[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 72 (Wednesday, June 5, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H3214-H3219]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               EDUCATION DETERMINES THE FUTURE OF AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Otter). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Etheridge) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this time, and I will be 
joined by some of my colleagues a little later, I hope, to talk on this 
special order on the floor this evening about a very important issue 
facing this country today, maybe one of the key issues.
  Everyone talks about my issue is more important, or that issue is 
more important. But the truth is, when we are talking about the future 
of America, that issue is education, because that is the one issue that 
not only helps us this week, this year, next year, but really secures 
our future when we are headed into the 21st century and the challenges 
we face. This group of young people in our schools today will determine 
the kind of future we are going to have.
  So many times I get perplexed when I have my colleagues come to this 
floor, and I really sense, number one, that they have not visited a 
school recently; or if they have been to a school, that they did not go 
into the classrooms; and if they went into a classroom, they probably 
did not pay attention to what they were seeing or listening to from the 
teacher, or they were not looking into the eyes of some of the very 
bright children who were in those classrooms struggling to learn in 
conditions, in many cases, that Members of this body would not want to 
be in every day.
  They are overcrowded, and in the summertime they are hot, and in the 
wintertime they may be cold. Or they are in a trailer outside, and if 
it is raining, they walk through the rain to get to the classroom, or 
walk through any kind of inclement weather.
  First, this evening, let me talk about some very positive things, 
some good things that are happening in our public schools. As this hour 
goes on, I will talk about more of them.
  Let me first talk about some schools in my district, something I know 
about, and in North Carolina. I had the occasion over the last couple 
of weeks, and I make an effort to visit schools about every week, but I 
went to a school down in part of my district, Anderson Creek 
Elementary, and visited with the principal, Ms. Cobb, and an awful lot 
of the teachers and students.
  They have a program where they encourage children to read. It is 
really a kindergarten through about fourth grade reading program. Some 
of the schools I am going to mention actually do it in the higher 
grades.
  She got those young people so excited about reading by giving them 
certificates and tee shirts, and getting the parents involved through 
kindergarten, that those youngsters in that school, and there are about 
roughly 700 elementary school students, over 545 of them read at least 
100 books. They had read a total of over 155,000 books this year; 
probably more than that by now.
  When we talk about good things, those are the kinds of things that 
make a difference. Because if a youngster learns to read and they learn 
to do math and they learn to communicate, that will make a difference. 
They will be successful students.
  I went to North Harnett Elementary the same day, where the leading 
reader in that school had read 410 books. It is amazing to me that a 
youngster would read 410 books and still do his or her homework.
  At Anderson Creek, they had one student who read 545 books. The 
children in that school had read a substantial number. It is sort of 
contagious. These are good things happening in Harnett County.
  Lafayette Elementary, the same thing. They went in, had an assembly, 
and they honored the students. Their program was titled Reading Around 
the World, where they actually put flags of nations around the world 
about which the youngsters had read. They got involved. They had tee 
shirts and they got certificates, and they honored top readers.
  These are the things we do not hear a lot about, but we always hear 
people critical of those people who are giving so much time in the 
classroom who really are creative, innovative, and thinking about how 
do we make things better for children.
  Then I went to Cleveland Elementary School, a school in the community 
I grew up in. The same kind of thing: a very caring principal and 
assistant principal, with an awful lot of hard-working, focused 
teachers. They were doing the program not only in reading, but in a 
number of other areas, and they were giving out certificates. Children 
were really and truly getting ready to build a strong foundation for 
the future, things we were not doing 10 or 20 years ago.
  I went over to East Clayton Elementary School over near Clayton, and 
the same kind of thing: a very focused principal providing great 
leadership, and teachers who were caring, creative, and making a 
difference.
  I only mention these schools because they are representative not only 
of just schools in my congressional district or in my State of North 
Carolina, but I happen to think they are representative of teachers and 
students and principals and administrators all across this country.
  Do we have problems? Sure. Do we need to improve? Absolutely. But 
they are about making a difference. This is the way we improve it. I 
have learned a long time ago that if we want to improve education, we 
lay out a plan, we work with the people, and we give them 
encouragement. It is awful easy to be critical.
  It is a lot like a little poem I use many times, and I think my 
colleagues would benefit from that, because it reminds me of being an 
architect. It takes a long time to go to school to be an architect. It 
takes a number of years. But the last time I checked, if we want to 
hire somebody to tear a building down, we can put them in a machine and 
put a ball at the end of a chain and we can knock it down pretty quick.

