[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 133 (Thursday, September 25, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11943-S11957]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004--Resumed

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the pending business.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 2765) making appropriations for the government 
     of the District of Columbia and other activities chargeable 
     in whole or in part against the revenues of said District for 
     the fiscal year ending September 30, 2004, and for other 
     purposes.

  Pending:

       DeWine/Landrieu amendment No. 1783 in the nature of a 
     substitute.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, in just a moment my colleague and friend 
from California will be offering an amendment. Before she does that, I 
again thank her for her contribution to this bill.
  When this bill was being marked up in the Appropriations Committee, 
she came to Senator Stevens, the chairman, Senator Gregg, myself, and 
the other members of the committee and said she believed the bill could 
be improved--specifically, the section having to do with the 
scholarships for the children in the District of Columbia.
  She made some suggestions. Quite frankly, as I told her on the phone 
later, I was just sorry I had not come up with those ideas because, 
frankly, she significantly improved the bill. So I wish to publicly 
again thank her for the suggestions she made. We incorporated those 
suggestions, those ideas, into the bill in the committee.
  She said: We want to make sure this bill is constitutional. She had 
some ideas in regard to that. We incorporated them into the bill. She 
also said: ``Let's make sure the mayor--who has been such a strong 
advocate for the scholarship program, the mayor of the District of 
Columbia--let's make sure he is intricately involved in this program, 
the designing of the program, the running of the program; let's make 
sure he is tied into this program, and that we can, in fact, do 
that.'' We made those changes as well.

  Third, she said: ``Let's make sure there is accountability so we can 
measure the results.'' We made some changes to accomplish that as well.
  The amendment she will offer and describe in a moment builds on the 
changes that we have already made but

[[Page S11944]]

goes further and breaks new ground and perfects the bill even further. 
I am anxious to hear her description of the amendment. I have taken a 
look at it. It is an excellent amendment.
  I yield the floor and anxiously await her amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Alexander). The Senator from California.


                Amendment No. 1787 To Amendment No. 1783

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I thank the manager of the bill, my 
colleague from Ohio. I appreciate his sentiments.
  Once in a while, by something we do, we can make a tangible and 
immediate difference in the lives of others. This is one such instance. 
In this case, what I hope to do is send an amendment to the desk, have 
Senator DeWine's second degree, and then I would like to speak to the 
underpinnings of this scholarship program, which some people call a 
voucher program, and my rationale as to why I think this Mayor's 
request to try a pilot small voucher program in the District of 
Columbia should be granted.
  I begin by sending the amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from California [Mrs. Feinstein] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 1787 to amendment No. 1783.

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

   (Purpose: To amend the DC Student Opportunity Scholarship Program 
                     regarding student assessments)

       On page 31, strike line 13 and all that follows through 
     page 32, line 2, and insert the following:
       (c) Student Assessments.--The Secretary may not approve an 
     application from an eligible entity for a grant under this 
     title unless the eligible entity's application--
       (1) ensures that the eligible entity will--
       (A) assess the academic achievement of all participating 
     eligible students;
       (B) use the same assessments every school year that are 
     used for school year 2003-2004 by the District of Columbia 
     Public Schools to assess the achievement of District of 
     Columbia public school students under section 1111(b)(3)(A) 
     of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 
     U.S.C. 6311(b)(3)(A)), to assess participating eligible 
     students in the same grades as such public school students;
       (C) provide assessment results and other relevant 
     information to the Secretary or to the entity conducting the 
     evaluation under section 9 so that the Secretary or the 
     entity, respectively, can conduct an evaluation that shall 
     include, but not be limited to, a comparison of the academic 
     achievement of participating eligible students in the 
     assessments described in this subsection to the achievement 
     of--
       (i) students in the same grades in the District of Columbia 
     public schools; and
       (ii) the eligible students in the same grades in District 
     of Columbia public schools who sought to participate in the 
     scholarship program but were not selected; and
       (D) disclose any personally identifiable information only 
     to the parents of the student to whom the information 
     relates; and
       (2) describes how the eligible entity will ensure that the 
     parents of each student who applies for a scholarship under 
     this title (regardless of whether the student receives the 
     scholarship), and the parents of each student participating 
     in the scholarship program under this title, agree that the 
     student will participate in the assessments used by the 
     District of Columbia Public Schools to assess the achievement 
     of District of Columbia public school students under section 
     1111(b)(3)(A) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 
     of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 6311(b)(3)(A)), for the period for which 
     the student applied for or received the scholarship, 
     respectively.
       (d) Independent Evaluation.--The Secretary and Mayor of the 
     District of Columbia shall jointly select an independent 
     entity to evaluate annually the performance of students who 
     received scholarships under the 5-year pilot program under 
     this title, and shall make the evaluations public. The first 
     evaluation shall be completed and made available not later 
     than 9 months after the entity is selected pursuant to the 
     preceding sentence.
       (e) Teacher Quality.--Each teacher who instructs 
     participating eligible students under the scholarship program 
     shall possess a college degree.

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I have been in public office for 30 
years. I have always supported schools. I supported every charter 
amendment, and every bond issue to be helpful to schools. I have 
supported every vote to increase dollars to schools. I voted to support 
charter schools, magnet schools, alternative schools. I have campaigned 
for increasing Title I moneys that go to schools that teach poor 
children to try to correct the formula so the money goes where the 
child goes.
  As a Mayor for 9 years, 3 of those years I bailed out the school 
district with $3 million a year so that teacher salary increases could 
be paid during those years. I have traveled to many cities to see what 
innovative public education programs have been put into play. I have 
never before supported a voucher program. I do so now with a great 
commitment to see if this program can succeed. I do so now because 
those of us who believe strongly in public education--and that is 100 
Members of the Senate--have perhaps been too concerned with the 
structure of education, the rhetoric of education, and not concerned 
enough about what actually works on the streets and in the 
neighborhoods and communities of America.
  This was brought to my attention 3 years ago when the Mayor of 
Oakland, Jerry Brown, called me and said: My schools have deep 
troubles. There are so many failing youngsters. I want to try something 
new. I would like to try a military school, all voluntary, aimed to be 
geared for excellence, college preparatory. I want to have the poorest 
of the poor admitted to this school.
  I thought about it for a while.
  He said: I have been turned down by the local board of education. But 
that is not going to stop me.
  He went to the State and got a special charter from the State. He 
came back here and convinced Jerry Lewis in the House, me in the 
Senate, to put some money in a bill to allow him to begin.
  I spoke to Jerry Brown this morning. I said: Jerry, I want to give 
the Senate a brief progress report. How is it going in your military 
school?
  He said: We have our startup problems, but we are doing pretty well. 
We have 350 youngsters. Some drop out. We have discipline. We have 
uniforms. We have the National Guard participating. These youngsters, 3 
years later, are testing to the equivalent of the second best middle 
school in Oakland.
  So it was a new model. It was refused by the educational 
establishment. But it is working for some youngsters.
  When I went to public school in San Francisco, there were 350 
students in the school. The class sizes were under 20. There were no 
other languages other than English spoken. That is certainly not the 
case for the most part in public education today. It has changed 
dramatically. Schools have student populations in the hundreds. Classes 
are way up in numbers. Language has run up to 40 different languages in 
a school. The economic and social disparity of this great diverse 
society makes teaching in the elementary school grades much more 
difficult.
  I have come to believe that if I can make a difference to work for 
new models in education, I am going to do it. Education is primarily a 
local institution. Policy is set by local leaders. The Federal 
Government provides maybe 7 percent of educational dollars and most of 
those through Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

  I strongly believe that Mayors should have an input. This Mayor has 
asked for dollars not to be taken from public schools but new dollars: 
new dollars to be put in public schools, $13 million; new dollars to be 
put in chartered schools, $13 million; and new dollars to try a 
scholarship program to try something different.
  What he has seen in the District of Columbia is too much failure. 
Despite the fact that each youngster receives $10,852 a year--the third 
highest in the United States,--despite the fact that of the amount of 
money that comes into education, test scores are dismal.
  Of fourth graders in the District of Columbia schools, only 10 
percent read proficiently. Of eighth graders, only 12 percent read 
proficiently.
  Think about what that means. If you are in the eighth grade and you 
can't read, what good is high school? You can't read to learn. Reading 
is a predicate to learning, just as discipline is a predicate to 
learning. So these youngsters become doomed.
  This is not my assessment. This was a national assessment that was 
done in March of 2000. Of eighth graders, 77 percent are below the 
grade level in math. Twelve percent are proficient in reading.

[[Page S11945]]

  I am supporting this because the Mayor wants it. I am supporting it 
because it is not a precedent. It is a pilot. It is 5 years. The 
voucher is adequate. It is $7,500. There are 9,049 students in the 
District of Columbia in failing schools.
  This would cover 2,000 of those youngsters; 2,000 of those youngsters 
would have an opportunity to have some choice in where they go to 
school. Would they go to a religious school or a secular school? That 
is up to the parent; it depends on the cost. Some families would be 
able to put in some additional funds, if the private school tuition is 
above $7,500.
  But I know for a fact there are plenty of schools where the tuition 
is below the $7,500. As I said in the committee, I helped a youngster 
go to one of these parochial schools in the District. The tuition is 
$3,800 a year. I have watched her blossom. I have watched the 
discipline work for her. I have watched the small classes work for her. 
I have watched the additional time the teacher spends with her work. I 
see her reading way above grade now. I see her proud of her uniform 
that she wears, so there is no competition for clothes. It is just one 
model.
  The key thing that comes through to me, as somebody who listens to 
average people perhaps more than I do the policy wonks when it comes to 
education, is different models work for different children. We all know 
with our own children, what works for one child doesn't necessarily 
work for another. Therefore, what public education needs to do is stop 
worrying about structures and bureaucracies and bigness and worry about 
what is not working for these children. What do we do to provide a 
different environment? Do we divide up our campuses in a number of 
smaller schools? Do we build schools in office buildings--small 
schools, maybe with a hundred youngsters--so children can be closer to 
their families? What do we do? What new models do we look at?
  All this Mayor is saying is these are failing schools. Why should the 
poor child not have the same access as the wealthy child does? That is 
all he is asking for. He is saying let's try it for 5 years, and then 
let's compare progress and let's see if this model can work for these 
District youngsters.
  Interestingly enough, I am looking at the list of failing schools, 
and I see four are elementary, four are middle/junior high; and then it 
jumps to eight for senior high. What is the lesson in that one 
statistic? The lesson in that one statistic is if you have four 
elementary schools failing, you are going to add to that in high 
school; you are going to have more high schools failing and more 
difficulty in high school.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this chart be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

