[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 172 (Wednesday, December 12, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H9764-H9771]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
H.R. 1, NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT, A GOOD BEGINNING WHICH REQUIRES ADDED
RESOURCES TO ASSURE AN EDUCATED POPULACE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Boozman). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is
recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow or the next day we will have on the
floor the long-awaited H.R. 1, Leave No Child Behind Act, an education
bill initiated by the President shortly after he was sworn in,
inaugurated.
It is a landmark event. It is a history-making event. We should all
look forward to it. It is an example of intensive bipartisan
cooperation. It does break new ground, and we should see it as a
commencement, a second commencement.
Lyndon Johnson began the Federal role in elementary and secondary
education more than 40 years ago when he initiated the first Elementary
and Secondary Education Assistance Act, primarily designed to help poor
school districts, poor children in poor school districts. This is a
continuation of that, a reauthorization of it; but I think it has many
elements which will move us forward. It has a lot of bipartisan
agreement.
We have moved from a situation which existed about 8 years ago where
one party was calling for the abolishment of the Department of
Education, and I think the Contract with America set forth by Speaker
Gingrich called for an end to the Federal role in coordinating
education. We had a very intense year of debate on that; and we fought
an attempt to cut school lunch programs, we fought an attempt to cut
Head Start. It was the depths of bipartisan conflict on education.
Fortunately, the American people let their voices be heard, and they
made it clear through the polls and through the focus groups that they
considered education to be a high priority, and they wanted more
Federal participation in education.
By 1996, in the process of reauthorizing or setting forth a new
budget, the end of 1995, actually, the party in power here in the
House, the new party in power, the Republican Party, saw the light, and
suddenly they began to support the Federal role in education. The
appropriation process I think indicated that when we got a big
increase, a more than $4 billion increase in education as a result of
the majority Republicans responding to the will of the people. It would
have been very disastrous if they had not recognized it and stopped the
call for the dismantling of the Department of Education.
So we are at a point now where the perception of the public,
according to recent polls, is that Republicans and Democrats are pretty
much the same in terms of their support for Federal involvement in
education, in terms of their support for education. Whether I agree
with that perception or not, that is the perception of the public. This
bill shows that the two parties can reach agreement about the same
thing, and it is a positive achievement. But in my opinion, it ought to
be a second commencement.
Now we agree on the basic role, and now we set some basic new
directions where I think one of the parties can certainly distinguish
itself at this point by recognizing the great need for more resources.
I hope it is my party.
I hope we wake up to the fact that all that we have done is
important, and nobody should minimize the importance of the bill that
will be on the floor, but the great flaw in the bill is that it lacks
resources. It does not have the resources to do the job that has to be
done.
Let us just stop for a moment and consider some of the activities
that are taking place in this first year of the 107th Congress. We have
a monumental challenge. September 11 certainly heightened and escalated
the nature of the challenge, but we had a challenge already in terms of
a faltering economy.
Things have been happening here which require some very difficult
decisions to be made. In this democracy of ours, keeping the economy
going, reacting to a new kind of threat, waging a new kind of war
requires an educated population.
I think governance of any modern industrialized society, that is far
more difficult than nuclear physics. The governance of a modern society
requires first of all an educated population. The most important
resource we can have is an educated population.
So the achievement of Congress, the two parties, in reaching the
agreement that has been reached that will be on the floor here is not
just a passing matter. Education is not just an ancillary kind of
operation, off to the side, ancillary because, after all, the
Constitution does specifically say that the Federal Government is not
responsible for education, that it is the responsibility of the States
and local governments. We have participated sort of as a stimulus and a
catalyst to make things happen faster and better, but we are not really
responsible. We do not understand it to be a major function of the
Federal Government.
I thoroughly disagree with this, and I think that in our new
commencement
[[Page H9765]]
of the Federal effort, commencement number two, in my opinion, that
this bill could be, we ought to take hold of the fact that education is
at the very heart of our effort to maintain our society and to move to
the point where we can master the complexities of a society which is
really moving toward kind of a cybercivilization, even if it did not
have these threats that are very real, the organized terrorist threat
that has clearly stated objectives.
``Mein Kampf'' was a statement of Hitler's objectives, and if folks
had just taken Hitler more seriously earlier, perhaps things would not
have reached the point, the destructive point, it reached, because he
clearly said what he wanted to do today and was going to do.
If there was a terrorist power that says that our society is a modern
society which is a decadent society which must be destroyed, and our
policies with respect to assistance and aid to the democracy in Israel
is unacceptable, but that is just only one thing that they find
unacceptable, they find it unacceptable that our women do not have to
cover themselves up, and we are too modern in allowing women to be
equal to men in our decision-making, they do not particularly like
democracy because they have kings and sheikhs and other kinds of people
who make the decisions, and our whole way of life is threatened, that
is very real and we have to rise to meet that threat and understand the
seriousness of it when it is also backed by tremendous amounts of
wealth, the oil money in the Middle East which finances the whole
thing.
So we have a serious challenge, and in this session we should be
rising to meet that challenge. September 11 in my home city of New York
was a horror that no one could have ever imagined. Yet September 11
shows how vulnerable our society is, how complex it is, and how a
strike at one nerve center could have a domino effect and impact on our
entire Nation.
The recession was already in place, so we cannot blame September 11
for the continued downturn and the escalation of the economic downturn,
but it certainly had a great impact on it. Communications were
disrupted, the financial center of the United States and of the entire
world was almost brought to its knees, and Wall Street really shut down
for a few days.
So it is very real, and as we marshall our resources to meet this
threat, let us not put education off to the side as being something
that is nice to do, but really is not at the heart of it.