     ``I watched them tear a building down,
     A gang of men in a busy town.
     With a ho heave ho and a lusty yell,
     They swung a beam and a side wall fell.
     I asked the foreman, are these men skilled,
     The kind you would hire if you had to build?
     He smiled and said, `No, indeed,
     Common labor is all I need,
     For I can wreck in a day or two
     What people have taken years to do.'
     And I thought to myself as I went my way,
     Which of these roles have I tried to play?
     Have I been a builder who builds with care,
     Carefully measuring the world by the rule or a square,

[[Page H3215]]

     Or have I been content to roam the town,
     Content with the business of tearing down?''

  Too many times we have people who unfortunately are willing to tear 
down, but are not willing to help be architects. We not only need 
architects to build buildings, we need architects in our classrooms. We 
have them in teachers; we need more. Yes, we need resources to help 
train them better, because the needs for our teachers are changing 
every day.
  I think that is the key issue in education, is that we give 
encouragement where it is needed. Certainly, we give counsel when it is 
not working out. If we have people who are not doing the job, then we 
need to take appropriate action, like we would do in any other area. 
But we ought to acknowledge when our teachers and our administrators 
and people who work with our children every day are doing a good job.
  Let me just share with Members, if I may, before I get to some 
prepared remarks, I read an article recently that I want to just read 
some pieces out of. It is by Gerald Bracey, and it was in The 
Washington Post. I think it is right on target when we are talking 
about education.
  It says, ``Why do we scapegoat the schools?'' I could not help but 
think, there is a lot of truth in this. I think I know a little bit 
about this. I said to my colleagues when they came here, I served as 
State superintendent of schools of North Carolina for 8 years. That is 
an elective office in North Carolina, like the governor and some 
others.
  There is one thing I learned. We may not know all the answers of what 
to do, but I know some of the things that do not work. Sometimes that 
is worth an awful lot.
  Gerald Bracey made this point: ``There is no pleasing some people, 
even when they get what they want. So why do we keep listening to them? 
For more than 20 years now, people have been bashing our schools.''
  He goes all the way back to the time when the Russians put up the 
Sputnik, and we got all carried away in this country and said our math 
and science programs are in shambles, our schools are failing us, our 
schools need to be fixed, so we put together a program. Lo and behold, 
with President Kennedy's focus and commitment, and yes, this Congress, 
the House and Senate put in resources behind it, and I emphasize, 
resources, and translated, that is money behind it, we put a man on the 
moon before the end of the decade.
  But Bracey goes on to say, we didn't say to the public schools, you 
are no longer in crisis, you have done a good job. You make this 
happen. Then all of a sudden, we walked along, and they did not get 
credit for what they had done. We stayed quiet. All of a sudden, after 
that happened, he said that there was no declaration that the crisis in 
education was over, and the question was raised, do pigs fly? 
Translated, that is that we did not give them the credit; it was 
assumed they had to do it.
  He goes on to talk about, again, he says, ``I don't mean to suggest, 
of course, that America's public schools are perfect. The dreary state 
of some urban and poor rural school systems is well documented.'' I 
would agree with that. He said, ``But I have been following the anguish 
over our competitive capabilities since the '83 report, and I've 
noticed the same pattern. In the early nineties, as the economy tanked 
and the recession set in, many variations of `Lousy schools are 
producing a lousy work force and it is killing us in the global market' 
could be heard, but those slackards somehow managed to turn things 
around. By early 1994, many publications featured banner headlines 
about the recovery that later became the longest sustained period of 
economic growth in the Nation's history. And then, `The American 
economy, back on top,' was the way that The New York Times summed up 
the turnaround in February of 1994.''
  Well, did the public schools have anything to do with that? Were the 
people that were employed in those businesses all of a sudden better 2 
years later than they were 2 years before? Did we give them any credit 
for that happening? No. They continued to be hammered.
  He goes on to say, ``Looking at a number of the different rankings of 
schools and school reports, the United States looked particularly bad 
in one DEF category: the difference in quality between rich and poor 
schools. We finished 42nd lower than any other developed nation, which 
is shameful for a rich nation.''
  So if 26 nations had better schools, how did we wind up being number 
2 in competitive ranking of all the nations in the world? The DEF used 
dozens of variables in many sectors, and the United States ranks well 
across the board.
  One important consideration is the brain drain factor. Our scientists 
and engineers stay here, earning us a top ranking in that category. 
Other nations of the world who send young people to the United States 
to be educated, and certainly we have received or we have been the 
beneficiary of that for a number of years, they come here and many of 
them stay in the United States, and they make their contributions here. 
We as a society and as a people have been beneficiaries of their coming 
to America and getting their educations here. It has made a difference.
  I only share this because I think this article is a good article for 
me to segue into the comments I want to make this evening, because I 
think there are some good things. There are a lot of good things about 
our public schools. I think the American public cares very deeply about 
our public schools.
  We have roughly 53 million young people in this country in the public 
schools of America. Depending on what State one is in, that may range 
from roughly 93 or 94 percent in North Carolina to where some States, 
maybe a little lower, we probably have 95 instead of 94, and some 
States less because they have more parochial schools. The bottom line 
is, the bulk of the students in this country are in the public school 
sector, and historically they have gotten a good education.
  The challenge we face today in the 21st century is a much different 
challenge than we faced 50 or even 100 years ago, or even 25 years ago, 
for that matter. The world is a different place. We are technology-
driven, by and large. We want every child to be able to make it. We do 
not have the luxury that we had 30 or 40 years ago where we could 
educate the top 20 percent, the rest of them could get a job on the 
production line.
  Those jobs in industry, wherever it may be, or even on the farm, for 
that matter, wherever they work, are really tied to technology.

