[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 27121-27127]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                 DIGITAL DIVIDE AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentlman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. LARSON. Mr. Speaker, today across our Nation, we are most 
fortunate that this economy that we are participating in continues to 
surge and roar. Yet, Mr. Speaker, today based on the finding of the 
Commerce Department, we find an alarming trend throughout this country 
as it relates to something that is commonly referred to as the digital 
divide.

                              {time}  1800

  The genesis for this special order this evening is to discuss that 
divide and potential solutions through prospective legislation that 
will be introduced in a compendium of bills that colleagues from the 
Committee on Science and the Committee on Education and the Workforce 
will be addressing as we move forward this evening.
  In a conference report entitled Falling Through the Net, Larry 
Irving, in testifying before the Subcommittee on Empowerment of the 
Committee on Small Business, and speaking directly to the ranking 
minority member, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-
McDonald), reported the following: He cited that there is an alarming 
trend that is taking place all across this Nation. Even though there is 
greater access to the Internet, what we find is that the gap is 
widening between those who have access to information and those who do 
not. And for those who do not, most disturbingly we find that it is 
happening along the lines of race, gender, geography and wealth.
  We must seek to close that gap. We must seek to make sure that in the 
policies that we enact here in the United States Congress that we leave 
no one behind in this economy.
  This poses a problem for us because of this gap. It is three-tiered. 
First, in terms of the economic isolation that it creates; economic 
isolation that all too often takes place within our urban areas and, 
therefore, impacts our minority populations who live there; economic 
isolation that takes place in our rural communities because of the 
inability for us to reach those communities with the technology they 
richly deserve and need; and it also results in an inferior form of 
education.
  The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers), who serves on the Committee 
on Science, and the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) on the 
Committee on Science, have pointed out, there is not a sufficient 
pipeline for us to make sure that there is a transition in our public 
school systems from school to work. In fact, many people have come 
before this Congress, many from the business community, asking us to 
ease immigration quotas so that they can import people from abroad to 
provide for the more than 350,000 jobs in the high-tech area that are 
currently going unfilled.
  Any economist worth their salt has spoken at length about the 
Information Age. We have come to acknowledge that knowledge will be the 
future currency in this country, and it is knowledge that will make 
this economic engine that is propelling us forward continue to thrive 
in a global economy. Tonight, we hope to address this by way of 
solutions.
  Now, I know all too often that Congress has a deserved reputation of 
talking at length about the problems but does very little in the way of 
solutions. What we are hoping to address by way of legislation is to 
look at three fundamental areas. All of us involved in education 
understand the three Rs of reading, writing and arithmetic, and yet to 
guarantee in the future that teachers will have the best tools afforded 
to them, that we will be able to provide our children with the very 
best and most up-to-date technology within the classroom, fundamentally 
we have to do three things: We have to look at retooling our 
infrastructure; we have to look at retraining our teaching force; and 
we have to rethink how we look at education from the bottom up.

[[Page 27122]]