Our previous speaker spoke very eloquently and forcefully and
intensively about the need for a ballistic missile system: Are you with
us or are you against us? Are you for a ballistic missile system or are
you not? That is going to save America, a blanket to protect us.
Well, Mr. Speaker, the terrorist enemies that we are up against, very
clever enemies that we are up against, used airline passenger planes as
weapons, and some fanatic out there has used envelopes in the mail as
weapons.
I am more frightened of the anthrax scare than I am of a repeat of
what happened on September 11 in terms of the hijacking of four planes
on one day and the ability to use those planes as weapons. I do not
think that will ever happen again in America.
But the anthrax threat and the ease with which somebody out there can
threaten a whole system, shut down some offices in Congress, bring the
postal service to a halt, that is very frightening.
{time} 2200
And so we are going to need all the resources we can marshal.
We are going to need a well-educated populace. We should not ever be
in a situation again where the anthrax cleanup is so slow because there
are not enough specialists around to do it, especially since anthrax
has been a concern of ours since the Gulf War. We began to be concerned
about anthrax since the Gulf War. We even vaccinated large numbers of
American troops to deal with the possibility of an enemy who might use
anthrax. So I was surprised when we discovered we had a problem here on
Capitol Hill and there were so few people to deal with it rapidly, and
they did not know how exactly to deal with it.
There were a number of blunders that were quite obvious from day-to-
day on the television set which showed that we were not prepared. I
would rather be prepared for that kind of warfare than to put all of
our resources into a ballistic missile system and to make that the
great test of whether we really care about protecting America or not. A
ballistic missile system will cost billions and billions of dollars,
and there is a doubt about how effective it would be. And even if it is
very effective, and once it is put in place, can be expected to do what
it is supposed to do, we are dealing with an enemy which can quickly
see that the use of anthrax through the mail or the introduction of
smallpox viruses in various ways into our society could accomplish far
more havoc than a single missile can accomplish at any time, if it is
done in a way which catches us off guard, if we do not have sufficient
specialists and experts, and if we do not have sufficiently-staffed
medical institutions that can detect and diagnose right away.
There are so many areas where we need more expertise, we need more
people who can deal with these problems than we have. So September 11
is a wake-up call, a vary tragic kind of wake-up call, but we need to
understand the war effort is just one more example of how this Nation
will not survive unless it has a better educated population to deal
with all of these problems, many of which cannot be predicted ahead of
time.
What have we done here in the 107th Congress? In the first year of
the 107th Congress, even with the war threat, I do not think we have
rallied to meet the challenges that are before us. Day after day, and
Christmas is just around the corner, the holiday season is upon us, and
there is talk of us having to be here for the rest of the week and then
come back next week just before Christmas. It looks like some kind of
heroic effort is going on.
After all, there is a war, and so you can understand how the calendar
cannot be followed in the manner it has been followed in previous
years, but it is not the war, I assure you. It is the great
mismanagement of resources here by the majority party.
We do not need to be here, and it is not a good use of taxpayers'
resources to have us here. It is not a good use of our time and energy
to have us separated from our constituents so much during this period.
Many of the votes that we have taken this year, and I must say this
because people are watching every Congressman all the time in relation
to his voting record. And the voting record is a statistical thing.
They do not really want to look into it very carefully, see the
details, or what you were voting on, it is just 95 percent or 96
percent or 100 percent, 90 percent, and that is it. How many times you
voted on the Journal is not considered, and how many times you took
junk votes.
This majority party that we have in the House of Representatives is a
master at a new product called junk votes, I call them. Votes that do
not matter. Somebody invented the term ``junk bonds'' a long time ago.
Junk votes are votes that are really not important at all and are
distracting. I guess you cannot say that they are that harmful. A
resolution to reaffirm that the golden rule is a good rule to follow.
That is a resolution that we would all vote for. It is not going to do
anybody any harm. A resolution that motherhood is a great thing. Those
kinds of resolutions have been coming all the time this year. Our
suspension calendar is full of items that are really quite trivial. We
could really have been spending more time at home, we could have
managed the serious votes in a manner which would allow us to be here
just for serious votes and we could have more time on the floor for
serious debate.
The most serious issues, the bills which have the most serious
content are the ones we give the least amount of time. That is the way
the majority operates here.
I am proud to report that finally we got the conference process back
operating in a democratic mode again, and the conference process for
H.R. 1, Leave No Child Behind, was a model of what this institution
should be all about. The Senate and the House conferees met, they met
in public, they negotiated, the staff carried the process through, all
the Members were involved, and it was like we were back to old-
fashioned democracy. Something
[[Page H9766]]
that has not happened much in the last 6 to 8 years since the
Republican majority took over.
I know we are not supposed to talk about the other body that much,
and that the Chair gave great liberties to two of my colleagues before
finally reminding them of that, but let me praise the Members of the
other body who worked with us on a conference committee. I think you
can talk about a functioning, productive conference committee. We
worked very well together and we produced a good piece of legislation.
But, again, I am going to come back to its shortcomings. That
legislation should be seen as a good beginning, and where we go from
there is what I would like to discuss tonight.
But before I get to that, I just want to talk about the fact that an
educated population also is a population that must be able to discern
what facts are and combat and counteract the stretching of the truth.
I heard two of my colleagues on the Republican majority side earlier
tonight talk about the achievements of this House, and they dared to
say that we have taken steps to deal with the serious problem of
unemployment, we have steps to take care of the needs of workers in an
economy which is in a downturn, and that we have done our work. Where
are the facts to support that? Where is there a response to the rapidly
increasing unemployment? In none of the legislation that passed in this
House will you find it.
In many of the proposals that the Democrats have proposed there was a
clear effort to try to deal with the immediate problem of unemployment.