                              {time}  1815

  Many of the jobs around this country and increasingly around the 
globe are tied to technology; and that is why we need our young people 
better educated today than ever in the history. And that is why we look 
to the public schools and we are challenging them. Parents are, rightly 
so, looking at their community. That is why when you see survey after 
survey, if you look at the rankings, and I have had occasion to follow 
them for a number of years now, by and large parents tend to rate the 
schools that their children attend fairly high. They usually get a B or 
higher for the schools their children attend. And if you look at 
schools, in general, they tend to get a much lower ranking.
  Why is that so? I think the reason is that parents and the people in 
that community are familiar with those schools where their children go. 
They know the teachers. They know what happens in that school, so they 
get a much higher ranking. They do not know about all these other 
schools. What they hear about these schools is general information that 
is shared, be it accurate or inaccurate, so they tend to process it. If 
they tell them schools are bad and they hear public officials continue 
to say it, they will say, My school is good.
  I think it has a lot to do with the same kind of ranking with Members 
in this body. They say Congress in general, we really do not have that 
high of numbers; but if you ask about a Member that represents in a 
district, he is a pretty good guy or lady. I know him. They represent 
us well. I think that is reflected in that as well.
  Let me move now to some of the issues I want to talk about, and I am 
joined now by some of my colleagues, and I will call on them in just a 
minute, the gentleman from Chicago, Illinois (Mr. Davis), who really 
has

[[Page H3216]]

been a tremendous leader in education in this body. But I would like to 
begin tonight by talking about why education is such an urgent national 
issue, and it really is.
  Since September 11 we have all been heavily focused on the issues 
regarding our national security, and I think that is appropriate, and 
on homeland security specifically. And that focus is completely 
appropriate as we have become aware of threats to our security in this 
new era of terrorist attacks. I mean, if we pick up a newspaper, we 
read a magazine, we turn on the TV, it is in front of us. So it is 
appropriate we deal with it. But we make a huge mistake, I think, if we 
fail to recognize and act on the reality that increasing the investment 
in education is imperative but it is absolutely critical to our 
Nation's security. It is as important, maybe more important, but it is 
equally as important as protecting our borders, both in the immediate 
sense and in the long term.
  You know, it is a lot like a child developing. It is awful hard for a 
child to develop healthy if we do not feed them the proper food. And if 
you give them food to develop the bodies, we have to give them the 
right education and opportunities to develop their minds, to be a well-
rounded person. In the 21st century, America's economic growth and 
prosperity depend more and more on a knowledge-based economy and on the 
skills of our people. And we have seen that over the last many years.
  Working Americans are beginning to understand that their level of 
earning is tied directly to their level of learning. Let me repeat that 
again. Their level of earning is directly tied to their level of 
learning. And it will be more so in the 21st century. And we really do 
not think about it; a lot of us as adults think of learning as academic 
being in the classroom. Let me remind my colleagues that all of us 
learn every day in the people we come in contact with, the 
interactions, the bulletins we read, whatever we do. It is things that 
we pick up. And it really perplexes me when I hear people talk about, 
and sometimes they do not think before they speak sometimes, they talk 
about how a student made little of this and a little of that.
  I used to go to civic clubs. I specifically remember one Rotary Club, 
and I will not call the name of where it was because somebody might be 
watching from that town. We had an eighth grade exit math exam for our 
students in North Carolina. I thought, I will have some fun. So I 
carried that math exam with me to the civic club. I will not even call 
the name of it. I handed it out.
  I said, I have read in this local paper how this exit exam is not 
even an eighth grade level. So I passed it out to the people who had 
come to lunch. Now, I was not so dumb as to not carry the answer sheet 
with me. I carried it with me. So I watched their faces as they were 
working on it. Finally as we got near the end of the meeting I said, if 
anybody wants to raise their hand and give me the answer, and I would 
read the question. And I could tell by looking at their face some of 
them had not done too good on getting their answers right.
  The point is we have some of the brightest young people in our public 
schools today we have ever had. But our challenge today in this body as 
we develop policy and across this country is to make sure that every 
child gets that opportunity, and we are trying. I want to talk about it 
as the evening goes on about the bill of No Child Left Behind and why 
it is important that, if we are going to do legislation, we have to put 
the resources behind it.