   NUMBER OF STUDENTS IN FAILING SCHOOLS, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC
         SCHOOLS, ENROLLMENT FOR SELECTED SCHOOLS AS OF SY 02-03
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                          Schools                             Enrollment
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Elementary
  Bruce-Monroe ES..........................................          370
  Stanton..................................................          622
  Wilkinson................................................          508
  Fletcher-Johnson EC......................................          528
Middle/Junior High
  Evans MS.................................................          259
  Sousa MS.................................................          420
  Johnson JHS..............................................          646
  R.H. Terrell JHS.........................................          294
Senior High
  Anacostia SHS............................................          693
  Ballou SHS...............................................          964
  Coolidge SHS.............................................          843
  Eastern SHS..............................................          968
  Roosevelt SHS............................................          821
  M.M. Washington CSHS.....................................          329
  Woodson SHS..............................................          788
                                                            ------------
    Total kids low performing schools......................         9049
------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, the Mayor has asked for a 5-year 
pilot. He said it would be for the less affluent. They are defined by 
families of 4 at 185 percent of poverty. This is a family of 4 that 
earns $34,000 a year, or below, and these children would be given 
priority by lottery to have an opportunity to go to another school. It 
is like a golden key. It gives them an opportunity to try something 
else. It is voluntary. Nobody is forced to do it. Why is everybody so 
threatened by it? No one is forced to do it. If a family wants to try 
it, this provides them with that opportunity.
  Again, these are schools identified for improvement, corrective 
action, or restructuring. That is the language from the bill. And 
priority is given to students and families who lack financial resources 
to take advantage of educational opportunities. That is the language in 
the bill. So for $7,500 a child, 2,000 youngsters will have an 
opportunity to try this, to see if it makes a difference.
  It might offer some smaller classes, or uniforms; it might offer more 
attention; it might offer an easier learning environment; it may offer 
better discipline. Certainly, there will be some curriculum changes. 
There will certainly be more emphasis on reading, writing, and 
arithmetic--the basics, if you will.
  Now we have in the Appropriations Committee, thanks to the 
accommodation of Senator DeWine and Senator Judd Gregg, made several 
changes in the original bill. It was brought to my attention to take a 
look at the Zelman Supreme Court case. Senator Voinovich mentioned that 
to us. I believe he was Governor of Ohio when Cleveland put forward 
this program, and it went up to the Supreme Court in a case called 
Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. So we took that case and this bill and we 
tried to bring them together so that we added religion to the general 
nondiscrimination clause, which also covers race, color, national 
origin, and sex, and extend the nondiscrimination clause to both 
schools and the entity operating the voucher program. We added language 
clarifying that the bill does not override title VII to ensure that we 
don't change title VII's provisions permitting religious discrimination 
under certain circumstances.
  We deleted certain other language which we thought might impact the 
establishment clause. We increased the role of the Mayor to make the 
Mayor responsible for the details and functioning and accountability of 
this program, and to ensure the proper use of public funds by the 
schools participating in this voucher program.
  The amendment I have sent to the desk is an additional strengthening 
of the testing and evaluation components of the bill to try to ensure 
that scholarship students are taught by quality teachers. Essentially 
what this bill says is every voucher child must be taught by a teacher 
that at least has a college education. Additionally, we have changed 
the testing requirements. I have had a conversation with Cardinal 
McCarrick. Since about one-third of the private schools in the 
Districts are Catholic schools, I talked to the Cardinal about the 
advisability of having the same tests given to a student on a voucher 
in a parochial, or secular school, as would be given to a student in 
the public school. He agreed that would be a very significant thing to 
do.
  I would like to read into the Record a portion of the letter from 
Cardinal McCarrick.

       . . . I want to assure you that we are not only open to 
     being accountable for any public funds which the families of 
     our students receive, but anxious to be able to prove the 
     value of our education. This would mean being willing to 
     administer the same set of examinations that are given in the 
     public school system.
       I was happy to be able to tell you that in the District of 
     Columbia 47% of our students are non-Catholic--

  Forty-seven percent of the students in the DC Catholic schools are 
non-Catholic--

     and in the heavily impacted inner city areas it goes up to 
     67% or higher. My great predecessor, Cardinal Hickey, used to 
     say that we don't educate them because they are Catholic, but 
     because we are Catholic and we accept this as a 
     responsibility for being good neighbors and committed to 
     serving the community.

  I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the letter be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                    Archdiocese of Washington,

                                Washington, DC, September 8, 2003.
     Hon. Dianne Feinstein,
     U.S. Senate, Hart Senate Office Building,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Feinstein: It was good to be able to speak to 
     you on the phone on Friday. I promised to send you this 
     letter to clarify the situation of our Catholic schools in 
     the District of Columbia. First of all, I want to assure you 
     that we are not only open to being accountable for any public 
     funds which the families of our students receive, but anxious 
     to be able to prove the value of our education. This would 
     mean being willing to administer the same set of examinations 
     that are given in the public school system.
       I was happy to be able to tell you that in the District of 
     Columbia 47% of our students

[[Page S11946]]

     are non-Catholic and in the heavily impacted inner city areas 
     it goes up to 67% or higher. My great predecessor, Cardinal 
     Hickey, used to say that we don't educate them because they 
     are Catholic, but because we are Catholic and we accept this 
     as a responsibility for being good neighbors and committed to 
     serving the community.
       I am so greatful to you for your concern for the parents of 
     these children. So many of our parents work three jobs and 
     more to be able to afford the education in our schools. The 
     help that this legislation would make available would be such 
     a blessing for them.
       If there is any further information that you might find 
     useful, please do not hesitate to have your staff contact me.
       With every good wish and deepest gratitude, I am
           Sincerely,
                                      Theodore Cardinal McCarrick,
                                         Archbishop of Washington.

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. We have a provision in this bill that a scholarship 
recipient would essentially be tested against a control group with the 
same test given in the public school setting as in the private school 
setting.
  The first component of my amendment requires that the managing entity 
that will run the voucher program give voucher students--not every 
student in private school--the same assessments they took in public 
schools. It also requires that the Secretary of Education, in 
conjunction with the Mayor, appoint an independent evaluator to study 
all aspects of the voucher program, with a strong focus on the academic 
progress of the students in the program.
  The independent evaluator, which could be a think tank, could be an 
independent entity, will be required to evaluate the test scores of 
voucher students over the 5-year period, as well as the scores of a 
randomly selected group of comparable students who applied for vouchers 
but did not get them.
  The test scores of the control group for which no voucher is 
available will be studied and measured against the scores of the 
voucher students.
  The evaluator will be required to report back to the Congress every 
year on the progress, for the duration of the 5-year pilot. This 
amendment also requires that the test scores of both recipients and the 
student control group, as I said, would be studied, obviously, against 
one another.
  I think we have a very practical, very doable trial proposal. I know 
on this side of the aisle there are a lot of objections to it, and I 
must say I am deeply puzzled by them because I do not understand what 
the fear is. Traditionally, the argument against vouchers always has 
been it takes money away from the public school. This does not. It adds 
money to the public school. Another argument always has been, how do we 
really know the students will do better? We have the testing and 
evaluation component in place.
  Finally, the program is restricted to those most in need. These will 
be the poorest families in DC who will participate. They will all be 
families of four, earning under $34,000 a year. So for 5 years, a child 
who is not making it, whose parent may be at wit's end, will have an 
opportunity to say, aha, I might be able to get one of those vouchers. 
Let's see if John, Sam, Gloria, or Betty can make it in another 
setting. In other words, let's try another model for our child.
  Affluent people do this all the time. Affluent people have that 
opportunity. If their child does not do well in one setting, they can 
place their child in another setting. Why shouldn't the poor person 
have that same opportunity? This is the weight of our argument. This is 
the candor of our argument. I hope this is the caring point of our 
argument, because if this passes, 2,000 children will be able to take 
that pilot and 5 years from now we will know a lot more than we know 
today.
  I have gotten a lot of flak because I am supporting it. And guess 
what. I do not care. I have finally reached the stage in my career, I 
do not care. I am going to do what I sincerely believe is right. I have 
spent the time. I have gone to the schools, I have seen what works, I 
have seen what does not work. Believe it or not, I have always been 
sort of a political figure for the streets as opposed to the policy 
wonks. I know different things work on the streets that often do not 
work on the bookshelves. So we will see. It is kind of interesting.
  I have a member of my own staff who I do not think was very much in 
favor of me trying this, but at one point she came up to me and said: I 
must tell you something. I grew up in Anacostia. My parents could 
afford to send me to a Catholic school, and I went to that school. I 
saw so many of my peers get into such trouble and it conditioned the 
whole remainder of their life. Now today, she is a distinguished 
attorney with a solid career and a solid job.
  My concern in education has always been K-6. It has always been 
teaching the basic fundamentals to kids so they could go on and learn, 
because if they do not have the basic fundamentals, it is so 
humiliating.
  As mayor, I used to go out to Bayview Hunter's Point every Monday. I 
spent the afternoon with children. I talked to children. It took me 6 
months to get them to look me in the eye, to be able to pronounce their 
names, to be able to talk directly to another human being. It took the 
time, the energy, and the effort. Through no fault of their own, in 
many cases our public institutions are so overburdened, with so many 
different issues, that it is difficult to provide everything for every 
child. Obviously, some children need more than they are getting.
  I hope there will be others on my side of the aisle who will give 
this program a chance. I believe it will meet the test of 
constitutionality. I believe it is a bona fide pilot. I intend to stay 
with it and see what happens and see that the evaluation and the 
testing is adequate and carried out correctly and see what we learn for 
the future for our children.
  Once again, I thank Senator DeWine for his courtesy in working with 
me. He really has been terrific and I appreciate it very much.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from California for a 
wonderful speech, but, more important than that, for her commitment to 
the children of the District of Columbia. Her position on this issue is 
so typical of her career and what I have seen her do during the time I 
have been in the Senate, during the time I have served with her. That 
is, she does not necessarily take the conventional position. She 
studies issues. She goes out and looks at the issue. She goes out and 
sees what the issues are and tries to understand them. As she says, she 
listens to the street. She listens to the people. She finds out what is 
going on, and that clearly is what she has done in this particular 
case.
  Again, as I have said on this floor before, I applaud her. I applaud 
her for her contribution to this bill. This is a better bill than it 
would have been but for the Senator from California. I thank her for 
her contribution.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. May I say one more thing? Will the Senator yield to 
me for a moment?
  Mr. DeWINE. I yield to my colleague from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. First of all, again, I thank the Senator. It has been 
a great pleasure for me to work with him. I really appreciate it.
  I have just been alerted that the Mayor is here. I understand the 
Mayor of the District of Columbia can come on the floor of the Senate. 
I believe very strongly, because mayors run their cities, they are 
responsible. Yet, in education, it is very often so frustrating because 
they do not have control. This is the Mayor who wants to leave a legacy 
of an improved education system for the District.
  Those of us who read the Washington Post this morning, and the 
Mayor's comments addressed, I guess, to the editorial board of the 
Washington Post, understand the frustration. I have always been one who 
had a great appreciation for Dick Daley, of Chicago, who went to the 
State legislature and said: Give me control of appointment of the 
school board. And they did. He appointed some of his people to the 
school board and turned around the Chicago public schools. I think in a 
way that has set a real pattern for public education in America. I had 
the privilege of visiting those schools and spending a day in Chicago.
  I ask consent that the Mayor be allowed to come on the floor of the 
Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Mayor of the District of Columbia is 
authorized to be on the floor of the Senate under the rules.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much, Mr. President.

