[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 60 (Tuesday, May 10, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H3098-H3102]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Marchant). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. CASTLE. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here. I am pleased to
follow the 30-Somethings, although I am a
[[Page H3099]]
little bit old for them. I think the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr.
Spratt) might be a little bit old for that as well, but I want to talk
about a different subject matter, as interesting as Social Security is,
and I will share time with the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers), my
distinguished friend, on this subject which is essentially dealing with
education in the United States of America and the Federal role in
education which is frankly largely not understood by everybody who
deals in education in this country. Perhaps we can bring a little bit
of light to that.
The starting point here is really the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, which is right now 40 years of age. It was 40 years ago
last month that President Lyndon B. Johnson signed what we know as
ESEA, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, into law, and the
core mission of that Act when he signed it into law 40 years ago and
was really one of the times the Federal Government has really got
involved in education was to help disadvantaged students improve
academically, certainly a laudatory goal I think as far as any of us
are concerned.
We have now enacted No Child Left Behind, and many people refer to
that as if it is something separate and different and new. What it
really is, a lot of the elements of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act with an overlay of some additional requirements as far as
standards and assessments are concerned.
President Johnson, when announcing his plans for the Great Society
touted the goal of an end to poverty and racial injustice. When
addressing education specifically he said, The Great Society is a place
where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge
his talent.
The ESEA arguably triggered the most significant Federal role in
elementary and secondary education. When he did sign that Act into law,
President Johnson explained that, ``By passing this bill, we bridge the
gap between helplessness and hope for more than 5 million educationally
deprived children.''
So where are we now some 40 years later as we look at No Child Left
Behind? Well, progress has been made since the enactment of the ESEA,
and sometimes, it is hard to measure that, but I think by any
standards, if you look at the various aspects of that Act, we can
certainly claim that there has been progress. Nearly 4 decades later,
however, poor and minority children still lag well behind the education
curve. It obviously has been through a lot of cycles, kids going first
through 12th grade in that 40 years.
In fact, a huge gap still remains when it comes to ensuring that all
kids are actually learning. No Child Left Behind built upon numerous
reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and was
driven to eradicate this problem and to ensure that every student will
not only have access but will also receive a quality education.
The Federal Government has spent more than $300 billion on K-through-
12 education since 1965, which was the date of enactment of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Yet that significant academic
achievement gap that I referred to between disadvantaged students and
their more affluent peers still exists in key subjects, such as reading
and math.
According to the recent national data on this subject, by the time
African-American students reach eighth grade, only 12 percent can read
proficiently, and only 7 percent are proficient in math. Nationally the
achievement gap between Hispanic and Caucasian fourth graders is 29
percentage points.
We have allowed ourselves to believe that some children are simply
beyond our reach. No Child Left Behind is rooted in the belief, a
different belief, that all students, regardless of race, background,
income, geography or disability, can learn and must be given the chance
to do so.
In the true spirit of President Johnson's vision, and like many other
laws that passed during the Great Society, we are helping all students.
As Brent Staples recently wrote in the New York Times, No Child Left
Behind happens to be the best hope of guaranteeing black and Latino
children a chance at equal education. Its core requirements that States
educate minority children to the same standards as white children
breaks a century old tradition of educational unfairness.
I think that captures that as well as it can be captured in a short
sentence or two.
For the past 3 years, the Federal Government, States, school
districts, parents and especially students have been dedicated to
reforms that ensure no child is limited. We are engaged as a Nation in
a continuing dialogue about our public education system. Despite the
often unfavorable tone, the fact remains that people outside the
education community are focused on reforms established by No Child Left
Behind. No Child Left Behind has its skeptics, and change is never
easy.
Many have complained that the Department of Education has been
inflexible with implementation. This has not, however, been the case.
The U.S. Department of Education continues to not only be an important
voice in helping to implement the law but an ear to some of these
negative accounts.
Some of that flexibility I have put on this chart, which I have to my
left, that they have undertaken, particularly in the last 2 years.
The first of these is flexibility on testing students with
disabilities. It has been shown that some of these students simply are
unable to stay up at a class level with other students, and some
flexibility was introduced in order to address that, mainly in the
percentage of children who would be exempted from the testing.
Flexibility on testing students with language barriers: Again, there
are demands that the kids be able to master the English language and be
able to test in that language eventually, but we are seeing the need
for some slowdown there.
