[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 35 (Thursday, March 18, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H1310-H1317]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PARENTAL CHOICE IN EDUCATION
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Porter). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, today we would like to address
the House related to education. I think as all people have contemplated
history and the betterment of human kind, most of the greatest leaders
have recognized that some of the core hope of humanity lies in the
education of its children. That is reflected by some of the words of
great leaders of the past. Aristotle said, the longer I study the art
of governing mankind, the more I realize that the fate of empires
depends upon the education of youth. Teddy Roosevelt said, to educate a
child not in line with moral capacity is to educate a menace to
society. Thomas Jefferson said, the purpose of education is to create
young citizens with knowing heads and loving hearts. And sometimes, Mr.
Speaker, that loving hearts part complicates all of our lives, because
it seems today in education we focus strictly on the academics of
education. We forget that the real heart of education is indeed the
education of the heart.
{time} 1630
And I have to think sometimes, Mr. Speaker, that as we look across
the spectrums of society and we recognize that some of the great
tragedies in this world are not so much that our academics are out of
kilter, but that sometimes our hearts simply have not been taught to
truly respect and care about one another.
And I have had the beautiful privilege of teaching a group of 1 year
olds in Sunday school for the past almost 21 years. And I have seen
coming generations rise up around our knees. And as I look at how they
grow up in the different areas they go into in life, it becomes very
obvious to me that in nearly every case if a child is given the proper
opportunity, they can grasp a lot of the academics of this world; but
what they need to understand is that they are indeed a miracle, that
they are part of a miracle of life, and that somehow that they were put
here on this earth for a purpose. And I truly believe that that is
where the education of the heart comes in.
But unfortunately, oftentimes in the public square in our country
today, we run from the idea that parents or guardians should have any
input in the foundational moral training of their children. It is left
to the schools, and the schools make the decision and that is the way
it is.
Mr. Speaker, I believe that we make a great error in doing that.
Because if a child understands that they are indeed a miracle, that
they are put here on this earth for a purpose, then somehow they are
part of a significant enterprise that really begs human description.
Once they understand that they have that purpose, then they begin to
grasp the academics. They have the motivation to learn science and math
and history. They have the
[[Page H1311]]
convictions to go out and face the challenges of life without faltering
when every wind of something that would distract them in life comes
along.
Mr. Speaker, I believe that we really, truly need to begin to
consider this entire dynamic in our educational system. As it happens,
we have decried socialism across the world. In fact, we have pointed
out to almost everyone that the highway of history is littered with the
wreckages of Socialist governments, of governments that somehow thought
that collectivism and socialism transcended that of liberty and the
worth of the individual and that of a rule of law and of a republic.
And if anything has demonstrated that over the last 10 to 20 years,
it is the fall of the Soviet Union. It seems that socialism has been
discredited across the planet in nearly every way, unfortunately except
in our own school systems in America. And we have embraced the notion
that government should be the one to make all of those decisions, that
government should be the ones to decide the academics, that government
policy should be the ones to allow the educational requirements of
children and to dictate what those are. And in so doing we leave out
the most important single factors in a child's life, and that is simply
those people who love them more than anyone else can possibly
understand, and that is their parents.
And I know that there is going to be an ongoing debate in this
Chamber for many, many years related to parental empowerment in
education. But Mr. Speaker, unless we as a people understand that
children are not wards of state, that they are the gifts of God to
their parents and to the world, unless we understand that parents have
more concern and more understanding about their particular children
than anyone else in the world, then we will fail the coming
generations.
Mr. Speaker, I am reminded of a circumstance recently in Arizona,
where I come from, where there was testimony on this very issue before
the State legislature. And some of the parents groups were there,
advocating that they should have a greater role in their children's
education. And as it happened, the debate continued in a more heated
manner. One of the bureaucratic members of government got up and said,
``Well, we love your children just as much as you do.'' He said that to
one of the parents. And one of the parents very succinctly said to the
bureaucrat, he says, ``All right. Tell me what are their names.'' And,
of course, the bureaucrat was without an answer of any kind.
And I think that that really illustrates what the bottom line here
is, and that is that no public or private group can really ever
understand a child's most important needs like mom and dad do. I
suppose that is reflected to a large degree by the magnificent success
of home schooling in America. These are some of the smartest kids in
the entire Nation.
And I am reminded that the Ark was built by amateurs and the Titanic
was built by experts. It seems that parents, even many times without
teaching degrees, are turning out the smartest children that we could
imagine. And we as a society and as a Nation and as policymakers need
to understand why that is true. And I, again, believe with all in my
heart that it goes to the motivation of the child many times. It goes
to the causing that critical curiosity that comes into the life of
every child if given that opportunity.
I believe parents are in a better position to know what is best for
their children. And that is why one of the things that I advocated in
this body for the time that I have been here has been to empower
parents in education. I believe that there is probably no greater thing
that we could do for our children in terms of the philosophical
underpinnings of the Nation and of their ability to face the future
with a sense of hope.
