[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 69 (Monday, May 17, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5510-S5515]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PELL GRANTS FOR KIDS
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, a half century after Brown v. Board of
Education, education on equal terms still eludes too many African-
American schoolchildren. Secretary of Education Rod Paige has called
America's persistent racial achievement gap ``the civil rights issue of
our time.''
By the 12th grade, only one in six Black students and one in five
Hispanic students are reading at their grade level. Math scores are
equally as disturbing. Only 3 percent of Blacks and 4 percent of
Hispanics test at proficient levels by their senior year. By another
standard, about 60 percent of African-American children read at or
below basic level at the end of the fourth grade while 75 percent of
White students read at basic or above at the end of the fourth grade.
There is still a huge achievement gap among African-American children
and White children. The No Child Left Behind Act's system of standards
and accountability is creating a foundation for closing the gap. But
funding disparities between rich and poor--too often minority children
attend poorer schools--school districts remain a stubborn contributor
to inequality. Between 1996 and 2000, poor students fell further behind
their wealthier peers in seven out of nine key indicators, including
reading, math, and science.
These outcomes cry out for a different model, one that helps address
funding and equality without raising property taxes; that introduces
entrepreneurship and choice into a system of monopolies; and that
offers school districts more Federal dollars to implement the
requirements of No Child Left Behind with fewer strings--in other
words, more Federal dollars, fewer Federal strings, and more parental
say over how the Federal dollars are spent.
Does this sound too good to be true? I would suggest it is not. Look
no further than our Nation's best-in-the-world higher educational
system. There we find the Pell Grant Program, which has diversified and
strengthened America's colleges and universities by applying the
principles of autonomy and competition. This year, $13 billion in Pell
grants and work study and $42 billion in student loans will follow
America's students to the colleges of their choice. This is in sharp
contrast to the local monopolies we have created in kindergarten
through the 12th grade education, where dollars flow directly to
schools with little or no say from parents.
That is why I have proposed Pell Grants for Kids, an annual $500
scholarship that would follow every middle- and low-income child to the
school or other accredited academic program of his or her parent's
choosing. These are new Federal dollars, so no district would see a cut
in its share of Washington's $35 billion annual appropriations for K
through 12, and increases in funding for students with disabilities
would continue. Armed with new purchasing power, parents could directly
support their school's priorities, or they could pay for tutoring, for
lessons and other services on the private market. Parents in affluent
school districts do this all the time. Pell Grants for Kids would give
less wealthy families the same opportunities--an example of such a
family are the Holidays in Nashville, TN.
Raymon Holiday is a sixth grader who recently won the American Lung
Association of Tennessee's clean air poster contest. I was there when
he won the 10-speed bicycle you get for winning this poster
competition. I met his father, an art major, and his grandfather, a
retired art teacher. They told me his great-grandfather was a musician.
So you can see where Raymon Holiday gets his instincts. His
grandfather, the retired art teacher, lamented to me that art classes
are usually the first to go when school budgets are cut. With Pell
Grants for Kids, a typical middle school of 600 students where
Raymon might be 1 of 500 middle- or low-income students who qualify to
receive a $500 Pell Grant. His middle school would see a $250,000
increase in funding. Raymon would be assured of art lessons.
The Pell grant model also encourages great American entrepreneurship.
Enterprising principals, like Raymon's principal, might design programs
to attract parental investment: advanced math classes, writing
workshops, afterschool programs, English lessons--whatever is lacking
due to funding constraints.
Surveys continue to show that while Americans are concerned with the
state of public education, most support their own child's public
school.
Herman Smith, superintendent of schools in Bryan, TX, would welcome
the $6 million that would accompany 13,500 eligible Bryan students--90
percent of his district. Bryan is right next door to College Station,
home of Texas A&M where, according to Smith, their budget cuts are
larger than Bryan dreams of spending for new programs and personnel.
Property values there are double those in Bryan, as is the per-pupil
expenditure. Not surprisingly, Bryan's population is almost half
African American or Latino, while College Station is three-quarters
white.
With 30 million American schoolchildren eligible for Pell Grants for
Kids, my fellow fiscal conservatives are probably raising an eyebrow.
But please listen. Every year, Congress appropriates increases in
funding for kindergarten through the 12th grade. What I am offering
here is a plan to earmark most of these new dollars--aside from
increases for spending for children with disabilities--for parents to
spend on educational programs of their choice. Otherwise, we will
continue to invest in the same bureaucracies that have disappointed
poor and minority families for too long.