[[Page S11947]]

  Just to continue on for a moment, I think what's going to happen in 
America is that more mayors of big cities will get more control over 
the schools, whether it is by appointing the school board or whether it 
is by having a separate entity involved in it. In the case of Chicago, 
I remember the Mayor appointed his chief of staff as head of the school 
board and his budget person, Paul G. Vallas, as superintendent of 
public instruction. So they had a working team to really turn the 
public school system around.
  I would like to welcome the Mayor of the District of Columbia to the 
floor of the Senate.
  Welcome, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much.
  I want everybody to know this is your request and your program. I 
don't know how many votes on our side of the aisle we will have for it, 
but I think it is a very important program to try. I think it is very 
important. I think because of the testing we have built into it, the 
same tests, the evaluation component, the fact is that your feet are 
going to be to the fire because this is your program and it is going to 
succeed or fail based on your energy, your staying power, your drive, 
your motivation. And I know it is there.
  To the Presiding Officer, and to the manager of the bill, I have made 
my arguments. I am happy to answer any questions there may be, but I am 
hopeful this amendment will be agreed to and we will have an 
opportunity to try this pilot program.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeWine). The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Ohio 
giving me the opportunity to speak at a time while the Senator from 
California is still in the Chamber and the Mayor of the District of 
Columbia is still here.
  I greatly respect the leadership shown by the Mayor of the District 
of Columbia and by the Senator from California, who are willing to take 
a fresh look at children who need help. This leadership is based upon 
their own experiences and common sense, and wisdom to try something 
different.
  I listened very carefully to the Senator from California. I was 
thinking the Senate is a good place for someone with a lot of 
experiences on the street and in the Mayor's office, in political 
campaigns, and in legislative bodies. She is someone who has enough 
experience to come to her own conclusions.
  This is a terribly important decision. It would not even be before us 
if the Mayor and other local officials in the District of Columbia had 
not asked for it because too many of the changes that have been 
suggested in education are often suggested in the tone of: This is good 
for you. But, it rarely ever happens unless somebody says: I want this 
for my child, or my school district.
  I remember in Milwaukee 15 years ago, there was a strange confluence 
of circumstances that led Milwaukee to try to give the poorest families 
in the city more choices of school for their children. It only happened 
because Polly Williams, who was the State representative and was the 
leader of Jesse Jackson's campaign in Wisconsin, and the Democratic 
mayor of Milwaukee, and the Republican Governor, Governor--now 
Secretary--Thompson, all happened to come to the same conclusion. They 
all thought outside the box. They all did things that were different.
  But the person that really made the most difference, with great 
respect to the mayor and with great respect to the Governor at that 
time, was Polly Williams, who represented parents who said: I want this 
for my child.
  What we are hearing today in the Senate, and what the Senator from 
California has so beautifully stated, and the Mayor has brought to our 
attention, is that we have several thousand families in the District of 
Columbia who are saying to us: We want this for our child. We see the 
results. We see the figures the Senator from California cited: In 
eighth grade only a few children are reading at the eighth grade level, 
so few children are able to do math, this lack of academic success is 
almost a guarantee of a lack of success in life.
  I was glad I had the assignment of being the Presiding Officer at the 
time when the Senator from California made her speech. I wanted to add 
to that in a couple of ways.
  I think she beautifully distinguished between this proposal and a 
broad voucher program. We have argued those up and down the street for 
years. But here is what the Senator from California reminded us is 
different about this proposal:
  No. 1, the Mayor wants it. If we were in a State, if we were in the 
State of California, or Tennessee, or Ohio, the money we are talking 
about would really be the State's money; in effect, it would be money 
the State was spending the way the State wanted to spend it. We just 
happen to be in the District of Columbia where the money is collected a 
little differently. This is money that local people really ought to be 
able to decide how to spend, and they want to spend it this way. That 
is one big difference.
  The Senator from California said this is a pilot program. One might 
argue that there is not such a thing in Federal Government; that every 
program lasts forever. But it doesn't have to last forever. This is a 
chance to try to give 2,000 poor children from failing schools one 
option to see if they can succeed in their educational life.
  We don't have many pilot programs with this idea. We have one in 
Milwaukee where it worked well, I thought. I have been to those 
schools. We learned a lot. We have some programs in Ohio, which the 
Presiding Officer helped to implement.
  In the Nation's Capital, it might be good to have a look and see 
whether this idea works or not. The Senator from California suggested 
in her amendment some provisions which will help make sure that it gets 
a fair test--requiring scholarship students to take tests similar to 
other students in the District, requiring the Secretary of Education 
and the Mayor to select an independent entity for evaluation, and to 
say that the teachers of these children who are on scholarships should 
be as well qualified as possible. Those are very sensible additions.
  The Mayor wants it. It is a pilot program. And it helps 2,000 of the 
poorest children in failing schools by giving them $7,500 a year of new 
money. This comes from no other educational program. If it is not spent 
for this, it goes right back into the Federal budgets. It is new money 
to give them that choice.
  Pilot programs and studies sometimes help us learn things. For 
example, Vanderbilt University did a very interesting report that was 
published in September of 2001.
  The Senator from California and the Mayor of the District of Columbia 
might be interested in this, too. They took a group of schools, all of 
which have the characteristics of potential failing schools. In this 
group of schools, 35 percent of the students changed school every year, 
and 50 percent of the students qualified for free or reduced-price 
lunches.
  The parents of the children in those schools had a modest education 
themselves. It is a recipe for failure when compared to most of our 
schools. Yet in these schools--instead of having only 1 of 10 or 1 of 
20 8th graders who score proficient in math or reading, these schools 
are first in the country and second in the country among African-
American students, according to the National Assessment for Educational 
Progress in Math and Reading.
  What schools are these? These are the schools on the military bases 
across the country. All of us can speculate as to why that is true. 
There might be more discipline in a military school or military 
environment. Another one might be that the school reports to the 
commanding officer of the base.
  The Senator from California has just increased the accountability of 
the schools in these scholarship programs by saying the Mayor is 
directly responsible. The Mayor of the District of Columbia is going to 
be paying attention to these schools and these scholarship kids.
  There is another thing we might learn from this study of the 
military. There is one other provision which I found very interesting. 
At the military post schools where the military children who live on 
the base go to school, parents must go to the parent-teacher 
conference. They don't have a choice. They can be court-marshaled if 
they don't go. They are ordered to go. I guess that might be the single 
most important thing.
  If this education has all of these aspects--and everyone is an 
expert. Everybody has 1,000 ideas. There are two

[[Page S11948]]

things we know for absolute sure. The thing that makes the most 
difference in a child's education is the parent and the second thing is 
the teacher. Everything else all added up into a lump counts for 
relatively little compared to those first two.
  It might be that if there are 2,000 families who go to the trouble of 
helping their kids move from a failing school into another school that 
these parents will have increased parental involvement. This might be 
what makes the difference in terms of their child's success. But we 
don't know that unless we try to find out, which we can do over the 
next 5 years if we support the Senator's amendment and then we support 
the bill that is reported.

  There are a couple of other things I would like to say. The Senator 
from California said that she has lived long enough to do what she 
thought was right and that she was puzzled by the opposition to this 
program. I have to admit that I am puzzled, too. On my side of the 
aisle, I am not always in lockstep with all of the Republican ideas 
that come along because I have lived long enough to make up my own mind 
about things.
  But on the idea of saying that poor children shouldn't have the same 
choices of schools that middle-income and rich kids have, I have never 
really understood the opposition. It has always puzzled me.
  Let me give an example of why. This is not some idea from the Moon. 
The idea of giving families choices in educational institutions has 
been the single most successful social program we have ever had in our 
country's history. Most people would say that the GI bill after World 
War II has been our most successful social program. What happened after 
World War II?
  At a time when only 5 or 10 percent of Americans were going to 
college, the Government said to the veterans: When you come home, to 
pay you back, we are going to give you a scholarship to go wherever you 
want to go to school. They said: You may go to Berkeley. You may take 
this money to Fisk University. You might go to Hastings in California. 
You can to Vanderbilt, you can go to the University of Tennessee, you 
can go to Ohio State, or to Notre Dame, or Kenyon. You can go to 
Yeshiva. You can go to a Brigham Young University. Wherever you want to 
go you can go to an accredited university.
  A great many of the veterans returning from World War II used their 
GI bills to go to high schools. Many of them went to Catholic high 
schools. At that time, we began to allow Government scholarships to 
follow students to the educational institutions of their choice.
  At that time, about 20 percent of our higher educational institutions 
were public. About 80 percent of the students went to private schools.
  It sounds strange today because now we have big public universities. 
In Ohio you had all of those wonderful institutions--Miami, Kenyon, 
Oberlin--all the colleges in Ohio. And Ohio State wasn't all that big 
at the end of World War II. A lot of the colleges that are universities 
today were just small teachers colleges.
  What has been the effect of allowing Federal dollars to follow 
students to the educational institution of their choice since World War 
II? What happened is that it has created more opportunities for 
Americans more than any other program we have ever passed. It has 
created not just some of the best universities in the world but almost 
all of the best universities in the world. It continues today in the 
form of the Federal Pell grant and the Guaranteed Student Loan Program. 
One-half or more of students who go to colleges or universities in 
California or in Ohio or in Tennessee go to college with a Federal 
grant or with a loan following them to the college or university of 
their choice.
  When I was president of the University of Tennessee, it never 
occurred to me to come to the Senate and say: Senator DeWine, I hope 
you will pass a law that keeps Federal dollars from following a 
Tennessee student to Vanderbilt or to Fisk or to Maryville College or 
Carson-Newman College or Howard University or Brigham Young or Yeshiva 
because they are private, public, or parochial. It never occurred to 
me. I wanted the students to have all of those choices. It helped them 
and it helped our university.
  If we have the tradition of choice in America, and if we have 60 
years of funding educational institutions by allowing the money to 
follow the student to the school of their choice, it has always puzzled 
me as to why we exempt grade schools and high schools. We even allow 
Federal scholarships to let money follow preschoolers to Head Start or 
the child care program of their choice. Many States allow juniors and 
seniors in high school to let money follow them to the college of their 
choice.

  We have gotten in this rut, and it is not clear how we got there but 
some people are determined to keep it forever. The ones paying the 
price are the poor kids of America.
  We just finished what has turned out to be a very unpopular set of 
tests in Tennessee and America, the leave no child behind test. In our 
State, some of the superintendents and teachers were up in arms. They 
said: We are not a failing school.
  I said: I would not get too proud or too embarrassed about the scores 
in Tennessee or California because all the leave no child behind tests 
are demonstrating is what we already know, which is that in most of our 
schools in America, even some of our finest schools, there are some 
children who are not learning to read. They are not learning to 
compute. Almost all of those children are disadvantaged.
  We can ignore that and adopt a new slogan that says leave no more 
than 35 percent of our children behind and go right on to decide to try 
some other things.
  As the Senator from California said, one thing we could try is to 
allow the District of Columbia to spend its money helping 2,000 of 
those children who are poor and in failing schools, help them go to a 
school of their parents' choice and see whether that helps.
  Some people say the school choice plan is a think-tank plan, maybe a 
conservative plan, maybe even a Republican plan. It is none of that. 
Let me give an example. One of the most distinguished educators in 
America is a man named Ted Sizer, at Harvard University, a graduate 
student during the Lyndon Johnson days. He was a ``power to the 
people,'' Johnson liberal Democrat. As his graduate degree thesis in 
the late 1960s, Ted Sizer published a proposal called ``The Poor Kids 
Bill of Rights.'' The idea was that part of the war on poverty, under 
the LBJ programs, the Federal Government should give $5,000, in 1969 
dollars, to every poor kid--he defined poor as middle income or below; 
which meant half the kids--give $5,000 to half the children in America 
and let it follow them to the school of their choice.
  That proposal came out of the 1960s from Ted Sizer, out of Harvard, 
out of Lyndon Johnson's philosophy. It is as true to that philosophy as 
it is to Milton Friedman's philosophy.
  I like better what the Senator from California said. She was not so 
interested in a philosophy. She was interested in parents and kids on 
the street. That is who we should be listening to. If the Mayor and the 
chairman of the city school board say: We have tried everything. We are 
spending $11,000 per kid; we are putting more money into charter 
schools; we are improving our schools, but we have all these children 
who are not learning to read, could we not try to give them a chance to 
go to some of the same schools that they could go to if their parents 
had some money? That is all they are saying.
  I am very glad to have been here today to hear the Senator from 
California address the Senate. I am glad she is here to make a 
difference. I am glad the District of Columbia Mayor is here to make a 
difference too.
  Everyone, after being here for a while, looks to the end of their 
careers and wonders what it will look like when looking back. My guess 
is when the Senator from California and the Mayor of the District of 
Columbia look back--these decisions, which are courageous in a 
political sense, are decisions they will take great pride in years to 
come.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeWine). The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. VOINOVICH. Mr. President, I rise to support the inclusion of the 
District of Columbia School Choice Program contained within the fiscal 
year 2004 District of Columbia appropriations bill. I urge my 
colleagues to defeat any attempt to weaken or remove the program.