The reality is that everywhere we have tried to empower parents, we
have seen good results. We have seen it in places where there are
vouchers programs. We have seen it in places where there are
scholarship tax credit programs. We have seen it in places where there
are school choice between the public school systems, where a child's
parents can choose to put their child in this public school or the
public school down the street. We have seen it anytime we empower
parents to make choices, something good happens. We have seen it, as I
said, in the home schools.
When we empower parents, we do good things for children. It is that
beautifully simple.
Mr. Speaker, as it happens among those groups, among those approaches
to educational choice, among those approaches to parental empowerment,
the one that I believe has the very most hope in terms of a public
policy outside the area of home schooling is this thing called
scholarship tax credits.
I was privileged to write Arizona's scholarship tax credit many years
ago. And now today we scholarship 21,000 children in Arizona. And the
schools they go to are entirely left up to the parents. The mechanism
is very simple. The mechanism is such that if an individual on a
voluntary basis chooses to contribute to a scholarship fund for
children to go to a school of their parents' choice, then the
contributor gets a dollar-for-dollar reduction in their income taxes.
And essentially what that does, Mr. Speaker, is it calls upon the
individual taxpayer to make a simple choice. Would I rather my money go
to the bureaucrats or would I rather it go to children? And I have to
say that is not a complicated task for many parents or many scholarship
donors. They have a pretty clear perspective of which way that should
happen.
One of the challenges, of course, in Arizona is that we really do not
have the money to put all the children that we would like to
scholarship. But there are a lot of ancillary effects of this program,
Mr. Speaker, one of which is that we have seen a definitive response by
the government schools, by the public schools, to parental choice. We
have seen that all of a sudden the schools there begin to have a much
greater interest in what mom and dad have to say about education.
Because they know now that mom and dad if they need to, if they choose,
that they can move in a different direction, they can take their child
to a different school.
When you empower parents like that, you create a dynamic between
public schools and parents that is vitally important to the success of
both.
As it happens, Mr. Chairman, about 90 percent of the parents in
Arizona choose a faith-based school for their children, again being
entirely up to them; but as many people would be detractors of such a
choice, the reality goes back to the heart issues that we spoke of
earlier.
And, Mr. Speaker, we talk about the problems with integration in our
schools. And if one looks at some of the private faith-based schools,
they are the most integrated schools in the entire Nation. And I have
to say to my colleagues that when you give parents the ability to place
their children in schools of their choosing, there are such a host of
wonderful things that begin to occur. First of all, competition happens
for the child. All of a sudden the child that might have been just a
little bottom in the chair for the system becomes royalty to everyone
in the system.
All of a sudden we begin to focus on the child rather than the system
itself. All of a sudden parents matter, their opinions matter. Because
if the schools could not respond effectively to the parents, then the
parents simply have another option. All of a sudden the schools begin
to say, all right, what are the dangers on this campus for children?
What are the situations as far as bullying in our schools? All the
things that we talk about in terms of public policy problems in the
schools begin to be affected almost automatically.
All of a sudden those questions begin to be taken up seriously by the
administrators because they recognize that they are competing for the
child in a sense.
Mr. Speaker, there are so many other things I would like to add, but
I see that a good friend of mine, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr.
Hoekstra) has come into the room. I would like to yield to Mr.
Congressman Hoekstra for a moment and perhaps we can come back and
discuss the issues a little bit more.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding.
To have the opportunity to have this dialogue about empowering
parents, empowering parents to give them a bigger role in the education
of their children, there are a number of methods
[[Page H1312]]
now that States are employing to create a dramatic impact in improving
their children's education.
I think my colleague and I agree that the most important thing in a
child's education is having a caring and involved adult in their life.
And whether it is a parent, whether it is a guardian, whether it is a
mentor, whatever, but if a child has a caring adult in their life, who
takes an interest in their education, that is a powerful motivator to
ensure that that child has the ability to learn and has the ability to
move forward.
And States are doing a tremendous amount of innovation and
experimenting with how they provide parents with this option of
selecting where their children go to school. Fifteen States today have
various proposals for public school choice, inner- and intra-district
choice programs, allowing students to transfer between public schools.
And then there are other States that provide slightly different
versions of public school choice. One of the things, again, another
version of public school choice, is charter schools. Today over 40
States and the District of Columbia have charter school laws. Again,
giving parents the initiative of saying this is the school that best
fits my child's needs. And it does not necessarily mean that the other
schools are not good schools, but recognizing that certain schools will
have certain strengths, not every school is exactly the same, and
provides a better opportunity to tailor the match for the child to the
school that they attend.
Six States have enacted voucher laws. My colleague has been very
instrumental in another form, a modified form of school choice that
opens up enhancing education for all of our kids, not only for those
that might go to a private or parochial school, but also a public
school, by putting more money into our school systems, public schools,
and the private and parochial school systems with a tax credit program
that my colleague not only introduced in the State of Arizona, but my
colleague was the key move in, I think, a trend that is gaining a lot
of interest. Because what it does is it not only empowers parents to
select schools, but it also empowers parents to reward the schools or
the community groups that they believe are doing a good job.