Pell Grants for Kids could be implemented gradually, starting with
kindergarten and first grade at an initial
[[Page S5511]]
cost of $2.5 billion. If the program had been in place during President
Bush's first 2 years in office, the extra $4.5 billion spent on K-
through-12 education--again, not counting another $3 billion for
children with disabilities--would have created $500 scholarships for
all 9 million middle- and low-income students through the third grade.
We have had 50 years to deliver an American education on equal terms
to all students. But a baffling commitment to the status quo has
prevented us from living up to Brown's noble legacy. This anniversary
presents the perfect opportunity to inaugurate a new era, one that uses
the strategy that helped to create the best colleges to help create the
best schools. Let us start with Pell Grants for Kids and move on from
there ``with all deliberate speed.''
I would like to make two or three additional remarks about Pell
Grants for Kids.
As I mentioned, the idea is a pretty simple one--significantly new
Federal dollars, fewer Federal strings, and more say by parents about
how the money is spent.
To give you an idea of how much money that would be, I have taken a
quick look in my home State of Tennessee. Tennessee has 938,000
students in kindergarten through the 12th grade. Pell Grants for Kids
would be eligible to all those students who are from families below the
state median income. The state median income for a family of four in
Tennessee is about $56,000. So for families who have an income of
$56,000 or below, each of their children would have a $500 scholarship
that would follow that child to the school or other approved academic
program of their parents' choice. We estimate about 60 percent of all
of Tennessee students would be eligible for a $500 Pell grant. In some
of the rural counties where there are a great many poor children, it
might be 90 percent of the students. In other counties--Davidson,
Maryville, Oak Ridge--it might be a smaller percentage.
But all in all, there should be about 562,000 students in Tennessee
who would be eligible. This would bring an additional $281 million to
Tennessee for K-12 education, and parents would have a say over how
that money is spent.
Often when this issue comes up and we talk about spending more
Federal dollars for local schools, the Senators on my side of the aisle
get a little hot under the collar. We do not want to spend any more
Federal money for local schools. On the other hand, when we say let's
give the parents more say on how the money is spent, the collars get a
little hot on the other side of the aisle because they are reluctant to
give parents more choice.
This is a conflict of principles. It is the principle of equal
opportunity--giving parents more choices. But there is another valid
principle on the other side. It is called E pluris unum. We have public
schools, common schools, to teach our common culture, and we do not
want to harm them. It is a proper debate in this body to say let's ask
questions if we are giving parents more say, more choices. Will that
harm our common schools? And there is a proper way to ask in this
Senate: Can we wisely spend that much more money? This is quite a bit
more money. Fully funded Pell grants for kids programs would cost 15
billion in new Federal dollars a year. It would add about $500 to the
$600 we now spend on each of the children in America today from the
Federal Government. Only about 7 or 8 percent of the dollars we spend
on children comes from the Federal Government. So it would be about a
70-percent increase in Federal funding for every middle- or low-income
child fully funded.
We are proposing to do this over a long period of time. Basically, to
add to the new money that we would appropriate every year for K-12, and
give most of that to Pell grants for kids. This would create more
equality in funding for poor districts. It would especially help
African-American and minority kids. It would provide extra dollars to
implement the standards of No Child Left Behind, and it would introduce
for the first time into our K-12 system the principle that has created
the best colleges in the world, the idea of letting money follow
students to the institution of their choice.
Over the next several weeks, I will be discussing this with
individual Senators. I have not prepared a piece of legislation yet
because I don't want to stand up and say: Here it is, take it or leave
it. Let's say one team says no choice and one team says no money, then
we are back where we were. I am looking for ways to advance the debate.
I don't believe we are going to be spending much more money through the
Federal Government in the same way we are doing it today. A lot of
Senators, and I am one of them, do not want to spend more Federal
dollars through programs that have lots of Federal controls. We have
seen the limit of command and control from Washington, DC, with No
Child Left Behind. That program will work. But I don't believe we can
expect to give many more orders from Washington to make schools in
Schenectady, Nashville, and Anniston, AL, and Sacramento, better. That
has to happen in local communities.
The right strategy is significantly new Federal dollars with fewer
Federal strings and more parental say about how those dollars are
spent. This does not have to be a Republican versus Democrat idea. I am
not the author of this idea.
In 1947, the GI bill for veterans was enacted. Since that time,
Federal dollars have followed students to the colleges of their choice.