[[Page S11949]]

  I also rise to support the amendment of Senator Feinstein which 
strengthens that provision in the appropriations bill.
  First of all, I applaud the efforts of my friend, the senior Senator 
from Ohio, Mr. DeWine, for his efforts to expand school choice for the 
parents and schools of the District. I also applaud the leadership of 
Senator Gregg moving this issue forward. I also applaud Senator 
Feinstein for her courageous support of this program and her very 
thoughtful amendment to the amendment to the appropriations bill.
  My father, a first generation American, used to say that America 
enjoys more of the world's bounty than any other nation because of the 
free enterprise system and our educational system. This is true today 
as it was years ago. It we expect to remain competitive in the world 
marketplace and maintain our standard of living, this country needs to 
rededicate itself to the free enterprise and most importantly our 
educational system.
  Some in Congress believe rededicating ourselves to this Nation's 
educational system means simply throwing more money at the issue, 
closing our eyes, hoping it will solve itself.
  If spending alone ensured a quality education, the District would be 
one of the best school systems in the Nation. For the school year that 
ended June 2001, the District spent an average of $10,852 per student. 
That is the third highest in the Nation. However, the 2002 national 
assessment of educational progress showed fourth grade students in the 
District held the lowest scores for writing and tied with Los Angeles 
for the lowest score in reading. That means 27 percent of fourth 
graders in the District scored below the basic level in writing, and 69 
percent tested below the basic level in reading.
  What a dismal message on the state of education for the families who 
live in the shining city on the hill, the Nation's Capital. What a 
terrible record to send throughout the country and the world.
  We, in Congress, are obligated to do more to help the children in our 
Nation's Capital. I have often said that the greatest thing one could 
do for their fellow human being is to help them fully develop their 
God-given talents so they can take care of themselves, their families, 
and make a contribution to society. We need to empower families and 
children with more than just additional funding.
  When I was first elected Governor of Ohio in 1990, I pledged to the 
people that I would draw a line in the sand for this generation of 
children in Ohio by making their health education my administration's 
top priority. As I look back, I am proud of that record in Ohio. When I 
left the Governor's mansion in 1998 for the Senate, Ohio led the Nation 
in State funding for Head Start. Every eligible child whose parents 
wanted them in a Head Start Program, early education had a place for 
them. Many of these Head Start facilities were sponsored by religious 
organizations and located on the premises of religious organizations.
  We were among the Nation's leaders in providing health care for 
uninsured children. Ohio increased funding for children and family 
programs by 47 percent while holding State spending to its lowest rate 
in 30 years. These actions and accomplishments were rooted in the 
belief that future generations of Ohioans would be served by a 
government that strived to empower families.

  As the Presiding Officer knows, education begins with a family. A 
parent must be a child's first teacher. It was in this context that 
Ohio became one of the first States to undertake the challenges of 
implementing school choice. My colleagues in the Senate know how 
tumultuous a battle that program faced. It went on for years and 
finally ended up in the Supreme Court.
  At the beginning of the Cleveland scholarship program, we provided 
2,000 scholarships to children in grades kindergarten through third 
grade that would follow them through the eighth grade. Depending on the 
family's income level, the State paid between 75 and 90 percent of the 
cost of education. The scholarship amount did not exceed $2,250, which 
provided a significant portion of the tuition at one of the 
participating nonpublic schools in Cleveland. The State also provided 
an equal number of $500 tutoring grants to those students who did not 
receive scholarships but whose parents felt they needed additional help 
for their children.
  The response to our program was overwhelming. The State received 
nearly 7,000 applications from Cleveland parents. More than half of the 
applicants were from households dependent on welfare, and half were 
from minorities. It was evident from the sheer number of applicants 
that parents were demanding options that the Cleveland Scholarship 
Program provided.
  Today, the program has expanded. Effective July 1, 2003, students who 
had previously received a scholarship are now eligible to receive a 
scholarship for grade 9 in the 2003-2004 school year. And beginning in 
the 2004-2005 school year, a student who received a scholarship in the 
9th grade will be eligible to receive a scholarship in the 10th grade. 
We are moving them along. Additionally, the scholarship amount has 
increased. The capped tuition for the 2003-2004 school year is now 
$3,000.
  From its humble beginnings in 1996, with 2,000 students, and total 
scholarships of $2.9 million, the program has more than doubled its 
enrollment. Today it covers some 5,200 students. Additionally, total 
scholarship amounts have increased to almost $10 million.
  Since 1998, Indiana University's Center for Evaluation has been 
conducting longitudinal studies regarding the Cleveland Scholarship 
Program. So we have been watching it. We put the money out so we could 
watch how this thing has progressed.
  In its most recent study, the center found that students who have 
participated in the Cleveland Scholarship Program since kindergarten 
have achieved significantly higher levels than public school students 
in reading and language skills.
  I would also like to call my colleagues' attention to the results of 
an evaluation of the Cleveland voucher program that was conducted 2 
years after it began by Paul Peterson of Harvard University.
  In his study, Dr. Peterson found that parents of voucher recipients 
were consistently more satisfied with many aspects of their child's 
education than were parents of students in the Cleveland Public 
Schools. From the quality of academic programs to school discipline, 
teachers' skills, class size, and so forth, parents whose children were 
participants in the Cleveland Scholarship Program showed greater 
satisfaction and enthusiasm than did parents in the Cleveland Public 
School System.
  The Cleveland Scholarship Program is merely one component of a 
renewal in our education system that needs to occur. I do not stand 
before the Senate and claim it is a cure-all for all troubled school 
districts. I think it is very important. Those of us who are supporting 
Senator DeWine's and Senator Feinstein's amendment are not claiming 
this is going to be the cure-all for troubled school districts. What we 
are saying is that it is another option on the education smorgasbord. 
And as the Presiding Officer so eloquently stated, why not look at some 
other programs that are out there? A business that is not doing very 
well starts to look at itself saying: What are other things we could be 
doing? Let's do some research and development. Let's look at some new 
ideas. Let's try something else.
  I must tell you, as chairman of the Governmental Affairs subcommittee 
with jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, I support this as one 
of many options. We need to expand our vision. Instead of putting on 
our blinders, let's look at some other programs. The legislation offers 
the positive step toward empowering parents in the District by 
increasing their involvement in their child's education and offering 
them more choices.

  Families in the District of Columbia have limited opportunity for 
choice in their children's education, and families have wholeheartedly 
embraced school choice. In 1996, the first charter schools opened in 
the District. The 39 charter schools operating in the District of 
Columbia only educate 1 in 7 children in the District. That is 15 
percent of the students. Hundreds--hundreds--are on waiting lists.
  Additionally, the Washington Scholarship Fund, a private, nonprofit 
organization, that provides scholarships for economically disadvantaged 
families, received over 7,500 applications for 1,000 available 
scholarships. It is clear that the parents of children in the District 
of Columbia want more options.

[[Page S11950]]

  When I came to the Senate, I said I would not mandate a scholarship 
program on any jurisdiction; they had to want it. It is clear to me 
that the District of Columbia wants this. And it is just as clear that 
the District is within the responsibility of the Congress. They are our 
responsibility. We are not mandating every school district in America. 
We are increasing options for families in the District of Columbia.
  Some would contend this is going to be running throughout the United 
States of America. We are concentrating our attention on our 
responsibility: the city on the hill, the Nation's Capital--our 
responsibility. And we are saying we want to give the parents of those 
children more options.
  The most important thing is that this proposal for fiscal year 2004 
has been drafted in consultation with and has the approval of Mayor 
Anthony Williams--I have talked to him about it; he is passionate about 
it--Council Member Kevin Chavous, chair of the Council's Committee of 
Education, Libraries, and Recreation; and Ms. Peggy Cooper Cafritz, 
president of the DC Board of Education. They are for this. They want 
this for their children. They are asking us for it.
  The bill also contains $13 million for charter schools and $13 
million for public schools to assist them with requirements under No 
Child Left Behind for teacher recruitment, training, and similar 
programs. Combined, the funds for these three programs represent the 
largest Federal contribution to the District of Columbia in the history 
of this country.
  Unfortunately, the debate is not focused on the $39 million in new 
funds for the District. Oh, no. It is on the $13 million being 
considered for the scholarships. The proposed scholarship program would 
be authorized for 5 years, giving Congress the opportunity to monitor 
and evaluate the progress of schools and students--5 years. Let's watch 
it, just as we did in Cleveland with the longitudinal studies. Let's 
see how it works out. It would be overseen by the District of Columbia 
and the U.S. Secretary of Education.
  Finally, it is a scholarship program that will help the neediest 
families in the District, the ones about whom the Presiding Officer so 
eloquently spoke. Eligible students are children attending low-
performing public schools and whose household incomes do not exceed 200 
percent of the poverty level. We are talking about a relatively small 
number of students. I think it is something like 2,000 students 
who would be eligible for the program.