Flexibility for rural schools on high-quality teachers: High-quality
teachers mean basically teachers who are proficient in the subject
matter which they are teaching, and obviously, if you are a math
teacher, you are proficient in math. You studied math or history or
English or whatever it may be; you studied that particular subject. But
obviously it is not always that easy, particularly in rural areas,
particularly for teachers who are teaching more than one subject, that
they be highly qualified in that area. So some latitude has been issued
as far as that is concerned.
Flexibility of student attendance issues: Some of the attendance
numbers were high, demanding some flexibility, although not much, was
introduced in that particular category.
Flexibility toward raising student achievement, a new path for No
Child Left Behind, and again, that is an important subject in terms of
where we are going to advance as far as No Child Left Behind is
concerned.
So the Department, I think, has been a lot more flexible than anyone
has really given it credit for in terms of what they have done. They
continue to review this, and some say, Well, what is happening in the
Congress of the United States?
We, in the Congress, will look at this again, not this year or next
year but the year after that in what we call reauthorization. So, in
the meantime, the Department of Education is doing its job, and we are
preparing to do our job as far as the reauthorization is concerned to
make sure that this program works.
The bottom line is that students realize that there are standards in
place now in all 50 of our States. There are assessments in the form of
testing in place in all of our States, and probably, this will
eventually go on as a matter of fact to high school, as well as the
grades which it is in now, in a more formal sense than it does at this
point.
Mr. Speaker, most recently, Secretary Spellings, who is now our
Secretary of Education, by the way, and, I think, doing a splendid job,
announced a set of guiding principles to help States implement No Child
Left Behind while taking their unique situations into consideration.
I know my State, which is the State of Delaware, is that we have had
a couple of submittals of different plans that have been accepted, and
there has been a great deal of flexibility as far as the States are
concerned, but these principles include ensuring students are learning,
making the school system accountable, ensuring information is
accessible and parental options are available and improving the quality
of
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teachers. To me, it is pretty hard to fight these things. To me, that
makes a heck of lot of sense in terms of educating the young people of
America.
If a State is meeting all of these principles, the Department will
take that into account when discussing amendments to State
accountability plans. This approach, if carried out fairly and in the
true intent of the law, could help some issues that have been raised
throughout the implementation process.
So this is being looked at. These demands are being made. In a
moment, I am going to return to this and talk about the funding and
talk about some of the student test scores and how they are doing
better now than they were before as we understand the difficulty of the
greater demands which are there but of making absolutely sure that that
is translated into help for our children across the United States of
America.
{time} 2100
Before I do that, Mr. Speaker, I want to yield to my good friend, the
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers). I must just say this: my
colleague has a scientific background. He is, I hate to use the word
fanatic, but I can almost use it in this case, because when it comes to
math and science, there is no person probably in the history of this
Congress that has been more of an advocate for this than he has. And by
an advocate, he goes out to see if there are laws he can change,
speeches he can make, writings he can pursue in order to shift
policies. And he has made a difference as far as that is concerned. He
has been a stalwart friend of mine and a stalwart friend of, I think,
everybody in education. He has been on the Committee on Education and
the Workforce with me for a number of years now, and so it is always a
pleasure to work with him.
So at this time I will yield to him, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me and
for the glowing introduction. I would return the compliment, and the
gentleman from Delaware has done a superb job of chairing the
subcommittee dealing with education. I appreciate his efforts. He deals
primarily with K-12 education and is largely responsible for all the
good things that we have done and that he has been talking about.
My first comment is simply one I have to get off my chest, because I
heard so many falsehoods about this last year during the campaign when
individuals were asserting over and over and over that we Republicans
had passed No Child Left Behind, but we had not provided funding for
it. That is just utter nonsense. If you look at the history of what the
appropriations were from the Federal Government for K-12 education
before No Child Left Behind was passed and what they have been after,
it is clear that there is a huge difference.
I believe my colleague will probably discuss that later and show a
graph which shows how rapidly it has increased under the Republicans.
Republicans are the true friends of education and have been for years;
and this is a dramatic demonstration of it, increasing 148 percent in
our funding over a short number of years.
Now that I have that off my chest, I will talk about math and science
education. The No Child Left Behind bill contains some provisions which
were not in there before, and that is that students not only will be
tested on reading but also on math and science. They are being tested
on mathematics right now to find out how well they are learning and how
much they are learning. In the year 2007-2008, for the first time, they
will be tested on science. And States are, as we speak, drawing up
requirements, standards that the students must meet, and they are
developing appropriate tests for those standards.