Today, 60 percent of America's college students have a Federal grant or
loan that follows them to the college of their choice.
When I was president of the University of Tennessee, it never
occurred to me to say to the Congress: I hope you do not appropriate
any money for children to go to Howard University or Notre Dame or
Brigham Young or Vanderbilt or Morehouse or the University of Alabama.
We give people choices. Or put it another way, in my neck of the woods
we told everyone where they had to go to college. We said, Senator
Sessions, you have to go to the University of Tennessee. We said to
young Lamar Alexander: You have to go to University of Alabama. Civil
wars have been fought over such things.
That is exactly what we do in K-12. We give people choice and have
created the best colleges in the world. We give them no choices and we
have schools that we wish were better. So the idea would be to try what
worked for colleges here in K-12.
I said I was not the only one to think of this. There was the GI bill
for veterans--that was bipartisan--after World War II, maybe the best
piece of social legislation we ever passed in the history of our
country.
In 1968, Ted Sizer, perhaps the most renowned educator in America
today, proposed a poor children's bill of rights, $5,000 for every poor
child to go to any school of their choice, an LBJ power-of-the-people,
liberal, Democratic idea at the time. In 1970, President Nixon
proposed, basically, giving grants to poor children to choose among all
schools. The man who wrote that speech for President Nixon was a man
named Pat Moynihan. He was a U.S. Senator. In 1979, he and Senator
Ribicoff, two Democrats, introduced essentially exactly the idea I am
proposing today. In fact, in 1979 Senator Ribicoff and Senator Moynihan
proposed amending the Federal Pell Grant Act and simply applying it to
elementary and secondary students.
At that time, when the Pell grant was $200 to $1,800, a third grader
could get a Pell grant, or if you were a high school student and you
were poor, you could get a Pell grant.
Senator Moynihan said to this body in 1979:
Precisely the same reason ought to apply to elementary and
secondary schooling--if, that is, we are serious about
education and pluralism and providing educational choice to
low- and middle-income families similar to those routinely
available to upper income families.
This was the impulse behind the basic educational
opportunity grants program as enacted by Congress in 1972.
He was talking about Pell grants.
It was the impulse by the Presidential message to Congress
which I drafted in 1970 which proposed such a program. It is
the impulse to provide equality of educational opportunity to
every American, and it is as legitimate and important an
impulse at the primary and secondary school level as it is at
the college level.
I am going to strongly urge my colleagues not to make a reflexive
reaction to this idea because, on the one hand, it has too much money,
or on the other hand, it has some choice. Think back over our history
and think of our
[[Page S5512]]
future and realize we have the best colleges and we do not have the
best schools. Why don't we use the formula that created the best
colleges to help create the best schools?
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the
conclusion of my remarks Senator Moynihan's statement in the Senate in
1980, and following Senator Moynihan's remarks, an article which I
wrote for the publication Education Next, which is being published this
week, entitled ``Putting Parents in Charge.''
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit No. 1.)
Mr. ALEXANDER. This article goes into some detail about the Pell
grants for kids proposal.
I look forward over the next several weeks to working with my
colleagues, accepting their ideas and suggestions about how we improve
our schools.
In June sometime I hope to introduce a piece of legislation,
hopefully with a bipartisan group of Senators. In July, Senator Gregg
and I have already discussed a hearing which we will have in the
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. And then perhaps next
year, the President of the United States might want to make this a part
of his budget.
I believe it is time in this country to recognize we need to give
poor and middle-income parents more of the same choices of educational
opportunities wealthier families have, that we may be able to do this
without harming our public schools. We have had, since World War II,
scholarships that have followed students to the educational
institutions of their choice, and they have done nothing but help to
create opportunity and create the best system of colleges and
universities in the world. I think we ought to use the same idea to try
to create the best schools in the world.
Exhibit 1
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am today introducing a bill
to make basic educational opportunity grants available to
needy elementary and secondary school students. This
complements the tuition tax credit bill that we recently
introduced and in no way substitutes for it. Just as I
believe that both need-based grant aid and tuition tax
credits should be available to assist with the costs of
college education, so also should the two alternatives be
available for needy students with tuition costs at the
elementary and secondary level.
As amended by the Middle Income Student Assistance Act of
1978, the basic grants program covers students from families
with income up to $25,000; the grants range from $200, for
students near the upper end of that scale, to $1,800 for
students from very low-income families. Many students are not
eligible for grant aid, and for them we have proposed tax
credits. Some students would be eligible for grant aid, and
they will presumably choose the one that suits them best.
