[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14160-14167]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



 THE VITAL ROLE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA'S EDUCATION SYSTEM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Green of Wisconsin). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Owens) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, abolishing the Federal role in education will 
produce a long-term monumental disaster for this country. I open with 
that statement to make it clear what I want to talk about tonight. 
Abolishing the Federal role in education would produce a long-term 
monumental disaster for this country.
  I want to make it clear what I am speaking about because I have had a 
couple of people, interns in my office and constituents, say that I 
ramble a bit, and they are not sure what my basic subject is about 
because of my examples that are far-reaching, et cetera.
  It is about education. I am here to talk about education again 
because it is important that we not allow education to get off of the 
radar screens of the people who make decisions here in Washington.
  Members of Congress and the White House must understand that it is a 
subject that the voters have indicated in poll after poll that they 
consider to be the number one priority. They want the Federal 
government to do more in the area of aid to education. That is a 
priority, and they are on target. The common sense of the voting public 
is more on target than the priority-setting here in Congress. Education 
is the number one priority.
  The reaction of the political leadership here in this city, in 
Washington, has been not to deal with education in a straightforward 
way which recognizes the need to provide more resources for education. 
No, instead we are avoiding the issue with rhetoric and trickery. I am 
here tonight because the latest active trickery deserves immediate 
exposure.
  On Tuesday, June 22, the Republican majority, and this includes the 
majority in both Houses, let it be known what their basic thrust is 
going to be with respect to education. The reauthorization of the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act per se has been put on the back 
burner, but it is being preempted by an obvious assault on the Federal 
role in the process of education.
  The same Republicans who came to power in 1995 and said they wanted 
to abolish the Department of Education are now pursuing that same goal 
through a different route. They have found that the American people did 
not approve of a frontal assault on education which talked about 
abolishing the Department of Education. That was unacceptable.
  Instead of a frontal assault, now we are going through a different 
route, through the back door, and waging guerilla warfare against the 
Federal role in education.
  On Tuesday, June 22, Republican leaders, and I am reading from an 
article in the New York Times, page A-18, Tuesday, June 22, 
``Republican leaders in Congress today unveiled an education bill that 
builds significantly on their previous efforts to give State and local 
governments even broader discretion over the spending of Federal 
money.''
  I appreciate the wisdom of the writer of this article, Mr. Frank 
Bruno. He starts out with an indication of exactly what is happening: 
``It builds significantly on their previous efforts to give State and 
local governments even broader discretion over the spending of Federal 
money.''
  The article continues, ``Under the proposal, a State could opt out of 
the current Federal financing system which allocates money for specific 
purposes and instead use most of that Federal aid as it wishes, 
provided that the State first enters into a 5-year contract with the 
Department of Education that holds the State to certain performance 
goals.''
  The trickery here is that this proposal follows the same course as 
the Welfare Reform Act, where there were supposed to be contracts and 
specific plans made, and most States have reneged on their contracts 
already. The Federal government seems to be paralyzed and unable to 
monitor them properly or to enforce those welfare reform agreements.
  Now we propose to follow the same course with education. The same 
people who wanted to abolish education in 1995 are not saying we should 
abolish the Department of Education, but instead take all the money, 
give it to the States, and let the Department of Education monitor it.
  However, we will hear them shortly after that saying that the 
Department of Education is a swollen bureaucracy, and therefore, we 
should cut the administrative costs by cutting the size of the 
Department of Education. The staff to monitor these programs I assure 
the Members in a few years, they will not be around at all. Right now 
they are all too few.
  Continuing in the New York Times article, ``The plan, which would 
apply to more than $10 billion in Federal money nationally, faces an 
uncertain fate. There is not yet a timetable for its procession to the 
floor of either the House and Senate, and Democrats in both chambers 
denounced it as a reckless experiment.''
  The Democrats who have been quoted are the same Democrats who voted 
against the Ed-Flex bill, which is the forerunner for this present, 
broader block grant approach. The Ed-Flex bill was taking a portion of 
the existing Federal funds and allowing States to use that as they saw 
fit. That was quite popular and a large number of Democrats voted for 
it.

[[Page 14161]]