  I would like to stress to my colleagues that this is all new Federal 
money for students in the District of Columbia. Let me repeat: This is 
all new money. These scholarships are one piece of a larger proposal to 
address the educational needs in Washington, DC.
  Certainly there is a role for Congress to play. We in Congress have 
increasingly recognized the need for the Federal Government to serve as 
the State for the District, a necessity considering the unique 
relationship between the District of Columbia and the Federal 
Government.
  For example, just 4 years ago, I was the chief sponsor in the Senate 
of the DC Tuition Assistance Grant Program, which was enacted in 1999. 
This program provides grants for students graduating from DC high 
schools to attend public universities and colleges nationwide at in-
State tuition rates. In other words, we put the students in the 
District in the same position as if they lived in the State of 
Tennessee or the State of Ohio. There is a subsidy by the State so they 
could go on and get higher education.
  It also provides smaller grants for students to attend private 
institutions in the DC metropolitan area and private historically black 
colleges and universities nationwide. So we have expanded it beyond 
just public. We now have private and historically black colleges 
included. This program has been enormously successful.
  There is one final point I would like to discuss. Critics of 
scholarships argue that scholarships are ways for private schools, 
especially religious schools, to get rich quick. Incredible, just 
incredible. It is not true. As my colleagues may know, tuition for a 
student does not cover the full cost of educating a child. The 
difference currently is made up by private donations.
  Many schools in the District run by the Archdiocese of Washington are 
struggling financially and would not be able to support a large influx 
of students. The Archdiocese estimates needing an additional $5 million 
in the first year alone, should the Archdiocese fill all open seats in 
their schools with students on scholarships. It basically means, if 
they opened their doors and took advantage of the scholarship program, 
for them to do that, they would have to go out and find $5 million 
someplace in order to educate these children.
  It is the same thing in the city of Cleveland, with our nonpublic 
schools. We have hundreds of low-income kids who are not Catholic who 
are attending Catholic schools. My mother was a volunteer librarian at 
one of them where 70 percent of the kids were non-Catholic. There was 
not any proselytizing going on.
  The reason they opened their doors is they believed in the two great 
commandments--love of God and love of fellow man. They believed the 
best way they could witness their faith is by reaching out and making a 
difference in the lives of these children, developing their God-given 
talents so they can take care of themselves and their families and make 
a contribution to society.
  I will never forget one of those students was a player on the Ohio 
State football team. He was a big center. He went to the school where 
my mom was a librarian. I went out there to one of their practices. He 
almost picked me up, and he looked at me and said: Are you Mrs. 
Voinovich's son?
  I said: Yes, I am.
  And he talked about the wonderful experience he had at St. Aloysius 
and the difference it made in his life so he could go on to high school 
and get a scholarship to play football.
  This is what we are talking about. Why anyone would deny a student in 
the District the opportunity that students have had in the city of 
Cleveland and other places throughout the United States is simply 
beyond me. It is not the end of the world, if this is adopted. That is 
ridiculous. This is a small experiment to give people an option in 
their children's education.
  Over the years it was argued that the Cleveland scholarship program 
was unconstitutional. I argued it was constitutional. I am not going to 
make that argument because the Presiding Officer made it in his 
presentation just before me, in terms of kids having money. The money 
goes to them, and then they can go wherever they want to go. That is in 
the American tradition. That is how thousands of Americans got their 
college education through the GI bill. The Supreme Court, on June 27, 
2002, upheld the Cleveland scholarship program. When they did that, I 
labeled it a victory for hope. We have seen wonderful successes in 
Cleveland of children excelling in school, when the doors of 
opportunity were opened and parents could choose to offer what they 
believed is the best education. I believe all families deserve those 
options. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation for the 
families in our Nation's capital.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, as a member of the DC Appropriations 
Subcommittee, I thank Senator DeWine and Senator Landrieu and their 
staffs for their hard work on this important legislation.
  This is never an easy bill. I have been ranking member of this 
subcommittee in years gone by. It appears every Senator or Congressman, 
whoever in their weakest moment or wildest dreams wanted to be a mayor 
or a member of a city council, decides they can play the role when it 
comes to the DC appropriations bill. Thank goodness for Delegate 
Eleanor Holmes Norton who has stood fast year after weary year, beating 
off every assault on home rule with some success and a few setbacks. 
But this bill is a tough one. It is always a tough one.
  Members of Congress will do on this bill what they wouldn't dare do 
in their own districts or State. They will force on the District of 
Columbia things they would never even consider doing at home. They 
think it is easy. This is an area of America which, sadly, does not 
have a vote in Congress nor in the Senate. Frankly, they don't have to 
answer to the voters of the State. So

[[Page S11951]]

when it comes to experimenting and doing what you would never suggest 
at home, it is usually the DC appropriations bill that becomes that 
laboratory, that political playground.
  Senators DeWine and Landrieu, with very few exceptions, have done 
their level best to make certain this year's appropriations bill did 
not deteriorate into that particular situation. I want to take a few 
minutes to underscore that there is much in this District of Columbia 
spending bill that merits our collective endorsement.

  As has been outlined, this bill provides $545 million in Federal 
funds, the bulk of which will fund the District of Columbia Courts, 
Defender Services, and the Court Services and Offender Supervision 
Agency, CSOSA, for the District of Columbia.
  Since the enactment of the District of Columbia Revitalization Act of 
1997, these three entities are funded entirely by Federal 
appropriations. The Revitalization Act made substantial changes in the 
financial relationship between the Federal Government and the District 
of Columbia and in management of the DC government.
  Under revitalization, the Federal Government's cash contributions to 
the District budget were substantially reduced. In exchange, financial 
responsibility for several governmental functions was transferred from 
the District's budget to the Federal Government.
  This year additional resources are being provided to the DC courts to 
integrate the 18 different computer systems that track offender and 
litigant information. In addition, the bill provides an increase of 
$6.8 million over the President's budget request which will allow CSOSA 
to enhance its supervision of high-risk sex offenders, offenders with 
mental health problems, and domestic violence offenders.
  In addition, the bill continues level funding for the DC resident 
tuition program, a very successful initiative Congress established in 
1999 which permits DC high school graduates to attend out of State 
schools at in-State tuition rates.
  Among other items, the bill also provides Federal funding for 
hospital bioterrorism preparedness; for security costs related to the 
presence of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia; for 
support of the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative; and for the Children's 
National Medical Center.
  It is important to recognize and emphasize that about 93 percent of 
the funds contained in this bill--fully $7.43 billion, $6.33 billion in 
operating expenses plus $1.1 billion in capital outlay funds--are not 
Federal funds, but locally-generally revenue which must be approved by 
Congress before the mayor can execute his budget and begin spending 
these local funds.
  The District of Columbia does not enjoy autonomy over the local 
portion of its budget but must await a congressional imprimatur. 
Senator Susan Collins has introduced bipartisan legislation designed to 
change that, which I hope we will have an opportunity to consider 
during this session of Congress.
  Senator DeWine and Senator Landrieu have collaborated on producing a 
thoughtful product. We owe them a debt of gratitude for tenaciously 
juggling municipal needs, amid Federal funding constraints.
  I have been in their shoes as either chairman or ranking member of 
the District of Columbia Subcommittee and was honored to serve. I 
quickly learned from that experience that while the DC spending bill is 
technically the smallest of the 13 appropriations bills we consider 
each year, it usually is among the more contentious ones.
  The issue before us is the issue of school vouchers. It is not just 
another debate about another DC appropriations measure. If this is 
adopted, it will be the first time in the history of the United States 
that the Federal Government will pay for private school vouchers in 
grades K through 12.
  This issue was brought up a few years ago when President Bush 
suggested sweeping reform of public education and some of his allies 
said: Let's put in school vouchers for private schools at the same 
time.
  In the Senate we took a vote on that issue. If I am not mistaken, the 
vote was 41 in favor of school vouchers, 58 opposed. I raise that vote 
because it will be of interest to see what happens now when this issue 
goes beyond a national program and is confined to the District of 
Columbia. I suspect many of those who said ``we don't want school 
vouchers in our State'' are going to say ``but we will allow them to 
have school vouchers in the District of Columbia.'' That is 
unfortunate. It reflects an attitude toward the District of Columbia 
which is not complimentary. Mayor Williams is here on the floor with 
Delegate Norton. I respect him very much. We agree on much more than we 
disagree, though we disagree on this particular issue. He was treated 
with a Faustian bargain. Here was the bargain the Republicans offered 
to him. They said: If we give you $13 million for your public schools 
that you had not anticipated and $13 million for your charter schools 
that you had not anticipated, will you sit still for and embrace and 
endorse and help us pass the first federally funded voucher program for 
private schools in America?
  The District of Columbia struggles with a lot of spending problems. 
There are a lot of reasons for it I will not go into. I know he must 
have looked at this long and hard and thought: This is something I will 
have to agree to. To get $26 million for public schools and charter 
schools, I am going to support the Republican voucher program.
  That, unfortunately, was the decision he made. I say 
``unfortunately'' because my respect for him has not diminished, but I 
am concerned that the decision he made for the District of Columbia is 
a departure from where the District of Columbia has been year after 
year when this appropriations bill has come up. For year after year the 
District of Columbia has said to Congress, respect home rule. Let us 
make our own decisions. Now this year they have done 180 degrees. The 
Mayor has said: When it comes to our schools, which is the 
responsibility of DC local government, we are going to allow the 
Federal Government--in this case the Congress--to create a school 
scholarship program, vouchers for private schools.
  DC could have done this on their own. They could have done it over 
the years. They didn't. There was a reason they didn't. It isn't that 
they didn't consider the possibility of vouchers for private schools. 
They considered it and voted on it and overwhelmingly voted against it. 
The residents of the District of Columbia, in referendum, 
overwhelmingly opposed vouchers for private education, overwhelmingly 
opposed diverting public money from public schools into private 
schools. That is what the people think about the concept.
  It isn't confined to that concept. The Mayor's own city council 
opposes this, and the elected members of the school board also oppose 
it. But the Mayor and the president of the school board support it. 
They have entered into this bargain with the Republicans to go forward 
with a voucher program, the first federally funded diversion of public 
funds from public schools to private schools in the history of the 
United States.
  It is momentous. What is particularly noteworthy is that this measure 
comes to us not after committee hearings, deliberation, a markup 
process with amendments, but comes to us, frankly, in a package in this 
appropriations bill which we are now changing with some drama on the 
floor of the Senate even as I speak.
  Senator Feinstein of California came forward with an amendment. She 
had made it clear in the Senate Appropriations Committee that she 
supported the voucher plan for the District of Columbia. Many of us 
pointed out in that hearing some deficiencies in this plan. Understand, 
we were given this voucher program in the Appropriations Committee 
where we don't usually entertain anything of that complexity--not that 
it isn't done, but it is done rarely--and we were given it on a take-
it-or-leave-it basis. As we considered what was proposed to us, a lot 
of questions were raised.
  Let me cite an example of one amendment I offered in the 
Appropriations Committee to give an idea about the mindset that is 
pushing this forward. I offered an amendment which said: You cannot 
give vouchers to a private school--public money to a private school--
unless the teachers in the private school receiving the voucher money 
have a college degree and the