In the State of Michigan we passed a new education financing system
that I think in many ways was positive. But after 10 years we have
learned that there have been some unintended consequences. Our school
administrators in some respects are now more beggars to the State
Capitol than being focused where they should be, which is on the
parents and the kids in their community. And there is really no way for
a school district that is doing a phenomenal job to go back to the
people of that community and say we want to do some special things for
our kids and to get that money.
{time} 1645
My hometown public schools have a declining enrollment. They cannot
take costs down quick enough to reflect a declining enrollment, and so
even though our public school system in Holland has always been a
competitive advantage for the community, where companies would locate
in Holland because they saw that we had a quality school system, it
helped to attract, that school district can no longer go to the
community and say if you want us to be a differentiater, that when a
company is located saying are we going to locate in West Michigan, are
we going to locate in Kentucky or somewhere else, one of the reasons
that company is going to locate in west Michigan is they are saying
they have got a great school district; they have put additional
resources into that school, and I know that if I come to this community
I will be able to attract the employees that I need because my
employees are going to want to have a good school district for their
kids.
Maybe you would want to share a little bit about what the impact of
tax credits have been in Arizona, not only in improving public schools
but enhancing choice for all of the kids in Arizona.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I will have to say that my first
response would be that among those 21,000 children who have received
scholarships, it is almost impossible to relate the wonderful anecdotal
stories that you get. Parents come to me and say, my child was failing
in the public situation. They just were not doing well. It was not that
the schools were not a good school. It just was not the right fit for
them. Sometimes we overlook that. Oftentimes there is this notion that
if you are for parental empowerment that somehow you are condemning all
public schools, and that is not the case at all.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield, I think that is critical
because I think this is what I really want to reinforce because I think
it is also a model that I would hope that we would consider here in
Washington; and more importantly, I am hoping that it is a model that
we will consider in the State of Michigan for putting more money into
our public schools.
The tax credit that you designed in Arizona not only empowers
scholarship organizations to give scholarships to low-income students
to go to private and parochial schools, but it also provides a
mechanism of funneling more money into our local public schools in
Arizona. Is that correct?
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. That is correct, and it has the ancillary
effect of causing parents to be more involved with that local public
school. All of the sudden they have a stake in it personally. They have
made a tax credit contribution to the school, and the schools then, of
course, there is a dynamic. There is a communication that occurs there;
and as you said in your remarks earlier, one of the prime indicators of
successful education is an involved adult, in other words, the parental
involvement in the education.
In fact, if there was any single greatest factor in a successful
child's education, and we talk about all the systemic approaches, but
the greatest single involvement is parental involvement, and I think
that is recognized in the home schools and private schools and public
schools. It really oftentimes does not matter so much which one of
those systems the child goes to as much as is the parent fully engaged
and involved, and that is why I believe things like the tax credit for
the public school and the tax credit for the private school option are
so good because they, as a matter of course, as part of the logistics,
they involve parents; and parents, when they are involved and have to
make a choice, then not only are they more aware of the situation but
they have an investment of their time and emotions, and they made a
choice and now they have to make it work.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, maybe you
can relate a little bit about the experience in Arizona. You talked a
little bit about that there have been, what, 21,000 students in the
State of Arizona who have been able to take advantage of a scholarship
to attend a school of their choice; but there have also been
significant amounts of money that have flowed back into the public
schools where parents who are very satisfied with what is going on in
their public school, the public school has identified a specific need.
We did a hearing on this I think 4 or 5 years ago as this concept was
starting to come out. I think that is what really intrigued me is it
did not pit one sector of our education system against another, the
privates against the parochials. This actually ended up being a win-win
situation for education in general because it became a new way to
voluntarily fund the public and private and parochial system, a
voluntary way to move more money into educating our kids.
I will yield back to have you explain some of the results that you
have seen in Arizona.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, the gentleman is exactly correct. As it
happens, somewhere around $100 million has been raised for children to
go to the private school of their parents' choice.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. This is $100 million voluntarily, correct? This is not
$100 million where the legislature in Arizona passed a new tax and said
we are upping our sales tax by half a percent or changing the income
tax? This is $100 million that people voluntarily in Arizona said we
are going to pump this money back into our education system to help
educate our kids and provide a higher level and a higher quality of
education?
[[Page H1313]]
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. The gentleman is exactly correct.
Approximately $100 million has gone to the private scholarship groups
and approximately 120 million additional dollars have gone into the
public school setting.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. So over $220 million, voluntarily going into education?