  My fear is that despite the recklessness of this and the extremism 
involved here, large numbers of Democrats are going to be caught 
sleeping, and the idea is going to look very attractive when the 
Governor calls and the State Department of Education people call and 
say, yes, we would like maximum flexibility. Give it to us. They will 
have an immediate targeted approach to the Members of Congress while 
the public is still out there wandering in confusion about the meaning 
of this kind of flexibility.
  The meaning of this kind of flexibility is that the States, which 
have traditionally and presently always had the power to forge 
education policy to improve schools and to get better results, the 
States that have failed to keep our education systems up to par and 
promote the kinds of education systems which are able to keep up with a 
world that is rapidly moving towards a cyber civilization, demanding 
more and more education of workers, a high-tech civilization where 
those who do not have a first-rate education will find it difficult to 
find employment, the States have failed to do that, and they have had 
93 percent of the responsibility.
  In another part of the same article they point out, the writer, Mr. 
Bruno points out the fact that ``Overall, the Federal government 
provides only about 7 percent of the education budget.'' I cannot 
emphasize this fact too much, because the core of Republican propaganda 
about education insists that education has been ruined by Federal 
intervention.
  The Federal government intervenes to the tune of 7 percent of the 
total allocation, the total appropriation for education. The States and 
the local governments are responsible for the rest, 93 percent. They 
have 93 percent of the funding authority and responsibility. They have 
93 percent of the control. So this preoccupation with grabbing the 7 
percent from the Federal government has no basis in any rational 
philosophy of trying to improve education. It is just a grab for more 
money, and it is an extremist act.
  It is extreme because it will push the Federal government completely 
out of the process of trying to improve our schools and to reform 
education. This is the last big amount of money the Federal government 
has invested, or the only significant amount it has invested to date. 
So if we push the Federal government out, then we only have the States 
left, and we have an extreme system.
  Our system already is weighted in terms of local control and State 
control. Unlike any other industrial democracy or industrial Nation, 
democracy or otherwise, we have decentralized policy-making, 
decentralized control of our education system. We are way at the other 
end of the spectrum from those nations that have total control in a 
central education ministry like Japan and France, and Great Britain has 
decentralized to a great extent.
  Basically all of the European countries have strong central roles for 
the development of education policies and practices and procedures, 
enforcement of accountability, et cetera. We have always been out there 
as the most decentralized system, and we are not apologetic about that. 
There is a lot to say about the American decentralized approaches to 
education.
  It started with Thomas Jefferson opposing a central national 
university, but he was the first to establish a university at the State 
level, and many other States followed suit. The Morrill Act created 
land grant colleges in all the States, and we have had a decentralized 
system in terms of elementary and secondary education as well as higher 
education for the life of this Republic.
  However, there are weaknesses in a system which is so extreme that it 
only involves the States and local governments. We discovered those 
weaknesses in a big way in World War II, and even more so later on when 
the Russians challenged us in the scientific race for new high-tech 
weaponry and the race into space, et cetera.
  The Russian challenge led to a great intervention by the Federal 
government in the form of incentives and new ways to stimulate science 
education, math and science education in our local schools. The 
involvement of the Federal government has been there to some degree 
since then.
  Later on under Lyndon Johnson, of course, we created the Title I 
program, which seeks to provide greater aid for the poorest school 
districts, the poorest schools in the poorest school districts in the 
country.

                              {time}  1930

  But total involvement, even after the Federal intervention, is 
minuscule compared to the involvement of other Nations in terms of 
their central government involvement with education.
  So we have a system which is at one extreme already. We are going to 
make it even more extreme by pushing the Federal Government totally out 
of the process. There is a great deal to be said about the present 
involvement in the Federal Government. I think it is far too little. It 
should be more.
  But even if we increase the Federal appropriations from 7 percent of 
the total to 25 percent of the total, we still would only have a minor 
role, a secondary role being played by the Federal Government. The 
States and localities would have 75 percent of the control. That would 
be a greater balance.
  The check and balance approach that we have found very useful in our 
overall national government, the check and balance approach is good in 
a number of different kinds of activities and enterprises, the check 
and balance approach where one does have some participation by another 
body to help to sort of balance off the kind of extremes that are 
negative on one side at the same time not take over and not smuggle the 
process.
  We need a check and balance of the Federal Government with respect to 
the State and local governments on education. There is nothing negative 
about having some ideas and some initiatives, innovations, research, 
statistics gathering, comparative analyses, sharing of information from 
one State to another, a number of things that the Federal Government 
does and does very well that it will not be able to do if it is pushed 
out of the process.
  It has to have a role which is significant, and the fact that it 
actually makes funds available to States and local governments gives it 
a role of some significance, however minor it may be. But to totally 
eliminate that is extremism.
  It is the kind of Republican extremism we heard in 1995. It is just 
more subtle now. Instead of screaming that we should abolish the 
Department of Education, they now propose a rational reallocation of 
the dollars that the Federal Government provides for education.
  It is like Marie Antoinette, when they said they have no bread, the 
poor have no bread, she said let them eat cake. The Republican 
majority, answering the call of the common sense of the voters who say 
we should have more Federal aid to education, they say let us just 
scramble the resources we have now. No more resources. Nothing new is 
going to be offered.
  We are going to scramble the existing money that is being provided in 
federal aid to education and make it appear that we are doing something 
great by giving control of all of the Federal funds to the States, 
which have done a bad job, I will not say bad, but inadequate, they 
certainly have not been able to keep up, and their resources are 
dwindling while the Federal resources are increasing. It is an extreme 
position.
  The bill which both houses of the Congress are praising as their new 
approach to education, they call it the Academic Achievement For All 
Act. They have already got a good nickname called the Straight A's Act. 
Their public relations people have done a good job. That is very, very 
effective, Academic Achievement For All, Straight A's Act.
  But it is only scrambling the Title I money primarily. We already 
have Title I funds. We already have a few other funds. They are going 
to take that, put it in a pot, scramble it, give it away to the States, 
and will claim that they have done something new for education.

[[Page 14162]]