[[Page S11952]]

school physically complies with the life, health, and safety code of 
the District of Columbia.
  That seems fairly reasonable for my colleagues who have voted for No 
Child Left Behind. Remember the President's program? The President not 
only required college degrees for teachers, but imposed even higher 
standards of excellence over the years. So to require a college degree 
at the private schools where we are sending public tax dollars is not a 
huge leap or a radical idea. It is consistent with what the 
overwhelming majority of the Senate said would be the minimum standard 
for public schools in America. To say that any private school that is 
supported with public taxpayer dollars has to be safe for the 
children--fire escapes, and alarms, the appropriate exit doors, and the 
like--it seems to me is just common sense. I am sorry to report to my 
colleagues that amendment was defeated.
  Senator Feinstein and the Republicans who support this DC voucher 
bill opposed my amendment which would have required a college degree of 
teachers at the private schools and would have required that those 
schools comply with the life, health, and safety code of the District 
of Columbia. I might add something. Per capita, the District of 
Columbia has the largest number of charter schools, which are 
exceptions to the traditional public school system, of any place in the 
United States. And even in the DC charter schools there is a 
requirement that teachers at these charter schools have a college 
degree.
  When I offered the amendment in committee, you should have heard the 
debate. I actually heard my colleagues say: Senator Durbin, you don't 
understand. These private schools are going to be experimental. We are 
going to try innovative approaches.
  One Senator said that would rule out home schooling. Home schooling? 
Is that what DC vouchers are about? It strikes me as odd that we would 
want to engage in an experiment in private schools with standards far 
lower than what we are demanding of our public schools. I have to add, 
too, that Senator Feinstein's effort to correct that problem, I don't 
believe, has been successful.
  Let me give an example. In this amendment Senator Feinstein offers, 
which is presently before us, there is a section on teacher quality. In 
describing it, she stated that all teachers in the schools receiving 
voucher funds must have a college degree. That is not what the 
amendment says. What it says is that only those teachers who teach the 
students on vouchers need a college degree. So this means, frankly, a 
school could put all of the students on vouchers in one classroom with 
a teacher with an associate's degree, which is a college degree. So I 
don't believe it was very carefully drawn. It doesn't meet the minimum 
standards we expect of schools in America.
  Let me tell you what else is deficient in the Feinstein amendment. 
The amendment falls short of the requirements that we all voted and 
imposed on public schools in America, where we said it is not enough to 
have a college degree. We said in public schools we are going to 
require not only a bachelor's degree, but certification of ability to 
teach, and particularly ``subject area mastery.'' What does that mean? 
If you want to stand in front of a high school class and teach 
chemistry, you must demonstrate that you have taken the appropriate 
amount of training in college to teach chemistry. Our understanding is 
that all of the statistics show that when the teacher in front of the 
classroom has not studied the subject, is merely reading a chapter 
ahead to stay ahead of the children, the students don't learn much. So 
we have said for public schools across America, this is our minimum 
standard--a college degree, bachelor's degree, certification, and 
evidence of mastery of the subject.
  It means in some of my schools in Illinois that they are saying we 
know you have taught biology for many years and you are good at it, but 
you don't have the requisite number of college degree hours to meet 
President Bush's requirements of No Child Left Behind. You have to take 
biology classes in college to meet President Bush's minimum 
requirements for public schools.
  Turn the page to this debate. In this debate, we hear from Senator 
Feinstein and supporters of the DC voucher program that we are not 
going to hold the teachers in the private schools receiving Federal tax 
dollars to the same standards as teachers in the public schools in the 
District of Columbia. Something is wrong with this picture. Either we 
were mistaken in imposing the standard on public education, or they are 
lax and deficient in not requiring the same standards of teachers in 
private schools in the District of Columbia where these children are 
going to go to school.

  Some of them have said this is just an experiment, and we are just 
going to see what happens. I can recall when my own kids were growing 
up and the school year started. After a few weeks, you get to meet the 
teacher. Before that, you may have said to your son or daughter, how 
are things going? They might say: Oh, I really like this teacher, or I 
am not getting along with the teacher. And you thought to yourself, I 
am going to work with my son or daughter and talk to the teacher and 
try to make things right. But there is a real possibility that students 
in some schools, public and private, can be thrust into a situation 
where they not only have a bad year, they have two straight bad years--
bad years with teachers who are not up to the academic levels that we 
should require. The experiment may fail for those students. They may be 
in classrooms where the teachers are not ready to teach and where, 
frankly, the teachers don't have the background to even consider 
teaching.
  What happens to that student after one bad year in this experiment? 
Can they catch up? It is possible but more difficult. Now give them a 
second bad year.
  This is an experiment with the lives of students. To think that a 
child can have a bad experience in the fourth grade and fifth grade and 
then catch up in the sixth grade may be wishful thinking. Some students 
are struggling with challenges that I never had and that my kids, thank 
goodness, never faced. To put them in this experimental atmosphere 
where teachers are not required to have the same basic minimum 
qualifications as teachers in public schools is a disservice to those 
children and their families.
  We hear about experiments taking place in other places, such as 
Cleveland and Milwaukee. We read about one in the Washington Post the 
other day, where a convicted rapist, a fellow, started Alex's Academics 
of Excellence. He received $2.8 million from the State of Wisconsin. It 
turned out that the students were not getting the kind of education 
they deserved there. They said it was very difficult for anybody to say 
no to someone who opened a school and said they were going to abide by 
all of the requirements of the law. That experiment failed, but it 
didn't just fail for those who wrote the law, it failed for those kids 
and their families.
  Why would we say, if there is going to be a DC voucher program, that 
the teachers in private schools wouldn't at least meet the standards we 
require of teachers in public schools? Sadly, the Feinstein amendment 
doesn't do that. That may have been her intent, but I am afraid she 
didn't quite reach it in terms of satisfying that need.
  There is another point that concerns me, too, and that is testing. If 
this is to be legitimate and honest, you would have to take the 
students who are in private schools and test them with exactly the same 
tests students in public schools take. Then you could at least compare 
progress. These students may be somewhat self-selected because they 
decided to go to a private school. At the end of the day, you ought to 
be able to compare test scores, in fairness, to not only the private 
schools but to the public schools.
  Listen to what the Feinstein amendment says. It says: Student 
assessments are not a requirement imposed on the school; rather, it is 
placed on the fund recipient--a very unusual allocation of 
responsibility--the fund recipient that administers the voucher payout. 
I don't understand why the schools don't have this requirement.
  The amendment goes on to say that the tests for voucher students must 
be the ``same as'' school year 2003-2004. In a way that seems to answer 
my challenge that the same tests be administered in the private schools 
as in the

[[Page S11953]]

public schools. But read it more closely. If these are the same tests 
as required in school years 2003 and 2004, consider that this is 
proposed as a 5-year program. So what this means is that all of the 
students in all grades would have to be tested as required by No Child 
Left Behind for public schools. Why? Because the requirements for 
testing in No Child Left Behind take effect and change each year.
  So what Senator Feinstein set up as a standard is a testing for this 
year only, instead of just saying pointblank the students in these 
schools will be tested with the same frequency and the same tests as No 
Child Left Behind, she has instead said only one year's testing 
standards, 2003-2004.

  For example, by 2007, there will be a science assessment required 
under No Child Left Behind. So public schools across America will be 
taking tests indicating competency in science. Under the Feinstein 
amendment, they do not have to worry about that. They are only held to 
the standard of 2003-2004.
  There is no duty in this law, as we read it, to report the findings 
of those tests publicly, even to the parents, only to the Secretary of 
Education. Why not? Where I live, the State of Illinois--the State of 
Ohio and other States--school test scores are reported publicly so the 
parents know, taxpayers know, whether the schools are performing. The 
Feinstein amendment does not require this.
  Now here is another thing I find curious. The Feinstein amendment 
requires the comparison made for those students tested must include 
testing not just students still in public schools and students who are 
now in private schools being funded with public funds, under vouchers, 
but also a third class, those students who applied for vouchers and 
were rejected. So we have a third category of students who are going to 
be a control group for testing.
  I do not quite understand this, but I do think the concept is at 
least challengeable, because there is no doubt in my mind that the 
private schools are not going to rush to accept students who are going 
to be problem students and challenging students. So there will be the 
rejected students having been controlled out into a cherry-picked group 
being tested separately.
  It is possible these students are likely to test worse. The private 
schools did not want to take them in because they are going to be held 
accountable for some 2003-2004 tests. Why the Senator has decided to 
include this, I do not know.
  So when we look at this bill overall and consider the elements in it, 
I am afraid Senator Feinstein's attempt to correct the problems does 
not quite solve the problem. We still have some major deficiencies in 
this bill.
  What bothers me, too, I read in the paper this morning that the Mayor 
has said he wants new authority over education in the public schools of 
the District of Columbia. At the risk of stepping on the toes of some 
of my friends, I think the Mayor is on the right path. The reason I say 
it is this: Many of the people who are supporting voucher programs have 
given up on public education, for a variety of reasons. For some 
political reasons, they believe the teachers' unions support Democrats 
and they are going to go after public education and they are going to 
fight the teachers' unions. Others have said, just look at the results. 
Some of the public schools are not very good. Therefore, there should 
be an alternative.
  If one takes an honest approach to this, the first obligation of 
elected officials in this country is to the system of education which 
built America and the system of education which serves more than 90 
percent of America's school children, and that is the public school 
system.
  I say to the Mayor of Washington, who has joined us today, and all 
those who are following the debate, do not give up on public education. 
Things are happening that are positive in the District of Columbia. 
Frankly, I think they have been ignored and played down and there has 
been a disservice by some of the rhetoric we have heard about DC public 
schools.
  There are good things happening: Charter schools and transformational 
schools, big changes that are moving in the right direction. I ask the 
Mayor, before he gives up on the public school system and says we have 
to have vouchers, that there is no other way but to take public tax 
funds and send them to private schools, before he gives up on public 
education, come to Chicago. Come and look at what has happened there. 
In our Chicago public school system, we have 95 percent minority 
students and 85 percent students under the poverty level. Yet in a 
rather brief period of time we have seen dramatic increases in test 
scores because the mayor of the city of Chicago assumed a personal 
responsibility for the public school system, brought in some of the 
most talented people he could find, challenged the parents, the 
teachers, the principals, and the students to do a better job and got 
the results to show for it.

  My colleagues do not have to give up on public education. They do not 
have to say there is no alternative but to let kids escape public 
education and go to private schools. There is a lot more that can be 
done. It takes some hard-nosed, tough-minded leadership, but I think 
the Mayor may be on the right path in what he said this morning. He is 
willing to accept more of this responsibility personally and maybe that 
is what is necessary.
  The Chicago experience tells me it has been a good experience. When 
the mayor had the power and the responsibility, good things happened. 
Come with me to the city of Chicago and take a drive through many tough 
parts of that great part of town. Homes will be found where people in 
the lower and middle income are struggling to keep it together and 
then, like a mirage or an oasis, one will see the public school where 
over the last several years the Chicago public school system has 
dedicated dramatic amounts of money to renovate these schools and bring 
them back to a source of pride in the community.
  No graffiti will be seen on the walls of the school. Flowers will be 
seen planted outside and the people in this neighborhood point to that 
public school with pride, because the mayor was proud of those schools 
and because the people in the neighborhood are, too.
  If that mayor or any mayor had said these public schools are a 
failure, we are walking away from them, then frankly it would have 
created a negative environment. We need a positive environment for 
education. Moving to this voucher plan, without adequate hearing, 
without the consideration of the options that are available to us, 
frankly is a move in the wrong direction.
  I also say to my colleagues that as I read through this bill, they 
must, I hope, acknowledge the fact there are several things that could 
happen they do not anticipate. For example, there is no prohibition in 
this bill that the 1,000 to 2,0000 vouchers that are created, whatever 
number they turn out to be, will all be given to children who are 
already in private schools. There is no prohibition against that. 
Though they start with a premise and a goal of moving kids from lower 
performing public schools to higher performing private schools, in fact 
the testing is not there for comparison.
  Second, there is no requirement that the family of the student 
receiving the voucher actually bring the student from a public school 
to a private school. This could end up diverting a substantial amount 
of money to students, and their families, already enrolled in private 
schools. Like it or not, the bill is inartfully drawn, and having been 
so poorly drawn, that could be the outcome. So they will not be proving 
much of a case there, will they, if students are already in the private 
schools?
  I can go on for some time about the experiments with vouchers in 
private schools. I want to close, because I see Senator Kennedy is in 
the Chamber and I imagine he would like to make a comment on this bill. 
If he does, he is certainly welcome to.
  I will close my comments on the Feinstein amendment by urging my 
colleagues to oppose it. Senator Feinstein has identified the problem. 
She has not identified solutions, not good solutions, not solutions 
that are worthy of the first-ever program in the history of the United 
States to divert funds from public schools to private schools under a 
voucher program.
  From my point of view, private schools in many communities add a lot 
to education. I am not an enemy of private education. I am a product of

[[Page S11954]]

Catholic education. My wife and I both attended Catholic schools, as 
did our children. But we understood our responsibility. Our 
responsibility was first to pay our public property taxes, to support 
public education, and then if we chose, for religious reasons or 
whatever reasons, to send our children to a Catholic school, we 
accepted the financial responsibility of paying tuition. It was a 
sacrifice for many families. I think they add a lot.