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. That is correct, and of course, that is the
voluntary aspect of it, which, as you mentioned, is vitally important;
but it also has engaged the parents. One of the things that we are
seeing is a decided increase in Arizona among those parents who are
highly satisfied with their public school experience, and we are
convinced that there is a clear connection between the two because
anytime that there is a motivation and incentive for parents and
schools to talk, it usually creates a better environment altogether.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman may want to just explain for
folks exactly how the tax credits work. How is this tax credit
different perhaps than a voucher system that is maybe being used in
some other States? Then we can talk a little bit about the advantages
of the tax credits versus vouchers and that kind of thing.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I will be happy to do that. I thank the
gentleman.
The single most important difference between vouchers and tax credits
is the fact that with the tax credit, all of the contributions that go
into the system are entirely voluntary and they never go through
government coffers. Now, you say, well, that is a simple difference;
but it creates all kinds of ripple effects, all kinds of ancillary
differences.
For instance, those people who are concerned that if they send their
child to, say, a faith-based school down the block and that if they
send them with a voucher that somehow the scary, insidious hand of
government will come in and tell them to take down their cross or Star
of David or whatever the case might be. Under the scholarship tax
credit approach they would have very little to worry about because
there is simply no connection to government in that regard. The moneys
go into a private charity, which 90 percent of those moneys then go to
the scholarship for the child.
When you consider the expenditures there, there is a significant
difference. I mean, about 56, 55 percent of our dollars that come
appropriated from this body go into the classroom; but overwhelmingly,
when people contribute on the private scholarship tax credit, about 90
percent of those go directly for tuition of the child.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield. I mean, that
is one of the frustrating things that we have here, and I think that is
an important statistics.
We passed a bill here a couple of years ago that entitled dollars to
the classroom because we did a survey of the Education Department. We
found that the Education Department and the other Federal agencies had
over 760 different specific education programs, not all of them
obviously in the Department of Education, not all of them obviously
targeted to K through 12 education; but we do not have that many
different kinds of education systems that you said, well, it makes
sense to have 760 different education programs.
Then what we started doing is we started taking a look at how those
dollars flow. We appropriate money into one of these programs, so we
send it to a K through 12 school with a list of rules and regulations,
or we send it to the State. The State then has to administer it and
send it down to a local school district, and again, it gets to a local
classroom, perhaps with some rules and restrictions on it. They then
have to report back to the State, and the State has to report back to
Washington and say we spent the money exactly the way that you told us
to and within the restrictions of the program.
Of course, we know that the folks at the local level cheat, so we
then send in our auditors. We send in our auditor from Department of Ed
down to the State, down to the local school district to audit, and the
school district has to justify and keep the records that they spent the
money exactly the way that they did. Then we end up with the scary
numbers that you said, somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of every
dollar actually going into educating a child. Somewhere between 30, 35,
40 percent of every education dollar we spend in Washington goes into
bureaucracy by deciding where the money is actually going to go.
Somebody's got to divide it up at the Federal level and the State
level, and we have got to track and monitor and audit.
What we tried to do a couple of years ago was kind of like what
happens with the tax credit program. As we were saying, 90 cents gets
into a classroom. What we tried to say here in Washington, would it not
be great if every education dollar we spend at a K through 12 level, if
we could get 95 cents of every dollar into the classroom educating a
child and get rid of the rules and regulations, get rid of the
bureaucracy.
It is exactly one of the points that the President had in his No
Child Left Behind bill of giving States and local school districts more
flexibility, but that part of the bill was left on the cutting room
floor. It got cut out of the bill, but I could not help but think of
that when you were talking about the effective nature of voluntary tax
dollars going into a scholarship fund, and then that scholarship
offering it to a student and 90 cents of every dollar gets to that
local school versus what we do here in Washington. It is a very
efficient way of getting money into a school.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Absolutely. I find it fairly telling that from
the Federal Government perspective that we supply about 7 percent of
the funding for education that goes to the States. In other words, the
total funding that it takes to educate a child in the public school
system, about 7 percent of that money comes from the Federal
Government; but when you consider that over 55 percent of the paperwork
that the school has to do is mandated by the Federal Government and
there is something horribly wrong about all that, because it just
underscores everything that you said, and if you consider across the
country, on the average, private schools cost approximately half, if
you just measure them all out and average them all out, about half what
the public school systems cost, and yet on the average they will
educate a child academically about one to two grade levels higher in
the same respective area.
There is something to be learned there. Oftentimes people say that is
because the private schools skim. Now, I think there are some other
differences. First of all, classroom size; second of all, certainly in
Arizona, for every two teachers, we have more than one administrator,
but when you look at the private settings, you have about one
administrator for every 19 teachers. So there is an entirely different
overhead dynamic, and I just think sometimes we need to look at just
some of the financial dynamics there.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, we did a
program called Education at a Crossroads, where we went around to
schools; and I do not know, 13, 14 different States, and we asked those
kinds of questions, what kind of paper do you have at the
administration level, and all those kinds of things. The local
administrators would be the first ones to say we share the same vision
that you have. We want parental empowerment; we want the parents to
want to send their kids to our schools; we want to get the dollars into
the classroom; we want that to be the focus.