We had proposals which stretched the number of weeks that you could
receive unemployment payments. We had proposed to increase the amount
of unemployment insurance the person could receive. We had proposals
even to provide 6 months of health insurance for workers who lost their
health insurance as a result of leaving. We had proposals for training.
All those were rejected by the majority party, yet they stood here on
the floor and said that they had taken care of business related to the
intense problems faced by workers in an economy experiencing a
downturn.
We need an educated population which can sort out those kinds of
facts which are very close to home, and no one should be able to get
away with distortions of that kind without being challenged by our
constituents. It is a complex world. The complexities of the world
demand that we have an educated population.
I think the definition of an adequate education probably in most
State constitutions is similar to the definition we find in the New
York State constitution. Probably not the same wording, but there is a
basic assumption when the States took on the responsibility for
education that they were talking about an adequate education. They do
not mean providing people with some luxury education that will allow
them to speak many languages and have their own set of computers and
technology, et cetera. But a basic and adequate education, as defined
in the New York State constitution, is an education which will allow
students to become productive citizens capable of civic engagement and
sustaining competitive employment. Capable of civic engagement and
sustaining competitive employment.
That is what a sound basic education is according to the New York
State constitution. That is no small item, I assure you. To be able to
have students who become productive citizens capable of civic
engagement and to be able to sustain competitive employment might have
been far simpler 200 years ago, when the constitution of the State of
New York was written, but in order to be able to sustain competitive
employment, you need to know far more than just to read and write. Why
not begin with reading. We have a problem just teaching reading.
But we need to understand that the education that citizens need in
our democracy demands that they be able to do far more than that, and
that is going to cost money. That is going to require a complex system
which is accountable. And the other part of it, a productive citizen
capable of civic engagement, our democracy will not survive if we do
not have citizens capable of civic engagement, who understand what our
decision-making process is all about and what it needs to do.
Now, it is to our credit that sometimes the public is way ahead of
us. The public, the constituents out there, with the education that we
have offered, we must be doing something right because they
consistently insist that education should be a high priority of the
government. The people of America, for the last 5 to 6 years, have
placed education among the top three priorities. In the last 10 years
it has been among the top five priorities. So there is something about
our populace which makes them understand what the people they elect are
quick to forget.
We trivialize education. We do not make it a high priority except in
terms of rhetoric. The highest priority items receive the greatest
portion of the budget. There is a correlation between appropriations
and priorities in this Congress, and we are not in the same place that
the American people are. They would like to have us do far more.
So capacity for civic engagement may be greater than we think and may
be greater than we as decision-makers for those same people who are
engaging in civic activity deserve. We deserve better action here to
reflect that.
On the other hand, they do not understand the complexities of the
world in terms of justice and peace and in terms of how our relations
with foreign governments are necessary to protect us. Those things get
short shrift until we have a September 11, and then we understand that
we cannot go it alone; that we have to have coalitions; we have to have
some standards; we have to answer the charge that we exploit the rest
of the world; we have to answer the charge that our foreign policy is
rampant with favoritism toward one nation or another.
Why should not our foreign policy lean in the direction of supporting
democracies? There are a number of ways to answer that, but we have to
be able to articulate that not just as a government but the people have
to understand it too.
We need a population that is educated to understand the best
utilization of taxpayer resources. Was it good for us to have voted
millions of dollars for the airline bailout, the cash for the bailout
and the long-term, low-cost, low-interest loans for the airline
industry bailout? Is that industry really that critical in our economy?
Well, from the looks of the tourist industry and the repercussions of
the lack of airline industry functioning properly, perhaps it is. Those
kinds of judgments people need to make.
Some are complaining quite a bit about that. Certainly I think they
have a right to complain about the fact that if the airline industry is
important, we should have taken steps to take care of the workers in
the airline industry at the same time we helped the management and the
owners of the airline industry. Those kinds of decisions and analyses
of events are necessary.
There is an insurance subsidy we have now voted. Some of the things
we have done here are new and monumental. The insurance subsidy is one
of them. I think the airline industry bill, the same bill that bailed
out the airline industry, had a compensation fund which is also
breaking new ground where the Federal Government is going to provide
compensation for all the survivors of the victims of the September 11
tragedy. I think it is a great step forward. We broke new ground there.
Is that a good idea, really? And what is that really all about? Every
citizen ought to be able to clearly understand.
We are not trying to enrich anybody at the expense of taxpayers, but
that is the kind of thing that government should be doing. But we ought
to really understand that for what it is worth.
Enron might seem like something totally unrelated to education, and
why am I bringing up the Enron disaster? Most folks are not aware of
the fact that Enron is a major economic disaster. Enron is the largest
corporate bankruptcy ever experienced by America.
It reminds me of the savings and loans phenomenon of a couple of
decades ago. Anything as big as Enron was deemed, any bank that had
that kind of position in the economic structure, was deemed too big to
fail.
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The whole policy of the Congress was to step in and bail out the
banks, and
[[Page H9767]]
we did. Billions of dollars of taxpayers' money went into bailing out
banks. Citizens never quite understood that, and most Members of
Congress did not understand how many billions of dollars were spent. It
is estimated that the taxpayers spent at least $500 billion bailing out
the savings and loan industry.
Is Enron something new that we are going to be confronted with? Are
we going to bail out Enron? Will there be other energy companies that
are too big to fail that we are going to come up with a set of
legislative actions to undergird? Is that kind of swindle going to be
perpetrated again?
