[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 26, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S546-S547]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     QUALITY EDUCATION FOR ALL ACT

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, we are in the very early days of this 
109th Congress, and one of the items we are all working at is 
identifying what the agenda should be for this Congress, for this 
country, and what issues should be given priority and attention, and 
what issues should be given priority in our funding.
  Along those lines, we have tried to introduce some bills early in the 
Congress to highlight priority concerns and priority issues for 
consideration by our colleagues, by the country as a whole, and by the 
administration. One of those bills is S. 15. This is a bill that I 
introduced along with Senator Reid and many other cosponsors on the 
Democratic side. It is called the Quality Education For All Act of 
2005. This legislation represents a major step forward in advancing 
educational opportunities for millions of students around the country.
  There is no question that we have made progress in recent years in 
advancing educational opportunity, but we still have very far to go. We 
need to look at ways to increase that opportunity and also to improve 
the quality of education in a meaningful and comprehensive manner.
  This bill is about making sure that we are doing all we can in the 
109th Congress to increase and improve educational opportunities for 
three different parts of our educational system. The obvious three are: 
Early childhood education; second, the education of people from 
kindergarten through the 12th grade; and third, higher education. Those 
are the three areas I want to briefly discuss today.
  Beginning with early education, the foundation for learning begins 
very early in life. Early education provides critical opportunities to 
promote children's physical, cognitive, social, and emotional 
development.
  We know that quality early education improves school readiness and 
fosters greater academic achievement and motivation in later years. 
Particularly this is true for children from low-income families.
  Early education also provides a great return on our investment. The 
benefits include lower rates of grade retention, placement in special 
education, and juvenile delinquency, and higher rates of educational 
attainment and skilled employment.
  These positive outcomes for children are not a guarantee when access 
to quality education is limited, and unfortunately lack of funding has 
limited access to quality early childhood education in our country.
  To illustrate what I am talking about, I will refer to New Mexico, my 
home State. There are approximately 28,000 children under age 5 in New 
Mexico living in poverty who are eligible, by virtue of the income 
level of their families, for Head Start services, but due to inadequate 
funding of Head Start, New Mexico can only provide services for around 
7,600 of those 28,000 children. An additional $186 million is required 
just to serve the other 20,000 or so eligible New Mexico children. This 
is without making any quality improvements, just expanding the services 
we are currently providing to the 7,600 to another 20,000.
  My colleagues and I believe we need to increase access to early 
education. We need to strengthen the quality of those programs as well. 
The first thing this bill does is expand access to early Head Start for 
our youngest children. It also increases access to Head Start for 
children and families living at 130 percent of the poverty line. The 
current law says if a person's family income exceeds 100 percent of the 
poverty line, they are not eligible to have their children participate. 
We would like to see that increased to 130 percent. Too frequently the 
working poor are left out of these types of programs in that they are 
not poor enough, but clearly these same families do not have the 
resources to provide quality early education to their children.
  The bill also seeks to strengthen the quality of these early 
education programs by making significant improvements to the quality of 
the teaching workforce. We provide grants to States to attract and 
retain highly qualified teachers, including grants to tribal colleges 
and universities to increase the number of postsecondary degrees earned 
by Indian Head Start staff. Plus, the quality set-aside in childcare 
will be increased from 4 percent up to 6 percent. With access to 
quality early education, children can enter school ready to learn, and 
that is in everyone's interest.
  I will move on to the issue of educating our children from 
kindergarten through grade 12. The main legislation that we have passed 
at the Federal level related to this, of course, is the No Child Left 
Behind bill. It is intended to deal with this problem. Unfortunately, 
we cannot expect States

[[Page S547]]

to meet the challenges of the No Child Left Behind Act without 
providing sufficient resources and guidance to them in how to do that.
  The administration assured us that we would be able to fully fund the 
No Child Left Behind bill when it was enacted. The program in the 
current fiscal year is underfunded by about $7 billion. There are more 
than 2.5 million fewer children who are being served through that law 
than the law promised to serve. In this legislation I have introduced, 
we provide that the No Child Left Behind bill should be fully funded.

  This issue is becoming critical for our schools for the simple reason 
that we are now in our third year after the enactment of No Child Left 
Behind, and there are a number of schools that are failing to meet the 
criteria set out in that law that has to be met, the adequate yearly 
progress number. They have failed to meet that AYP, adequate yearly 
progress number, for 2 years in a row. They are in a position now that 
sanctions will be applied to them for failing to do so.
  At this point, Federal resources to help them avoid those sanctions 
are absolutely critical, and we give this a very high priority in our 
legislation.
  The bill makes a number of changes to the law to ensure that the No 
Child Left Behind bill is implemented in the manner that Congress 
intended. It would give schools the option of recalculating their AYP 
scores from last year and do so by applying the administration's newly 
issued rules. This would save thousands of schools from inappropriate 
sanctions that were caused by the delay in publishing the rules that 
are called for in that act.
  There is a particular provision in our legislation that I know 
Senator Reid from Nevada feels very strongly about, as do many of us, 
and that is a provision to assist rural school districts with the 
resources they need to have good schoolbus transportation for all their 
students. There are many school districts in this country where the 
schoolbuses are antiquated, where they need to be replaced and 
modernized, and we provide some assistance to those school districts 
under this legislation to do that very thing. We call for full funding 
of the No Child Left Behind bill. We call for full funding of IDEA.
  In the final area I wanted to talk about we call for greater access 
to higher education for all of our students. It is clear that we have 
many people who would like to be in college, many students who would 
like to continue with their college education but because of the 
inability to pay, they are not proceeding with that education. The 
estimate we have is that there are 180,000 of our young people in this 
country who are not going to college, to a university, because of their 
inability to pay.
  This is a time when we are worried about too much of the work being 
done overseas that needs to be done to support our economy. We are 
worried about outsourcing. We are worried about the immigration of 
people into this country to take good-paying jobs. The reality is, if 
we do not educate and train our own young people to take these jobs 
that outsourcing will continue and will grow over time. So it is very 
important that we increase resources for higher education.
  We are requesting additional Pell grant funds so more students can 
receive Pell grants. We also need to ensure that students who graduate 
from high school are ready to go to college, and we have funds for the 
TRIO Program and the GEAR UP program as well.
  There are various provisions in this legislation, some of which were 
included in legislation introduced in the previous Congress. The truth 
is, we are trying as a Congress in these early weeks to determine what 
is going to be given priority, what will we, in fact, decide to fund, 
and what will we decide to neglect.
  A week from this coming Monday the President will present to the 
Congress his recommended budget for the year. I hope very much that the 
commitment we are advocating in this legislation for educational 
funding, for increased access to education, and for improved quality of 
education, that that same priority will be reflected in the 
administration's budget we receive on February 7.
  I do believe this is an important issue. It is one that has not been 
talked about a great deal in the last weeks and months. We hear the 
administration's agenda of what they want to get done in this 
Congress--with regard to privatizing Social Security, with regard to 
reforming the Tax Code, with regard to prosecuting the war in Iraq. 
There is not always much mention of education as a continuing priority. 
Our legislation tries to correct that. Our legislation tries to ensure 
that education is a continuing priority.
  I commend it to the consideration of all of our colleagues, and I 
hope very much we will have a chance to enact many of the parts of this 
legislation as we proceed through the 109th Congress.
  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. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Martinez). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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