[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 134 (Friday, September 26, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12042-S12045]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004--Continued
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I know my colleagues will be coming to
the floor to speak more about the situation in Iraq, but I take a
moment as one of the managers of the DC bill to give a few closing
remarks on that subject and wrap up a couple of issues this morning.
Then I understand the Democratic leader will come to the floor. When he
does, I will be happy to yield. And I see one of my other colleagues.
For the record, I follow up a couple of comments from my friend from
Missouri who spoke just a few minutes ago on the subject.
One, he referred to a letter from Secretary Paige. We on our side do
not have a copy of that letter. It has not been submitted to us. We
would be pleased to receive it if there is such a letter indicating
support for this three-sector approach, because all we have is the
``Statement of Secretary of Education Rod Paige On the DC School Choice
Initiative Before the House Committee on Government Reform,'' dated
June 24, 2003.
I have spent the last 30 minutes reviewing again the statement, which
I had read once before, and there was no mention at all in this
statement of any three-sector approach. It is approximately 20 pages
long, and I have highlighted every reference to the choice initiative
fund proposed by the President, and there is no reference in here for
charter schools or for education reform for traditional public schools.
So I want to submit this statement for the Record. That is all we
have on this side. If there is a new statement from the Secretary, we
would be happy to review it. I ask unanimous consent that the statement
of Secretary Paige be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Statement of Secretary of Education Rod Paige on the DC School Choice
Initiative Before the House Committee on Government Reform, June 24,
2003
Chairman Davis and members of the Committee, thank you for
the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the
Bush Administration's proposal to initiate a program to
expand school choice in the District of Columbia in fiscal
year 2004. I welcome the opportunity to describe our proposal
and explain our reasons for putting it forward. I am also
very pleased to appear at this hearing with Mayor Anthony
Williams, who has been, and will continue to be, our partner
in developing this initiative. I truly appreciate the Mayor's
willingness to work with us, and the relationship we have
developed around the simple idea that wider educational
options can benefit the children of the District of Columbia.
This hearing occurs very close to the anniversary of a very
historic moment in the history of educational choice in
America. On Friday, we will observe the one-year anniversary
of the Supreme Court's decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris,
the case that determined that a properly structured school
voucher program is constitutional. When the Court announced
that decision, I hailed it as one that could open doors of
opportunity to thousands of children and could transform the
educational landscape in our country. That statement is worth
repeating today, as we think about how to improve and reform
elementary and secondary education in Washington, DC.
Mr. Chairman, I know that officials in my Department and
Members of Congress have been concerned about the quality of
education in the District of Columbia for many years. D.C.
public schools are only a short walk from our offices, we see
District students going to and from school each day, and we
read about the challenges of the D.C. public schools in the
newspapers almost daily. We all want the capital of the
greatest nation on earth to have some of the finest schools
on earth. At one time this city's schools were considered
among the best in the entire Nation. But for many years we
have been disappointed by the performance of public schools
in the District, and at the seeming inability of public
school officials to manage schools and programs effectively.
In some respects, the situation in the District may be no
different from that in other urban school districts that
educate large numbers of children living in poverty, but in
other respects the District has sometimes seemed uniquely
resistant to reform and improvement. I say that with full
respect for Superintendent Vance and with appreciation for
what he is trying to accomplish and for some of the things he
has achieved, but I think it's the truth.
Let's consider the performance of D.C. students on the
National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP as it's
called, the assessment that measures the performance of
students over time in reading, writing, math, and other core
academic subjects. In the most recent mathematics assessment,
administered in 2000, only 6 percent of D.C. fourth-graders
tested at the ``proficient'' or ``advanced'' levels, the
levels that show that students have demonstrated competency
over challenging subject matter. A lower percentage of
students in D.C. demonstrated proficiency than was the case
for any State. At the other end of the scale, 76 percent of
D.C. fourth-graders scored at the ``below basic'' level,
which means that they could not demonstrate even partial
mastery of the math skills and knowledge that are appropriate
at the fourth-grade level. The 2000 8th grade math results
were very similar; only 6 percent of D.C. students tested at
the ``proficient'' or ``advanced'' levels, and 77 percent
were ``below basic.''