An article appeared recently in the paper about the Pritzker family
bank in Illinois. That bank went under as a result of shenanigans. The
savings and loan swindle was basically a swindle where people were
encouraged to put their money in, and they were given very high rates
for their investment because that would attract deposits. Once their
deposits were in, every $100,000 worth of deposits was insured by the
Federal Government. So people did not mind going where the highest rate
was offered. If a savings and loan offered 15 percent, people moved
their money there because they knew if they put $100,000 in, it started
out at $10,000, but Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, we pushed it
up to $100,000. So it became profitable for banks to call in the money.
Everybody knew the money would be safe, and then those banks that
gathered all of that money misused it in terms of the investments that
the banks made. People stole in various ways. In the final analysis,
the Federal Government was handed the bill.
Mr. Speaker, are we going to get into another swindle like that with
energy companies? We need a very well-educated population to deal with
these complexities. The governance of a modern, industrialized society
is more difficult than nuclear physics; and education is not an
ancillary function on the side, not for the Federal Government or any
other branch of government.
I would like to return to the item that is on the agenda now tomorrow
or the next day and talk in more detail about the final version of H.R.
1. It has gone through the conference process. I was fortunate enough
to serve on the conference committee, and I think we did some useful
things there, but my basic premise is that it is just a beginning. It
is a good beginning, but it is a beginning. Now we need to go on to
resources. To quote from an article that appeared in the Washington
Post, many principles underlie the plan that we are going to be voting
on were outlined by the President during his first week in office. He
called the bill at that time his top domestic priority. It would expand
the Federal Government's role in enforcement of educational standards
requiring every public school student in the country to take state-
administered reading and math tests in grades 3 through 8, and holding
schools and educators accountable for the result.
The bill also requires States to establish a minimum level of
proficiency on the exams, and to make steady progress in bringing all
students up to that level that they establish within 12 years. In
addition, the measure would require States to report progress toward
the goal by several student subgroups defined by race, ethnicity,
socioeconomic status and other factors. A statistically representative
sample of students in each State would take the National Assessment of
Educational Progress, a highly regarded Federal test, to set a
benchmark for the State exams. The school that fails to meet the
improvement timetables would be subject to escalating assistance and
sanctions, and parents of students attending failing schools would be
given new educational options.
In various ways the spotlight would be thrown on the people who have
the primary responsibility for education, the State and the local
education agencies, a spotlight which is standardized. There would be a
spotlight in each State which does not vary from State to State as a
way to judge progress, to make each State accountable in accordance
with a set of national standards. That is the most important feature of
the bill. If it does nothing else but to force out into the open the
accountability process whereby States have to let it be known what they
are doing, the public will know, and we will see step by step what
happens.
The bill would provide nearly $1 billion for a program aimed at
having all children reading by the third grade. That is a good feature
of the bill, an emphasis on reading. We found that reading is basic to
education. You cannot have education without a certain level of reading
competence, forget about math and going forward with history and
anything else. If a student cannot clear the first hurdle of being able
to read adequately, and yet we found in colleges where teachers are
trained, there is no specialized training in most colleges as to how to
teach reading. Very few people were given special instruction in
reading who became teachers of reading.
There are some good features in terms of what we did not do also. The
President must be given credit for throwing overboard what had been a
major planking in the Republican majority's platform before, insisting
that vouchers, that the Federal Government get into the business of
providing money to parents so parents can have vouchers to go off and
purchase the education from private schools, whether private or
parochial. Of course that never was a very sound proposal because the
Federal Government would only be able to give the amount of money
allocated for title I children which never reached more than $1,400;
and no school anywhere in the country is able to function with a
tuition of $1,400.
Poor parents would have to make up the difference which sort of was a
contradiction. If you are poor, how are you going to raise the
difference between $1,400 and $4,000 or $5,000 for tuition. That was
taken off the table, and I congratulate the President for doing that.
The President also insisted that we go back to the original purpose
of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and concentrate the
funds that are available on the poorest children. Concentrate the funds
available on the children with disabilities. The two functions of the
Federal Government which must be given the highest priority for
assistance in education are the poor and those who have disabilities
and need special education. We are back to where we should have been,
and President Bush should be given credit for pushing aside all of the
temptations of our majority party in this House certainly to take what
education funds were available and try to spread them as much as
possible regardless of how much wealth a district had already.
Members wanted to take something home to their district for
education, and we had a great deal of pressure to take the title I
funds and sort of dismantle them. President Bush has brought a halt to
that and deserves credit for refocusing the resources of the Federal
Government on the worst problems as the highest priority.
We did have a big discussion about the need for the Federal
Government to live up to its commitment which was made 25 years ago to
provide 40 percent of the cost of special education funds. We passed a
bill more than 25 years ago which said that we would cover 40 percent
of the expenditure of each State for special education, which is called
IDEA. At this point 25 years later, we are only providing 10 percent of
the cost, and we wanted to move and there was a great debate in the
conference committee, we wanted to move from the 10 percent to a full
40 percent funding over the next 10 years; and we were unable to get
that provision accepted by the Republican majority in the House.
That is still unfinished business, but that is very much consistent
with my message for tonight, and that is if we had taken on the
responsibility of 40 percent funding for special education, it would be
a great jump forward in terms of more resources for each local
education agency because it would free up the funds that they are now
spending for special education. They are required by the Constitution
according to the Supreme Court interpretation to provide an education
for all children regardless of their disabilities. So they must spend
the money regardless of whether the Federal Government gives them a
portion of it or not. If the Federal Government were to meet its
promise and give them 40 percent of their expenditure, that is 40
percent
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that they do not have to budget for in their own budget for that
purpose. They could use that for some other education purpose.
The bill increases Federal funding despite the fact that it does not
increase the funding for special education; it still increases Federal
funding by $3.7 billion. And funding for title I for the poorest
children would double over the next 5 years. These are positives, and
it is a good beginning and we need more. We need more to deal with the
fact that we are not providing the kind of education that our complex
civilization requires to enough children, to enough people, to keep
pace with the need.