  Let me just quote again from the article, ``But the extraordinary 
fanfare with which it was introduced suggested the extent to which 
Republicans in Congress eyeing next year's critical elections have 
decided to seize education as an issue and make local control their 
battle cry.
  ``Education is number one on the Republican agenda, said Senator 
Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, at an early afternoon 
news conference just outside the Capitol. Mr. Lott was joined by 
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois. They stood with other lawmakers 
in front of a yellow school bus brimming with fresh-faced students. 
Dozens of other students fanned out around the lawmakers, clapping and 
cheering their assent to each policy point, no matter how arcane.''
  I am quoting from the New York Times article Tuesday, June 22. ``Mr. 
Hastert described the bill which Republicans have titled the Academic 
Achievement For All Act and nicknamed the Straight A's as a historic 
step. Democrats said the direction of that movement was backward. 
Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, said it was 
unclear from the Republican plan how accountable schools would be. Mr. 
Miller also said States would be able to shift money from poor 
districts and children to wealthier ones. Communities will be pitted 
against each other to lobby their State Capitols for school money, he 
said.
  ``We know how that fight will turn out. Education Secretary Richard 
W. Riley issued a statement denouncing the bill along similar lines. 
The bill is a far-reaching extension of the philosophy behind the 
Education Flexibility Partnership Act, or Ed-Flex, which Congress 
passed with broad bipartisan support this year and President Clinton 
signed the bill into law.''
  Let me repeat that last paragraph. I quote from the New York Times 
article, ``The bill is a far-reaching extension of the philosophy 
behind the Education Flexibility Partnership Act, or Ed-Flex, which 
Congress passed with broad bipartisan support this year and President 
Clinton signed into law.''
  I reread that because I want to make it clear that I am not an 
alarmist. I am not here upset and frightened for no reason. What was 
done before on a bipartisan basis, with large numbers of Democrats 
participating, was a precedent-setting action. It is the forerunner of 
what is about to come back to us in the form of a take-it-all 
flexibility-for-all-of-it, meaning take everything that the Federal 
Government has invested in education and give it to the States.
  Democrats, beware. Democrats, do not fall into this kind of appeal 
for local control reasonableness. The local control is already 93 
percent. Why not let the Federal Government remain in the process with 
its measly 7 percent?
  Continuing to read the article from the New York times, ``The law 
authorizes States to grant waivers to local school districts that want 
to spend Federal dollars in ways differ slightly from the specifically 
intended purpose.
  ``The new Republican bill whose chief sponsors are Representative 
Bill Goodling from Pennsylvania and Senator Slade Gorton of Washington 
would allow precisely that kind of reshuffling. Republicans said the 
safeguard preventing any particular area of education or school 
district from neglect would be the performer's contract which would 
oblige States to prove that achievement was not suffering.''
  The performance contract, the same kind of thing that they have in 
the welfare reform bill. The States must show that they are doing 
certain kinds of things, only they have not bothered to do it, and no 
one in the Federal Government has been strong enough to force them to 
live up to the contract.
  Thus, it will be with education. Once the States have the money and 
the Department of Education has less of a reason to exist, less staff, 
less budget, who will go out to enforce the contract? No one. This is a 
rip-off, a grab for the 7 percent of the Federal dollars that are now 
devoted to education by the States, who have, as I said before, done a 
very poor job up to now.
  Democrats contended that many students could fall by the way side 
before the Federal Government was able to determine that a State had 
fallen short of its goals. Like Ed-Flex, the new bill would affect 
slightly more than $10 billion of Federal money, largely the same pool 
of money to which Ed-Flex applies. That represents most of what the 
Federal Government spends on primary and secondary education.
  So we are about to make a monumental mistake. It is on extremist's 
proposal that will be clothed in sweet reasonableness, and a lot of 
people are going to be caught off guard and fall for it. Why have total 
control, total involvement only by States and local governments and 
leave the Federal Government totally out of the picture with respect to 
the effort to reform education and improve our schools?
  There was a time when States were totally responsible for housing, 
States and local governments, housing for the poor. Nothing ever 
happened. Only the Federal Governments intervention provided decent 
housing in areas for people for whom there was no other answer.
  There was a time when health care was not a Federal responsibility. 
Federal Government did not get involved with health care. We had a 
monumental disaster across the Nation in terms of health care later. 
Later on, the Federal Government, through Medicaid and Medicare, 
through Lyndon Johnson, began to play a greater role.
  Whatever my colleagues may consider wrong with our health system at 
present, I am certain that my colleagues would not try to take away 
Medicare. Medicaid, they are trying to take away, but even Medicaid, 
one would have great resistance in taking that away from the American 
people.
  Senior citizens and retirement and care for people who are aging was 
totally neglected by the States. We had the poor houses. We had all 
kinds of bizarre ways in which they made a token effort to help aging 
people. But only Social Security, a Federal program saved senior 
citizens from abject poverty and suffering.
  The States had the ball, and they would not run with it. The States 
traditionally are controlled by people who have not bothered to govern 
for everybody. The temptation and the tendency of the States is always 
to govern for the powerful, and to do as little as possible to please 
the majority, and let the minority go completely. Triage systems. Do 
not provide health care at all. Do not provide housing at all. Social 
Security. Do not provide anything for the aging. It is the Federal 
Government that has made the effort to close the gap and provide the 
safety nets.
  In education, that has not been the case. It is still primarily a 
State responsibility, a local responsibility. So why move to the 
extreme position of trying to make it a total State local 
responsibility using Federal funds?
  I spoke last time about the fact that the Federal Government, in its 
intervention, redistributes funds in ways that have aroused a great 
deal of opposition in certain quarters, because if one distributes 
funds according to the population, the big cities are likely to get a 
larger percentage of the funds than other areas, the States that have 
large populations. For some reason, that is considered to be 
undesirable. If one distributes funds according to population it seems 
to me the fairest way in the world to distribute them. But that is 
undesirable.
  There was a move afoot last week to try to cut back on the mass 
transit funds received by California and New York because the mass 
transit funds were going a larger percentage to California and New 
York. Well, that is where most of the mass transit is. That is where 
the people who ride on subways and buses live. So why was there a great 
outcry about the fact that they got a larger proportion of the mass 
transit funds than most other areas?
  Highways and road were getting large amounts of money in areas where 
the per capita utilization of the highways is minimal. If one had to 
give highway and road money out on the basis of how often the roads are 
used, then the large population centers would get more highway money 
because, actually, the number of people utilizing the highways and 
utilizing

[[Page 14163]]

the roads are far greater in the areas where the people live. People 
are there, therefore they should get from the Federal Government a 
proportional share of the resources that are available.
  But this has not happened; and for that reason, I use an example 
which several people called me about and said, well, what does that 
have to do with education? What does it have to do with justice for the 
big cities? Why are you reverting to reciting statistics about who died 
in all the wars? It just seems to me a very graphic way to try to bring 
home the point I am trying to make.