  We are of the mind, and hope to address this this evening as well, 
three bills that are before the Committee on Science and the Committee 
on Education and the Workforce. Those bills focus on the problem. And 
let me start with the issue of retooling.
  What do I mean by retooling? Fundamentally, most Americans, when they 
think of retooling, think of our great failure in the 1970s when we 
found out what happens when a business does not retool, as was the case 
with respect to the automobile industry. We did not make the necessary 
steps in that area, and we found that we lost market share. We found 
that all of a sudden the United States, once the preeminent producer of 
automobiles, fell behind competing nations. It is a lesson that we 
learned hard.
  That was in the automobile industry. The industry we are speaking 
about this evening is education and, fundamentally, it is our children 
that we are talking about. We need in this Nation, just like we have a 
national highway system and a highway infrastructure that transports 
our commerce, and that our parents made sure was constructed after the 
Second World War, we need to make sure that our children have an 
information superhighway that links up our public schools and our 
libraries so that everyone can have access to information; so that 
everybody will be able to have access to the knowledge that they are 
going to need to flourish and to grow in the Information Age in an 
increasingly shrinking world in this global economy of ours.
  We expect to close this gap. If we expect not to leave any child 
behind, we also must provide for having teachers who are able to 
utilize that technology within our classrooms. I am a former school 
teacher. I understand implicitly the need and the desire on the part of 
teachers to be able to individualize instruction for all of their 
students. We now have the capability, we now have the technology to do 
just that; to allow the teacher to individualize instruction; to be 
more diagnostic in their approach to teaching and, therefore, more 
prescriptive in the remedies that they apply to their students.
  We have the opportunity to allow the gifted to learn as fast and as 
far as their minds and creativity will carry them. We have the 
opportunity to remediate for those students that need our help the most 
and, for the vast majority of students, to allow them to participate 
and thrive in the fullness of this economy, by providing them with the 
skill sets that they are going to need.
  Frankly, that is going to require a change. We have to provide 
incentives for our teachers. First and foremost, tax incentives so that 
they can pick up equipment on their own, purchase computers, purchase 
the hardware and software that they need and receive a tax credit for 
it; to go back and get an education and receive a tax credit for that 
so that they can be further trained in their ability to integrate 
voice, video and data within the context of their lesson plan, within 
the context of their curriculum, so that they are a more effective and 
efficient teacher.
  And incentives need to be provided to the business community as well; 
to allow them to buddy up with teachers, to allow them to buddy up with 
school systems. And where they will provide hours, by lending the 
expertise of their corporations to public schools, they should receive 
a tax credit for that as well.
  Secretary Riley has pointed out that we are going to need 2 million 
teachers over the next 10 years, and we have to make sure that our 
universities are turning out teachers that are well versed in voice, 
video, and data technology, and capable of integrating them within 
their lesson plan.
  Now, I am constantly reminded by my wife and by others, and I believe 
this to be true, that no piece of legislation, no bill that is 
proposed, ever reads to a child at night, or tucks them in, or provides 
them with encouragement. Only caring parents can do that, and only 
professionally trained teachers, within the context of the classroom, 
can provide for the kind of ubiquitous individual education that I 
believe the technology that we possess now can provide for our 
students.
  But we need to act now. And what I am suggesting this evening is that 
aside from the infrastructure needs that I know that we must address, 
and besides the retraining, that we fundamentally have to think about 
that technology and how our children use that technology. It has been 
stated on more than one occasion that oftentimes the fifth grader in a 
local school knows more than the teacher, or is the technology expert 
in the school. We have to take advantage of this.
  We are submitting legislation that focuses on creating a National 
Youth Tech Corps starting in the fifth grade, reaching out to children, 
making sure they understand the importance of not only being served but 
providing service, letting them participate fully in mentoring other 
students and, in some cases, of course, teachers as well.
  We want to let them also participate civilly and understand the 
importance of putting a civic face on technology and the responsibility 
that goes along with that. Let them work with the elderly in a 
community and help shut-ins use E-mail and talk directly through 
technology to their children and to their grandchildren.
  I know that it will take some time to look at what is the most 
efficient technology and infrastructure. Will it be wide band, will it 
be radio wave, will it be infrared, will it be satellite transmission 
that we use to bring this ubiquitous form of technology to our public 
schools and libraries? And to fully train teachers is going to take 
time as well. But our youth are already hungry. Our youth already 
understand and grasp the technology oftentimes better than their 
parents. And I believe that from the bottom up, if we encourage their 
involvement, and acknowledge and recognize them for their effort, that 
we can move this Nation forward.
  I have felt for some time that as a nation we have our head in the 
sand with respect to this issue, and that we, as a Congress, have got 
to wake up and understand. If we will consider just for a moment the 
dilemma the local superintendent of schools or boards of education 
face, all wanting and desiring to light up the desktops of their 
children and the blackboards of their teachers, but faced with enormous 
economic costs and something that we refer to as Moore's law on the 
Committee on Science, where technology is eclipsing itself at a rate so 
that every 6 to 12 months it has become almost obsolete, no 
superintendent, no principal, no board of education is going to be able 
to find themselves in a position to put the monies forward needed to 
bring this technology into their classroom if there is not a plan for 
ongoing maintenance, and if the very technology that they install could 
be obsolete in 6 to 12 months.
  Mr. Speaker, this requires the best and the brightest minds in this 
country, an alliance for progress that will bring together the National 
Science Foundation, NASA, the Department of Education, the business 
community, and government focusing on the best solutions to bring that 
technology into our classrooms and our libraries.
  I am joined this evening by a distinguished colleague on the 
Committee on Science as well, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu), and 
at this time I would yield to him.
  Mr. WU. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Connecticut. I have 
had many occasions in recent months to observe the digital divide as it 
plays out in my home State of Oregon. On some of my elementary school 
visits there are whole roomfuls of computers.

                              {time}  1815

  In one school that I visited just about 10 days ago, there was a 
roomful of windows, Intel machines, and there was another roomful of 
Apple computers; and in that particular elementary school, there was 
literally dozens of computers on two different software systems. And in 
stark contrast, in some other schools that I have visited, there are 
barely two computers available to the entire school.
  This is one example of the digital divide. I would guess that the 
same situation is played out at home, that the wonderful parents that 
have contributed these machines at the school with