In other words, our cyber-civilization requires a tremendous amount
of brain power, and the production of that brain power takes place in
our school system. Since we have 83 million children in public school,
that is where most of the brain power education is taking place. If we
fail to produce the brain power needs of a cyber-civilization, we are
going to crumble. We are going to fall. We need enough brain power to
fill the positions in our government, in our military, in our technical
areas, in our school system. Right through and through there is a
demand for more and more and better brain power.
I am going to read some excerpts from a speech I made at the Yale
Political Union on Monday, November 26.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record my speech in its entirety. It
is entitled, ``Congress Should Spend More to Reform Public Education.''
Congress Should Spend More to Reform Public Education
(By: Congressman Major R. Owens: Yale Political Union--Monday, November
26, 2001)
There are a number of interesting appropriation dollar
figures and funding facts which might serve as a useful
skeleton for this discussion:
The highest per pupil cost is paid by the American
taxpayers supporting a public institution to educate a
student at West Point. The per pupil cost is about three
times the cost of educating a student at Yale.
There are about sixteen thousand school districts in
America. Among the diverse school districts in New York State
the cost per pupil ranges from seven thousand to twenty-six
thousand dollars.
The gross expenditure for education in America is more than
370 billion dollars; federal dollars are only seven percent
of this amount. The national governments of all of the other
industrial nations are far more deeply involved.
There are 4,070 higher education institutions in America;
1,688 of these are public institutions. In the year 2001,
about 1.2 million higher education students received Bachelor
Degrees; the projection for the year 2005 is 1.25 million
graduates.
There are 83 million students attending the public schools
of America; the total enrollment for four year higher
education institutions in 2001 was 9.4 million students.
The new job openings projected by the U.S. Department of
Labor for the period between now and the year 2008 for the
following occupations are: 1.6 million teachers; 1 million
registered nurses and health technicians; 1.3 million police,
detective and other law enforcement and security personnel.
Dan Goldin, the retiring Administrator of NASA predicts a
``technological sunomi'' requiring 2 million additional
scientists and engineers over the next 20 years.
H.R. 1, President Bush's high priority education
initiative, presently being negotiated by a House-Senate
Conference Committee, authorizes increases that, if
appropriated, would raise the overall federal share in
education expenditures from 7 percent to 8 percent within
five years.
This set of relevant and revealing observations could
launch us on many diverse and interesting course. However, it
would be more profitable if we could focus this brief
dialogue on the hypothesis that the survival of the nation is
inextricably interwoven with the collective initiative to
reform public education. When we contend that ``Congress
Should Spend More Money to Reform Public Education'', we are
really insisting that Congress should spend more money on
education in order to guarantee the survival of the nation. I
am making this assertion at the outset, in order to make it
clear that this is not a ``mickey-mouse'' session about
adding a few dollars here or there to get higher public
school student test scores.
In addition to providing vital cement for our civic, social
and economic infrastructure, our defense, safety, security;
basic national physical survival is directly dependent on the
amount and levels of the education of our population. If it
fails to maintain its brainpower production, its public
education system, in syncopation with its enormous brainpower
needs, this great American cyber-civilization will fall with
a momentum more rapid than the fall of the Roman Empire.
The recent monumental management and communications
blunders of the CIA and the FBI; the absence of translators
to translate important information gathered through our
multi-billion dollar world-wide electronic surveillance
system; the failure of the FAA to implement decades-old
proposals for the securing of airplane cockpits; the
increasing amount of sloveliness or ``human error''
related to the execution of routine but critical tasks;
these are examples of escalating brainpower deficits
directly related to our immediate safety and security.
When the most recent super-aircraft carrier was launched,
it had dozens of unfilled positions because it could not find
within the Navy's ranks, persons who could operate the high-
tech equipment being utilized. The National Aeronautical and
Space Administrator, Dan Goldin, recently announced that at
NASA there are twice as many engineers over sixty than there
are under thirty. Goldin predicts that two million additional
scientists and engineers will be needed over the next twenty
years when we be experiencing a ``technological sunomi''
From our routine and less visionary sources such as the
U.S. Department of Labor are projected occupational shortages
which indicate the deficits will extend far beyond science
and technology: The projected number of job openings due to
growth and net replacements between now and the year 2008 is
1.6 million teachers; 1 million registered nurses and medical
technicans; 1.3 million law enforcement and security
personnel. The Information Technology Association estimates
that two million information technology professionals will be
needed. When you add this same degree of need for more
doctors, geneticists, pharmaceutical engineers, lawyers and
MBA's; there should be considerable fear aroused among
national decision-makers when we consider the fact that the
number of college graduates from our 4,000 degree granting
institutions will hover at only 1.2 million per year during
this seven-year period.
At the mouth of America's great educational funnel from
Head Start and kindergarten through elementary and secondary
education to our colleges and universities; at this source of
our raw material there are 83 million students attending
public schools. The challenges of public education reform
stated in simple arithmetic is a matter of developing far
more than 1.2 million college graduates per year from a base
of 83 million. In addition to doubling and tripling the
number of college graduates, the public eduation system must
prepare millions of better educated technicians, mechanics,
craftsmen and operators. The performance of the mechanic
servicing an airplane is as critical as the performance of
the pilot of the plane. At every occupational level, the
pursuit of better quality is as important as the need to
produce greater numbers.
Education adds value to all who are engaged. Even the worst
student exist from an education experience with some degree
of improvement. The system must be designed to add as much
value to every pupil as possible. Society requires increasing
levels of competence from an increasing number of performers
who can be produced only from a more effective ``churning''
process at the mouth of the funnel. Excellence or even basic
competence is guaranteed only when there is a merit driven
process continuously pushing new expertise upward to replace
the burned out and to challenge smugness or stagnation.