                              {time}  1945

  The resources for education, the resources which involve helping 
people, should go where the people are. The fact that we are abandoning 
public schools means that the largest concentration of public schools 
and the largest concentration of people voting in public schools are in 
the big cities and the States that have the big cities.
  Why do we want to abandon them with respect to education and leave 
them in a situation where they will not be able to get decent 
employment in the future? We are going to create an uneducated 
underclass, an inadequately educated class or half educated class or 
poorly educated class. Whatever title we may choose to give it, it is a 
class of people that will not be able to qualify for the high-tech 
jobs. They will not be able to participate in the cyber civilization 
that is coming. That will be a great tragedy. And if we do that, we are 
generating a great unjust situation against a segment of the population 
which repeatedly has been called upon to defend the country.
  In all the wars, the largest number of casualties have been in the 
big States and the big cities where most of the people live. I used 
that example before and I will repeat it again. I think it is important 
to recognize that the demographics of the war dead, the demographics of 
heroism. These are heroes. Everybody who gave their life is 
automatically a hero. They gave all they could give in defense of this 
country in World War I, in World War II, in Vietnam, in Korea. The 
demographics stand out.
  But the people who died in the greatest numbers came from the places 
where people live in greatest numbers, where the population is. They 
might have had other factors that contribute to the heroism, but it was 
there.
  Even the battle of Gettysburg. On the Union side, the largest number 
of soldiers who died were New Yorkers. Because New York was probably 
clearly the State which is most densely populated at that time which 
furnished soldiers and troops for the Union's cause. That is certainly 
one of the biggest factors. And there might have been other factors. 
But the greatest number of soldiers on the Union side who died were 
from New York and Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, the States with the 
largest population.
  In World War I, New York and Pennsylvania again are way up there 
ahead of everybody else; 35,100 casualties, 7,307 combat deaths from 
New York in World War I. Pennsylvania 5,996 combat deaths. Illinois 
3,016. These are the big cities of New York, Buffalo, Philadelphia, 
Pittsburgh, Chicago.
  California was just beginning to boom in population, and they had far 
fewer deaths. But later on, California, where the people live, where 
the population is, they are the people who send the largest number of 
soldiers to the wars and they died in great numbers. Eighty-nine 
thousand casualties in World War II from New York State. Twenty-seven 
thousand of those, almost 28,000, were combat deaths.
  Why should we quibble about the portion of Federal funds that New 
York receives for mass transit or that they receive for education or 
for Medicaid? That is where the people live.
  California, big jump in World War II, 47,000 casualties. Seventeen 
thousand died. But even then, it was less than half of New York, which 
was still the largest population center during the Second World War. 
Where the people live, that is where we have the casualties, that is 
where we have the heroes, and that is where we have the public schools 
that are being abandoned now. Those are the people that we call upon 
and order to go to war. But in peacetime suddenly they become a 
nuisance.
  We have a philosophy that is sometimes weakly expressed, and 
sometimes there are high-powered people who come right out and say it: 
We do not need poor people.
  There was a member of the editorial board of the New York Times more 
than 15 years ago who used the phrase, ``planned shrinkage,'' that 
instead of trying to rebuild poor communities, instead of trying to 
take care of the poor, let us just plan for the city to shrink in size 
and population. Planned shrinkage sounds like a perfectly respectable, 
acceptable term.
  Now, that was long before anybody ever talked about ethnic cleansing. 
Ethnic cleansing you would say cannot be equated to planned shrinkage, 
and I would agree. But it is on the way. Low-income cleansing is what 
happens when you have plan shrinkage, low-income cleansing. Let us make 
life difficult for people who are poor and maybe they will move away. 
Let us make life difficult and hostile and they will solve the problem 
for us by moving away. We do not really need people. We only need 
people in times of war. We only need people when the Vietnam War takes 
place, and out of our cities comes a larger percentage of combat deaths 
than any other part of the Nation.
  In the big cities we will have the names on the Vietnam Wall 
Memorial. Go look at the names. And I am glad we have such a memorial, 
as I said before, because it brings war home in a very human way. We 
are not talking about unknown soldiers. We are not talking about tombs 
for unknown soldiers. We are talking about human beings that lived and 
breathed and they lived and breathed in the big cities. That is where 
the soldiers came from. They died in large numbers. Their names are on 
the Vietnam Memorial. They are the soldiers whose families and friends 
and neighbors still in those big cities that we should make a pledge to 
provide first-class education.
  The Federal Government should participate in provisional education 
because those people are very important to our Nation. I hope I do not 
just have to use that example, but that example is a graphic which 
brings it home.
  What about the future of the Nation if we do not educate the people 
in the big cities, we do not educate the folks who go to our public 
schools large numbers?
  There are a couple of other items that appeared recently in the paper 
that I think are significant. I am here repeatedly to talk about 
improving education and improving schools. I talk about the need to 
have a massive construction program, a school construction program, 
which not only deals with the problem of overcrowding in our big cities 
and in rural areas, replacement of schools that are falling down, 
replacement of the trailers that are inadequate in so many places, but 
also school construction which would provide for the wiring of schools 
so that we can get more technology in schools.
  They need new computers to do the construction. They need to be 
hooked up to the Internet. That is where the world is going. We have 
thousands of thousands of jobs. I think now they talk about right now 
there being 300,000 vacancies. There are 300,000 vacancies in the 
information technology industry. They expect the number to climb to 1.5 
million in 2 or 3 years. And these estimates are based on the fact that 
they look at the number of youngsters who are taking computer science 
in our colleges and they say that number is totally inadequate.
  We need more youngsters going into college. We need more youngsters 
at every level, not only the colleges where they can get the computer 
program training, but the junior colleges where they are going to 
become computer technicians, or even high school where they get enough 
training to become computer mechanics or in some way assist. Because 
the world is going in that direction.
  The age of cyber civilization is going to be here sooner than we 
realize. And