Now, why is math and science so important? A lot of people think,
well, it is great if you want to be a doctor or an engineer or a
scientist, fine, take math and science. But if you do not want to be
any of those, why bother? Well, I will tell you why it is important.
Because the jobs of the future are simply going to require that the
individuals applying for those jobs have an understanding of the basic
principles of science and mathematics. It is that straightforward.
I can give a good example of that just in my personal experience.
Last year, I was driving down the highway and listening to National
Public Radio, and they were doing a story about grease monkeys, or what
used to be called grease monkeys, mechanics who work on cars. In the
course of doing the story, they interviewed a service manager of a
dealership and asked, what do you look for when you hire a new
mechanic? He said, first of all, they have to have had high school
algebra and high school physics.
That was amazing to me, because when I graduated from high school
many years ago, those who were planning to become mechanics did not
take physics or algebra because they did not need it. They were
planning to be mechanics, so why bother taking it. But the world has
changed. The cars back then had no computers under the hood. Today,
there are literally hundreds of microchips under the hood of every car.
And anyone who wishes to be a mechanic had better understand how to do
the diagnostics, how to read the curves and graphs the diagnostic
equipment displays. And so that is just one example out of many.
My district has a lot of manufacturing, as does much of Michigan; and
when I tour those factories, it is a different world today. The people
who work on those machines understand math and science. And if they do
not, they will not get that job. They are making good money, $60,000 or
$70,000 a year. But they earn it because they have studied hard to
learn math and science, and they have learned it well.
Our country in the future is going to need good technicians, good
mathematicians, good scientists, good engineers, but also good factory
workers, because the jobs in the factories are changing. Jobs in retail
are changing. Jobs in many areas of life are changing, and we have to
do a better job than we have been.
How have we been doing compared to other countries? The Third
International Mathematics and Science Study, which occurred a number of
years ago, was very revealing. In the United States, the fourth grade
was a little below average in mathematics. By eighth grade, we were way
below average. By high school, our students, our high school students
compared to those of other industrialized countries were second from
the last.
Now, I have never regarded America as a Nation to be second from the
bottom. I have never regarded our Nation to be average. We should be
better than average. But our students are not performing in
mathematics.
A similar test for physics was even worse. We were dead last of all
industrialized nations in high school physics. More recent tests bear
the same trend out. We are just not meeting the needs of the future. We
are not competing with other nations. We are losing ground to them.
A lot of people say, why do kids really need it? Well, I talked about
the jobs of the future, but let me outline that it is more than just
that. We need scientists and engineers to provide the kind of
innovation that will keep jobs here. We constantly complain about jobs
going to China, to Mexico, to Thailand, and to India. Why are they
going there? It is not just the different wage rate. It is the fact
that they have highly trained scientists and engineers, whereas in
America, engineering enrollments have gone down steadily for the past
20 years, just starting to come up the last couple of years.
In China, they went from producing far fewer engineers than we do to
producing more than four times as many engineers every year as we do,
and they are beginning to innovate. They are beginning to develop new
products. They are developing new factories, and we are falling behind
in that.
But there are other reasons to teach math and science. Consumers
today need to know when they are in the marketplace, they have to know
something about science to read all the labels on materials and
understand what there is in these foods and what is in these products
they are buying, whether they are safe or not, and how do you read the
labels, the content labels and the warnings.
Also, voters have to know. Today, with referenda, particularly in
California, they frequently have referenda on things such as the
environment. Last election they had one on stem
[[Page H3101]]
cells. How are the people supposed to vote on these if they know
nothing about math and science?
Math and science also produces thinkers and learners. It is a
different learning process to learn math and science. I hear this a lot
from people: oh, it is so hard. Do our kids really have to take it? Or,
I just could not get math when I was in school. I hear this over and
over. What they fail to recognize is that math and science require a
different mode of thought because science uses a different mode of
inquiry. I do not think it is any harder than anything else, but it is
a different way of learning, something most students have not
experienced before if they have not had good math and science education
in the first eight grades.
I recall a case where I was teaching a student when I was a professor
at the University of California at Berkeley. She came in with a total
mental block. This was the most elementary physics course in the
department, Physical Science 10. She said, I cannot get this stuff. I
cannot get it. I cannot get it. And I worked and worked with her, and
spent hours with her; and finally she saw the light and learned how to
think properly. I had not heard from her for years after she left my
class. When I came to Congress, I got a little note from her. She is
now the director of a laboratory in Wisconsin. So even someone who felt
they had no hope of passing learned how to learn, and from then on it
was good.