[[Page 27123]]

two rooms full of computers, that they also provide computers at home 
and in the other neighborhoods where they have struggled to put two 
computers into the entire school, that at home perhaps there is much 
less access to computer technology and all the marvels that it can 
bring into our lives.
  I think we need to address this digital divide situation and we need 
to address it aggressively. By all estimates, in this century and going 
forward in this century, 75 percent of all future jobs will require 
some form of computer literacy.
  Now, one of the things we know is that, just as in the private 
sector, where the cost of putting a box, a machine, a computer on a 
desk and its associated software is only about 30 percent of the cost 
of actually implementing computer technology. The other 70 percent is 
really the cost of training the users of the computer and fully 
integrating that into the business.
  The parallel in the education arena is that while it costs a lot to 
put computers into the classroom, and many classrooms still have not 
successfully done that, it will cost even more and take even more time 
to integrate the computers into educational curricula, to properly 
train teachers, as well as students, in the use of the machines which 
we hope to make available to them.
  Mr. LARSON. Mr. Speaker, my colleague has made several good points, 
and I just want to amplify a couple.
  Another concern that has arisen, and I spoke about the need to retool 
with respect to the need for infrastructure improvement. In this 
Congress, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) has introduced bills 
with respect to school modernization. It is important that we modernize 
our schools. It is important as we do this that we bring in the kind of 
technology, as I will continue to say, that will light up the desktops 
of children and the blackboards of teachers.
  Other nations are moving ahead of us. And just like the automobile 
industry was arrogant in the 1970s, not believing that anyone could 
ever compete with them, we are being leap-frogged by other nations. 
Countries like Costa Rica, nations like India in many instances have 
more sophisticated technology within their classrooms and understand 
its importance if they are going to thrive in a global economy.
  And so, we have got to make sure that, as a Nation, that if we 
anticipate leaving no one behind and if we are going to close this 
digital divide, that the way to do that is through our public education 
system.
  These are not reports that came from the Department of Education. 
This is the Department of Commerce. The Department is citing this 
alarming gap; and it understands fundamentally, as does the business 
community, that we lack the sufficient pipeline coming from our school 
systems that will provide them with the workforce that they need in the 
future.
  So it is of vital importance that we are able to get this legislation 
enacted and that we are well on the way to closing this divide.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from North 
Carolina (Mr. Etheridge), a member of the Committee on Science and the 
Committee on Education and the Workforce and a leader in educational 
issues and an expert in this area.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Connecticut 
for yielding.
  Let me thank him for bringing this issue before us tonight and 
hosting this special order so that we could talk about an issue that is 
important not only to schools. So many times when we talk about them, 
we talk about as if it is important only to schools and to children and 
to teachers and to parents. But my colleague has properly framed it. It 
is important really to this country and our competitiveness.
  We have seen in the 1990s, as an example, where business has 
absolutely used technology to increase productivity at a level that we 
have not seen since the dawning of the industrial revolution in this 
country literally, and it has increased our productivity and given us 
one of the best economies really that we have had in our lifetimes. If 
we can just sustain it for a few more months, it may be the longest 
sustained economic period of growth in the history of this country. And 
a lot of that goes to the technology that is driving our economy.
  That being said, your point of acknowledging that the challenges we 
face at the public school level and the digital divide that is there 
already, that is why the business roundtable as come forward on 
education and put their shoulder to the wheel, as some would say, the 
titans of industry. But they are not industry as we expect; they are 
industry that understands that a well-educated citizenry, as Thomas 
Jefferson said, is really our key not only to a democracy but to a 
thriving economy.
  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and almost every chamber of commerce now 
across this country, and I had the privilege when I was State 
superintendent in North Carolina of working not only with our, what is 
called the Citizens of Business and Industry, which is really our State 
chamber of commerce, each chamber of commerce now has an education 
component.
  Now, there is a reason to have an education component and a support 
unit there for public schools. Because they recognize that if we are 
going to have a strong economy and children are going to be able to 
produce in the 21st century, and the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu) was 
talking about 75 percent of those who are going to be moving into the 
workforce need to have computer skills and I would challenge him, I 
think it is 100 percent, the truth is everyone is going to have to have 
some knowledge of computers. But we are going to have to have a much 
higher competency on a large segment of our population in the 21st 
century because most jobs are going to be driven in one way or another 
by technology.
  The thing that I see in our public schools and the issues my 
colleague has talked about in the bills, and I want to commend my 
colleague for the bills that he has in committee that he is working on, 
I have a bill on school construction that the gentleman from New York 
(Mr. Rangel) is on and he has been since I have signed on, it is 
important to get those bills in and get them moving. Because just to 
have technology without space for children and to have those buildings, 
some of those old buildings just absolutely will not take the wiring 
and the technology that is needed to get on the Internet. The school is 
the ramp that we are going to get onto the Internet to get to the 
world, and too many of our schools do not have an on-ramp.
  And unfortunately, as we talk about computers and Internets in our 
schools, as badly as they are needed, too many of our classrooms do not 
even have telephones, things that we thought of years ago that were 
important that on every executive desk and that in each one of our 
offices where we have computers.
  I went in a classroom just this past Monday and visited where they 
are trying to get just five computers in each classroom, a very modern 
school in a very progressive county in my district. But guess what 
happened? They could not afford to have them and have them tied to the 
Internet. So now they have computer labs.
  Computer labs are not all that bad. The problem is children get to 
use them only when they go. How would we like to have all the 
automobiles that we have placed in a garage and we could only use them 
once a week? That is really what we are doing with computers. As 
important as computers are to a child in learning, we are saying you 
can get to them once a week; and by the way, you can only use them 
about an hour and we will teach you how to drive it. That is really 
what we are doing. And an item that is so important, the technology 
that is driving the changing world and yet we want to deny it to our 
children.
  I commend the gentleman for what he is doing. I think we are on the 
right track. And I would trust that this Congress would do everything 
within our power not only to raise the issue to a