[[Page 14164]]

in order to participate in that and hold a job, they have got to have 
the education necessary.
  Let me just highlight this report that appeared yesterday in the New 
York Times.
  A report was issued by the Commerce Department which describes the 
economic benefits from the Internet. The economic benefits from the 
Internet have greatly benefited our economy. Our overall economy is fed 
by a new kind of phenomena which requires a highly educated work force.
  The article was in the New York Times on June 23. It reads as 
follows:

       The financial benefits of the Internet and high technology 
     extend beyond the quick riches they have brought high-profile 
     entrepreneurs and investors in recent years to the Nation's 
     economy as a whole, a new Government study shows.
       The information technology industry, which includes 
     everything from the Dell Computer Corporation PC's to the 
     Microsoft Corporation's software, to Cisco System, Inc.'s 
     routers, generated at least a third of the Nation's economic 
     growth between 1995 and 1998, the Commerce Department said in 
     a report released today. During that period, the gross 
     domestic product rose 22 percent, to $8.7 trillion.

  The Internet as a force in our economy did not exist 20 or 30 years 
ago. But between 1995 and 1998, it expanded to reach the point where it 
is now third. Internet related activities are a third of our economy.

       Those goods and services also got cheaper and allowed 
     businesses to become more productive, cutting inflation by 
     seven-tenths of a percentage point in 1996 and 1997, the 
     report says.
       ``The improvement in technology, in productivity, is what 
     has made the economy so incredibly attractive in the last 
     couple of years,'' said William J. McDonough, president of 
     Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
       Today's Commerce Department report, the second in a series 
     of three on technology, does not provide figures measuring 
     total spending on high technology. Instead, it focuses on 
     growth of on-line businesses and companies that cater to the 
     technology industry. For example, it says almost half of all 
     American workers will be employed in high-technology 
     industries or at companies that rely heavily on technology by 
     2006.

  I repeat. The report says, ``Almost half of all American workers will 
be employed in high-technology industries or at companies that rely 
heavily on technology by 2006.''
  I cannot say that too often. Because as I move through my own 
district, which has very serious problems with respect to resources 
that schools have, most of them are not appropriately wired, they do 
not have enough computers, and many of those who have computers are not 
wired to the Internet.
  I move about among people who say that I am talking about a luxury. 
``Let us get enough books, enough crayons enough blackboards. Let us 
deal with the basics,'' they say, ``and then you can come back to us 
and talk to us about computers and the Internet.''
  No, we cannot wait because we are galloping forward and if half of 
the people employed, if half of the American workers in the year 2006 
are going to be in the high-tech industries, our youngsters in the 
schools in my district, unless they have more exposure to computers and 
there is an effort to interject and interweave the Internet and the 
kind of things it can do, computer literacy, computer competency, we 
will not be able to qualify for those jobs.
  The unemployment rate is already very high in my district. It is 
already very high. There is no hope for it going down even if the 
number of jobs increase, as they have in New York City. We have a large 
amount of vacancies in the high-technology industry in New York City. 
But the unemployment rate among the young people in my district is 
still up around 20 percent. They cannot qualify for the jobs if they do 
not have the education. That is a simple fact, and we have to 
understand that.
  I cannot speak too often or too long or too forcefully about 
education when we are talking about the livelihood of these young 
people. They have no future if they do not get the education that they 
need.

       Workers in information technology have been at least twice 
     as productive as other workers from 1990 to 1997 and earn 78 
     percent more than other workers, the report said.
       The report ``provides fresh evidence that our Nation's 
     massive investments in these sectors are producing gains in 
     productivity and that these sectors are creating new and 
     higher-paying jobs faster than any other,'' Commerce 
     Secretary William M. Daley said in the report.
       Meanwhile, those who invested in high technology have 
     reaped rewards that outpaced the market as a whole. The 
     Standard and Poor's High Technology index rose more than five 
     times since June of 1994, while the broader S.&P. 500 stock 
     index tripled. Spending on information technology has 
     quadrupled over the last decade, rising as a share of all 
     business spending on equipment to 53 percent from 29 percent, 
     according to the Commerce Department in a separate report.

                              {time}  2000

  ``Internet activity is driving deflationary boom conditions,'' said 
Ed Hyman, an economist for the ISI Group in New York. ``It's 
official.''
  Mr. Speaker, I ask to enter the article which describes the report 
from the Commerce Department on the impact of high technology and 
information technology in its entirety for the Record.

                  [The New York Times, June 23, 1999]