This will not necessarily be the form that produces the most
assistance; for some, the simplicity of the tax credit may
make it more attractive than the complex forms required to
apply for a basic grant, particularly where the respective
amounts of aid are not much different. Others, particularly
the neediest, will plainly fare better under the grant
program. But there is no redundancy or overlap between the
two forms of aid: The tax credit would be available only for
tuition which the student or his family actually pays;
insofar as a basic grant (or other aid) covers tuition
expenses, those expenses would not be eligible for a tax
credit.
Precisely the same reasoning ought apply to elementary and
secondary schooling--if, that is, we are serious about
educational pluralism and about providing educational choices
to low- and middle-income families that are similar to those
routinely available to upper income families.
This was the impulse behind the basic educational
opportunity grants program as enacted by Congress in 1972. It
was the impulse behind the Presidential message to Congress
that I drafted in 1970 which proposed such a program. It is
the impulse to provide equality of educational opportunity to
every American, and it is as legitimate and important an
impulse at the primary and secondary school level as it is at
the college level.
The basic grants program, and the other major student aid
programs authorized under title IV of the Higher Education
Act, will expire during the 96th Congress, and one of our
important responsibilities in the next 18 months is to reform
and extend them. I shall have more to say on that subject on
other occasions. But it is none too early to introduce the
idea that one reform that must be seriously considered is the
inclusion of needy elementary and secondary school students.
It will doubtless be argued by some that this legislation
is unconstitutional, inasmuch as many students with tuition
costs at the elementary and secondary level are enrolled in
church-related schools. I see no distinction of
constitutional significance between the aid we already
provide to students in church-related colleges and that which
I propose to provide at the primary and secondary level, but
I do not assert that the Supreme Court will necessarily agree
with me. As with tuition tax credits, however, this question
can only be resolved by the Supreme Court, and that can only
happen if the authorizing legislation is passed by the
Congress.
____
[From Education Next, Summer, 2004]
Putting Parents in Charge
(By Lamar Alexander)
In 1990, as the new president of the University of
Tennessee, I was trying to understand what had made American
colleges and universities the best in the world. I asked
David Gardner, then the president of the University of
California, why his university has such a tradition of
excellence. ``First, '' he said, ``autonomy.'' The California
constitution created four branches of government, with the
university being the fourth. The legislature basically turns
over money to us without many rules about how to spend it.
``The second is excellence. We were fortunate, at our
beginning, to have a corps of faculty dedicated to high
standards. That tradition has continued. And third, generous
amounts of federal--and state--money have followed students
to the schools of their choice. That has increased
opportunity for those who couldn't afford college, created
choices that made good fits between the student and the
school, and stimulated competition that encouraged excellent
programs.''
Autonomy. High standards. Government dollars following
students to the schools of their choice. That was the formula
for the GI Bill, passed by Congress in 1944. The program gave
World War II veterans scholarships redeemable at any
accredited institution, public or private. Those veterans who
didn't hold a diploma could even use the scholarships at
Catholic high schools. With these scholarships came few
federal rules, thus preserving the universities' autonomy.
And by allowing students to choose their college, the GI Bill
encouraged excellence and discouraged weak programs.
Not all university leaders welcomed the program. ``It will
crate a hobo's jungle,'' warned legendary University of
Chicago president Robert Hutchins. Instead, the GI Bill
became the most successful piece of social legislation
Congress ever enacted. It became the model for the federal
grants and loans that today follow 58 percent of America's
college students to the schools of their choice. In 1972,
when Congress debated whether future federal funding for
higher education should go directly to institutions or be
channeled through students, the model of the GI Bill helped
carry the day for the latter approach, which was surely the
right one. Pell Grants (named for Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-
R.I.), Stafford Loans, and other forms of financial
assistance to students followed. This year the federal
government will spend nearly $17 billion on grants and work-
study programs and will provide an additional $52 billion in
student loans.
Rarely has the federal taxpayer gotten so much bang for the
buck. These federal vouchers trained the ``greatest
generation'' and made it possible for a greater percentage of
Americans to continue into higher education than in any other
country. At the time of the GI Bill's passage in 1944, only
about 6 percent of Americans held a four-year college degree.
Today that figure stands at 26 percent.
Moreover, these scholarships have strengthened public
institutions. At the end of World War II, 50 percent of
American college students were attending public institutions.