Our inability to more effectively transform the raw
material represented by the 83 million public school students
has brought us to a critical point where an explosion in need
for more brainpower is overwhelming our processes for the
production of the necessary brainpower. At other similar
pivotal points in its history, sometimes by fortunate
accident, and sometimes through the vision of geniuses, this
nation has adopted sound practices and innovative initiatives
in education. By fortunate accident the majority of the
states and localities embraced the concept of public schools.
As a result of the vision of Thomas Jefferson, the University
of Virginia became a model emphasizing publicly supported
higher education beyond the liberal arts to embrace practical
science, engineering and agricultural production.
Another genius, Congressman Morrill, inspired by
Jefferson's model, initiated federal support for land grant
colleges and universities in all of the states. Following
World War II, the GI federal education subsidies provided a
massive boost in brainpower pools at a time when more
sophisticated mechanization and automation were creating
demands for new and better brainpower.
Extraordinary federal support for the higher education
which qualified participants for immediate professional jobs
has provided a great incentive for the expansion and
improvement of the elementary and secondary public education
system. Preparing students for college is the first priority
of most local school districts. A more automated and
digitalized commercial and industrial sector with demands for
better educated high school graduates has provided an even
greater and broader incentive. Despite the present drift into
recession, these incentives and rewards for more and better
education are firmly in place. Certainly it is possible to
move a greater portion of the 83 million public school
attendees into education streams that will allow them to meet
the mushrooming needs of our cybercivilization.
In this 107th Congress, the critical question is will a
great leap forward be taken to funnel 20 or 25 percent
(instead of the present 12 percent) of the 83 million upward
to higher levels of competence and expertise. The good news
is that the Bush proposal presently in
[[Page H9769]]
conference does propose some small steps forward:
HR 1 will authorize almost one billion dollars for a new
reading program.
The bill proposes to double Title I funds from 8 billion
dollars to nearly 16 billion dollars over a five year period.
The Senate conferees are insisting that the bill greatly
increase funding for children with disabilities.
The bad news is that this is authorization legislation and
there are clear indications of resistance to these increases
by the appropriators. President Bush is also insisting on a
degree of regimentation and testing that poisons the
relationship between the federal, state and local education
policy makers. We may move from a 7 percent federal share to
an 8 percent share; however, the heavy handed oversight
offers the appearance of a federal bully instead of a federal
partner.
The worst news is that even if a full appropriation is
achieved for the amounts authorized, this presidential
initiative, which is probably all that we can hope for in the
next four years will constitute only an incremental increase
in funding at a time when states and localities are being
forced to reduce funding for schools:
The critical need for smaller class sizes and more
qualified teachers requires increased funding.
The infrastructure of school physical facilities needs
about 300 billion dollars nationwide and this problem is not
addressed at all.
Computers and other technology which may hold the key to
breakthroughs in the education of those most difficult to
reach are not encouraged sufficiently.
Appropriations for children with disabilities (IDEA) which
moves in DC toward the current already authorized 40 percent
of total cost is being proposed by the Senate but opposed by
the President. The federal increase would free local funds
for greater application toward the needs cited above.
In summary, the Bush initiative, even if improved by
current Senate proposals, falls far short of the significant
leap forward in federal funding which the present pivotal
moment in the nation's development demands. Through four
administrations, from Reagan through Bush to Clinton and
now another Bush, I have strongly recommended and will
continue to recommend that we establish new parameters for
federal assistance to education:
In order to re-position the present primitive, almost
freakish, insistence that the least amount of federal funding
for elementary and secondary education is highly desirable,
we must learn from the examples of some of the other
industrialized nations. Greater federal support which moves
from 7 percent toward 25 percent of the overall national
education expenditure would not constitute an over-
centralized takeover of education; instead, it would
represent a logical mean between the extremes of nationalized
education ministries and 16,000 uncoordinated independent
school districts in fifty states.
Immediate significant federal funding initiatives should
focus on large, non-recurring capital expenditures for
physical facilities and equipment. States and localities
would not become dependent on Washington for their operating
expenses; however, necessary overwhelming one time
improvements could be realized.
Priority for federal funding should continue to go to
assist in the education of those most difficult to educate--
the poor and children with disabilities.
Special federal funding must be made available to validate,
certify and promote education innovations that work. The best
programs and practices must be assisted in establishing
critical masses throughout the nation.
Without bullying states and localities, the Congress should
continue to promote higher standards for student achievement
and for opportunities-to-learn.
Funding to systematically expand support for Research,
Development and Dissemination must be greatly increased. It
must be recognized that this is an activity almost totally
neglected by states and localities.
My final word is that society's fullest possible support of
public education should not be viewed as a noble gesture, or
a governmental philanthropic virtue, or the mere provision of
a ``safety net'' for those too poor to pay for their
children's education. The far wiser and more productive
public policy viewpoint must assume that public education is
a necessity vital for the functioning of our very complex
cyber-civilization. This nation literally will not be able to
survive without an adequate and continually updated public
education system.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to comment and read a few excerpts from the
speech. I started by saying that there are a number of interesting
appropriation dollar figures and a number of interesting funding facts
that might serve as a useful skeleton for the discussion of a topic
that we were faced with. My topic was Congress should spend more to
reform public education. There were debaters on the other side who
opposed this later on, and it was an interesting evening at Yale
University.
Number one, we should look at the following figures and funding
facts. The highest per-pupil cost is paid by the American taxpayer when
we support the institution which educates the student at West Point.