       Commerce Report Describes Economic Benefits From Internet

       WASHINGTON, June 23 (Bloomberg News)--The financial 
     benefits of the Internet and high technology extend beyond 
     the quick riches they have brought high-profile entrepreneurs 
     and investors in recent years to the nation's economy as a 
     whole, a new Government study shows.
       The information technology industry--which includes 
     everything from the Dell Computer Corporation's PC's, to the 
     Microsoft Corporation's software, to Cisco Systems Inc.'s 
     routers--generated at least a third of the nation's economic 
     growth between 1995 and 1998, the Commerce Department said in 
     a report released today. During that period, the gross 
     domestic product rose 22 percent, to $8.7 trillion.
       Those goods and services also got cheaper and allowed 
     businesses to become more productive, cutting inflation by 
     seven-tenths of a percentage point in 1996 and 1997, the 
     report says.
       ``The improvement in technology, in productivity, is what 
     has made the economy so incredibly attractive in the last 
     couple of years,'' William J. McDonough, president of the 
     Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said in a speech in New 
     Jersey today.
       Today's Commerce Department report, the second in a series 
     of three on technology, does not provide figures measuring 
     total spending on high technology. Instead, it focuses on 
     growth of on-line businesses and companies that cater to the 
     technology industry. For example, it says almost half of all 
     American workers will be employed in high-technology 
     industries or at companies that rely heavily on technology by 
     2006.
       Workers in information technology have been at least twice 
     as productive as other workers from 1990 to 1997 and earn 78 
     percent more than other workers, the report said.
       The report ``provides fresh evidence that our nation's 
     massive investments in these sectors are producing gains in 
     productivity and that these sectors are creating new and 
     higher-paying jobs faster than any other,'' Commerce 
     Secretary William M. Daley said in the report.
       Meanwhile, those who invested in high technology have 
     reaped rewards that outpaced the market as a whole. The 
     Standard & Poor's High Technology index rose more than five 
     times since June 1994, while the broader S.&P. 500 stock 
     index tripled. Spending on information technology has 
     quadrupled over the last decade, rising as a share of all 
     business spending on equipment to 53 percent from 29 percent, 
     according to the Commerce Department in a separate report.
       ``Internet activity is driving deflationary boom 
     conditions,'' said Ed Hyman, an economist for the ISI Group 
     in New York. ``It's official.''

  Mr. Speaker, it cannot be said too often, if we do not educate our 
young people in our big cities, a whole segment of the population will 
be out there wandering in the wilderness, nowhere to go, in terms of 
employment. I will not begin to postulate on what the consequences will 
be. I just know that a just America, which seeks to have a continuation 
of law and order, of promulgation of the right to pursue happiness, is 
an America which will not shut down the public school system and cut 
off the opportunities for the young people in our biggest cities and 
the poor people in our rural areas. That is what will happen if the 
Republican Academic Achievement for All Students Through Freedom and 
Accountability Act goes through. Because all it does is take the 
Federal initiative, the Federal dollars, scramble them up and put them 
in the hands of State and local governments who have not been able to 
measure up to the job, to the requirements, up to now.
  How can we improve education by giving more money, throwing more

[[Page 14165]]

money, taking Federal money which exists now, throwing it into the 
State and local coffers? What is the great automatic, obvious advantage 
of local control? Why is local control sacred? There are many examples 
of local control degenerating into complete corruption. There are more 
examples of local control being stagnant. For long periods of time 
school systems did not move off dead center in terms of improving the 
performance of their students. This is not just true of low-income 
areas but large numbers of middle-income communities had stagnation. 
When the Federal Government intervened shortly after the Russian 
Sputnik triumph in space and began to offer greater incentives and 
offer greater amounts of money and money for training and for 
leadership to promote more science and education, better science and 
education teachers, the public schools began to do a better job in 
science and math. The effect of that was to create something that has 
continued. We have a large number of very good public schools in the 
Nation. In areas where you have low performance overall, there are 
schools that stand out. We have some of the best schools in the world 
in New York City. Some of the high schools have repeatedly taken the 
largest share of science prizes whether it is Westinghouse or some 
other science prizes. If you move into the area of debate, any other 
area, you find other high schools who stand out there. So we have 
individual schools that have done a magnificent job, but the system 
overall is lagging. The system overall that seeks to educate 1 million 
children in New York City has many, many problems. A majority of the 
youngsters in these schools are receiving an inadequate education. Some 
of them have never been able to sit in a classroom with a teacher of 
science or math who majored in math or science in college. In our 
junior high schools a survey was done which showed that in the areas 
where most of the African Americans and Latino students live, the 
poorest students in the city, most of the junior high school teachers 
teaching science and math had not majored in science or math in 
college. They were people who were thrown in there and had to try to do 
a job because no other bodies were available. This is a chronic 
problem. It was not just for that year or the year after, it still 
exists. There are some schools that lost their physics teachers, high 
schools, several years ago. They still do not have a physics teacher 
who majored in physics and has some expertise in the area 3 or 4 years 
later. The problem is acute. In an area where larger salaries are paid 
in the suburbs surrounding the city, they attract off the best teachers 
and you have a situation where the ones who need the greatest amount of 
help and the most expertise, the most creative, the most imaginative 
teachers, get the least from the teachers.
  The shrinking teacher pool, the number of teachers available, the 
fact that it is becoming more and more difficult to find good teachers, 
is part of the larger problem. Because of the fact that we have not 
appropriately funded the education system, we have not appropriately 
insisted on accountability, you do not have enough youngsters going 
into college, you do not have enough coming out. So those who are 
graduating from college, they choose other professions in large numbers 
and the number of students who go into teaching as a percentage of the 
professions chosen, that number keeps shrinking. We need more 
youngsters going into the college from high schools, youngsters who are 
qualified to do college work, who can come out of college and become 
those good teachers which would back up the system's effort to teach 
those who need help most. Nothing of that kind will happen if we take 
away from the big city schools the title I funds that go in large 
amounts to big city schools. This Academic Achievement for All Students 
Through Freedom and Accountability, Straight A's Act, that was 
described by the Republicans the day before yesterday is an attempt to 
move in a direction where the ultimate, the final result would be that 
States would have the power to move the money that the Federal 
Government appropriates now for the poorest schools, they can move it 
anywhere. We know from past history they will move it to the areas 
where they are seeking votes, where the greater number of votes are. 
They will move it to the areas where the people have the most political 
power. Those who have political power now have the best schools now 
already. In New York State, we have some of the world's best schools, 
best outfitted high technology schools, schools who have had computers, 
that the ratio of students to computers has been very good for years 
and they have been hooked up to the Internet for years. They have not 
had problems of wiring their schools because there is an asbestos 
problem. We cannot wire a lot of schools because asbestos still exists 
and when you start boring holes just to put wires in, that is a big 
problem. They have not had the problem of appropriations being too 
small for books so that the teachers and the principals do not even 
want to ask for additional appropriations for computers. They have not 
had those kinds of problems. They have not had the problems that there 
is no room to place the computers even if they were given to you 
because the schools are overcrowded. There are a number of schools in 
my district that are operating at a capacity of twice the number of 
students that they were built for. An elementary school built for 500 
students has 1,000. A high school built for 2,000 students has 4,000. 
They go from 7 in the morning until late in the afternoon. Many schools 
have three lunch periods because the lunchroom cannot accommodate all 
of the students so they have to have lunches in shifts. That forces 
some elementary school students to eat lunch as early as 10 o'clock in 
the morning. That is child abuse, to force a child to eat lunch at 10 
o'clock in the morning. It happens in large numbers of schools.
  So without the Federal help, the first opportunity to learn factor, a 
decent building, a place where you can go and feel safe, a place which 
is adequate, adequate and conducive for learning, a place which 
nowadays would be able to accommodate technology and allow computers 
which are not a luxury anymore, wiring to the Internet which is not a 
luxury, to allow all of those factors to be involved in the education 
process, it is impossible to achieve that without more help from the 
Federal Government.
  The greatest emphasis that I have placed on my role as a member of 
the Committee on Education and the Workforce is to focus on the basic 
problem of school construction. We may talk about a lot of other 
factors, and I do not want to minimize the need for more research, I do 
not want to minimize the need for more teacher training and teacher 
accountability. All of these problems, all of these factors are 
important. But before anything happens, we need to have a massive 
school construction program which says to the Nation that we have not 
abandoned the public schools. The fact that schools are literally 
falling down sends a message that is highly visible and highly 
symbolic, that we do not care about public education anymore. We talk 
about improving the teaching of reading, computer literacy and computer 
competence, but when a child walks into a school with a coal-burning 
furnace, the risk to that child's health is greatly increased, it would 
be better off if at a young age they stayed away from school because 
the more you are exposed to certain fumes, the greater the likelihood 
that you are going to have asthma or other respiratory illnesses. Why 
should we have children go to school and have their health jeopardized, 
be placed at risk because they go to school? If a child goes to a 
school which still has paint that had lead in it, and they are first 
graders or kindergarten children, they play with the paint and they get 
some of that in their system, their health is greatly threatened. We 
still have those kinds of problems. We still have asbestos problems, 
but the greatest problem is, of course, the overcrowding, where you 
cannot teach 40 children in one room, especially when they are children 
who need a great deal of attention. You need the space before you can 
use the additional teachers.