Today 76 percent choose to attend public colleges and
universities. So many foreign students want to attend
American university that some institutions impose caps in
order to make room for lower-achieving homegrown students.
British prime minister Tony Blair is overhauling his nation's
system of higher education because he sees a growing gap
between the quality of American and British universities.
Likewise, former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique
Cardoso recently told a small group of U.S. senators that
the most important thing he would remember about his
residency at the Library of Congress is ``the uniqueness,
strength, and autonomy of the American university.''
Meanwhile, federal support for elementary and secondary
education has taken just the opposite approach--with opposite
results. Instead of allowing tax dollars to follow students
to the schools of their parents' choice, the federal
government gives $35 billion directly to the schools
themselves (or to the states, which then give it to schools).
In addition, thousands of pages of federal and state
regulations govern how these funds are spent, thereby
diminishing each school's autonomy. Measured by student
learning, rarely has the taxpayer gotten so little bang for
so many bucks. In 1999, 8th-grade students in this country
were ranked 19th in math and 18th in science compared with 38
other industrialized nations. The National Assessment of
Educational Progress, known as the nation's report card,
shows other alarming trends. For example, between 1996 and
2000, the gap between affluent and poorer U.S. students
actually widened in seven out of nine key indicators--like
reading, math, and science. Two out of every three African-
American and Hispanic 4th graders could barely read. Seventy
percent of children in
[[Page S5513]]
high-poverty schools scored below even the most basic level
of reading.
enhancing local control
It is time to try a different funding approach, and Pell
Grants, the college scholarships offered to low-income
students, provide a useful model. Congress should enact
``Pell Grants for Kids,'' which would provide a $500
scholarship to each middle- and low-income child in America.
Children could use these scholarships at any public or
private school or for any educational program, such as
private tutoring. Homeschooled children would also be
eligible for the scholarship, as long as the money was spent
on an accredited educational program. Overall, the grant
would be available to about 60 percent of America's 50
million primary and secondary school students, those whose
families earn $53,000 or less. It would put the parents of
approximately 30 million children directly into the education
marketplace, each of them armed with a $500 grant, thereby
encouraging choice and competition.
This idea has a distinguished lineage. In the late 1960s,
Theodore Sizer, then at the Harvard Graduate School of
Education, proposed a ``Poor Children's Bill of Rights'' that
would have supplied scholarships of $5,000 per child to the
poorest half of children in the United States, for use at any
accredited school, public or private. In 1992, while I was
serving as secretary of education under President George H.W.
Bush, the president asked Congress to appropriate a half
billion dollars to create a pilot ``GI Bill for Kids.'' The
program would have awarded $1,000 scholarships to 500,000
children in states and cities that wanted to try the idea,
but the Democrat-controlled Congress refused to enact it.
The most important point to make here is that most of this
new scholarship money is likely to be used at the public
schools that nine out of ten students now attend. I believe
parents are likely either to give the money to their school
to meet its general needs or to seek the school's advice on
how best to spend the money to help their child. Surveys show
that while many Americans are discouraged about the state of
education generally, most parents support their own child's
public school. Parents in affluent school districts regularly
augment their schools' budgets with contributions for extra
programs, particularly in the arts. Pell Grants for Kids
would give children of low- and middle-income parents the
same opportunity.
Pell Grants for Kids would provide more federal dollars for
schools while also encouraging more local control--I mean
more control by parents and teachers--over how that money is
spent. Once parents make the decision about where the $500
will be spent, the principal and teachers in that school or
program decide how it will be spent. For example, in a public
middle school with 600 students, if two-thirds of the
children are eligible for the grant, that's $200,000 in new
federal dollars each year following those children to that
school. This would be manna from heaven for schools, many of
which engage in time-consuming charity sales to net $500 or
$1,000 for needed programs and projects. Enterprising
principals surely would design programs to attract parents'
investment--perhaps an after-school program, an extra math
teacher, or an intensive language course. And if they didn't,
parents would have the option to spend the money on another
accredited educational program that suited their child's
needs, such as tutoring.
Aside from stimulating competition, these new federal funds
would help to narrow the gaps in spending between wealthy and
poor districts and make more real the promise that no child
will be left behind. For example, in Bryan, Texas, property
values average about $128,000 per student. Next door is
College Station, home of Texas A&M University, where property
values are $305,000 per student. As a result, College Station
is able to collect far more in property taxes and its schools
thus spend twice as much per student as those in Bryan. Last
year Herman Smith, superintendent of schools in Bryan, told
me, ``College Station is talking about cuts in programs and
personnel that we could only dream of.''