The highest per-pupil cost is paid to educate a West Point student. The
per-pupil cost of education at West Point is at least three times the
cost of educating a student at Yale or Harvard. I did get the facts
about 8 years ago when we had a friendly chairman of the Committee on
Armed Services who twisted the arms of the people at West Point, and
they got me the facts and figures. At that time the cost per student at
West Point was $120,000. That did not include the field training using
artillery and all of the capital expenditure for that. Just the kind of
academic training that they received was estimated to cost $120,000 per
student.
{time} 2230
At that time Harvard and Yale were about 30 to $35,000 per student.
So we do believe in spending money to educate the best when we think it
is necessary. We set a high priority on our military leadership. The
very best is supposed to come from West Point so we spend a tremendous
amount of money.
Another fact. There are about 16,000 school districts across America.
Among the diverse school districts in just one State, New York, the
cost per pupil ranges from $7,000 per pupil to $26,000 in an upstate
school district and most of the school districts within New York State
are spending above $15,000 per pupil. $7,000 is about the lowest in the
State, in New York City.
Fact number three. The gross expenditure for education in America is
more than $370 billion. But Federal dollars are only 7 percent of this
amount. The national governments of all of the other industrialized
nations are far more deeply involved in the education of their
population. We have a decentralized system which also takes away the
responsibility and allows the Federal Government not to be responsible
for what is probably the most important task it has, and, that is,
maintaining the education of the population. We only put 7 percent into
the total expenditure pot for education.
Point number four. H.R. 1, President Bush's high priority education
initiative presently being negotiated, which is almost about to come to
the floor, if every part is appropriated would maybe take us to 8
percent instead of 7 percent. This is far too little in terms of the
Federal share for education expenditures.
We could take quite a bit of time to discuss just those four
interesting facts, but it would be more profitable if we could focus
this brief dialogue on the hypothesis that the survival of the Nation
is inextricably interwoven with the collective initiative to reform
public education. When we contend that Congress should spend more money
to reform public education, we are really insisting that Congress
should spend more money on education in order to guarantee the survival
of the Nation. I am making this assertion at the outset in order to
make it clear that this is not a Mickey Mouse session about adding a
few dollars here or there to get higher public school student test
scores. It is more than that.
In addition to providing vital cement for our civic, social and
economic infrastructure, our defense, safety, security, our basic
national physical survival is directly dependent on the amount and
levels of the education of our population. If it fails to maintain its
brainpower production, its public education system, in syncopation with
its enormous brainpower needs, this great America cybercivilization
will fall with a momentum more rapid than the fall of the Roman Empire.
Do not be smug. We saw the Soviet empire fall because it turned its
back on certain realities. The great American empire can fall, too.
The recent monumental mismanagement and communication blunders of the
CIA and the FBI, and I do think some of those blunders led to September
11, the absence of translators to translate important information
gathered through our multi-billion-dollar worldwide electronic
surveillance system, the failure of the FAA to implement decades-old
proposals for the securing of airplane cockpits, the increased amount
of slovenliness or human error related to the execution of routine but
critical tasks, these are
[[Page H9770]]
examples of escalating brainpower deficits directly related to our
immediate safety and security.
When the most recent super aircraft carrier was launched, less than 2
years ago, it had dozens of unfilled positions because it could not
find within the Navy's ranks persons who could operate the high tech
equipment being utilized. National Aeronautics and Space Administrator
Dan Goldin, who just retired recently, announced that at NASA there are
twice as many engineers over 60 than there are under 30. Goldin
predicts that 2 million additional scientists and engineers will be
needed over the next 20 years when we will be experiencing what he
calls a ``technological tsunami.'' A tsunami is greater than a tidal
wave, a hurricane or a tornado all put together.
From more routine and less visionary sources such as the United
States Department of Labor, we can find projections of occupational
shortages which indicate that the deficits will extend far beyond
science and technology. The projected number of job openings due to
growth and net replacements between now and the year 2008 is about 1.6
million teachers, 1 million registered nurses and medical technicians
and 1.3 million law enforcement and security personnel. The Information
Technology Association estimates that 2 million information technology
professionals will be needed. When you add this same degree of need for
more doctors, geneticists, pharmaceutical engineers, lawyers and
MBAs, there should be considerable fear aroused among national
decisionmakers when we consider the fact that the number of college
graduates, although we have 4,000 degree-granting institutions in
America, the number of college students who graduate each year hovers
at 1.2 million per year. Over this 7-year period where we project all
those needs for new people who are highly trained, we will be
graduating only 1.2 million students per year.
At the mouth of America's great educational funnel, if you look at an
upward funnel, a funnel where down at the bottom is all these 83
million public school students and as you go through the education
process they funnel up into our higher education institutions and
sometimes into 2-year colleges or sometimes into technical institutes,
et cetera, from the mouth, this source of 83 million students, we
should get a better return than 1.2 million graduates from college. We
should double that instead. In addition to public education, students
who will go to college, we should also understand that there are a
great number of people who are needed as educated technicians,
mechanics, craftsmen and operators. The performance of the mechanic
servicing an airplane is as critical as the performance of the pilot of
that same plane. We know that large amounts of money are spent to train
pilots, but we should also know that at every occupational level, the
pursuit of better quality is as important as the need to produce
greater numbers.
Education adds value to all who are engaged in education. Even the
worst student exits from an education experience with some degree of
improvement. The system must be designed to add as much value to every
student as possible. Society requires increasing levels of competence
from an increasing number of performers who can be produced only from a
more effective education churning process at the mouth of that funnel
which funnels them upward.