I still remember a press conference we did where we brought out the
reams and reams and reams of paperwork that these school districts are
required to send to Washington, and obviously if they have got to send
all this stuff to Washington there has got to be somebody that fills it
all out. The thing that we never did find was when you send all of that
paperwork into Washington and we would have a huge stack from just a
local school district, who in Washington is the person that reads all
of that stuff? I think that we never found that person or that
Department, and that is why the flexibility is so important.
So even though in some of our schools the ratio of teacher to
administrator is very different than what you may find in another
setting, if it is a private or parochial setting, that is not
necessarily where the administrators want to be. They would prefer to
put as
[[Page H1314]]
much money into the classroom because they have got the same focus that
we have.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, that is pointed out very clearly
in the year 2000 where only 52 percent of staff employees in public
schools were teachers, about half; and many of them I am convinced that
were not teachers would certainly have wanted the money to go towards
instruction. If you look at the same year, only 52.4 percent of the
nearly $382 billion spent nationwide on education, only about half was
spent on instruction.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. What is the number?
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. 382 billion in the year 1999 through 2000
school year. Only 52 percent was spent on instruction.
{time} 1700
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield,
what this tells us is a very important thing. This is not an issue of
money. We are spending a tremendous amount on education, but we are
spending a tremendous amount of it in the wrong place, and it is partly
because parts of the No Child Left Behind, that never made it into law,
was to give local school districts and States relief from the paperwork
burden that sucks up valuable education dollars away from the kids and
puts it into a bureaucracy either at the State capital or here in
Washington.
Like I said, and I think the gentleman agrees with me, the teachers,
the principals, the administrators at the local level want to do what
we are saying; they want to focus those dollars in the classroom. But
they recognize that when they get as many mandates as they get from
Washington, D.C., they have to have the piece of paper and the forms
filled out; they have to dot the I's and cross the T's or they get in
trouble.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is exactly right.
We have an estimated number of Federal programs, so when we talk about
how we create these programs for the States, there are over 700 of
them. And I would suggest to my colleagues that these mandates and
regulations and ineffective programs make it very difficult for the
local schools at the State level to comply with this.
What they do in the meantime, and this is shocking, but $84 million
in State education funds were recently returned to the U.S. Treasury
because States had not used it for more than 3 years. I am convinced
they are just ready to pull their hair out because they could not deal
with these complex mandates we put on them from the Federal Government.
I think there is a bigger issue here, and that is sometimes the
Federal Government just needs to get out of the way and let the States
and parents make the decisions on education. Because it seems like the
more we get involved from the Federal level, the more we have a
tendency to mess things up.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. The gentleman used the word that we talk about quite
often. School districts and principals and teachers at the local level
are forced to comply. Compliance means you adhere to the rules, but it
also means your focus has changed from where it needs to be, which is
educating the child to complying with the rules. And the teachers and
principals at the local levels want to focus on our kids.
All these programs and all these rules and regulations move us away
from where the gentleman and I started today when we started talking
about parental choice. We talked about parental empowerment and
recognizing that the tie between the parent and the child and the local
school district is absolutely critical, and that when we put in funding
schemes like we have in Michigan that say the money is no longer going
to come from the local level and the people in the community, but it is
going to come from these folks over here in Lansing, we weaken that.
When we send in a bunch of programs and a bunch of mandates from
Washington, it weakens the ability of the folks at the local level to
take a look at the needs of Johnny and say, What do I need to do for
Johnny? They have to say, Wait a minute, I have this form 1081 with
this program and I have to fill this out, and that means I have to do
this. I have to fill this report out after class today, or I have to
fill it out at the end of the semester. Again, it weakens that link
between the parent, the teacher, and the child and that local community
and it forces these people to look to Washington, which is the last
place they should be looking to as to who needs to be educated in their
community.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I find it ironic that this body
is essentially the school district for the Washington, D.C. schools.
Perhaps the nomenclature is a little different, but the reality is we
are in charge of trying to make sure that the Washington school
districts here in the District of Columbia operate effectively. Now, in
Arizona, just to give a comparative, about $6,800 per year in the
public school system is what it takes us to educate a child, when you
add maintenance and operations along with the cost of facilities. But
here in Washington, D.C. it is over $12,000. It is the highest in the
Nation.
If we know what we are doing here in terms of educational policy, why
is the one school area that we are most in charge of costing the most
and have some of the poorest schools in the Nation?
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will once again yield,
that is one of the ironies here. The gentleman is right. Many in
Washington would say that the Congress functions as their school board,
and yet we do spend somewhere upwards of $12,000 per student in the
city of Washington, D.C.
I know that for most of the school districts in west Michigan, the
area that I represent, the number that they get per child is somewhere
in the neighborhood of $6,700 to maybe somewhere around $8,000, maybe a
little over $8,000, but in that range, and they would be saying, wow,
if I got $12,000, and even for the most or the best funded school
district in west Michigan that is another $4,000 per student, that
would be a 50 percent increase, what would I do with all that money?
And then, of course, they look at the results here, and those are not
very good results.