About 90 percent of Bryan's 13,500 students would be
eligible for the $500 Pell Grants for Kids, putting more than
$6 million in new federal dollars into the hands of Bryan
parents. They could then provide more funds to Bryan's public
schools, as is likely, or use the scholarship to help pay for
enrichment programs or private school tuition. Bryan would
still have fewer dollars to spend than College Station, but
the gap would narrow.
overcoming objections
Let's consider some questions and criticisms that might
accompany the Pell Grant for Kids proposal:
In a time of tight budgets, can the nation afford to offer
$500 scholarships to 30 million schoolchildren? If it were
enacted today, Pell Grants for Kids would cost $15 billion a
year. A number of measures could be taken to ease the burden.
First, implement the program gradually, providing $500
scholarships only to kindergarten and 1st graders in the
initial year. This would cost just $2 billion. Second, over
the next several years, devote most of the new appropriations
for K-12 education (not related to children with
disabilities) to Pell Grants for Kids. Done this way, it
would not take many years to fully fund the scholarships
while staying within a reasonable budget. For instance, if
Congress had allocated two-thirds of all new federal spending
(non-disability related) on K-12 education since 1992 to this
program, $10 billion would have been available for
scholarships this year--enough to provide full $500
scholarships to all middle- and low-income children in
kindergarten through the 8th grade.
Or consider this: In just the first two years of the
current administration, Congress appropriated $4.5 billion in
new dollars for K-12 education (not counting another $3
billion more for children with disabilities). That $4.5
billion would have been enough to fully fund $500
scholarships for all nine million low- and middle-income
children in kindergarten through 3rd grade.
Aren't K-12 schools and colleges so different that the Pell
Grant analogy is invalid? It is true that schools and
colleges sometimes emphasize different public purposes. For
example, schools are asked to teach children what it means to
be an American, to inculcate moral values, and to make up for
poor parenting. Universities have research and public service
missions that schools don't share. But the core mission of
both schools and colleges is the same: teaching and learning.
Most high schools teach some college courses. Most community
colleges teach some high-school students. That is why it is
so odd that the way the federal government funds K-12
education is so different from the way it funds colleges.
Aren't you overlooking some real problems that colleges
have? No doubt universities have significant problems. Some
college students don't pay back their loans. Some for-profit
institutions are shams. Some courses are weird. Some tenured
faculty members are worthless. In the context of rising
tuition costs, there is too little interest in creating a
less leisurely university calendar, in proposals such as
requiring professors to work over the summer. Such abuses are
the price of institutional autonomy and choice. Overall,
however, American colleges and universities are by far the
best in the world--and therefore useful models for how to
improve our other educational institutions.
Can we trust middle- and low-income parents to spend $500
wisely on their child's education? I would remind those who
make this condescending argument that Congress currently
appropriates $8 billion each year to provide childcare
vouchers to 2.3 million low-income parents. These parents may
use the voucher at any licensed center, public, private, or
religious. Likewise, 9.5 million low-income students may
spend their federal student aid dollars at any accredited
college. If Congress trusts low-income citizens to choose
childcare and higher education providers for themselves, why
not trust them to spend $500 on K-12 education programming
for their children? In addition, because of our experience
using established accrediting agencies to monitor Pell Grants
for colleges, it should be relatively easy to create a
similar system to make sure that Pell Grants for Kids are not
spent on fly-by-night operations.
Will more federal funding mean more federal control over
education? Pell Grants for Kids would actually reduce federal
control over education. The current funding process
dictates how federal dollars are to be spent and imposes
heavy regulations on local schools. Letting federal
dollars follow children to the school of their parents'
choice would put control back into the hands of parents
and teachers.
Would Pell Grants for Kids violate the principle of
separation of church and state? Federal grants have followed
students to parochial colleges since World War II and to
parochial daycare centers since 1990.
Will giving individual schools so much autonomy leave some
mired in mediocrity? Autonomy need not mean a lack of
accountability. The No Child Left Behind Act requires states
to establish tough academic standards and to measure
students' and schools' performance on an annual basis. With
these accountability systems in place, the argument for
choice is that much stronger. Parents will have the knowledge
of school performance to make informed choices about where to
spend their new federal dollars. For this reason, students
who decide to use their $500 scholarships at private schools
would still be required to participate in their state's
testing program.