[[Page 27124]]

higher level but to put some money behind it. Whether it takes 
allocating resources or whether it takes tax credits to encourage the 
private sector to help us, it is so important to make sure that that is 
in the classroom where children can learn, whether they are in the 
inner city or whether they are in isolated rural areas. If they are 
part of the digital divide, they suffer just as badly no matter where 
they are. Every child ought to have that opportunity no matter what 
their economic or ethnic background might be.
  Mr. LARSON. Mr. Speaker, I have been to several hearings and a 
variety of different forums as it relates to this issue, and the 
general public and the business community and in fact the academic 
community is crying out for leadership.
  This Nation has always been able to move forward on critical issues. 
We have always been able to respond, especially when the very fabric of 
our economy is at stake here. If we are going to continue to thrive and 
compete in a global economy, then we have got to make sure that we have 
the students who can make that transition from the school to the 
workforce, that, in a knowledge-based society, that our students going 
on to higher education are exposed to the same kind of data and 
research.
  But what we find from the Department on Commerce is that, while more 
people today have purchased more technology, i.e. computers and voice 
video and data integration within the context of work and home, 
fundamentally the gap has widened between those who have access to that 
information and those who do not, creating the haves and have-nots in 
the information age.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield on that 
point for just a moment, because I think he is absolutely correct. But 
the point he made that was made earlier by the gentleman from Oregon 
(Mr. Wu), as we talk about technology in the classroom, it is 
imperative that we make sure our teachers get the staff development 
training they need so that, whatever that technology may be, it is not 
just computers, it is integrated technology, that they have it so they 
can integrate it in the curriculum.
  Because it has to be a part of the taught curriculum, not just an 
add-on to the daily activities. And until it is taught and the teachers 
have the time, and many are doing it and many States are working at it, 
but they need every bit of help we can give them to do that so it 
becomes a part of the active curriculum every day.
  Mr. LARSON. Mr. Speaker, in my State, in Connecticut, and in my 
hometown of east Hartford, united technologies have buddied up very 
successfully with fourth and fifth grade teachers to expose them. These 
are teachers that had, frankly, not ever used computers, who had never 
seen a laptop, who were exposed to it. And as they became more familiar 
and were able, as my colleague pointed out, to integrate the technology 
within the context of their daily lesson plans and their curricula, 
then they began to see the wonders of this technology.
  I have pointed out this evening that there is wide concern about 
rural areas, many of which my colleague represents in North Carolina. 
But there is no one who is more sensitive and understands more 
succinctly the problems of urban America with respect to technology 
than our esteemed colleague, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner), 
who also serves on the Committee on Science with us.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman at this point.
  Mr. WEINER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. 
Larson) for yielding. I also wanted to thank him for bringing this 
issue to the floor. He has really tried to push this issue to the 
forefront, and he is frankly bucking some of our conventions around 
here in the House of Representatives.
  One of the things that we are known for in this great body is acting 
with great alacrity, with great speed in times of crisis. It is a time 
when we come together on both sides of the aisle and we manage to get 
the People's work done, whether we stare down the barrel of very often 
misfortune or war or crisis in the country.
  But it is very difficult often to discuss the types of issues that my 
colleague is discussing here tonight because it requires our making an 
intellectual leap not just to next week or next year but maybe to 
events that might happen 10 or 15 years down the road. And when we are 
looking at issues like this, frankly, this process has never been very 
good at it. We have never been very good on planning for the next 
generation for 4 or 5 years hence.
  But I would argue, and my colleague has made this point abundantly 
clear, as has the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu) and the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge), that we are at that crisis mode right 
now.

