; we 
are going to give you more money--when we give them that money with 
more flexibility, we have a right to demand results. The States have a 
right to demand results. The school boards and the parents have a right 
to demand results.
  So what we have is a trilogy, if you will. There are more resources 
targeted to where they are needed, in programs that work. The money is 
given more flexibly to school districts which are empowered to use that 
money more flexibly, with literally teams of teachers, administrators, 
and parents deciding: Do we need another school counselor or do we need 
another reading specialist? Do we need to put a paraprofessional in a 
classroom, or a number of them? Or do we need to hire more teachers? Do 
we need to have a coordinator for a mentoring program or do we need 
to put that money into hiring a new science teacher?

  Those are the kinds of decisions where I think, more often than not, 
schools will make the right decision. We have to give them that 
flexibility.
  The fourth point on which I think we agree is that we should empower 
parents to have greater decisionmaking authority in the education of 
their children. There has been a lot of debate in this Chamber this 
year and in past years that part of what we ought to do is to give a 
voucher. They can take that voucher and send their children to a 
public, private, or parochial school. We are not going to do that this 
year. I understand it is being done on a limited demonstration basis, 
and it ought to continue in those places. There are other ways to 
empower parents to make choices for their children and they involve 
public schools. I want to mention two of them today.
  One of those is public school choice. The other is the establishment 
of charter schools. I will start with the charter schools first. 
Charter schools are public schools. Charter schools are not private 
schools. They are not parochial schools. Charter schools are public 
schools. They are public schools in my State and in 35 or so other 
States, where the faculty, the administration, and the parents have 
been uniquely empowered to harness the energy of that education staff, 
to harness the energy and creativity of the parents, the 
administrators, and the community, to raise the level of achievement 
for the students.
  They are given, in some cases, less money, at least for brick and 
mortar costs for their schools, than our other traditional public 
schools. In many

[[Page S5810]]

States they are given roughly the same amount of money to educate each 
child, at least in operating funds, as other public schools enjoy. But 
some amazing things have happened in charter schools in my State. One 
of them has failed and was closed after 1 year. The rest have not.
  One of the schools, the charter school in Wilmington--the first 
charter school created with partnerships with a number of our major 
companies--has had the best high school results on the Delaware State 
tests of all 29 public high schools in our State for the last 2 or 3 
years in a row.
  We measure student progress in reading, writing, and math. If you 
look at the percentage of students at the Wilmington charter school who 
have a disadvantaged background, who are eligible for free or reduced-
price lunch, it is under 20 percent, maybe even under 10 percent. It is 
a relatively middle-class, upper middle-class school. It attracts 
students from throughout northern Delaware.
  There is another charter school in Wilmington, DE, in the middle of 
the projects called the East Side Charter School. The East Side Charter 
School does not have a 10 or 15 or 20 percent rate of poverty. Eighty-
three percent of the students there are there on free or reduced-price 
lunches. It has the highest level of poverty of any school in our 
State. Yet the students who go to that school come early and they stay 
late. My sons will be finishing up their schooling this school year 
this coming Friday, June 8, a day to celebrate in our household.
  Over at the East Side Charter School they do not finish on June 8. 
They do not finish on June 18 or June 28. They will be going well into 
July. Kids going to East Side Charter School not only start early and 
go late but they have a longer school year. They also wear school 
uniforms. The children's parents are asked to sign something like a 
contract of mutual responsibility where they agree to be part of their 
child's education, to give something back in terms of parental 
voluntarism at that school during the course of the year. The teachers 
and the administrators are freed up to be creative and innovative in 
ways that sometimes do not occur in some of our traditional public 
schools. They work in teams in ways that do not always happen in other 
schools, public or private.
  Last year, when the State of Delaware gave its annual Delaware State 
math tests--we test kids in almost 200 public schools; testing them in 
reading, writing, and math--there was one public school in Delaware in 
which every child tested in math met or exceeded the State's standards 
in mathematics. It was the East Side Charter School.
  If, in the East Side Charter School, with the highest incidence of 
poverty in my little State, every child can meet or exceed our State's 
standards in math, we can educate every child in this country to meet 
their State's standards in math or reading or writing or other 
subjects.
  We have to be smart enough to invest the resources; we have to be 
smart enough to make sure that schools have the flexibility to use 
those resources; we have to demand results; and we have to empower 
parents and teachers to be creative and innovative. Not every parent in 
our State chooses for their child to go to a charter school. The number 
of charter schools is growing and is playing an important role in our 
State.
  Unfortunately, I would like to say, the charter schools in Delaware, 
and most other States, don't get the kind of capital support for brick 
and mortar for building a charter school or upgrading a charter school 
or renovating a charter school that inures to students in regular 
public schools. That is not the case. For those who have wanted to 
start a charter school in my State and in most States, they have to go 
out and borrow money, sometimes from a bank. Unlike a traditional 
public school which borrows money, the interest is tax free, which 
lowers the interest cost for those traditional public schools, when a 
charter school goes out and borrows money for its school, the interest 
on that loan is not tax free. The interest on that loan is taxable. The 
interest rate is higher.