The most recent NAEP reading assessment took place in 2002,
and the National Assessment Governing Board announced the
results just last week. The results for D.C. students were a
little better than the 2000 math scores, but still were
completely inadequate. Only 10 percent of D.C. fourth-graders
could read proficiently, while 69 percent were ``below
basic.'' At the 8th grade level, 9 percent were
``proficient'' or ``advanced'' and 52 percent were ``below
basic.''
Looking at the quality of a school system requires more
than just reviewing scores on achievement tests. But when we
look at other indicators, they too show that D.C. public
schools are not providing the education that children in the
District need or deserve. The most recent edition of Quality
County, the annual review of education trends and data
produced by the newspaper Education Week, gave the District a
grade of only a D+ for having an acceptable system of
academic standards and accountability, a C in the area of
success in recruiting new
[[Page S12043]]
teachers, and a D+ for school climate. The D.C. public school
system has a long history of management problems in such
important areas as facilities maintenance, personnel and
payroll, food service, procurements, and even in accurately
counting enrollments. In addition, the system has
historically failed to comply with the requirements of
Federal programs, such as Title I and Special Education, to a
point where the Department has had to enter into compliance
agreements with the District that call for implementation of
major reforms within specific timelines. We insisted on these
agreements not because some paperwork wasn't being filled out
correctly, but because the District was, for instance,
failing quite egregiously to provide its disabled students
with the free appropriate public education required under the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
I would like to repeat what I said a few minutes ago: I
support and respect the work that Paul Vance is doing in the
District. I know that he has taken on the major management
problems and having been a big-city school superintendent
myself, I know that turning around a system is not easy. And
Superintendent Vance has shown some results. The District's
Stanford-9 achievement test scores for 2002 showed minor
improvements at most grade levels in reading and math. And
the proliferation of charter schools in the District,
including some that have achieved great initial success, has
given more choices and greater hopes to students and parents.
But I believe the preponderance of information demonstrates
that schools in the District are not achieving what they
should and that more needs to be done if children in the
District are to achieve to the high levels called for under
the No Child Left Behind Act.
The Bush Administration has responded to this problem by
including, in our fiscal year 2004 budget request, a school
choice initiative for D.C. You might ask whether expanding
educational choice to include private-school options is
appropriate for the District, whether it is likely to work,
whether giving students wider educational opportunities is
likely to help the D.C. public school system improve, and
whether we should, instead, request more money for D.C.
public schools. Let me address those issues.
We believe that the President's budget includes more than
adequate support for D.C.'s public schools, including charter
schools. Our request for Department of Education elementary
and secondary education formula programs would provide some
$92 million to the District in 2004, an increase of 15
percent over the level only two years ago (2002). And let's
forget that D.C. already spends, per student, more than all
but a handful of urban districts across the country. If money
were the solution, then we would have solved the problems of
public schooling in the District a long time ago. We believe,
instead, that tackling this problem will depend in large
measure on giving D.C. students more educational choices.
In the communities across the country that have
experimented with publicly and privately funded school choice
programs that include private-school options, the results
have been extremely positive, for the students directly
served by the programs and for the school system as a whole.
For example, research by Patrick Wolf of Georgetown
University, along with Paul Peterson and Martin West of
Harvard, on the first two years of the scholarship program
administered by the privately funded Washington Scholarship
Fund (WSF), showed that the math and reading achievement of
African-American students who enrolled in private schools
using support from the Fund was significantly higher than the
achievement of a control group of students who remained in
D.C. public schools. This research also found that parents
who received support from the Fund gave their children's
schools higher ratings than did parents of children in the
control group, and that their children were doing more
homework. Studies by these and equally eminent scholars in
other cities, such as Milwaukee, San Antonio, Cleveland, and
Dayton, offer very similar results.