[[Page 14166]]

  I am very proud of the fact that President Clinton forged an 
initiative on increasing the number of teachers per classroom, 
especially in the early grades. That was a $1.2 billion initiative in 
last year's budget which was not easily gained. It took a lot of hard 
negotiating. The Republican majority resisted it all the way and they 
are still resisting. They want to convert that into something else. But 
it is important that we made the effort, we recognized the need to have 
a ratio of students to teachers, especially in the early grades, which 
is better than the kind of 35 to 40 ratio of students to teachers that 
exist in some schools now.
  But in New York, the truth is where they need the teachers to relieve 
the burden of teachers having too many students, they do not have the 
classrooms. You cannot put a teacher with 20 children in the front of 
the room, a teacher with 20 children in the back of the room and expect 
to really have education among young children. It is not going to 
happen. That is too many kids in one room. The fact that there is 
another adult, another teacher, will not solve the problem. You need 
space. You need a classroom. You need a well-lighted classroom. You 
need a classroom that does not have the threat of coal dust from a 
coal-burning furnace. You need a classroom that is properly ventilated. 
You need new classrooms in many of these situations.
  The Republicans claim in their new initiative that the way to solve 
the problem is to give it all to the States and let them solve the 
problem, let the States and the localities have the Federal money, that 
measly 7 percent that we provide for the overall education budget, give 
it to the States and that is the solution to the problem. Well, the 
States, some States have large surpluses at this point. In fact, quite 
a number of States have surpluses. The prosperity that has benefited 
the Federal treasury has also benefited State treasuries. In New York 
State, the State had more than $2 billion as a surplus in last year's 
budget. The Democrats in the legislature sought to get a measly $500 
million of that to provide for school repairs and school construction 
in the areas of greatest need. The governor vetoed the $500 million out 
of the $2 billion budget.
  At the city level, New York City had a surplus of at least $2 
billion, and the mayor of the city of New York did not bother to 
appropriate a single penny to relieve the overcrowding in schools, to 
get rid of more coal-burning furnaces, to deal with asbestos problems, 
not a penny went out of that surplus. Are we going to give more money 
to the mayors and the governors, are we going to give the Federal money 
and expect an improvement in the situation when their behavior has 
indicated that they do not themselves care about their public schools? 
They are abandoning public schools. The great talk of vouchers and 
charter schools, et cetera was designed to deflect attention away from 
the fact that you need to invest heavily in public schools.
  I introduced, on May 14, a bill, H.R. 1820, to amend the Elementary 
and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to provide grants to improve the 
infrastructure of elementary and secondary schools. Title XII already 
exists in present law. This is a very germane approach. There is no 
need to depend only on the Committee on Ways and Means to provide loans 
for school districts as a means of dealing with the problem of 
construction. We have a massive need for more school construction. We 
might recall that last year, we authorized $218 billion over a 6-year 
period for highway construction. I do not know why the Federal 
Government has to be so involved in highways and roads, but $218 
billion was authorized for highway construction. I was not against 
that. I think that is a proper use of public dollars. But I am 
proposing in this bill, H.R. 1820, that over a 5-year period we spend 
$110 billion on school construction, $22 billion a year. The $110 
billion is close to the $112 billion that the General Accounting Office 
said in 1995 we needed in order to, at that time, revamp, repair and 
keep our public school inventory at its present level, in proper 
condition. They did not talk about the expanding enrollments which now 
require probably, if we were trying to meet the need, about $200 
billion for school construction all across the Nation.