  The State of Delaware issues bonds from time to time. We issue bonds 
not just for capital projects for the State, for roads and prisons and 
health facilities and other things, parks, but we also issue tax-exempt 
bonds to help raise the money for our public schools.
  The State of Delaware provides anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of the 
capital costs for building and renovating schools in my State. When a 
charter school wants to go out and raise the money for its brick and 
mortar needs, the State of Delaware doesn't issue bonds. It does not 
pay 60 percent or 80 percent or even 6 percent of the capital costs for 
the charter schools. The same is true in almost every other State where 
there is a charter school.
  Later during the course of the debate--not today but later this or 
next week--Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and I will offer an 
amendment that says, given the kinds of results we are seeing in 
charter schools in our States and other places, maybe there is an 
appropriate role for the Federal Government in leveling the playing 
field a little bit for capital costs for charter schools.
  The other topic I want to discuss is public school choice. We 
introduced, statewide in Delaware, public school choice 4 or 5 years 
ago. Today any parent can elect to send their child to a public school 
not on their feeder pattern. We choose the public schools that our two 
sons attend in Delaware. Other States are moving to public school 
choice as well.
  In S. 1, the legislation we will be taking up in a few minutes, there 
are real consequences for schools that fail to make significant 
improvement for all kinds of students: rich, poor, male, female, 
disabled, nondisabled. We expect real improvement, real progress toward 
the academic standards those States have adopted. For States where a 
school fails for 4 years in a row to make real progress toward their 
academic standards, there are consequences which include providing real 
public school choice with transportation for those children in that 
failing school, allowing that school to be turned into a charter 
school, turning that school over to the private sector or the State has 
to take over the operation of the school. Yet we don't provide anywhere 
in our legislation help to the States, advice or assistance, technical 
assistance or otherwise, on how, if you have never had an experience 
with public school choice, you all of a sudden put in place a public 
school choice system in your State. Or if you have never started 
charter schools or your charter schools are struggling to get started, 
how do you help them get up and running so they can mirror the success 
stories I have talked about here today in Delaware?
  Again, Senator Gregg and I will be offering an amendment later in the 
debate which would provide some help to States that haven't been 
thinking about public school choice but are going to have to under the 
legislation we are going to adopt and States that, frankly, haven't 
given any help on the brick and mortar capital side to charter schools. 
My State is as guilty as others that need to start doing that, 
particularly if we want to invest our money in what works.

  I will close with this: There are a lot of important issues we will 
consider, whether the Republicans are in the majority or the Democrats. 
The most important thing we are endeavoring to do in this country today 
is to raise the level of achievement of our students. Those kids in our 
schools will some day in many cases go on to college. In most cases 
they will go on to work. It is important that when they reach that 
college or when they reach the employer or employers for whom they will 
be working, they have the ability to read, the ability to write, to 
think, to do math, and to use technology so they and their employers 
can be successful, and they can have the kind of life they want for 
themselves and their families.
  It is not the role of the Federal Government to run our schools. That 
is the job of the local folks in the States and the schools and the 
school districts. Our job is to level the playing field. We have an 
opportunity, through the legislation we are again taking up this 
afternoon, to try to level that playing field a little bit and to 
invest the resources needed in our schools, particularly for kids 
struggling from disadvantaged backgrounds, to provide those resources 
more flexibly, to say, when we provide more money with greater 
flexibility, we want results; we are going to hold folks accountable 
for results, and

[[Page S5811]]

finally, to say we want to give parents more authority, to empower 
parents to choose more often than not the public schools they attend.
  I will close with this: If I needed any proof that public school 
choice was going to work, I got it, literally, the week after I signed, 
as Governor of Delaware, public school choice legislation into law. I 
was in a forum where there were a number of school administrators 
talking amongst themselves. During the break, I overheard one school 
administrator say to another, about public school choice: If we don't 
offer what parents want for their kids, they will simply send their 
children to another school.
  I said to myself: He has it. In our State, if we are not offering in 
school A what parents want for their kids, if they are offering it in 
school B, the child can go to school B and the money follows the child. 
The State appropriation follows the child. It infuses competition and 
market forces into our schools and other schools attempting public 
school choice in ways we never imagined possible. That is the 
potential. That is the hope of part of what we are doing today, this 
week, and later this month.
  I ask my colleagues, as we address the consequences for schools going 
forward in the future, if we are serious about empowering them to do 
public school choice, if we are serious about making charter schools a 
reality, keep in mind the legislation and the amendment to be proposed 
by Senator Gregg and myself.
  I yield the floor and 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. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. CARPER. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business 
for 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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