  An educated populace is also critical to the survival of a free 
people and the sustaining of our democracy. Our Nation's experiment 
with self-governance can only endure if our people know and understand 
their stake in its success. And I will talk more later about the long-
term challenges we face in education, but I want to now talk about the 
immediate challenges we face in America's schools. And I think before I 
do that, though, I want to talk about some infrastructure needs; but 
before I do, let me turn to my colleague from Chicago, Illinois (Mr. 
Davis), who has been a champion for education in this body. But he has 
really been a fighter for young people since he has been here.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge). I was sitting there thinking and 
recalling that North Carolina is recognized as having one of the best 
public education systems in the country; and as I have observed the 
gentleman over the last several years, I kind of smiled to myself and 
said, yes, I know why. And one of the reasons is because they have had 
great advocates like the gentleman over the years, even before he came 
to the Congress, who seriously promoted and functioned as an advocate, 
who kept pushing and kept recognizing how valuable and how important 
education is. And so I simply want to commend the gentleman for the 
kind of leadership that he has displayed in the State of North Carolina 
and in the United States Congress, pushing the concept that we really 
cannot afford to leave any child, that we cannot leave any of our 
children behind, especially as we continue to try and make America 
become the Nation that it has the potential of being.
  So I thank the gentleman for giving me the opportunity to share a bit 
of the time with him this evening to talk about how important education 
is because it has always been a priority for me. And I, too, believe 
that the best way to preserve the safety of our country is to educate 
our Nation's youth so that they can continue to grow and develop and 
help be in a position to confront the issues and solve the problems 
that we continue to face.
  I was thinking of the fact that we spend and we are going to spend, 
because we have no choice except to, billions of dollars to protect our 
Nation from future terrorist attacks and to rebuild what has already 
been torn down. And I support this kind of spending and know that it is 
vital to the success of our country. But I also think that we cannot 
afford to lose sight of the fact that, as we increase military 
spending, we also need to protect the future by continuing to invest in 
the education of our children.
  I am fortunate to come from a congressional district that has some of 
the very best public schools as well as private schools. I mean, I have 
got schools like Whitney Young High School, which has won the academic 
decathlon every year for the last 10 years. It is known as the best 
college prep school in the Nation. This is a public high school. Yes, 
it is a magnet school; but it is also a public high school. Then I have 
got other schools like the Oak Park and River Forest High School, like 
Trinity Lutheran. All of these schools have super records.
  Then I have got a little school like Providence St. Mel, which is a 
little private black school in the heart of the inner city where 99 
percent of all the young people who graduate from there go to college. 
And this school has a tremendous program of discipline where every 
young person has to comply with whatever the rules and regulations are. 
If not, you just cannot go there. Paul Adams does not allow it. Then I 
have got St. Ignatius Prep, one of the top prep schools in the country.

  And then I also have schools that turn out great athletes, people 
like Mark Maguire, Kevin Garnett. All of these individuals came out of 
my schools, schools in my community. Westinghouse just won the boys' 
championship this year. And Marshall High School has the best woman 
basketball coach in the Nation. I mean, Dorothy Gaters has won more 
championships and has had more offers to go to universities and go to 
the pros, but she will stay right there at Marshall; and that is where 
she is going to probably end her career.
  But we also have to recognize that there is still a tremendous amount 
of unmet need. And that is to say, far too many of our young people do 
not have the resources made available to them so that they too can 
actualize all of the potential that they have, and so we have to keep 
putting in the resources. I mean, it is not good enough to talk about 
leaving no child behind. We also have to put the money in where it is 
necessary. We have to have standards that are high. There must be 
accountability, and there must be adherence to standards that have been 
set. And so I agree with everything that I have heard you talking about 
here earlier this evening. And I certainly want to

[[Page H3217]]

keep commending you for keeping education on the front burner, out in 
the forefront.
  Let me just tell you as I end and go back and do some other work, I 
went to a one-room school when I first started school. As a matter of 
fact, there was one woman, Ms. Beadie King was the teacher, and she 
taught eight grades plus what we called then the little primer and the 
big primer. And much of whatever it is that I know today and much of 
what I can recall, I am a person who likes to use poetry when I am 
talking and use vignettes, and most of those I learned from Ms. Beadie 
King, and I can still remember them. Today I could not remember 
anything, but I remember them.
  So there is nothing greater than good teachers, and we need to make 
sure that our teachers are well compensated, that they are paid for the 
work that they do so that the quality of their lives can also be what 
it should be.
  So I commend the gentleman and thank him for the leadership that he 
has displayed, and it has just been a pleasure to be here these few 
moments and join with the gentleman.