I remember when we did the ``Education at the Crossroads'' hearings,
we did a district in Alabama, and it was very interesting. They had one
of the lowest per-student funding ratios in the State and they had the
highest test scores. So we asked them what they attributed this kind of
performance to, because they did not get a lot of money, yet their
scores were phenomenally well. The answer was, well, we only get enough
money to focus on the basics. We do not do a lot of the peripheral
stuff. We cannot do it. We cannot afford it. So all we do is, day in
and day out, we focus on the basics.
That is not saying these other things are not worthwhile, but it
means that they have to get the foundation and the basics done first.
And I do not want to put a number out there, but if you gave that
school district $12,000 per student, they would not know what to do
with the money because they are doing it with a whole lot less and
getting outstanding results.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I think that perhaps one of the
greatest dynamics of this debate is the whole cost structure. On the
average, and I will speak for Arizona because that is the State I am
from, about $6,800 per student when we educate that child in a public
school, whether it is an inner city school or rural school. If you
average it all together, it is about $6,800. In Arizona, the average
private school is approximately half of that, and yet, again, they
outperform the public schools on the average. In Arizona, the average
home schooler is approximately half of that, and yet they are the most
outstanding academic children. They perform academically better than
just about any other children in the State.
Consequently, I think that the obvious inference there is it is not
just the money. In fact, it seems like we have to pay more for worse
results on a regular basis. I am just convinced that rather than trying
to argue about which system is better, we need to start looking at home
schooling and the private schools and see what are they doing that the
public schools are not doing. What are they doing that government can
learn from, rather than to compete so much all of the time? Let us find
out what they are doing that is making things work for children. I am
convinced that that would have a big impact here.
[[Page H1315]]
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, I have spent a lot of time trying to find a
common ground between the various forms of education in Michigan,
whether it is home school, private schools, a charter school, or a
public school, recognizing that each one of these plays a vital role in
our total education system; and, also, very frankly, recognizing that
when you are in the State of Michigan and you are talking about
education reform, you are going to have to design it as a win-win that
says there is something in here that is going to enhance the ability of
public schools to compete, to educate our children, as well as enhance
the educational opportunities for private and parochial schools.
One system is not inherently better than the other and one system
should not be inherently favored over the other. Again, this is why I
am very much intrigued by the concept that the gentleman has
successfully promoted, which is a tax credit, which is a win-win for
all of those. I do not think, as it is written, Arizona allows or
provides a benefit for home schoolers, does it?
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. It does not, unless the home school would have
some type of satellite classroom setting, and I would hope and look for
the day that it would. Because, again, there is no one that has a
higher opinion and a greater respect for the home schoolers of this
country than I do. They simply have done such a magnificent job that
all of us could learn greatly from them. I hope we do.
Interesting to the gentleman's point, one of the great educational
philanthropists in this country, John Walton, recently said in a
roundtable that, ``In any system, if you want to increase the attention
a group receives, you must increase their power. The best way to
empower school children and parents is to let them direct the money.''
Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is exactly the point. What happens when we pass
legislation out of Washington that empowers Washington, that gives them
more authority, it means that people at the local level have to spend
more time focusing on Washington bureaucrats. In Michigan, when we
moved the funding from the local level to Lansing, it meant that the
local administrators now would have to spend more time focused on
Lansing rather than the interest in their community.
That does not mean that what we have done in Michigan is bad, but it
is a recognition that that should be counterbalanced. Because where do
we want the power and the influence for our local schools? Do we want
it in bureaucrats in Washington, in Lansing, or do we want it in my
hometown of Holland, with parents? Do I want it around a kitchen table
or around a PTA table?
I want it in my local school districts, because in some cases now in
my local community, the parents kind of walk away and say, Pete, what
can we do? We cannot raise the money.
We had an inner-city school that a lot of people in the community
wanted to keep open, but there was nothing that our superintendent
could do to go to the community and say, this is not the most efficient
way to run our school system by keeping this school open, but I really
think it is important to the sense of community and the city of Holland
that we leave that school open. He could not go to the community and
say, if you agree with me, great, then give me the money to do it. They
never had the opportunity to say there is something more important here
than just the bottom line on dollars and cents.
There is a sense of community for that part of our town and the
belief that using what somebody might describe as being an inefficient
way of educating our kids by having that community school right there,
that local neighborhood school right there, even if it is a little bit
more inefficient, because it gets a better result.
We have to focus and give our people at the local level and the
parents and administrators at the local level the opportunity to design
a system that works, not necessarily the one that is the most
efficient. Because it does not do us any good if it is the most
efficient, but we do not get the kind of results that we want.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I think that if we look at the
American economy, how it differs from, let us say Socialist countries
in the world, and we see that we have placed nearly all of the
direction of this economy, this monstrous productive American economy,
in the hands of the consumer, in the hands of the everyday purchaser.
Now, the reality is that there are always groups that join together and
have economies of scale and magnify their purchasing power. But the
reality is we have understood in this country that free enterprise and
giving this over to private individuals has been a magnificent engine
of productivity in this country.