                              {time}  1830

  Our students today are doing very poorly as compared to other major 
industrialized nations, in math, in science. Frankly they rank near the 
bottom. And we are also seeing that there is a crisis and that jobs are 
very mobile. Perhaps no community is more evident of that than the one 
that the gentleman represents in Connecticut, one where once upon a 
time it was unheard of that insurance jobs could be anywhere else 
except around one another in one community. The same is true for my 
financial services in New York City. Now with the new technologies 
being what they are, jobs are extraordinarily mobile and it does not 
just stop at one district, it does not stop at the borders of our 
country. Jobs could almost overnight at the throw of a switch leave our 
shore and go overseas. This is a crisis of our economy.
  I have to say that this is also a crisis because decisions that we 
make today in 1999, on the legislation that you are pushing, are 
decisions that will manifest themselves 5 or 6 or 10 years down the 
road. If we do not act on these things now, it is going to be too late 
if we wake up and see, wait a minute, we have got a terrible brain 
drain, we have a terrible circumstance where we cannot fill the good 
jobs that our economy is producing, we better hurry up and invest in 
education. It does not work like that. You have to invest in 1999 to 
see the benefits in 2009.
  So I would argue we are at the precipice of a crisis in our education 
system right now. But another element that we are kind of bucking 
against here and this one is a philosophical problem. Many people in 
this Chamber and perhaps many people in the country at large still have 
what I would argue is an outdated federalist notion of education 
issues. We are still very much hung up on the idea that education is an 
issue that they deal with at the local level and the city council from 
where I came, in the States from where you came and the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Wu) came and it is really Congress' job to stay out of the 
way. And in fact we go so far as to say it is our job here in Congress 
to pave a road but if it goes by a school, we cannot touch it. We can 
pave a highway but we cannot plug a school into the Internet. That is a 
philosophical objection that we hear around here from time to time that 
speaks to a federalist argument that is literally generations behind 
us.
  Today, we have a national crisis. Today, we have an emergency that 
transcends that type of thinking. Now, I would share the argument that 
many of my colleagues make here that we should not, once we plug the 
school in, say here is what we think you should look at with that 
Internet hookup, here is what we think how many kids you should have in 
the classroom. Although I have views on that, perhaps that is something 
for a local school board or a local city or local governance. But for 
the Federal Government to stand back in the face of what is really an 
economic battle, an economic war that goes beyond these shores and say 
we will not get involved really does ignore a major problem.
  The legislation that you have proposed and are sponsoring recognizes 
that the Federal Government has to get in the game, has to begin to 
participate in solving this problem. This is, I believe, an intuitive 
point among

[[Page 27125]]

