[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.

                          ____________________