[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 7027-7037]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 800, EDUCATION FLEXIBILITY PARTNERSHIP ACT OF 
                                  1999

  Ms. PRYCE of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on 
Rules, I call up House Resolution 143 and ask for its immediate 
consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 143

       Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be 
     in order to consider the conference report to accompany the 
     bill (H.R. 800) to provide for education flexibility 
     partnerships. All points of order against the conference 
     report and against its consideration are waived. The 
     conference report shall be considered as read.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shimkus). The gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. 
Pryce) is recognized for 1 hour.
  Ms. PRYCE of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield 
the customary 30 minutes to my friend, the gentlewoman from New York 
(Ms. Slaughter), pending which I yield myself such time as I may 
consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is 
for the purposes of debate only.
  Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 143 provides for the consideration of 
the conference report on H.R. 800, the Education Flexibility 
Partnership Act of 1999, better known as the Ed-Flex bill.
  Yesterday the Committee on Rules, by a vote of 11 to zero, granted 
the customary rule waiving all points of order against the conference 
report. The House will have 1 hour to debate the merits of this 
legislation.
  As my colleagues may recall, back in March the House passed the Ed-
Flex bill by a bipartisan vote of 330 to 90.

                              {time}  1030

  The Senate followed suit by passing its Ed-Flex legislation by an 
overwhelming vote of 98 to 1.
  It is encouraging to know that Democrats and Republicans can come 
together on at least one aspect of our Nation's education policy. There 
are numerous competing ideas for improving our schools and teaching our 
children; but we all agree that education, perhaps more than any other 
issue, will dictate our Nation's future, and it must be a top priority.
  I do not think anyone would argue that many of our Nation's schools 
are failing, and there is no excuse. We are the world's only remaining 
superpower, yet we allow our children to graduate from high school 
without basic reading and writing skills. Something is not working. It 
is time to move beyond the status quo and encourage innovative reform.
  Passing the Ed-Flex conference report is a good first step in the 
right direction. This legislation will allow all 50 States to 
participate in a program that gives local school districts the freedom 
to implement effective reforms by liberating them from restrictive one-
size-fits-all Federal requirements.
  This approach recognizes that the Federal Government does not have 
the magic pill that will remedy the ailments of each and every school. 
But the least we can do is clear away some of the obstacles found in 
onerous Federal regulations that are blocking our schools' path to 
improvement.
  The Ed-Flex program is founded in the principle of trust, trust in 
our State and local leaders who we believe will make good choices for 
their communities. Ed-Flex has worked in the 12 States that are 
currently eligible, including my own State of Ohio. This success 
strongly suggests that we expand Ed-Flex to all 50 States, and that is 
what this legislation is all about.
  Let us be clear. The Ed-Flex program does not simply dissolve Federal 
education law. We are not simply handing out money and turning our 
heads the other way. To be eligible for Ed-Flex, States must 
demonstrate that they have an effective plan for improving the 
education of poor and disadvantaged children, and they must agree to be 
held accountable for the results. In fact, this conference report 
strengthens the accountability provisions of current law.
  All told, the conference report actually contains very few changes 
from the House-passed bill, and it should receive the same broad 
support. The bipartisan spirit surrounding the Ed-Flex bill was carried 
over into the conference committee to produce a bill that both the 
House and Senate can approve and the President should sign.
  One example of this bipartisan effort is the decision of the 
Republican conferees to drop a Senate amendment which the Democrats and 
the President opposed. The amendment would have provided additional 
flexibility to schools, giving them discretion to devote more funds to 
special education, which is a top Republican priority.

[[Page 7028]]