  I think we should take care here. We are creating a new system in the 
District of Columbia, and there are few protections and safeguards, if 
any, to stop the possibility that at some point after we have passed 
this bill that some group will decide to open up a private school and 
draw in hundreds of thousands of dollars of public taxpayer funds and 
the teachers in those schools may not have college degrees, only 
associate degrees, the testing in those schools may not match what is 
going on in the public schools, and the schools will be allowed to 
discriminate against students for such things as disabilities where 
they will not allow any children in who have any kind of learning 
disability or any physical or mental disability, which would be 
allowed, incidentally, under this proposal.
  Is that what we want to see happen? Is that what should be the first 
test case of this experiment in the voucher program? I think not. I 
urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. I urge them to think long 
and hard that if they voted against vouchers for their States, why is 
it now we are making an exception because the case in point involves 
the District of Columbia?
  These students and their families deserve the same respect as the 
students and families in all of our States, and I urge my colleagues to 
keep that in mind as we consider this important legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, my friend and colleague from Illinois has 
once again demonstrated why he is known as certainly one of the best, 
if not the best, debater in the Senate. He does an absolutely excellent 
job. I always enjoy debating with him. I thank him for his contribution 
to this debate. I know we will have the opportunity to continue to 
debate in the days ahead.
  My colleague from California, Senator Feinstein, will, in a moment, 
talk about her amendment and will respond to Senator Durbin's comments 
about her amendment. But I would like to make a couple of comments 
first about Senator Durbin's comments.
  My colleague from Illinois talked about where this plan came from. I 
talked earlier about the fact that it is a three-pronged program. That 
is what I like about it. I happen to like the fact that a third of the 
money goes to the public schools, a third of the money goes to the 
charter schools, and a third of the money goes to this new voucher 
program.
  Somehow, my colleague seems to know--I don't know how, but he seems 
to know how this program started. Somehow he seems to know in his 
wisdom that this program was some sort of bargain deal. The House 
Republicans came to the Mayor and said: Mayor, here's the deal.
  It is a funny thing. The Mayor, under the rules of the Senate, cannot 
come down here and speak. But if someone would happen to ask the Mayor, 
not on the floor--you can't do that; that is against the rules, but if 
someone someday would happen to ask the Mayor what the truth is, what 
the Mayor would say is that is not true, and this was the Mayor's idea; 
that the Mayor and his people said they wanted. This is the program we 
want. We want a balanced program because what we want is a choice for 
the children and the families of the District of Columbia. We want a 
balanced program.
  Yes, we want more assistance for the public schools--and the Mayor 
has a consistent record of trying to get more money for the public 
schools of the District of Columbia, and he is not bashful about that. 
He should not be bashful about it. And he is proud about it. Yes, he 
wants more money to create more charter schools. Everyone who will vote 
on this bill needs to understand when the issue comes, when Senator 
Durbin tries to strike the money, what you will be striking is $13 
million which will create more charter schools, four or five more 
charter schools in the District of Columbia. Everyone needs to 
understand that.
  The Mayor is proud of the fact that the District of Columbia has 
created more charter schools. I must say my colleague, Senator 
Landrieu, has been integrally involved in creating those charter 
schools. It is something she cares passionately about.
  Mr. DURBIN. Will my colleague yield for a question?
  Mr. DeWINE. If I may finish the thought and then I will yield.
  The Mayor also said: I want more money for my public schools. I want 
to continue to improve them. I want more money for the charter schools. 
We are proud of what we are doing in that area. And third, I want to 
create the voucher program.
  So let's clear that up. If anyone has any doubt about it, ask the 
Mayor. Go to the source. What the Mayor will say is: It was my idea. I 
am the one who had the idea. My people put the program together. We 
requested it. This is what we want.

  I will be more than happy to yield, not the floor, but for the 
purpose of conversation with my colleague.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank my colleague from Ohio.
  I would like to ask through the Chair, I certainly will be ready to 
yield whenever he would like to ask me a question because I think this 
is an important part of the debate, but I ask my colleague if he is 
aware of two things. First, the amendment I am going to offer will take 
the $13 million out of the school voucher program and divide it equally 
among the public and charter schools. The money goes back into public 
and charter schools, so they will end up with about $20 million each, 
instead of $13 million.
  Mr. DeWINE. In response, I have not seen the amendment of my 
colleague.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank him for acknowledging that.
  Second, I ask my friend and colleague from Ohio if he is aware the 
Executive Office of the President released a Statement of 
Administration Policy on September 24. In reference to this particular 
program it said as follows:

       The administration is pleased the committee bill puts $13 
     million for the President's School Choice Incentive Fund 
     Initiative. . . .

  It doesn't refer to Mayor Williams' School Choice Incentive Fund 
Initiative.
  Mr. DeWINE. In respond to my colleague, we all like to take credit 
for many things. I am sure the President is taking credit for this. I 
am sure I will probably take credit for it, too, if it passes. There 
will be many fathers and mothers of this program.
  All I know is what the Mayor will tell us. The Mayor will say this is 
a program he put together.
  What I would emphasize to my colleague is that this is a program that 
the Mayor says is a balanced program.
  I will quote from a letter the Mayor has sent to me. I ask unanimous 
consent to have this letter printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                Washington, DC, September 11, 2003
     Hon. Mike DeWine,
     Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on 
         the District of Columbia, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman DeWine: Thank you for your leadership on the 
     District of Columbia's FY 2004 Appropriations bill. By any 
     measure, it is a great bill for the city. In particular, I am 
     grateful for your support for the District of Columbia School 
     Improvement Initiative, which will help us advance the 
     important school reform efforts underway. Certainly, the 
     private school scholarship element has generated significant 
     debate, and I hope that I have made the case to your 
     colleagues that its passage is consonant with home rule and 
     will strengthen our public education system.
       I, along with the Chair of the District Council's Education 
     Committee, Kevin Chavous, and the School Board President, 
     Peggy Cooper Cafritz, believe that we must continue to do 
     everything possible to strengthen our nation's public 
     schools. This is why, in addition to a private school 
     scholarship program, we have insisted on strong federal 
     financial support for both the District of Columbia Public 
     Schools (DCPS) and the public charter schools.
       Since becoming Mayor, I have overseen an increase in the 
     public education budget by more than 50 percent. This 
     demonstrates my commitment to public schools as tremendously 
     important institutions in our city. This increase has allowed 
     our charter school movement to expand to 40 schools and has 
     permitted us to launch the Transformation Schools Initiative 
     in 15 DC public schools,

[[Page S11955]]

     which we hope will revitalize our lowest-performing schools. 
     After consulting with education officials, however, I have 
     concluded that these aggressive reforms, while promising, 
     will take years to reach most of our children. So, as these 
     foundations expand and improve, I think it is prudent to look 
     to the assets provided by our private schools, at least for a 
     limited period of time.
       The proposed scholarship initiative will not drain 
     resources from our public school system. I have agreed to 
     hold the public schools harmless from any loss of local 
     funding arising from students' enrollments in private schools 
     through the federally funded scholarship program. Moreover, 
     because Title I funding is based largely on census data, we 
     do not anticipate that DC will lose significant federal 
     funding as a result of this program. Thus, under the 
     scholarship initiative, our public schools will receive the 
     same amount of funds as they otherwise would have, in order 
     to educate fewer students.
       Since our city began to debate the issue of expanded school 
     choice, there has been speculation that this initiative will 
     have an impact far beyond the borders of Washington, DC. Some 
     say that what we do in the District will affect national 
     education policy and the likelihood of pilot programs in 
     other cities. For me, however, the issue of vouchers is more 
     localized.
       This initiative was designed by District leadership for 
     District residents and is not being imposed on the District 
     from outside, as some would have you believe. As mayor, I am 
     trying to make the best choices for the residents of this 
     city, and without a state government to which, under normal 
     circumstances, I would make this request. In this regard, I 
     believe it is appropriate for the federal government to act 
     on behalf of the nation's capital when the local mayor and 
     school board president seek assistance.
       You have been a strong supporter of the District of 
     Columbia and of our aspirations for self-government. Our city 
     continues to improve in many ways. I hope we can count on 
     affirmative action from the Senate in support of the School 
     Choice Improvement Initiative and the entire FY 2004 District 
     of Columbia Appropriations bill.
       Again, I thank you for the extraordinary leadership and 
     commitment you have shown toward the District. I look forward 
     to continuing to work closely with you in taking the 
     necessary actions to support the District of Columbia.
           Sincerely,
                                              Anthony A. Williams,
                                                            Mayor.

  Mr. DeWINE. This is a letter dated September 11, 2003, to me as 
chairman of the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, a two-page 
letter from Mayor Williams to me.
  I would like to quote a part of this letter to my colleagues. This is 
the third paragraph:

       Since becoming Mayor, I have overseen an increase in the 
     public education budget by more than 50 percent. This 
     demonstrates my commitment to public schools as tremendously 
     important institutions in our city. This increase has allowed 
     our charter school movement to expand to 40 schools and has 
     permitted us to launch the Transformation Schools Initiative 
     in 15 DC public schools, which we hope will revitalize our 
     lowest-performing schools. After consulting with education 
     officials, however, I have concluded that these aggressive 
     reforms, while promising, will take years to reach most of 
     our children. So, as these foundations expand and improve, I 
     think it is prudent to look to the assets provided by our 
     private schools, at least for a limited period of time.
       What the Mayor clearly is saying is that as we improve our 
     public schools, as we have the charter schools, we need 
     another alternative for some of our students.

  Let me quote again, if I could, from the letter:

       The proposed scholarship initiative will not drain 
     resources from our public school system. I have agreed to 
     hold the public schools harmless from any loss of local 
     funding arising from students' enrollments in private schools 
     through the federally funded scholarship program. Moreover, 
     because Title I funding is based largely on census data, we 
     do not anticipate that DC will lose significant federal 
     funding as a result of this program. Thus, under the 
     scholarship initiative, our public schools will receive the 
     same amount of funds as they otherwise would have, in order 
     to educate fewer students.

  Let me quote another part of the letter:

       This initiative was designed by District leadership for 
     District residents and is not being imposed on the District 
     from outside, as some would have you believe. As mayor, I am 
     trying to make the best choices for the residents of this 
     city. . . . In this regard, I believe it is appropriate for 
     the federal government to act on behalf of the nation's 
     capital when the local mayor and school board president seek 
     assistance.