Across the world I have seen that we are the most productive economy
in the history of humanity, and it is not because we are so much
smarter than anybody else. It is simply because we have a better
system. I would suggest that sometimes those that would denigrate
trying to pull free enterprise and parental empowerment and choice into
education forget the lessons of history.
There were times when someone came along and said about Federal
Express, when it came along, that it would destroy the post office.
Well, not only did it not destroy the post office, it actually made
them far more efficient. We send a letter across the country now in 2
days rather than 5 or 6. We have some of the more efficient efforts in
the postal system than we have ever had. The postal system, many times,
gives money back to the Treasury now, instead of us having to
appropriate billions of dollars more.
The same thing happened with the telephone system when we deregulated
it and turned that back into the hands of consumers. When we let people
make their choices about what was best for them, we revolutionized
communications. All of a sudden people had cell phones everywhere. It
has become the bane of our society, I think, to see and hear cell
phones ringing everywhere, but people can send pictures using their
cell phones, they can call Australia for 10 cents a minute, they can
look up their Web site on their cell phone, and almost everyone has one
these days. And it is because we knew if we could deregulate those
things, that an engine of innovation would occur.
{time} 1715
Mr. Speaker, it astonishes me in this country that we have had the
insight to increase the efficiency of the mail and the telephony of
this country, and yet we do not afford our children the same
opportunity to have competitive excellence in education.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I believe the gentleman is absolutely
right. I do not believe we have even begun to tap the full potential to
reform K-12 education with the technology that is out there today. How
can we really revolutionize K-12 education? Rather than accepting the
status quo, what can we do? We have some tremendous needs.
We have a much more diverse society than what we had before, so we
need to assimilate children. We need to get them to learn English. I
sit on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The other thing
we need to have happen, as we have more kids who need to learn English,
we have a tremendous need for children here to learn another language
because we are in a global marketplace. How do we explore what they are
doing in Europe where many kids speak two, three, four different
languages? That is not done here.
I think there is a tremendous opportunity to investigate different
means of learning. I think one of the ways that will happen is by
allowing educational opportunities and choices to flourish and then
empowering parents so they can align their child with the school that
they best believe fits their child's needs.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I cannot agree more. Several things occur when
we empower parents as essentially the customers of education. We say
education should not be a customer-driven thing. I suppose we can say
that about anything; but one thing is sure, when we do have a market-
driven situation, we get better quality, greater innovation, and a
drastic reduction in costs.
I am convinced that those same things would happen for the
educational system in this country if we injected parental empowerment
and competitive excellence into the system.
But a fourth thing occurs, which is when we empower parents to choose
their children's education, those parents with a philosophy of one kind
are
[[Page H1316]]
able to direct their children in that direction. Those with a
philosophy of a different kind can do something else. I am afraid if we
do not start looking into some of these hard issues, deeper issues in
our educational system, we may grow a generation with great academic
skills, but very little concern for their fellow human beings.
It is especially difficult when some, forgive me, some intellectual
pigmy masquerading as a Federal judge says that children in the public
school system cannot say the words ``under God'' in the Pledge of
Allegiance. That essentially vitiates much of the efficiency of the
system entirely. I am concerned if we do not begin to realize it is not
just academics, that academics are important, but it is not just
academics, that we are going to see a new generation that does not know
who Abraham Lincoln is, that does not who George Washington is and what
they stood for and the things that made this country the greatest
Nation in the history of the world.
That is why I am so deeply committed to seeing that education is
given a greater sense of parental empowerment and competitive
excellence. It will be the salvation of the public school systems, and
in my judgment it will be to the betterment of the coming generations.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, it is kind of interesting, the gentleman
brings up the judicial pronouncements, and they have been going on
since the early 1960s with school prayer, and there has been a very
serious unintended consequence. I was at a school in Michigan for a
graduation. I looked at the program. It said opening prayer. I kind of
looked at the superintendent and nudged him and said, You cannot do
that. He kind of looked at me and laughed and said, We can here. Then I
looked over at the diploma table and there were a stack of books over
there. I said, What book are you handing out? He said, Well, we are
handing out the Bible to all of our graduates. I had a smile on my face
and said, You cannot do that here. And he kind of laughed and said, We
do.
What some of the court pronouncements have done, they have broken the
bond between the school and the community because public schools
represented local community values, not to an extreme; but when you get
a pronouncement from some judge in California about what some school in
Arizona or some rural school in Michigan or Illinois or Indiana can do,
and that now becomes the law of the land, and the people in Indiana or
Michigan or Arizona never had any problem, they look and see what book
is being handed out, and for 100 years this school has been handing out
a Bible at graduation, and we are not telling people what to believe or
whatever. It breaks the bond. Again, it is one of those barriers that
comes up between a local public school and their community, and these
are the barriers that I think are making it so difficult for our local
public schools that have been so successful, but we are creating all
sorts of barriers.