                              {time}  1830

  Mr. ETHERIDGE. I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Davis), and I would say to him that his comments here on the floor and 
the comments as Members speak and acknowledge great teachers that made 
a difference in their lives, honors those teachers in a very special 
way, and all of us could stand up and acknowledge those people who have 
made a difference.
  As the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) mentioned about 
compensating teachers, it is important that we do a better job of it 
because they want their children to go to college. They want to own a 
home. They would like to have a nice car. And in some places in this 
country, they who are some of the more educated people in the 
communities cannot even send their children to the schools where the 
people who educate their children do. And that is not right in America 
and we have got to change that and we can do better.
  The number one security threat, though, to our schools is a lack of 
adequate infrastructure. Let me talk about that just for a minute. My 
colleague from Illinois (Mr. Davis) alluded to it a few moments ago 
talking about the communities that really have some of the resources 
and others who do not because in many of America's communities, school 
buildings are old and unfortunately because of the resources of those 
communities, they are neglected and falling apart and they do not have 
the kind of quality infrastructure that would make a difference. We 
send in children into buildings, and I have often said in my 
communities as I have moved around, and I think it is still true, that 
we have prisons in this country that we as members of this United 
States Congress helped build and pay for that are a whole lot nicer 
than the buildings we send our children to. That is wrong. It is not 
wrong that we have the prisons. It is wrong that we have better 
facilities for them than we do for our children. We have it within our 
power to do something about that, and I am going to talk about that 
more in a minute because we come on this floor and argue about issues 
and policies, and many of them are short term, built to get to the next 
election, but I am here to tell everyone this issue is far beyond the 
next election. This is about the next generation and the future of this 
country, and I think the American people are going to hold some folks 
accountable for not living up to this part of the bargain because the 
average school in this country is over 40 years old. If the average is 
40, then one can imagine how old some of those buildings are. Some of 
them were built shortly after the turn of the century and some are 
approaching 100 years of age. The age is not the issue. The condition 
is what is the problem. Fifteen million American children currently 
attend what has been classified as substandard facilities. If these 
were prisons in the country or if they were jails, because of the codes 
we have in America, we close prisons and we close jails and we are 
forced to build them, but there is nothing that says we cannot send a 
child to a substandard facility, and children, in my opinion, are not 
as safe as they can be in substandard schools. And they certainly are 
inviting targets for would-be terrorists, either foreign or domestic, 
in some of these cases, and let me tell why, and I am going to use my 
congressional district, which I think is a very progressive district 
and I am sure other members would probably say the same thing, but 
certainly they are. Our State passed a $6.2 billion State bond issue in 
1996 and the counties that I am getting ready to cite have raised 
revenue and built buildings every year, I know, for the last 10 or 12 
years, and part of their challenge is they are growing so rapidly, they 
cannot keep up. The biggest challenge is school overcrowding, certainly 
in my congressional district, and I am sure it is true in a number of 
the others, and use of temporary trailers or substitutes for quality 
classrooms.
  Why is that an issue? There are several reasons. One is they are 
isolated from the rest of the building. In many cases they do not have 
shelters. They go out to the classrooms in the morning or the afternoon 
and it is raining or it is cold in the wintertime, they are losing 
instruction time. The teachers have children put a coat on to go to the 
bathroom or to go to the cafeteria or to the library. Members get the 
idea. It is just a challenge, and there are not many businesses in this 
country that allow their business to operate under those conditions, 
and yet we send our children to them and we say to the teachers we want 
them to send them back to us all A students, and if they do not, we are 
going to hold them accountable. I do not have any problem holding 
people accountable for the job they do. I think we ought to hold them 
accountable and we ought to have high standards, but we ought to have 
the gumption, as some of my friends would say, to put the quality 
facilities there to get the job done and put the resources there so 
they will have the tools to teach with.
  Mr. Speaker, in and around the Triangle region of the Raleigh area 
where I represent, our schools are literally bursting at the seams. 
Despite the best effort of local, as I have already said, and State 
officials, our school systems are finding themselves swamped by rapidly 
increasing enrollment forced on by growth. Many people have moved to 
the area to find good jobs because we have seen a lot of growth over 
the last several years, and they have had to put children in trailers.
  In my home county, as an example, Western Harnett High School now 
packs students and teachers into 22 trailers, 22. Multiply that by 25 
to 28 students, and my colleagues get an idea of how many young people 
are outside the main building. They have to go somewhere else to go to 
bathroom. They have to go to the cafeteria, anywhere else they want to 
go, and in high school, remember, they change classes every hour if 
they are on a regular schedule. If they are on a block schedule, it may 
be every hour and a half or two hours. So there is a lot of movement 
and a lot of people outside the building.
  Think of the security challenges that a high school principal faces 
in those conditions. They just are not big enough to handle the load. 
These young people are really young adults, and they are in facilities 
that are not what they ought to be.
  Next year, school leaders on this campus, now it already has 22, are 
going to have to add six more because the community is growing so 
rapidly. Someone said, well, are they doing anything? They are getting 
ready to build a new high school, but the point is that is happening 
all across our States and many places in America.
  Among all the schools in Harnett County, we have 122 trailers. Next 
door in Johnston County, a county that I grew up in, the school leaders 
have been forced to employ 169 trailers. That is how fast they are 
growing, and they are building new schools every year. Four Oaks 
Elementary alone has 16 trailers. Three-fourths of the schools in 
Johnston County have at least one trailer, and the story is the same 
all across the district because it is growing so rapidly.
  Local and State leaders have stepped up to the plate and they have 
built new schools, but the enrollment growth is so rapid that many of 
these new schools are overcrowded the day they open. Across the State 
of North Carolina, we have more than 1,500 trailers