  At this point, before I yield to my colleague, I ask for the yeas and 
nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  Mr. CARPER. Will the Senator make the request again?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has requested the yeas and nays.
  Mr. DURBIN. Parliamentary inquiry.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will withhold.
  The question is on the call for the yeas and nays. Is there a 
sufficient second?
  At the moment there is not a sufficient second.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
  I very much disagree with the position of the Senator from Illinois. 
I understand this is something that is new. I understand it is 
something being tried. I understand it turns counter to a lot of what 
has been done in the educational establishment today. But that doesn't 
mean it shouldn't be tried.
  I wish to correct one point. I asked the Mayor if he believed he got 
a Faustian bargain. He said no, he didn't. He said: As a matter of 
fact, I proposed the three-pronged asset portion of this. In other 
words, one-third of the money would be new money to the schools, one-
third of the money would be new money to charter schools, and one-third 
of the money would be new money to try this special scholarship program 
for poor children.
  I would like the Record to reflect the rationale for the language in 
my amendment on the testing. In order to guarantee a valid and 
statistically reliable evaluation, we are told it is vital that we have 
the scholarship student and those students who applied for the 
scholarship but didn't get it take the same test for all 5 years. If 
the District should switch tests at some point in the 5-year duration 
of the program, we need to continue giving the test to start with, 
which today in the District is the Stanford 9 test. That is a norm-
referenced test which is given all over the country, and it would 
preserve the evaluation. The use of the same exact test for all 5 years 
is critical to be able to compare apples to apples. If the District 
changes tests during these 5 years, you have a false comparison; you 
have apples to oranges. That is the reason the language is as it is.
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. May I finish?
  Any parent applying for this scholarship must agree that their child 
will take the Stanford 9 test for all 5 years regardless of whether 
they receive a scholarship or not.
  Let me tell you what this is all about. I recognize the Senator 
doesn't like it. That is fine. He doesn't have to vote for it. But what 
this is all about is that 76 percent of DC fourth graders performed 
below basic in math, and only 10 percent read proficiently. Only 12 
percent of eighth graders read proficiently.
  That is what this is all about--to see if, by learning some of the 
basics, these children have a better start in education in a different 
model, in a different setting, with a different structure than 
currently exists in public education. It may work. It may not work. But 
these are all poor children. They are all in failing schools. Why not 
give them a chance?
  I suppose you could fault it by saying, well, everyone who instructs 
one of these children in these schools should have more than a college 
degree. Sure. I would like to do it. I don't know that we can condition 
the requirement in every private secular school or every private 
parochial school that may accept one of these children.
  I took high school classes from nuns who didn't have college degrees. 
And guess what. I got into Stanford based on what I learned in high 
school. So I came to realize that these absolute requirements may be 
right if we are going into this on a permanent basis, but we are not; 
we are going into it on a temporary basis. This pilot gives us an 
opportunity to see whether these children progress better in different 
settings. What is the difference if those different settings happen to 
be private parochial, or they happen to be private secular school 
settings?
  I cannot tell you how many parents write to me and ask: Can you help 
me get my child into a private school? Please help me. These are 
parents who have funds. What about the parents who do not have funds? 
They don't have a chance at this. All this does is give them that 
opportunity.
  If you do not like it, don't vote for it. That is easy. But some of 
us want to see what works and what doesn't work.

[[Page S11956]]

  They said the same thing to Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown about his idea 
to start a military school in Oakland. A public military school? 
Horrors. The school board voted it down. Fortunately, the Mayor of 
Oakland is a persistent personality. He went to the State and got a 
special charter to open a military school so that youngsters from the 
deeply troubled socioeconomic areas in the city of Oakland would have a 
shot of going to college. Now they have 350 kids who are 3 years into 
the program, and they are testing as the second best middle school in 
Oakland. That is discipline. It is amazing. Different models work for 
different youngsters.

  That is why I am supporting this approach.
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. You might not find the ``i'' dotted or the ``t'' 
crossed exactly the way you would like to have the ``i'' dotted or the 
``t'' crossed.
  This isn't a program that is national. It is not a program that is 
going to exist for 50 years. It is a program that is going to be tried 
for 5 years. Either poor children will do better or they won't. And the 
test is going to be--
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I don't know whether I want to yield to the Senator 
or not.
  Mr. DURBIN. Just say no. No is also an answer.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I beg your pardon?
  Mr. DURBIN. No is an answer, if you don't want to answer.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I am thinking about it.
  Mr. DURBIN. It is your prerogative.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Yes. I yield.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank my friend and colleague from California.
  I have no doubt that she offered this amendment--I say through the 
Chair--to address some of the concerns raised in the committee.
  I ask my friend from California to turn to page 2 of her amendment 
and consider paragraph B on page 2. I will read it. It says:

       Use the same assessment every school year used for school 
     year 2003-2004 by the District of Columbia public schools to 
     assess the achievement of DC public school students.

  I will ask the question, and then I will sit down.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Fair enough.
  Mr. DURBIN. Currently, the DC Public School System, like many public 
school systems, is in transition under the No Child Left Behind Act and 
the 2005 requirement that students be tested every year. Currently, 
their public school students are only tested every other year.
  By establishing as a standard for the next 5 years for the District 
of Columbia voucher program using the 2003-2004 assessments, the 
Senator is saying they will only be tested every other year, while 
students in public schools by the year 2005 have to be tested every 
year.
  If the Senator had said here that you will comply with the No Child 
Left Behind Act testing requirement, it would have been easy. But 
instead, you picked one particular year, and I don't think you reach 
the standard which you have described to our colleagues.
  Is that true or not?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. What you have just stated and what I have been told 
is that in order to have a fair test evaluation and compare apples to 
apples, the same test has to be used, which in the District is the 
Stanford 9, for the 5-year period. So that is the test now being given. 
If the District changes--I think it is called a criterion-based test--
and I gather the District is considering changing them, this control 
group would still have to take the Stanford 9 to see if they have 
progressed.
  Now I am told if somebody says, I am happy to change it, I am told 
you cannot get a fair test if we change it.
  Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator will yield the floor, I would like to ask 
this question.
  Does the Senator understand that by the year 2005 under No Child Left 
Behind, every public school in America, including the District of 
Columbia, will have to test every grade every year; but in the current 
school year, schools are moving toward that goal. In the District of 
Columbia they are only testing every other year.
  It is not a question of changing the test. I am asking the Senator 
from California, does she understand if we stick to the 2003-2004 
standard, she will only be testing every other grade while every public 
school in the District of Columbia and across the Nation will be moving 
to every grade, every year by 2005? Her bill, her standards, will not 
be following that same assessment.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. As I understand it, the Stanford 9 is a nationally 
norm-referenced test. It can certainly be given every year, and I 
believe the Mayor will agree to that.
  If your question is, Are you saying the students will be tested every 
other year instead of every year, what I am saying is we can use it 
every year. If you are saying we want the test to change in the middle 
of the test period, I am being told that will mess up any fair 
evaluation.
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Yes.
  Mr. DURBIN. I am not suggesting changing the test. The same test 
should be administered in a private school as administered in a public 
school.
  I am suggesting to the Senator, as she has written this amendment, 
the 2003-2004 testing in the D.C. public schools, her standard for 5 
years only tests every other grade. By 2005 every grade will be tested. 
It is not the substantive test that is the issue. It is a question of 
whether every grade will be tested every year.
  The reason I raise this, and I hope the Senator agrees, should have 
been worked out in the education committee after hearings and markup in 
the amendment process. We are doing it on the fly, on the floor, 
creating the first private school voucher program in America and 
discussing as we go.
  That is my concern.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I appreciate the Senator's concern.
  If the Senator from Ohio agrees, I am very happy to have my amendment 
modified to provide that the voucher recipients and the students in the 
control group be given the same test that all District public schools 
students are given.
  With respect to this being done in the education committee, I 
probably agree, except it would probably get bogged down one way. The 
reason it is in the appropriations bill is because the Mayor has come 
to us and asked us for the additional money. The additional money is 
what brought this on. Once the additional money was in the bill, then 
the terms of the money came to bear and the bill had to be written.
  It is not easy. There are powerful forces against it. People do not 
want to try it. I do. I hope a majority want to try it. We have tried 
to do the best we can.
  Even more importantly, what has been developed here is a relationship 
between the city and Members of this Senate with this Mayor. I happen 
to respect this Mayor. I am a taxpaying citizen of this District. I 
have been so for 10 years. I used to go down the street where there was 
a pothole so big somebody plugged it up with a mattress. I am very 
pleased to say, Mr. Mayor, that pothole is gone now. The District is in 
much better shape. People are coming back to the District. He wants 
this.
  The question was also raised, it is easy to do it here. I am not in 
my own jurisdiction. I tried to point out, the mayor of Oakland came to 
me in my own jurisdiction to do something that was a new model; I 
agreed to it. I am going to look at new models and try to support them 
where I can, also support teachers, also support Title I, and also 
support public education.


         Amendment No. 1787 to amendment No. 1783, As Modified

  I ask the Member from Ohio if he would be in agreement that we submit 
a modification and ask our amendment be modified to reflect that the 
test be given annually?
  Mr. DeWINE. I would certainly have no objection to that. It at best 
is ambiguous. It is always good to clarify.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, may I direct a question to the Senator from 
Ohio?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). The Senator from California has 
the right to modify her amendment. However, to do so, she would have to 
send it to the desk.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I modify the amendment on page 2, line 3, strike 
``that are used for school year 2003-2004.''

[[Page S11957]]

  I send that modification to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has the right to make that 
modification to her amendment. However, she needs to send a 
modification to the desk.
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment will be so modified.
  The amendment (No. 1787), as modified, is as follows:

       On page 31, strike line 13 and all that follows through 
     page 32, line 2, and insert the following:
       (c) Student Assessments.--The Secretary may not approve an 
     application from an eligible entity for a grant under this 
     title unless the eligible entity's application--
       (1) ensures that the eligible entity will--
       (A) assess the academic achievement of all participating 
     eligible students;
       (B) use the same assessments every school year that are 
     used by the District of Columbia Public Schools to assess the 
     achievement of District of Columbia public school students 
     under section 1111(b)(3)(A) of the Elementary and Secondary 
     Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 6311(b)(3)(A)), to assess 
     participating eligible students in the same grades as such 
     public school students;
       (C) provide assessment results and other relevant 
     information to the Secretary or to the entity conducting the 
     evaluation under section 9 so that the Secretary or the 
     entity, respectively, can conduct an evaluation that shall 
     include, but not be limited to, a comparison of the academic 
     achievement of participating eligible students in the 
     assessments described in this subsection to the achievement 
     of--
       (i) students in the same grades in the District of Columbia 
     public schools; and
       (ii) the eligible students in the same grades in District 
     of Columbia public schools who sought to participate in the 
     scholarship program but were not selected; and
       (D) disclose any personally identifiable information only 
     to the parents of the student to whom the information 
     relates; and
       (2) describes how the eligible entity will ensure that the 
     parents of each student who applies for a scholarship under 
     this title (regardless of whether the student receives the 
     scholarship), and the parents of each student participating 
     in the scholarship program under this title, agree that the 
     student will participate in the assessments used by the 
     District of Columbia Public Schools to assess the achievement 
     of District of Columbia public school students under section 
     1111(b)(3)(A) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 
     of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 6311(b)(3)(A)), for the period for which 
     the student applied for or received the scholarship, 
     respectively.
       (d) Independent Evaluation.--The Secretary and Mayor of the 
     District of Columbia shall jointly select an independent 
     entity to evaluate annually the performance of students who 
     received scholarships under the 5-year pilot program under 
     this title, and shall make the evaluations public. The first 
     evaluation shall be completed and made available not later 
     than 9 months after the entity is selected pursuant to the 
     preceding sentence.
       (e) Teacher Quality.--Each teacher who instructs 
     participating eligible students under the scholarship program 
     shall possess a college degree
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I yield the floor.
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. Reid are printed in today's Record under 
``Morning Business.'')
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith). The Senator from Arizona.

                          ____________________