Our inability to more effectively transform the raw material
represented by the 83 million public school students in America has
brought us to a critical point where an explosion in need for more
brainpower is overwhelming our process for the production of the
necessary brainpower. At other similar pivotal points in its history,
sometimes by fortunate accident and sometimes through the vision of
geniuses, this Nation has adopted sound practices and innovative
initiatives in education. By fortunate accident, the majority of the
States and localities very early in the history of the Nation embraced
the concept of public schools. As a result of the vision of Thomas
Jefferson, the University of Virginia became a model emphasizing
publicly supported higher education beyond the liberal arts, publicly
supported higher education which embraced practical science,
engineering and agricultural production.
Another genius following in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson,
Congressman Morrill, after the Civil War, he was inspired by
Jefferson's model, he initiated the Federal support for land grant
colleges and universities in all the States. Later on following World
War II, the GI Federal education subsidies provided a massive boost in
the brainpower pools in America at a time when more sophisticated
mechanization and automation were creating demands for new and better
brainpower. Senator Warner of Virginia at our last meeting of the
House-Senate conference committee made a very moving speech about the
fact that he was educated as a result of the GI subsidies. He got 7
years of education subsidized by the Federal Government. That made all
the difference in his life.
Extraordinary Federal support for the higher education which
qualified participants for immediate professional jobs, the Federal
Government did support higher education very early and that started a
system which provided incentives for students to go up and there was a
clear pattern that if you got a decent education at the lower levels,
you could go on to get a professional education in the colleges.
Preparing students for college is the first priority that most local
school districts see. That is what they are there for. A more automated
and digitalized commercial and industrialized sector now demands better
educated high school graduates who will not necessarily go to college.
They provide incentives for them. You can go into a Microsoft program
even if you are not a college graduate and take certain levels of exams
and reach a point where you are making a very decent salary with
opportunities for advancement as you educate yourself more. This is
outside the formal education structure. Despite the present drift into
recession, these incentives and rewards for more and better education
are firmly in place. Our economy is going to recover. Our
cybercivilization is going to continue. It is going to have greater and
greater needs. It is possible to move a greater portion of the 83
million base of students that we started with into the education
streams which will produce the kind of people we need. We cannot do
that unless we have greater resources.
In the 107th Congress, the critical question is will a great leap
forward be taken similar to the great leap forward of our forefathers
who were wise enough to establish a public education system, again
similar to the great leap forward taken by Thomas Jefferson when he
created the University of Virginia or the great leap forward that was
taken by Morrill when he established the land grant colleges. Or the
great leap forward that was taken more recently in the GI education
programs. Can we rise to meet the challenge so that instead of getting
12 percent of our students, of the 83 million, to the college graduate
level, we can double that to maybe 25 percent. The good news is that
the legislation that will be on the floor takes some important steps
forward. I have already mentioned that. Those steps are very important.
The bad news is that what our legislation does is authorize. Tomorrow
or the next day we will be voting on a bill that authorizes
legislation. Each year the appropriation will have to match those
authorizations if we are going to really move forward. Authorization
has a problem without support from the appropriation. We may move from
7 percent to 8 percent only if the appropriation is full over the next
5 to 10 years. The worst news that we are confronted with is that we do
not have the amounts of resources that we really need. The critical
need for smaller class sizes has not been met. The critical need for
more qualified teachers has not been met. The infrastructure of school
physical facilities is totally ignored. We do not have any money that
address the problem of the need for more funding for school
infrastructure, for the building of buildings, repairing of buildings
or the funding of technology, the installation of new technologies, et
cetera. Computers and other technology which may hold the key to
breakthroughs in the education of those most difficult to reach are not
encouraged sufficiently in this legislation. Again, we do not
appropriate the additional money which we felt was required for
children with disabilities
[[Page H9771]]
which would have been a great step forward.
Through four administrations, from Reagan through Bush to Clinton,
and now another Bush, I have strongly recommended and will continue to
recommend that we establish new parameters for Federal assistance to
education.
In order to reposition the present primitive, almost freakish
insistence that the least amount of Federal funding for elementary and
secondary education is highly desirable, we must learn from the
examples of some of the other industrialized nations. Greater Federal
support which moves from 7 percent toward 25 percent of the overall
national educational expenditure would not constitute an
overcentralized takeover of education. Instead, it would represent a
logical need between the extremes of nationalized education ministries
and the present 16,000 uncoordinated independent school districts in 50
States in America. In other words, we are in an extreme position. We
are at the lower end of support for our school systems, 7 percent of
the total education bill, versus some countries which are at the other
extreme where the education is totally run by the national government
and they get some bad results as a result of that. But let us not
remain at that extreme. We should move toward greater Federal
participation.
Immediate significant Federal funding initiatives should focus on
large nonrecurring capital expenditures like the ones that I have just
mentioned in terms of the physical infrastructure.
{time} 2245
Priority Federal funding should continue to go to educate the poor
and children with disabilities. Special Federal funding must be made
available to validate, certify and promote education innovations that
work. The best programs and practices must be assisted in establishing
some kind of critical mass throughout the Nation, and Federal money is
necessary to allow them to do that.
Without bullying states and localities, Congress should continue to
promote higher standards for student achievement and for opportunities
to learn. Funding to systematically expand support for research,
development and dissemination of information must be greatly increased,
because none of the states are engaged in that kind of very important
activity.
My final word is that society's fullest possible support of public
education should not be viewed as a noble gesture or a governmental
philanthropic virtue or the mere provision of a safety net for those
too poor to pay for their children's education. The far wiser and more
productive public policy viewpoint must assume that public education is
a necessity vital for the functioning of our very complex cyber-
civilization.
This Nation, our great American Nation, literally will not be able to
survive without an adequate and continually updated public education
system. Brain power is our best protection for the future.
____________________