We are creating judicial rulings from California and other places
that break that bond. We are moving funding away from the local level.
We are moving rules and regulations in from Washington that tell them
how to do their business, and all of that gets in between a local
school, a parent and their child. That is a huge problem.
We ought to talk about what you are planning on doing here in
Washington. We have talked about all of the money spent here in
Washington on K-12 education, all of the money for the rapid
acceleration on Federal spending on K-12 education, and it is all going
through programs and mandates. When you start a new program, you send
it to a school. That program comes with strings attached.
But the gentleman has another view, a version of a tax credit bill
that he would like to see enacted here in Washington that would, rather
than empowering bureaucrats, would empower parents. So it says
Washington is going to become more balanced, we are going to fund money
directly for programs that we think are of high priority, but at the
same time we are going to do something to strengthen that bond between
a parent and the educational system in their community by going to the
same win-win proposal as they have in Arizona, which was tax credits.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. We have introduced the Children's Hope Act,
and the gentleman is a cosponsor. All of us are very appreciative of
that. The Children's Hope Act is essentially a bill in Congress
designed to create an incentive for other States to create their own
scholarship tax credit such as the ones in Arizona, Florida and
Pennsylvania. The idea, of course, is to empower the States, the local
governments, and the parents exactly in the opposite order: the
parents, the local governments, then the States, and then lastly have
the Federal involvement.
Instead of trying to create a monolithic program here that we
control, and as has been demonstrated, we do not control things very
well from this body, if we can empower the parents in the greatest way
possible, we can do the States the greatest favor possible in my
judgment. The Children's Hope Act will create a Federal tax credit. It
would simply allow people to pay less Federal income taxes if they
contributed to educational efforts in their own State. This is
especially focused on the scholarship tax credit programs for tuition
organizations that give tuition to children to go to the schools of
their parents' choice.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. And it is intended to help public schools as well?
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. It lets the States make that decision. We
tried to create the broadest possible latitude for the States and the
local governments there to do that. Certainly if we look at, and there
is a lot of criticism that Washington no longer cares about education,
and they measure our concern for education in funding, but the reality
is our funding for education in Washington has gone up precipitously,
and in my judgment that is in the wrong direction.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. The funding from Washington may not necessarily be all
that bad if there was balance. But what we have done is we have funded
bureaucracy, bureaucracy which has written more rules and more
regulations for local school districts. We have talked about the impact
that has had. It is smothering our local public schools with overhead
and administrative costs and taking dollars out of the classroom. A tax
credit would begin to bring a little bit of balance that says rather
than putting more money into empowering bureaucrats, we are going to
put some money into empowering parents and rebridging that gap between
parents and local schools and their children.
That is the important thing, to give at least some of this money the
opportunity to be driven by the parents in their local community,
rather than by a bureaucrat here in Washington.
Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. There are two ways the Federal Government can
return money to the States. They can appropriate money with all of
these bureaucratic mandates; or they can simply say to the States, here
is an idea, if you do it yourself, you will have to send less money to
the Federal Government in the first place. That is what the Children's
Hope Act is predicated upon. It creates an incentive for States to take
care of their own efforts by empowering parents and sending less money
to the Federal Government.
I am convinced that this solves a lot of the problems across the
board.
Mr. Speaker, I am convinced we can accomplish so much if the
Children's Hope Act is passed. It puts the scholarship tax credit on
the radar of the States in general. It looks at what is happening in
Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Florida. If we can empower parents and
create a new movement toward competitive education, towards
competition, towards competitive excellence in education, I think we
can do more for this coming generation than anything else.
And I would suggest to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra)
that the implications are pretty significant. Abraham Lincoln said the
philosophy of today's classroom is the philosophy of tomorrow's
government, and how our children grow up and the days that exist now
will certainly dictate the kinds of philosophies that fill these seats
across this room. I would appropriate the words of one of our
predecessors of a long time ago, Daniel Webster. Daniel Webster said it
this way. He said if we work on marble, it will perish. And there is a
lot of marble around here. If we work on brass, time will efface it.
There is a lot of brass in
[[Page H1317]]
this place. If we rear up temples, they will crumble in the dust. But
if we work upon immortal minds and imbue them with principles with the
just fear of God and the love for our fellow men, we engrave on those
tablets something that will brighten to all eternity.
That is what it is really all about here. This is more than just a
bureaucratic struggle over who has control over what happens. It is
about trying to make sure that the foundations and the underpinnings of
America and the great principles that have made us the greatest Nation
in the history of the world remain in the hearts of the coming
generations. That is certainly my belief, and I yield to the gentleman
to express his perspective.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, there is not much I can add to Daniel
Webster or the gentleman's rendition of Daniel Webster.
On occasion I have an opportunity to give a tour of the Capitol at
night. One of the places I go to is the other body. I go to the desk
that was Daniel Webster's desk and tell the stories about him. He was a
great orator, a very wise man, as the gentleman has quoted him. I think
his quotes would be a very appropriate place to end this Special Order.
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