What about the charge that voucher programs ``cream'' the
best students from the public schools and thereby weaken
public school systems? We find no evidence to buttress that
claim. To the contrary, research by Caroline Hoxby of Harvard
and others has found that students who take advantage of
private school choice options are typically at least as
educationally and economically disadvantaged as students who
remain in the public schools. To some extent, this is because
existing choice programs have explicitly targeted children
from low-income families, as our initiative would do. But
even without this targeting, programs that include private-
school options seem to attract students who are no more
affluent, and have no better an educational profile, than
other students. In addition, there is at least preliminary
evidence that school districts in which public schools have
been exposed to private-school options seem to attract
students who are no more affluent, and have no better an
educational profile, than other students. In addition, there
is at least preliminary evidence that school districts in
which public schools have been exposed to private-school
competition, through a choice program, have responded by
improving educational services. In Milwaukee and in the
Edgewood district in San Antonio, the presence of a choice
program was associated with gains in achievement in the
public schools.
Those findings are consistent with my own experience
directing the Houston Independent School District, the
Nation's seventh-largest. In Houston, we didn't resist school
choice; we embraced it. We created a system of charter
schools even before the State did. We let children in low-
performing schools take their share of the funding--$3,750 a
year--to a private school. I believe that our acceptance of
choice, our willingness to compete with charter and public
schools, helped us to make the changes we needed to make in
order to achieve the learning gains for which we received
national acclaim.
For these reasons, the Administration has put forward our
proposal. The outlines of this proposal are very simple. The
President's budget request for fiscal year 2004 includes $75
million for a national Choice Incentive Fund. Under this
program, the Department would make grants to support projects
that provide low-income parents, particularly those who have
children attending low-performing public schools, with the
opportunity to transfer their children to higher-performing
public and private schools, including charter schools. A
portion of the money would be reserved for the District of
Columbia.
We anticipate making a grant either to the D.C. public
school system or to another, independent entity to operate
the program in the District. The grantee would then develop
and implement procedures for certifying schools to
participate in the program, informing D.C. families about the
choices available to them, selecting students to participate,
and then monitoring and reporting on the program as it goes
forward. The proposal in our budget did not specify the
maximum amount of assistance an individual student could
receive, but we want it to be sufficient to allow students a
good choice of educational options.
We also see accountability as a major feature of this
initiative, because it will give parents in D.C. the ability
to hold schools accountable for meeting the educational needs
of students. And we will provide for a rigorous evaluation of
the project in D.C. (as well as the other projects funded by
the national Choice Incentive Fund) by examining the academic
achievement of students, parental satisfaction, and other
results, so that the lessons can be applied to future
programs and initiatives. We want to obtain solid evidence on
the benefits of expanding educational options and making
schools accountable to parents while respecting the
flexibility and freedom of participating private schools.
Mr. Chairman, I know that this proposal has engendered a
great deal of attention in the media and elsewhere, including
some vociferous criticism. Before I end my statement, I would
like to respond to some of the major criticisms, to set the
record straight.
We've heard that the Administration is trying to impose
this initiative on the District against the will of its
citizens and with no input from its elected and appointed
leadership. That is not the case. We have met not only with
Mayor Williams, but with Councilman Kevin Chavous, who is the
Chairman of the Council's Education Committee, and with
School Board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz to discuss our
proposal, and we look forward to continuing our discussions
with these and other local officials. I would like to commend
these officials for the courage they have shown in publicly
endorsing a D.C. school choice initiative and their
willingness to work with us on the details. We want to
implement a choice program that reflects the needs of the
District and reflects the input of D.C.'s leadership; we
don't pretend to have all the answers.
I acknowledge that a choice initiative that includes
private school options will probably not, in the end, be what
some of the political leaders in the District want. It is,
however, what I believe the parents want. The Washington
Scholarship Fund has a waiting list of approximately 5,000
children. One D.C. parent, Virginia Walden-Ford, the leader
of the D.C. Parents for School Choice, testified before
Councilman Chavous's committee and said the following:
``We have received hundreds of calls from parents who have
not been lucky enough to get a scholarship through the many
scholarship groups in town, WSF, Black Student Fund, etc.,
and parents who are camping out for charter schools that are
not keeping up the pace of parents' need to get out of
failing schools. They contact us looking for better options
for their children. Parents here in the District are daily
expressing their frustration in a school system that is
taking too long to fix itself.''