parents around this country in districts, Republican, Democrat, 
independent and the like.
  Mr. LARSON. I would like to amplify that point by saying that the 
legislation acknowledges that decisions with respect to education are 
best made locally. I am a former member of the board of education in my 
community in East Hartford. I served locally on a town council and 
served in the State legislature. I understand the importance of local 
control. This legislation seeks not to intervene with local control but 
augment the ability. And to your point, and I think the most critical 
issue that we face with respect to supplying our schools with the 
wherewithal to do this without bankrupting them through local property 
taxes is to come up with a strategic means of supplying information, 
through whatever conduit, satellite, broad band width, radio wave, 
infrared, whatever is most economically feasible and efficient to bring 
technology into those classrooms. That is an information superhighway, 
not different infrastructurally than a national highway system and 
only, and I would argue along with you, is the Federal Government in a 
position to do that. No community, no State, even a city as large as 
New York or a State as affluent as Connecticut or Oregon can provide 
itself with the wherewithal to do the kind of infrastructure work and 
maintenance that will be needed. But this Nation does, because what is 
at stake here is to make sure that we have the ability to facilitate 
learning throughout a lifetime.
  Mr. WEINER. If the gentleman will yield for a moment, I have to tell 
you, and it is interesting to hear you use that language. Last night a 
bipartisan group of Members of Congress sat down and heard a speech by 
John Chambers, who is the CEO of Cisco. Cisco Systems, they are a 
company that makes the switches that all Internet commerce and all 
Internet traffic travels over. They do not actually make the wire. It 
is kind of like no matter who is carrying the information they are 
making the switches to get it there. They are a very successful 
company, a market capitalization that frankly boggles the mind at this 
point. When he was describing his company, the gentleman sitting next 
to me was I believe from Chase Manhattan Bank and he turned to me and 
said, ``That's five times the market capital of my company,'' and he is 
a major bank. It was interesting because very often we are visited on 
Capitol Hill by folks who are making narrow appeals for legislation 
that might help their particular business. But what Mr. Chambers argued 
for is the two major things that he thought would not only benefit his 
company but the country as a whole is, as you said, one is the 
infrastructure, making sure the infrastructure is available for this 
new economy to travel over, and he harkened again and again to the 
notion of education. His argument was very simple. He said that a 
company like his, if he so desired, could in a matter of a year or two 
move its work elsewhere, move its jobs elsewhere. That is how 
interconnected the community has become. If you think that is an 
exaggeration, I would ask you when you go back to your office here at 
the House of Representatives, if you want a bill, you go onto the 
Internet and you just print it up on your computer. When I was here 
working on Capitol Hill, not eons ago, just 5 or 6 years ago, you had 
to look up in a book the bill number or call over to someone and get 
the bill number and then there was a House documents room, where you 
had to walk down, someone would climb up on the ladder and they would 
actually pull down a copy of the bill and there you had a copy of the 
bill.
  So this is technology that is making every corner of this economy 
work much faster and much more efficiently. With that same speed, if we 
are slow on the uptake with education changes, with infrastructure 
changes, we are simply going to get left behind. It is very easy for 
somebody like John Chambers who employs thousands and thousands of 
people at Cisco to say, well, I am going to go to Australia tomorrow 
because so little of his business actually involves bricks and mortar 
in Silicon Valley. That was one lesson that I think he left with us 
that was very poignant.
  He kept coming back to education. On some level I would argue, for 
him, he will find his workforce, because there are going to be 
countries out there who are smart enough to figure this stuff out and 
invest quickly. He was describing the slow evolution, perhaps 
revolution is the wrong word to use about China, I say to the gentleman 
from Oregon (Mr. Wu), but evolution that is going on where they are 
starting to catch up and investing more and more of their resources in 
education. So I think we have a window of time here. You have described 
it very well. We have a window of time here where we can take advantage 
of the enormous intellectual wealth that is being created in this 
country and try to pass some of it along to our schools and these three 
bills do that.
  Mr. LARSON. A point very well made. I yield to the gentleman from 
Oregon.
  Mr. WU. I thank the gentleman from Connecticut for yielding and for 
his strong commitment and leadership to advocating for adequate 
technology training for our teachers and in our classrooms. To further 
expand upon the gentleman from New York's comments concerning 
federalism, what we need is a federalism of commitment and not a 
federalism of convenience. Today, we saw in this House a situation 
where our commitment to federalism became inconvenient to certain 
values and we ran roughshod over a certain State's rights, but we are 
going to stay focused on the issue of education here. And with respect 
to local determinations, no one would more strongly advocate for 
completely taking care of educational issues at the school board level, 
at the school level, at the classroom level than I. However, in my home 
State of Oregon, because of certain property tax limitation measures 
which were passed several years ago, the local school boards no longer 
have the resources or the authority to take care of some of their 
crucial, basic mission. As a result of that, some of those financial 
resources and the authority has gone to our State capital of Salem.
  It has also become apparent that between the local school boards and 
our State capital, there is not enough to go around to solve the 
problems that the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) has 
tried to address with his school modernization and school construction 
bills. And I would like to thank the gentleman from North Carolina and 
the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) for their leadership in school 
modernization.
  In my congressional district, there are schools which are only 2 
years old and yet they are already overcrowded. I did a class size 
study of my congressional district and over 70 percent of the students 
in grades K through 3 were in class sizes which were over the optimum 
and a significant percentage were in class sizes of 27 and above. Many 
high school students are in classes where there are more than 40, 45 or 
50 students. That is just not an adequate environment in which to 
learn. Other schools in my congressional district have a lack of 
facilities, they need to build the additional space so that additional 
teachers can teach, and other schools have old facilities. In Astoria, 
Oregon, there has not been a new classroom built since 1927. Some 
schools do not have telephones. Many classrooms have only one plug in 
the wall. The bill that the gentleman from North Carolina has sponsored 
would help address that issue, not by taking that function away from 
the local school board but by assisting the school board in its job. It 
respects federalism and it helps education. Between the school 
modernization initiative which would bring $200 million to the State of 
Oregon, and the class size initiative putting 100,000 teachers into 
classrooms across America, that would put 2,500 teachers into the State 
of Oregon. That is a very important first step. It respects federalism 
because there continues to be a crucial role for the State and for the 
local school board, for the teacher and for the parent. But we must do 
what we can to address these issues of classroom overcrowding and 
antiquated facilities.

[[Page 27126]]


  Mr. ETHERIDGE. If the gentleman will yield, he is absolutely right. 
And tie that together with what the gentleman from Connecticut is 
trying to do in terms of linking up with technology. My State is one of 
those fast growing States, not unlike yours where we are just growing 
by leaps and bounds. Over the next 10 years as we look out, the 
projections are by the Department of Education, as the gentleman from 
Connecticut knows, they have projected that the high school population 
in this Nation will grow substantially, and my State is one of the 
probably top five fastest growing States. But even with the growth, 
technology can have a significant impact in helping that, but we need 
to be able to help not only a facility with technology but also with 
those teachers in the classroom and staff development.
  I have been in a lot of classrooms, as all three of my colleagues 
have, and I have never in the years that I was State superintendent and 
as a legislator now as a Member of Congress ever had a child or a 
teacher for that matter to ask me where the money came from, whether it 
was Federal, State or local, recognizing that at the Federal level we 
probably only put in about 6 percent, depending on where you are it may 
be a little bit more or less in States, not much more than 7, but they 
have never asked that question.
  The problem we face is tremendous challenges. Children never know 
what they need. They only know what they get. In many cases, they do 
not know that what they get is not what they should be getting, that it 
is woefully short in a lot of cases and in a lot of communities. This 
digital divide that you are calling attention to tonight is a critical 
issue. It spans whether you are rural or urban. I commend the gentleman 
for that, because I think all of us need to be better educated but more 
importantly once we are educated, we need to act on it.