[[Page H3218]]

today in use, and that number is growing, despite the best efforts of 
local governments and State government to put money in at a time when 
they are really feeling the pinch with the economic downturn.
  Overcrowded schools and trailers, they are not as safe as brick and 
mortar, we know that. I do not want to send anyone into a panic because 
their children attend school in a trailer, but any principal, if he is 
being honest, will tell someone that security is severely diminished by 
the use of trailers because they are outside the main building, they do 
not have the kind of control, and certainly they raise the risk of 
security around the building.
  As Congress thoroughly examines our Nation's security needs in the 
wake of September 11, we must not fail now because we did and we have 
spent money and we continue to do as we should have. We must not fail 
to provide assistance to get students out of trailers and into more 
safe and secure permanent buildings, and we can do it.
  Some of my colleagues say, well, Congress ought not to do it. Let me 
remind them. We spend money on a lot of stuff. We build schools 
overseas. We build prisons here at home. I just want somebody to tell 
me why we cannot build school buildings because there is a bill to do 
it. In our State and in our local areas, we have issued a record number 
of bonds to finance school construction in recent years. We did it when 
I was superintendent.
  Congress and the administration now can help provide the kind of 
leadership to deal with this pressing issue if they will only decide to 
do it across this country. At a similar time in our Nation's history 
where we were seeing tremendous growth and the challenge to our public 
schools, America faced unprecedented school age population growth with 
the onset of the baby boomers, and when did this happen? It really 
happened in the 1950s, after World War II, and at that time there was a 
Republican president who had been an American general that led us 
through World War II. He responded to the challenge with a proposal 
worth of $9 billion in current dollars for the Federal Government to 
assist with school construction.
  So I do not want my colleagues on either side of the aisle saying 
this Congress is unprecedented, and we spend money. This was a 
Republican president. It was not a Democratic president. He understood 
there was a need. It was not about party. It was about ideology. It was 
about building a future for America, and there are a lot of young men 
and women in this country who are today adults who went to school in 
these buildings that were paid for by the Federal Government.
  President Dwight David Eisenhower really was an American hero. That 
is why both parties tried to recruit him. The Republicans got him. He 
ran for president, but he was not afraid to provide the needed 
leadership on the domestic front. He understood it. Let me repeat it 
again. He understood that if we are going to be a strong Nation and we 
are going to be prepared for the future, we had to have a strong 
domestic economy, and on school construction, President Eisenhower 
said, ``Without impairing in any way the responsibilities of our 
States, localities, communities or families, the Federal Government can 
and should serve as an effective catalyst in dealing with this 
problem.'' The president was right then, and we now need that same kind 
of leadership once again.
  Here in the U.S. House, my colleagues and I are working to provide 
that same kind of leadership. We have endorsed H.R. 1076, the America's 
Better Classroom Act. This legislation will provide Federal tax credits 
to the holders of school construction bonds to help leverage precious 
resources at the local level. H.R. 1076 will help provide more than $22 
billion in school construction bonds across this country, and this is a 
bipartisan piece of legislation. It is not partisan. It will work to 
build new school buildings, alleviate overcrowding, strengthen security 
and improve education in the United States of America.
  Mr. Speaker, my colleagues and I have worked for several years to 
pass a similar piece of legislation. We now have 226 cosponsors on this 
piece of legislation, and I implore the Republican leadership of this 
House tonight to allow this bill to come out of the committee and come 
to the House floor. It is an urgent national problem, and it needs to 
be addressed.
  President Bush, who is doing a fine job on the war against terrorism 
and has shown leadership on other education issues, has unfortunately 
ignored the school construction crisis facing this country. Mr. 
Speaker, the American people deserve better. The American people 
deserve quality schools for their children. Their children are the most 
precious resource they have.
  Talk is cheap. It takes action and it takes responsibility, and the 
American people deserve the peace of mind that quality, secure schools 
will provide. I am proud to work with my Democratic colleagues, and 
yes, Republican colleagues who will join us, to support innovative 
solutions to this important issue. School construction is an important 
part of this agenda.
  In addition to school construction, there are a great many other 
educational issues that this Congress needs to address. Over the last 
several weeks, we have challenged several proposals, one that floated 
out of the administration, to change college students' loan rates. To 
their credit, they pulled it back after we raised the issue, that it 
would cost those students and their parents considerably more.

