[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14045]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                               EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about 
the subject that is I think most on the minds of my constituents and 
most of the constituents throughout our country, and that is the 
subject of education. It is definitely the building block for the 
future; and as we head towards a more and more complicated future with 
more and more rapid change, that education basically life-long 
education is going to be critical to the prosperity of our country and 
certainly of our people.
  We seem to have an unfortunate choice that is laid out before us if 
we are watching public policy makers on education; and that choice is, 
either bash public education or blindly support it. I am here to say 
that I do not think that is the choice that is put before us, and I 
would urge public policy makers to find a middle ground.
  Basically, support for public education makes a great deal of sense. 
It has educated somewhere around 90 percent of the population. I 
personally benefited from it, as have millions of others. It has done a 
wonderful job of educating our children. It is one of the better things 
we did in the 20th century. But just because we support it does not 
mean that we should do so blindly or that we should never ask for 
reforms or never ask for it to be held accountable or to improve or for 
standards to be set.
  I worry that, given that false choice between supporting and bashing 
public education, that we will miss out on that opportunity to reform 
it and set the standards that we should set. That is why I as a member 
of the New Democratic Coalition, a group of moderate Democrats. We are 
searching for that middle ground to try to find an area where, yes, we 
can support public education, but we can also set the standards and 
make the changes we need to improve it.
  It makes a great deal of sense to say that we should spend money on 
school construction and to reduce class sizes, and I think we should. I 
think it is wrong to run away from a Federal obligation to help public 
education.
  But it is equally wrong to continue the current Federal role in 
public education in the manner that we have set it up. That manner is 
totally bureaucratic and process oriented and not results oriented and 
not oriented towards encouraging local control, which could make an 
incredible difference in our education system.
  So, yes, the Federal Government should support public education, but 
we should stop driving dollars out the way we are driving them out now, 
which is basically in a blizzard of programs, some 300 or 400. I have 
actually tried to count them over the course of the last 6 months and 
still have not quite tracked them all down.
  They are designed totally along the lines of process. If one meets 
certain standards, one gets a certain amount of money. Basically, we 
have turned our school district personnel in this country into people 
who are more interested and spend more of their time, I am sorry, they 
are not more interested, they are forced to spend more of their time 
justifying their existence to the federal bureaucracy than they are 
spending time educating our children.
  Why do they do that? Because they have to get the money. They have to 
fill out a variety of grants and a variety of programs to prove that 
they deserve the money in the first place, and then prove that they are 
spending it exactly how we told them to in the second place.
  All of this takes away time from the classroom. I believe that it 
would make a good deal more sense to drive those dollars out far more 
narrowly and to drive them out based on standards and based on actual 
accountability and accomplishments. Instead of just driving money out 
based on whether or not they filled out a grant form properly, we 
should take a look at it and say, let us set a measurable standard for 
the school district. Let them set the standard. It does not have to be 
driven down from the national government. Then measure them against 
their own standard in the future and reward improvement. Reward people 
who are accountable and are moving forward in education instead of just 
those who fill out the proper grant form.
  I think this would help in two regards. One, it would give the right 
incentives to school district to work towards improving achievement for 
their students as opposed to work toward meeting some requirement that 
has been set by the Federal Government.
  I will give one example of that. In my home State, for a while, we 
drove the money out for special ed based on how many special ed 
students there were, period. There was no ceiling on it. So slowly but 
surely we saw the creeping increase in the number of special ed 
students in school districts, not because there were more coming in, 
but because the school districts knew, if they could qualify more as 
special ed, they would get more money.
  Did this do anything to improve the quality of education? No, but 
that was the incentive that we gave the school district.
  Let us give the right incentive. Let us tell them that we will drive 
more dollars out to the degree to which they are improving the academic 
achievement of their students.
  Another good idea that I have seen is one that was introduced by the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Davis) and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. 
Roemer) on alternative certification of teachers. In addition to 
encouraging local control and higher standards and accountability, we 
also need to make sure that we have the level-best teachers out there 
and as many of them as we need.
  The idea of setting up alternative certification procedures so that 
professionals who may have worked in a variety of different fields who 
now want to get into teaching can without necessarily having to go 
through the normal certification process.
  If we have somebody who has been a professional physicist for a 
number of years, it does not make sense to say to them they somehow 
cannot teach physics. Let us take advantage of that brain power we have 
out there to help our students.
  But the biggest point I want to make today is one does not have to 
simply blindly support education. Support it, but expect results.

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