Why not let all Title I money follow children to the
schools of their choice? For now, I believe a gradual
approach is warranted. The nation should begin by letting
parents control how most, not all, of newly appropriated
federal dollars for K-12 education are spent. Let's monitor
parents' spending patterns and school performance for a while
and then evaluate whether to expand the program.
But private school tuition costs far more than $500.
Correct. So those who worry that vouchers will hurt public
schools should relax. But six hundred parents armed with $500
each can exercise $300,000 in consumer power at a public
middle school. Five hundred dollars can also help pay for
language lessons or remedial help. At Puente Learning Center
in South Los Angeles, Sister Jennie Lechtenberg teaches
students of all ages English and clerical skills at an
average cost to the center of $500 per year.
toward better schools
Of course by themselves Pell Grants for Kids would not
create the best schools in the world. As David Gardner said,
it took autonomy and high standards in addition to generous
funding following students to schools of their choice to help
create the finest university system in the world. To increase
schools' autonomy, Congress should provide generous support
to the charter school movement, offer waivers from federal
rules to successful school districts, and use its
oversight power to simplify federal laws and regulations.
To help schools aspire to the excellence most colleges
enjoy, Congress needs to give schools more flexibility in
administering the mandates of No Child Left Behind. To
make it easier for schools to pay teachers more for
teaching well, just as colleges do, Congress should
encourage the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards and other efforts to reward outstanding
teachers. These organizations, in turn, must make the
measure of students' progress a key ingredient in a
teacher's evaluation.
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It is a mistake to expect that merely switching to the
higher education model for funding is all Congress needs to
do to help transform public schools. To help children arrive
at school ready to learn, Congress should heed President
Bush's challenge to strengthen Head Start by improving
coordination, emphasizing cognitive skills, increasing
accountability, and involving governors. So that state and
local governments can remain financially sound enough to
support good schools, Congress should keep its promise to end
unfunded federal mandates. So that children can learn what it
means to be an American, Congress should help states put the
teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful
place in school curricula.
Finally, no plan for better schools is complete without
better parenting. In his research James Coleman found that,
until a child is 14, parents are twice as important as school
for the child's learning. Yet the United States has gone from
a society that values the job of being a parent to one that
has been waging a war on parents. Liberal divorce laws and
the diminished importance of marriage, higher taxes, poor
schools, trash on television, unsafe streets, uncontrolled
illegal drugs, and inflexible work arrangements have all made
it harder for parents raising children. No part of American
society has paid a higher price for this than our schools.
Giving every middle- and low-income child a $500 scholarship
to help encourage choice within education is a start, but
only a start, toward putting government and society squarely
on the side of parents raising children.
Nonetheless, enacting Pell Grants for Kids should be the
next central thrust of federal efforts to improve the
nation's schools. For the past half century, the United
States has actively supported the expansion and improvement
of higher education through a generous funding system that
encourages autonomy, choice, and competition. Our
institutions of higher education have helped produce the
research that has been responsible for creating half our new
jobs since World War II. They have sculpted an educated
leadership and citizenry that have made our democracy work
and made it possible to defend our freedoms. It is past time
to take the formula that has worked so well to help create
the best colleges in the world and use it to help create the
best schools for our children.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I express my appreciation to Senator
Alexander of Tennessee for his wise remarks. Listening to the Senator,
it reminded me of that advertisement: When E.F. Hutton speaks, you
should listen. When Senator Alexander talks on education, we ought to
listen, and, indeed, when he speaks on a lot of subjects. He has served
as Secretary of Education for the United States. He has been the
president of the University of Tennessee. He has also been the Governor
of Tennessee who had to run their school systems. He brings tremendous
wisdom and experience and insight to this issue.
It must be our goal to improve the quality of education for children
in America today. We have to work on that issue. We are not where we
ought to be. There is too much inequality today.
I also think about Brown v. Board of Education, as we celebrate that
historic decision today, and that Senator Alexander clerked for Judge
John Minor Wisdom, one of the judges who is famous in the old Fifth
Circuit for enforcing Brown v. Board of Education.
Brown v. Board of Education had more impact than most decisions have
ever had from the Supreme Court. As a young student in school, I rode a
bus every day 15 miles to school. As we went north on the road to my
school, we would pass a bus with African American children heading
south. So the white kids went to the school up in the northern end of
town, and we would pass one another. I went further than I should have
traveled to get to school, and they went further than they should have
traveled to get to their school.