But also we have other reasons for it. Economic security. The better
jobs go to those who understand math and science. National security.
The Rudman Report of a few years ago made the most striking statement I
have heard, and that is that the greatest danger our Nation faces
beyond nuclear war is the fact our students are not able to compete in
the world market and, therefore, we are facing dramatic problems in our
Nation if we do not improve.
Now, what can we do about this? Everyone always blames the teachers
first. I have worked with teachers in the classroom for some 30 years.
I have gone in the classrooms, I have taught myself, I have taught the
teachers how to teach students, and I will not say a bad word about the
teachers. Because all the teachers I worked with earnestly wanted to do
a better job of teaching. The problem is they had not been taught math
or science properly. They had not been taught how to teach it properly,
and they just felt it was hopeless. They did not know where to start,
what could they do.
So I believe our role as the Federal Government is to provide
training opportunities, both preservice and in-service training for
teachers, teaching them math and science, but also how to teach math
and science. In addition to that, we need improved curricula that
really teaches science the way it should be taught.
The way to teach science is by doing it, not by talking about it; and
that we have to get across. Because the kids love science if it is
taught by doing it. They love doing the experiments. They love figuring
it out. But if they have to just sit and read a book and memorize all
the terms of science, it is not going to appeal to them, and they will
not learn what science is all about.
So we need inquiry-centered curricula. We need hands-on curricula,
where kids actually use materials and work with them; but it also has
to be based on the concepts of science. Too often education programs
emphasize either inquiry or they emphasize the hands-on approach or
they emphasize concepts, and they all argue with each other about what
approach to take. To me the answer is simple: it is all of them. You
combine all of those and develop curricula that really meet the needs
of the kids, keep them excited and interested, and also provide the
teacher training so the teachers can teach those courses.
We are facing a crisis because of this. But there is another reason:
India and China. Almost 20 years ago, India made the decision that the
only way they were going to compete in the world today is by developing
strong backgrounds in math and science, and they had a unique way of
doing it. They set up an institute of science, mathematics, theoretical
physics, and all these things, similar to MIT and Harvard combined, and
set that as the goal for every child in the nation to achieve. And it
really worked. All the parents wanted their kids to go to that school.
It was the best school in India, and arguably one of the best in the
world. So the parents wanted their kids to go. They made sure they
studied math and science hard.
Now, obviously, not all of them made it; but in the process of
trying, many of them ended up learning enough math and science so that
when they got to the university, they could study more math and science
and choose one of many different careers.
In conclusion, let me just say that we live in a very competitive
global economy. If we are serious about competing in this global
economy, we have to make certain that we work smarter. And to do that
we have to make sure that our kids are smarter; that they learn the
right things in school; that they are fit for the job market of the
future; that we can compete with these other nations and beat them at
their own game, and that we can maintain our strong economy in the face
of this global competition.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield back to the gentleman
from Delaware, and I thank him for accommodating me for such a lengthy
discourse.
{time} 2115
Mr. CASTLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for his
continuing and abiding interest in this subject. I am afraid sometimes
the rest of us do not take as much note of it as he does. Perhaps we
had a little trouble with the math and science ourselves, I guess. But
I understand how important that is. Every time I talk to companies, to
people who come into Delaware looking to locate in Delaware, they make
a big fuss about that. We happen to have more Ph.D.'s per capita than
any other county in the country in New Castle County. As a result of
that, there is a great deal of interest in research in our area. I
understand the importance of this. We need to sell the message to a lot
of people out there. The gentleman from Michigan is the one who really
helps sell it.
Mr. EHLERS. If the gentleman will yield, I want to thank the
gentleman for his comments. It just reminded me of something I often
say to students when I am in high schools. I tell them, Look, you have
a choice: You can either be a nerd, or you can end up working for a
nerd. Which would you rather be? That is what it is likely to come down
to in the future because, if you do not understand math and science,
you are not going to have a really quality job.
Mr. CASTLE. I thank the gentleman for all his help in this area. He
touched on something that I want to turn to now with these charts
because some of the strongest criticism that we have heard concerning
No Child Left Behind has been with respect to the funding, specifically
the Federal Government's role in funding the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act.