                              {time}  1845

  Mr. LARSON. Like so many individuals across this Nation, I 
participated in Net Day and was responsible in Connecticut for what we 
referred to as Connect 96. But even there with the electronic 
barnraising that took place and the single connections to our schools 
where we are able to hook up libraries and schools, we recognize 
fundamentally that there was still a problem that persisted.
  I do not want to leave here this evening, and I want to make sure 
that I allow you time to talk about an important issue as it impacts 
schools in your State that has been severely impacted by the flooding 
that has taken place throughout the great State of North Carolina, but 
I did just want to reemphasize three points. One, with respect to 
retooling. We need a national plan; we need a Marshall Plan for our 
public education system. No different than the ability that our parents 
recognized when they came home from the Second World War and said, 
Look, we need to connect this Nation through commerce by an interstate 
highway system. It is a different highway, but probably, more 
important, it is an information highway, that without that connection 
this gap between those who have access to information and those who do 
not are going to be left behind.
  So we need to put the best minds together to focus on the best means 
of providing universal and ubiquitous service to our children and our 
teachers, and our teachers are fundamental to this. At no point, first, 
would anyone, especially the superintendent of school systems of all of 
North Carolina, or a Congressman from New York or Oregon, recognize 
fundamentally the role of parents. There is no greater teacher.
  That is not at issue here, nor is what is at issue here the use of 
technology to replace a teacher. What is at issue here is the use of 
technology to enhance and augment the ability of teachers to get after 
the goal that every teacher strives for, to individualize instruction 
for their students, to bring out the very best, to be more diagnostic 
in their approach to teaching, to open up universes where all of us in 
this room have here before never traveled and to be able to be more 
prescriptive in their remedy and, therefore, more accountable.
  The accountability between teacher and student, and teacher and 
parent, and parent and child is enhanced by this technology, and by no 
means is it ever meant to replace, but augment and provide us with the 
kind of tools that we are going to need to have the best educated 
country in the world.
  Mr. Speaker, that is what has allowed us to come to this point in 
history as the preeminent economic and military force in the world. 
Absent our attending to investment within our public school 
infrastructure will only mean the slow decay of this Nation. It cannot 
happen on our watch. We have got to make sure that we move forward on 
this agenda, and we can do so by inviting our students as well.
  There is concern all across this country about kids' involvement with 
this technology and the Internet, but supervised by adults, caring 
adults that put a civic tone and civic responsibility with appropriate 
checks, we can unleash in this country a new civic force starting very 
young but recognizing the importance not only of being served, but 
providing service.
  That is the goal of this education, of these proposals to retool, to 
retrain and fundamentally rethink.
  I recognize my dear friend and representative from Oregon for some 
closing remarks so that we can give the gentleman from North Carolina 
(Mr. Etheridge) time to respond to his proposals as well.
  Mr. WU. Mr. Speaker, I want to just underscore a couple of positive 
programs that are occurring around the country and particularly in my 
corner of the country because I think that we need a sense of hope, a 
sense of what is going right, a sense of where we are going from here.
  The gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner) mentioned Cisco and the 
dinner last night. Cisco Corporation has an education foundation here 
in Washington, D.C., and in my home State the largest employer is Intel 
Corporation. Intel has made it a practice to donate motherboards to 
schools. They make a lot of public school donations, and the quid pro 
quo is that the school is then tasked to bring together the other 
things that are needed to make an entire computer out of a motherboard; 
and students and teachers learn together how to do that. It is a 
complete process of education, and it starts with a motherboard 
donation by Intel Corporation. That, Mr. Speaker, is the kind of 
public-private partnership that I think we should be looking for.
  Another public-private partnership that is occurring in Oregon is 
something that is called Saturday Academy at the Oregon Graduate 
Institute. Saturday Academy brings public school students to sites 
around the metropolitan Portland area on a Saturday and permits them to 
study topics in science, mathematics, and other things of their 
interests, computer science perhaps. Earlier this year we were able to 
show congressional leadership this program in action, and the question 
that I faced after that was: Gee, how come this is not happening in my 
community?
  This started, that is, the Saturday Academy program started with a 
small grant from the National Science Foundation; but it has been 
leveraged by private donations and donations from the corporate 
community. I think this is the kind of public-private leadership and 
partnership that gets us to where we want to go.
  There is one particular aspect of the Saturday Academy program which 
addresses the divide which the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson) 
has been trying to address in this discussion. What we have witnessed 
is a dropoff in math and science participation by girls in junior high 
school and in high school so that by college the participation by young 
women in science and mathematics just is not where it should be.
  We are not training the number of engineers, mathematicians and 
scientists, female mathematicians, engineers and scientists that we 
should; and Saturday Academy has a special program focused on girls. It 
is called AWSEM. Let me make sure I get this right: Advocates for Women 
in Science,