                              {time}  1845

  I have had the great privilege to serve at the local level, the State 
level, and now at the national level. And it never fails that whenever 
budgets get tight, some people insist on putting education on the 
chopping block. That is distressful because that truly is our future. 
But I know too well that you cannot strengthen education on the cheap.
  Also, it would be less than honest if I did not acknowledge that 
there are areas that we need to pay attention to. Where there are areas 
that need to have trimming and cutting back, we should do that. 
Everyone should acknowledge that; and we should not allow anyone, I do 
not care who they are, what position they hold, or where they are, to 
misspend public education money for our children and misrepresent the 
funding sources that they would be using. Because I happen to believe 
that when you cut education, you pay a heavy price.
  I grew up in a rural farm community; and I always say that when you 
cut education, it is as dumb as eating your seed corn. Because you 
always save the best corn to plant the next year. Some people in this 
town may not understand that reference, but back home, folks understand 
that eating your seed corn is not a smart idea if you hope to have a 
crop next year. And the same is true with our children. It is sort of 
an old cliche, but it is so true when we talk about our children, that 
they are our future.
  I expect if you ask most parents, they would, if they were open and 
honest, and most of them are, they would say to us that they could get 
along with a whole lot less than they do, if they had to. Because we 
all really, I think it is true of me and my wife, most of us want 
things better for our children. And that is why we work hard, because 
we want to make sure they are successful and they have the opportunity 
for a bright future.
  That is why the budget resolution that the majority pushed through 
this body a couple of months ago now contained many, I think, very 
misguided proposals and misplaced priorities that I think were wrong 
for this country. And education was caught in that crossfire. The 
Republican leadership's budget resolution cut $90 million in education 
funds from President Bush's own proposal that was just recently 
enacted, the No Child Left Behind Act. If you are going to have a 
program and you are going to ask people to live by high standards, and 
I think we need to have that, if we are going to ask them to do the 
kind of assessment to know where children are and help them get better, 
we have to give them the tools to get the job done, especially at a 
time when we are seeing almost 40 States, I think over 40 States in 
this country, facing budget crisis. If we do not live up to our part of 
the bargain, they are probably going to figure out right quick that we 
did not really mean it. Because they are not going to do it, and then 
we will be worse off than we were when we started. And I think that 
budget was misguided.

[[Page H3219]]

  The budget resolution also cut Pell grants for colleges, cut safe and 
drug-free schools by $200 million, improving teacher quality by $105 
million, education technology by $134 million, and also eliminated 28 
important educational efforts, such as dropout prevention, rural 
education, an area that is really hurting because of the disparate 
resources there, civics education, and numerous technology and training 
programs.
  It is important that we live up to our commitment at this level. 
Because if we do not, even though the Federal Government only puts in, 
depending on the local jurisdiction, 6 to 7 percent, and in North 
Carolina it is probably no more than about 7 percent of the total 
budget because the bulk of it is State and local, that is an important 
piece of money because it sends a powerful signal. It says that this is 
a priority at the national level; we really do believe in what you are 
doing, and here is how we want to help those who have fallen behind.
  Historically, Federal monies have been to help those who had needs in 
specific areas, by and large children with special needs, which we 
really are not meeting that obligation. We originally said we were 
going to pay a substantial amount more than we are now paying. We are 
paying 20 percent, and we should be paying more like 60 that we 
committed to. But these kinds of shortsighted cuts are wrong for our 
children, and they really are wrong for my home State and I think for 
the other States who are struggling to meet the needs and who really 
want to make a difference in children's lives.
  I just hope that as this session moves on, and we are now getting 
into moving into the appropriations process of the budget, which will 
be coming up in the next several weeks, that we will correct some of 
these problems; that we will put the resources in that are needed so 
that teachers can teach and they will have the resources to meet their 
needs. Because if we do not put in the resources that we need and we 
put the mandates in for the things we want them to do, and then we 
threaten to hold back other monies if they do not live up to that 
obligation, what we do, the people we hurt the most are not the wealthy 
school systems in this country. They may be getting few of the 
resources on a percentage basis to the budget than a lot of others, but 
the ones who are really getting hurt are the children, in most cases, 
who are the most vulnerable, those in the poorest school systems, the 
children with special needs who get some of the money.