I note also that a majority of people in the District of
Columbia support choice, including choice that includes
private school options. In a 1998 Washington Post poll, 56
percent of D.C. residents said that they supported using
Federal money to help send the city's low-income students to
private or parochial schools, while only 36 percent opposed.
For African-Americans this support was even stronger--60
percent were in favor--and among African-Americans with
annual incomes of under $50,000, it was even stronger, with
65 percent in favor.
We in the Department have also heard that this initiative
will bleed money from the District's public schools. That is
also not the case. The Choice Incentive Fund proposed by the
President represents new money. It was not obtained by
subtracting funds from the other Federal programs that
support D.C. public schools. If the initiative does not go
forward in the District, my guess is that the money will be
used in other communities to expand educational choices and
improve educational outcomes in those communities.
We've also heard complaints that we are supporting a
voucher program when we could
[[Page S12044]]
be supporting the District's charter schools instead. We find
this complaint especially interesting since it has recently
been voiced by some who were never strong charter school
supporters before. But that's all right with us because we
strongly support charter schools too. We will continue to
fight to make sure the President's charter school funding
priorities are fulfilled, especially on the facilities front,
so that this vibrant movement can keep flourishing.
And, finally, we've heard that all the Administration cares
about is launching a voucher program in the District, that we
don't care about the children who will remain in the public
school system. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Our
Department has a record of reaching out to the D.C. Public
Schools, to work with the system on overcoming its problems,
of providing it with information, technical assistance, and
other resources. We've adopted individual schools in the
District and provided those schools with hands-on assistance.
In our meetings with D.C. officials, we have said that we
will continue these efforts, and I'm happy to state that in
public today. The choice initiative should be just one
element in an effort to improve education in the District and
ensure that all children can achieve to high standards. We
want to contribute to the larger effort as well.
Let me close with a quotation from Dr. Howard Fuller, the
former superintendent of schools in Milwaukee, currently the
Director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning
at Marquette University, and a strong advocate of opening up
wider educational choices for children and parents. Dr.
Fuller has said:
``In America, it is virtually impossible for our children
to bring their dreams to reality without an education.
Unfortunately, far too many of our children are not only
having their dreams deferred, they are having them destroyed.
They are being destroyed by educational systems that are
undereducating them, miseducating them, and pushing them out
by the thousands every day. We must have a sense of urgency
about changing this unacceptable situation.''
It is that ``sense of urgency'' that drives this proposal.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today. I
would be happy to respond to any questions that the Committee
may have.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, another point I would like to make is
that the Senator made a statement that needs clarification. As I
started out this morning, I said the details of this are very
important, because if you pursue the details and you dissect the
details, you will eventually get to the truth. So there is one detail I
must repeat. And I guess I am going to have to stand here, I don't
know, every day or a month or a year to continue to say this until the
other side cries uncle. This proposal is not--it never was, it is not
today--limited or designed for failing schools. Let me repeat, this
proposal is not--not when it was initially proposed, not last week, not
yesterday, not last night, not today, not this morning at 5 minutes to
12--limited to children in failing schools.
Although the proponents say they are interested in helping children
in failing schools, the real issue for proponents of vouchers is they
simply believe in choice. That, of course, is their prerogative. But to
stand behind the visual of poor people struggling in schools that are
failing is absolutely false. This proposal, as written, if anyone reads
it, is not limited or directed to failing schools. It gives a
preference to students in failing schools, but it is not designed to
students in failing schools.
That principle is worth fighting over because the whole
accountability system we have put into place is about identifying
schools that are failing, and then providing resources to those schools
to make them better.