[[Page 27127]]

Engineering and Mathematics. I attended an AWSEM banquet about 2 years 
ago, and the level of enthusiasm of these junior high and high school 
girls for math and science was absolutely striking. The AWSEM program, 
I understand, Mr. Speaker, is going nationwide.
  There are success stories out there like AWSEM, like Saturday 
Academy, like the Intel donation program, and I think that we need to 
focus both on what challenges lie ahead and what we are doing right 
today. And with that I yield back.
  Mr. LARSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oregon. I also 
thank the gentleman from New York for their contributions this evening. 
We hope to come back again with another special order to both detail 
out the progress and at this time yield the floor to our esteemed 
colleague from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) who has important and 
critical issues that impact education in his home State of North 
Carolina to address.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, 
and I also thank him for the special order because I think what we have 
been about this evening is so important, and also let me thank the 
gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson) also for his legislation. The 
leadership he is bringing to that, there is no question that as he 
talks about this information highway or the digital divide, not unlike 
what our colleagues who were here in the 1950s talked about the 
interstate highway, and he is absolutely correct in talking about that. 
My friend, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu), when he talked about 
Intel, let me remind you that those business partnerships are 
important.
  In North Carolina we actually have students in a number of schools 
actually getting the motherboard from Intel, putting them in and 
bringing computers up to modern standards from computers that many 
businesses will share with them. So, Mr. Speaker, there is tremendous 
partnerships out there, and we have done it with IBM and a number of 
our high-tech folks in the research triangle.
  So there are a lot of great success stories, and I hope we can talk 
about more of those at a future time, and this evening I appreciate you 
yielding the last little bit to me so I can talk about some of the 
schools in North Carolina, specifically in the eastern part of the 
State, that have been hit so hard by Hurricane Floyd and then followed 
up by Hurricane Irene that did even greater damage to our agricultural 
areas.
  But here is a photograph that some of you have seen earlier of towns 
in eastern North Carolina flooded. The truth is when we talk about 
that, folks do not realize how large the geographic area was. It is an 
area that includes about 2.1 million people, and the geographic area is 
larger than the State of Maryland. So it is a substantial area.
  The devastation is substantial. When you look at these for 
preliminary numbers, it really came out of the local paper early on. 
They have been refined and are not quite that large, but if you look at 
the town of Princeville, 100 percent flooded with 2,152 residents. 
There is Tarboro, 40 percent, 4,300 residents. There is Rocky Mount, 40 
percent flooded with a total of 22,900 residents. There is Goldsboro 
with 24,000, and the number goes on.
  The point I want to make tonight, that I call on my colleagues in 
this Congress, before we go home and wrap up this year, we have to 
appropriate the funds needed to make sure these people can get their 
lives back together, they can get in homes, farmers can get their crops 
in the ground and ready for next year. The devastation has been 
tremendous. This has been the largest natural disaster in the history 
of my State. It affected Virginia, it affected Maryland, it affected 
New York and parts of South Carolina. Preliminary numbers I have here: 
on November 19, over 30,000 individuals just in North Carolina had 
registered with FEMA. The number of homes that are going to be 
destroyed or displaced are now approaching 10,000, and there may be as 
many as another 15 to 20,000, maybe higher than that, going to need 
help. There are a lot of businesses in trouble. I talked with a 
businessman in Wilson who lost everything that he had, his whole life's 
work. He was in his 50s. His business was flooded. He had no flood 
insurance because he never had any need for it. It was a 500-year flood 
plain.
  Last Sunday I was in Rocky Mount at the request of a constituent. He 
wanted me to come down. I went to visit. I went to the homes of his 
three daughters. One had been in a home 5 years, another one 7 years, 
the other one a bit longer. She was on the other side of town. They 
were nice brick homes. Unfortunately, none of the three had flood 
insurance, and all three of them lost everything they had, and he said 
to me:
  ``Congressman, we don't need any loans. If they get a loan, they 
can't repay it. They owe loans on the house to have even the furniture 
that was in it. And if we don't get some help, we will not recover.''
  I only tell that story because it can be repeated thousands and 
thousands of times in eastern North Carolina. We had up here today over 
70 members of the North Carolina General Assembly House and Senate 
saying please help us, help us before you go home; and I call on my 
colleagues to do the same. We should not go home until we appropriate 
money to help these people who pay their taxes, who live by the rules, 
who have been subjected to a disaster today we were not expecting. We 
need to help them. We help people around the world. It is time to help 
people at home.

                          ____________________