  All those areas that are on the edge are the very youngsters that we 
are going to need to help. So I think sometimes we do not really 
understand when we pull the cord and not put the resources in place. 
Mr. Speaker, it has been my experience in the few years I have been 
here that we put together a lot of words, and talk is awful cheap. But 
at a time when we spend a lot of time back and forth about 
appropriations and budgets and so on, a lot of stuff gets lost in the 
sound and fury of the debate. But at the end of the day it really is 
about budget and spending choices that we have to make that really 
defines the kinds of priorities that we ought to have, and they really 
express our values as a Congress and as a people.
  I trust that in the next several weeks that we will show that we 
really do value education, because we know that lifetime learning is 
the key to the American dream for every family, middle class, wealthy, 
and those who are struggling to get into the middle class. As I said 
earlier, in today's global economy, America's international 
competitiveness is absolutely dependent on our people's ability to 
perform knowledge-based jobs that produce the best products and 
services in the world. And if we are going to continue to compete, we 
had better be about making sure the next generation of Americans in 
this new economy of this Information Age can be able to earn based on 
what they have learned.
  And it is so true. It is as true today as it was last year; but it 
will be more so over the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And so we have 
been trying to get Congress to give higher priority to strengthening 
our public schools, really our neighborhood schools; and by doing that 
they will demonstrate how much we value the education of our children 
and how much we care about the communities we live in. It is 
irresponsible, in my opinion, to talk about how much we value education 
and how much we care about the future and about our children when we 
come to this floor and squander the opportunity to make a difference 
and not put the resources in place to help our children be successful.
  In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, let me say that both our immediate and 
our long-term security needs depend on our investment in education. It 
is as critical today as it has ever been in the history of this 
country. You have heard others talk earlier about a number of things, 
but it is about looking at the future and how do we, as Members today, 
help those teachers in the classroom and the administrators teach our 
children to make decisions for tomorrow. We cannot allow children to be 
continually placed at risk by being condemned to less than quality 
facilities, and that same thing would be true for curriculum and 
instruction. That means we have to put the resources in where we can.
  We cannot put them all in. We will never have enough, I realize that. 
But it has to be a partnership, and a true partnership with State, 
locals, and, yes, with the private sector to make sure that teachers 
get the skilled training they need and the ongoing training. Too many 
times we say to these professionals, you are professionals, we believe 
in you; and yet, when they walk out of the classroom and they need to 
get their certificates renewed or upgraded, they have to take it out of 
their own meager salaries to pay for it. We do not do that in any other 
profession I am aware of that pays that kind of wage in this country, 
but we do it to teachers. And that is wrong. We can do better, and we 
ought to be doing better.

  I think America is looking to Congress to provide leadership on these 
urgent national priorities, and I trust that not only my Democratic 
colleagues but my Republican colleagues will also join me. I certainly 
can say to you that I stand ready to help deliver on that because I 
think it is critical to the future of this country. We will not get 
many more opportunities. Even though these are challenging times and 
resources are tight, if we spend them wisely, we can have a very bright 
tomorrow. Our children will inherit a better country, and our democracy 
will be safe and secure. I really believe that an educated citizenry is 
important to maintaining a democracy. We have seen it around the world. 
When we do not have quality education, we are in trouble.
  I will close with this, Mr. Speaker. If we want to look at 
Afghanistan as a place, the first thing they did was shut down the 
schools. Of course, the first thing they did was oppress the women and 
then they shut down the schools. But the truth is if you poison the 
minds of young people and do not give them an opportunity, your future 
is pretty grim. We are not going to let that happen in America. We are 
going to work together to make it better. We have the chance, we have 
limited resources, but we can target them, we can build better schools, 
we can help those teachers in the classrooms who are telling children 
about the better world they will have. Someone has said if you want a 
better world, tell a child, they will build it.

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