If the other side gets away with saying, ``Well, that is what we
said, but that is not really what we meant, because we aren't
interested in putting resources into failing schools, we are interested
in putting resources into all schools, because our job is to make
parents happy,'' I think that is just such a foolish goal.
Let me say why I think it is foolish. As much as I would like to see
every parent happy, in my 25 years in public life I don't know how in
the heck we would measure that because some parents are real happy,
some parents are a little happy, and some parents are happy in some
ways and not happy in other ways, and I would have no way of measuring
what is a good measure for parental happiness. If someone in this
Chamber has any way to measure parental happiness in a way that
taxpayers could know if parents are a little happy, just a little
happy, happy on Mondays and not on Fridays, and that was our goal,
please tell me because I would be open to discuss it.
It is foolishness. We should be directing revenues, if we are going
to do that, to failing schools. This proposal is not directed to
failing schools. They can say it 1,000 times. I ask you to read the
details.
Now my third point. I know my colleague has been very patient, but I
have to make this point. My colleague from Missouri asked me, What
difference does it make? What difference does all this make?
It makes a huge amount of difference. We, as a Congress, with this
President, in a bipartisan way, have embarked upon a new effort, a new
journey, to take good public schools and make them great, knowing that
some schools are excellent but some schools are really bad. And as a
Nation, we are saying since 1965 our general plans are not working as
well as they should have, so let's make a big adjustment. We have made
a big adjustment, and that difference is worth fighting for, the
strengthening of public education in the greatest democracy in the
world.
People on my side say to me: Senator Landrieu, you have spent a lot
of time on this issue. For Louisiana, the State I represent, and for
the country I love--and all of us love our country and our States--this
is about as essential as it gets.
The fourth point I want to make: My friend from Missouri talks about
the single moms. Please help these single mothers, poor single mothers
who are working and can't afford to send their children to school.
Please help.
And they show pictures of African-American single moms and Hispanic
single mothers, kind of indicating, in a very insulting way--I know
they do not mean it to be insulting, but you could interpret it as
that; and I know that is not the intention--but there are those of us
over here who think we spend a lot of time fighting for poor women. I
have spent my whole life, basically, doing that. So it is really hard
for me to accept this criticism. But I am not perfect, and maybe I have
failed in some way in that effort. But when my friends say things to
me, that we need to help single mothers, let me just ask them a
question. Is it that party or this party which does not support the
increase in the minimum wage for these same women? Is it that party on
the other side of the aisle which refuses to raise the wage from $5.15
to help poor women have more choices in their life, or is it this side
of the aisle? Is it that side of the aisle which refuses, year after
year, to put more money into day care so the same poor women who are
working two jobs--early in the morning until late at night--could have
some sense of satisfaction that their children will be well cared for
while they are contributing to the great economy of this Nation, or is
it our side?
So you have to understand--I hope people understand--this is a very
important debate. The facts will speak for themselves. They can run all
the ads they want, all the bumper stickers, and all the headlines, but
that is what the facts are.
I have this letter we received today. It is dated September 26. It is
from Secretary Paige.
I am writing today to express my strong support for the
District of Columbia education improvement initiative. . . .
This bill includes a three-pronged initiative to:--
And here it is--
(1) improve DC public schools . . . (2) create new charter
schools . . . and (3) provide scholarships.
This is the first official letter we have received.
This letter is a step in the right direction.
I see the leader on the floor. But let me just say, until this
administration says they will veto any bill that does not have this in
it, the Members who are willing to negotiate on this have no assurance
that this is the way it will ultimately come out.
So I thank the Secretary for clarifying the position. I commend him
for his innovation. But again, until we have a statement of a veto from
the President unless this proposal includes these three provisions,
with permanent funding for all three, we do not have any assurance
these words will actually match the rule of law. And that is still a
problem.
I see my leader and yield the floor.
[[Page S12045]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
Mr. DASCHLE. I thank the distinguished Senator from Louisiana. I
appreciate all of her effort in providing leadership to the Senate on
this appropriations bill. We will have more to say about it next week.
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