If we look carefully at these charts, we begin to get the true
picture of what is happening in the funding. Let me go through it word
by word. Education Funding, Discretionary Appropriation Increases,
Fiscal Year 1996 to Fiscal Year 2005. This is what the Federal
Government has done for the funding of education. Although it says the
Department of Education here, this money basically flows through to our
States and school districts throughout this country. Federal funding
for education has more than doubled over the past 9 years. Under the
final fiscal year 2005 appropriations bill, discretionary funding for
the Department of Education climbed from $23 billion in fiscal year
1996 to $57 billion for fiscal year 2005. That is an increase of 148
percent. That is a tremendous increase. We are talking about 15
percent, and maybe the math comes in handy here, 15 percent or more on
an annualized basis. Most costs of living, when you measure it in
government programs, is just that; it is cost of living. Usually it is
2 or 3 percent. So the Federal Government has stepped forward and said,
We are going to make a larger commitment to education, and we have done
that in the course of the last 9 years. I do not have the chart here to
show this, but I would be willing to put a lot of money on the fact
that the States and the local school districts have not
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been able to keep up with this particular pace of funding that has gone
into education.
Just one more chart while we are looking at these charts, and that is
funding for programs under the No Child Left Behind Act, a 40 percent
increase in 5 years, showing that, in the last 5 years since No Child
Left Behind, we have also had very significant increases as far as No
Child Left Behind is concerned to help with those programs. These are
programs, by the way, which were being put into place by most of the
States and most of the school districts in this country even before No
Child Left Behind came along. I am very dubious of any argument saying
the Federal Government has not done its share as far as that is
concerned. I am discouraged, frankly, by States and organizations that
focus more on the funding levels than on what the law is supposed to
ultimately be providing to students, which is a quality education and
the opportunity for future success. Many even argue that it is an
unfunded mandate, that it is impossible for schools to implement the
law at the funding levels provided by Washington, D.C.; This is a
disingenuous argument at the very best.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, which you may know
as GAO, released a report in May 2004 which discredits comments that No
Child Left Behind is an unfunded mandate. The GAO reviewed more than
500 different statutes and regulations enacted in 2001 and 2002 and
officially concluded No Child Left Behind is not an unfunded mandate.
Even more clear are the significant increases in Federal funding of
Elementary and Secondary Education Act programs since the enactment of
No Child Left Behind as was shown by those charts. According to the
U.S. Department of Education, Federal funding for programs encompassed
by No Child Left Behind has increased $17.4 billion, as I indicated,
representing a 40 percent increase in just 3 years. Included in this
number is title I funding for disadvantaged students and schools, which
is funded at $12.7 billion in fiscal year 2005, an increase of 45
percent since No Child Left Behind was signed into law. That is
significant, because that is the money that is going to the schools
that have the most low-income children in their schools.
It should also be noted that, in 1994, President Bill Clinton signed
the Improving America's Schools Act, a reauthorization of the ESEA,
that required States to develop standards and aligned assessments for
all students. Districts were required to identify schools not making
adequate yearly progress and take steps to improve them. Bill Clinton,
1994.
This makes two important points. First, States across the country
should already have been implementing accountability systems similar to
what is required under No Child Left Behind. The previous
reauthorization included many of the same provisions, just without the
necessary teeth to ensure compliance. Second, during that time,
Congress did not appropriate the same levels as were authorized in the
act. Democrats funded education in the same manner when they controlled
Congress and the White House.
Yes, raising the student achievement levels are difficult and
expensive. The fact remains that the Congress has been funding the
program. States and organizations should not be avoiding their
responsibilities to students on the back of a failed funding argument.
The hard work and dedication of those implementing No Child Left
Behind is clear, and we can all agree with the law's goals. We are
beginning to see results. Many educators across the country have
stepped up to the plate. New test results for the 2003-2004 school year
show students are posting high math and reading scores on States'
tests. For example, in my home State of Delaware, scores have improved
in three out of four grade levels in all three subjects tested,
reading, writing and math. Fifth grade reading performance in Delaware
climbed to 85 percent, a seven percentage point increase from last
year. In Ohio, fourth grade math scores improved from 58 percent last
year to 66 percent this year. Additionally, according to the Chicago
Tribune, students in every grade level posted increased scores on
statewide reading and math tests in the 2003-2004 school year. Finally,
according to a 2004 study by the Council of Great City Schools, the
achievement gap is narrowing in both reading and math between African-
American and Caucasian and Hispanic and Caucasian students in our
Nation's inner city schools, and they attribute the positive change in
part to No Child Left Behind.
We must also recognize that the job is not done. We must see to it
that all children are receiving a quality education. No Child Left
Behind is a step in this direction, and we must stay the course. Any
attempts to change the system would play into the hands of those who
support the status quo, effectively preserving a failed system that
does not ask if children are learning.
____________________