In addition, the schools of the African-American community were not
as good, and their schoolbuses were not as good, for the most part,
either. It was not an equal system.
The Supreme Court of the United States considered the issue in 1954,
and they evaluated what was happening. They said the laws of the United
States should treat people equally, and that it is not equal treatment
to say to a person: You cannot go to this school, although you may live
quite close to it, simply because of the color of your skin. We had
grown up with that situation. People did not give it much thought. They
accepted it as the way things were. The Supreme Court ruled
differently, and people complained about it. Some even said it was
activism and the Supreme Court was overreaching. But if you read the
Constitution and the law, it seems to me the Supreme Court at that
point was not an activist court, it was not an overreaching court; it
was a court founded on law, and they went back and read the plain
language of the Constitution, and they said this process of denying one
person the right to attend a school simply because of the color of
their skin violated our Constitution. I think that was a plain ruling,
a fair ruling, and a good ruling.
I know we are about to take up the defense bill in a few minutes, but
I would say this: Things have changed in many different ways. My two
daughters grew up in Mobile, AL, not too far from Murphy High School.
Murphy is one of the oldest, largest schools in Mobile. The Mobile
County school system is a very large system. I believe they have 60,000
students. It is a great historic school. Fifty years ago, it was an
all-white school. There were all-African-American schools in the
community. They have, as a result of Brown, integrated the school
system. My daughters went to that school, and the racial mix was almost
exactly 50-50. They enjoyed their time at Murphy High School. It is an
excellent high school. In fact, I remember Secretary Bill Bennett, when
he was Secretary of Education, came down and gave them a blue-ribbon,
topflight national school award for the excellence in education there.
They loved that school. They had friends who were White, friends
who were African American, friends who were Asian, and friends who were
from India. They were all in that school system. They benefited from
that experience and did well as a result of it.
I believe the decision was beneficial legally. I believe the decision
was beneficial for the children. It made a statement, with crystal
clarity, that people could not be denied the right to public activities
simply because of the color of their skin.
That is an important principle in this country. We were very slow to
recognize it. The South was openly segregated in so many different
ways, and this decision broke it down. It took many years before the
decision would be fully implemented, but it has been implemented, and
much good has come from it.
President Bush has said in his philosophy of education that we must
not let children fall behind. He has used the phrase ``the soft bigotry
of low expectations.'' What he means is, if our children are going to a
public school that is doing pretty well, and they are doing fine, and
minority students are going to a school that is not doing so well, we
should not have the attitude, well, we are not too concerned about
that.
In fact, more dangerous than that is a philosophy that we have low
expectations, and we are not going to demand the same quality in all
school systems in America. That is not acceptable. Our children can
learn. All children of all races can learn. We need to challenge all
students to be their very best. We cannot allow children to fall
behind. We need to identify children who are falling behind early.
If you love children, if you care about the poor, if you care about
minority students, and you want them to succeed, you will find out how
they are doing. That is why the President said we want to test. The
Government plan of No Child Left Behind is not to test to punish or to
put down a child; it is to find out how they are doing in school. If
they are falling behind, we need to intervene promptly and quickly to
lift them up so they can reach their fullest potential.
Secretary Rod Paige, our Secretary of Education today, is an
experienced educator who was the dean of a school and was the
superintendent of the huge school system in Houston, TX--he has said by
the time children get to the ninth grade, if they are not up to speed,
if they are substantially behind in reading and math and cannot
compete, that is when they drop out.
So the President's legislation--what we worked on--is designed to
find out much earlier if children are falling behind, to give them that
intensive support and extra resources necessary to have them catch up
so they will no longer be behind, so when they get to the 8th grade,
the 9th grade, or the 10th grade, they will be able to function and do
high school work and go on and
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complete their degree and be successful in the world rather than
becoming frustrated or becoming a discipline problem, and maybe even
dropping out of school because they know they are so far behind they
cannot keep up.
That is what we focused on when we crafted the No Child Left Behind
Act. That is ultimately one of the keys to American movement in this
new century; and that is, are our children reaching their highest
possible level of achievement. The more children who achieve their
highest and greatest potential, the greater the benefit will be for our
country.
I see my time is up. We are about ready to go to the defense bill. I
again express my appreciation to Senator Alexander for his insights and
commitment to education. There is much we can do to make our system
better.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________