                              {time}  2015

  H.R. 1820 is based on the fact that there are certain findings we 
cannot turn away from. There are 52,700,000 students in 88,223 
elementary and secondary schools across the United States. The current 
expenditure of the Federal Government for education infrastructure is 
only $12 million. The present federal expenditure per enrolled student 
for education infrastructure, any kind of physical facility, is 23 
cents per student, and appropriation of $22 billion a year would result 
in a federal expenditure for education infrastructure of only $417 per 
student per fiscal year, $417 per student per year compared to the 
present 23 cents.
  That is what I am talking about. Let us not be overwhelmed by the big 
numbers; 22 billion a year sounds so great, but when you look at the 
number of children involved, we are talking about spending $417 per 
year.
  My bill, H.R. 1820, proposes to provide, to distribute, the money 
across the country in accordance with the number of school aged 
children that each State has. Therefore my use of the statistics of the 
number of students divided into the amount of money is correct.
  I do not propose to try to make judgments on priorities. We just 
proposed to address the problem. Some schools will spend majority of 
their money on building new schools, some may spend the funds on 
repairing existing schools, in some cases schools will choose to use 
some of the money for improving their schools for technology. Those are 
the options that they would have at the local level, but we must 
understand that there is a need to move and not to leave this up to the 
local and State governments that are obviously not going to deal with 
the problem.
  Overcrowded classrooms have a dire impact on learning. Students in 
overcrowded schools score lower on both mathematics and region exams 
than do students in other schools. We must meet the challenge of a 
cyber civilization by educating all of our children. The Republican 
approach which proposes to end the federal role in education is the 
wrong one; we need more help, not less, for our public schools.
  The article I referred to is as follows:

                  [The New York Times, June 23, 1999]

               Bill Offers States Leeway on Education Aid

                            (By Frank Bruni)

       Washington, June 22.--Republican leaders in Congress today 
     unveiled an education bill that builds significantly on their 
     previous efforts to give state and local governments ever 
     broader discretion over the spending of Federal money.
       Under the proposal, a state could opt out of the current 
     Federal financing system, which allocates money for specific 
     purposes, and instead use most of that Federal aid as it 
     wishes, provided that the state first enters into a five-year 
     contract with the Department of Education that holds the 
     state to certain performance goals.
       If the state failed to meet those goals, which the 
     Secretary of Education would have to approve, the state would 
     return to the old system of financing.
       The plan, which would apply to more than $10 billion in 
     Federal money nationally, faces an uncertain fate. There is 
     not yet a timetable for its procession to the floor of either 
     the House or the Senate, and Democrats in both chambers 
     denounced it as a reckless experiment.
       But the extraordinary fanfare with which it was introduced 
     suggested the extent to which Republicans in Congress, eyeing 
     next year's critical elections, have decided to seize 
     education as an issue and make local control their battle 
     cry.
       ``Education is No. 1 on the Republican agenda,'' said 
     Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, at an 
     early after news conference just outside the Capitol.
       Mr. Lott was joined by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of 
     Illinois. They stood with other lawmakers in front of a 
     yellow school bus brimming with fresh-faced students. Dozens 
     of other children fanned out around the lawmakers, clapping 
     and cheering their assent to each policy point, no matter how 
     arcane.
       Mr. Hastert described the bill, which Republicans have 
     titled the Academic Achievement for All Act and nicknamed 
     Straight A's, as a ``historic step.''
       Democrats said the direction of that movement was backward. 
     Representative George

[[Page 14167]]

     Miller, Democrat of California, said it was unclear from the 
     Republican plan how accountable schools would be. Mr. Miller 
     also said states would be able to shift money from poor 
     districts and children to wealthier ones. ``Communities will 
     be pitted against each other to lobby their state capitols 
     for school money,'' he said. ``We know how that fight will 
     turn out.''
       Education Secretary Richard W. Riley issued a statement 
     denouncing the bill along similar lines.
       The bill is a far-reaching extension of the philosophy 
     behind the Education Flexibility Partnership Act, of Ed-Flex, 
     which Congress passed with broad bipartisan support this year 
     and President Clinton signed into law.
       The law authorizes states to grant waivers to local school 
     districts that want to spend Federal dollars in ways that 
     differ slightly from the specfically intended purpose. But 
     the districts can deviate only so much; money meant to combat 
     substance abuse can be shuttled from a program specified by 
     the Federal Government to one that is not, but the money 
     cannot be used, for example, to improve reading skills.
       The new Republican bill, whose chief sponsors are 
     Representative Bill Goodling of Pennsylvania and Senator 
     Slade Gorton of Washington, would allow precisely that kind 
     of reshuffling. Republicans said the safeguard preventing any 
     particular area of education or school district from neglect 
     would be the performance contract, which would oblige states 
     to prove that achievement was not suffering.
       Democrats contended that many students could fall by the 
     wayside before the Federal Government was able to determine 
     that a state had fallen short of its goals.
       Like Ed-Flex, the new bill would affect slightly more than 
     $10 billion in Federal money, largely the same pool of money 
     to which Ed-Flex applies. That represents most of what the 
     Federal Government spends on primary and secondary education.
       Over all, the Government provides only about 7 percent of 
     the education budget for the nation's public schools and 
     education experts have said that even striking changes in 
     Federal policy have limited impact.

                          ____________________