  I cannot say I understand the President's opposition to giving local 
school districts the option of putting resources into education for 
children with special needs. However, I appreciate the decision of 
Republican conferees to compromise on this issue in the interest of 
quickly moving this important legislation to the President's desk where 
it can be signed into law.
  I am pleased to report that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Chairman 
Goodling) has assured the Committee on Rules that the Republican 
commitment to funding special education will remain high on his 
committee's agenda. Other changes agreed to in the conference will 
ensure that our Nation's poorest schools continue to receive priority 
consideration for Title I funding.
  In addition, the conference report clears up some confusion created 
by the Department of Education's interpretation of the Individuals with 
Disabilities Act which governs the treatment of children who possess a 
weapon at school. Under this legislation, it is made clear that 
children who possess weapons will be subject to the same discipline 
procedures as children who carry weapons. After yesterday's horrifying 
incident in Colorado, it is clear that we must enforce strict rules of 
no tolerance for guns in school. This is a step in that direction.
  The conferees also agreed to an amendment designed to benefit rural 
school districts. Specifically, small school districts that reduce 
class size to 18 or fewer children will be allowed to devote funds to 
professional development without joining consortiums.
  Outside of these few changes, the conference report mirrors the 
House-passed bill. Fifty governors, the National School Board 
Association, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Association of 
School Administrators all support this legislation.
  So I urge my colleagues, in the spirit of bipartisanship and in the 
name of innovative education reform, to move expeditiously to adopt 
this rule and agree to the Education Flexibility Conference Report. We 
cannot afford to wait any longer to remove the obstacles that stand in 
the way of our children's opportunities to learn.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Pryce) for 
yielding me the customary time.
  Mr. Speaker, even as the Committee on Rules was considering the rule 
to accompany H.R. 800, the Education Flexibility Partnership Act, an 
unspeakable tragedy was unfolding in Littleton, Colorado.
  Mr. Speaker, I am a parent, and my grandson is visiting me here this 
week. We know what is truly precious in our lives, and we are literally 
heartsick over what has happened to the people of Littleton. Our 
prayers are said for them, and our hearts are heavy for them, and the 
Nation mourns their terrible loss and ours.
  Mr. Speaker, we have children and family members in our schools 
across the country, and parents are afraid to send their children to 
school. But we are also members of our communities in which we live and 
who send us here. Here on this floor, we are elected officials with the 
responsibility to do what we can to guard against future tragedies. As 
we continue to discuss how to improve our schools, we have got to 
redouble our efforts to keep our children from slipping through the 
cracks.
  I have offered legislation to provide students, educators, and 
communities constructive activities that they can be involved in, not 
just during but after-school activities to steer our children away from 
guns and drugs and violence. I implore this House to pass it.
  This and the tragedies that other communities have endured all too 
recently remind us that we have children living their lives in the 
shadows, on the edges, children who may not be reached by traditional 
means, who may not be involved in traditional school activities; too 
many guns, too much violence in the media, too little love in our 
hearts, who knows for certain? But, sadly, we really cannot yet explain 
what is truly unexplainable. We really do not know what makes children 
who have lived so little feel so hopeless about the rest of their 
lives, but what we do not know we are obliged to try to learn.
  Our efforts at after-school education and education in general cannot 
focus solely on students whose behavior might more readily identify 
them as in need or at risk. We must also cast the light of caring and 
concern into those shadows where our children have retreated. By doing 
so, we can begin to help them build the self-esteem that is crucial in 
their ability to respect themselves and others.
  Mr. Speaker, as the author of after-school legislation, I will urge 
this House and this Congress to set aside funds for school districts 
who want to provide their students more counseling and mentoring 
opportunities as well as tutoring. That request and my efforts in that 
regard are in keeping with the legislation which we are considering 
today, legislation giving schools more flexibility to do what works 
while being accountable for the results.
  Earlier last month the House passed a bill to extend the eligibility 
of the Ed-Flex program to all 50 States. This program, which has broad 
bipartisan support, allows State education agencies to waive a wide 
range of requirements that generally apply to certain Federal 
elementary and secondary education assistance programs.
  Along with many of my colleagues, I stood in this very well and urged 
Members to consider the importance of accountability when undertaking 
such an endeavor.
  I am pleased that, during the conference on this legislation, the 
majority agreed to make two important changes to this bill. First, they 
chose not to include language which would have reversed the decision of 
this body to hire and train 100,000 new teachers so that we may begin 
to reduce class size in the early grades. Mr. Speaker, study after 
study has told us the importance of doing just that. Second, they 
allowed a provision requiring that Title I funding must continue to 
give priority to schools with more than 75 percent of their children 
below the poverty line.
  This bill is an improvement over what passed last month and, as a 
result, I will not oppose it. But I will remain concerned with its 
timing, particularly with the decision to bring it forward when the 
majority knows full well that these decisions will have to be 
reevaluated as Congress continues work on reauthorization of all of our 
elementary and secondary education programs.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the rule.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. 
Roemer).
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentlewoman from 
New York, for yielding me the time.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise as a coauthor of the Ed-Flex bill with the 
gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), and proudly proclaim that we have 
made it a long way in the last 8 or 9 months when we introduced this 
bill through committee, through the markup process, on to the floor 
where we had 112 Democrats support this bill, and then into a 
conference last week. I am delighted to say that we have accomplished 
this with true trust and reaching out, Democrat to Republican and 
Republican to Democrat.
  We have improved on a pilot bill that has existed in 12 States for 
the last 4 years, built on the successes that the pilot program and Ed-
Flex has accomplished in States like Maryland and Texas and Ohio, 
improved on those pilot programs, applied some of the strengths of 
those programs to our bill.
  So that is the first reason I hope that people will vote for this 
conference report, that this is an old value and a new idea. The old 
value is to trust the local schools to do what is in their best 
interest, to educate our children with the right curriculum, the right 
values, the right discipline. We will trust those local schools in 
Indiana and Delaware and California to do it.
  But the new idea is to say that we are not going to keep new 
handcuffs on them and new regulations and new paperwork. But we are 
going to have one

[[Page 7029]]

rope of accountability for this Federal money, and that is student 
scores and student performance. If students do better, they will stay 
in the Ed-Flexibility program. If their students see significant 
declines in their scores, they will be terminated from the program and 
they will go back to the old regimented system. So it is an old value. 
It is a new idea. It is based upon a 12-State pilot program.
  The second reason is accountability. We have tougher accountability 
in our bill than in current law. We must make our schools accountable 
for better school performances from our students. This bill does it. It 
does it through the gateway into the program. It does it with tougher 
assessment and accountability standards. It does it, as I mentioned 
before, with the termination clause.
  Thirdly, I urge my colleagues to vote for this bill because it is 
even improved coming out of the Senate. In the Senate they attached the 
Lott amendment to the bill which would have restricted the President's 
proposal, initiated last year, already being practiced, that allows the 
localities the opportunity to hire new teachers and do something about 
the teacher-student ratio.
  The Lott amendment would have greatly curtailed the availability of 
that program, the applicability of that program at our local level. It 
would have not allowed that program to go forward. That Lott amendment 
has been removed. That was a concern of the President. That was a 
concern of some Members when they came to the floor, when this bill 
first went from the floor into conference. That amendment has been 
removed.
  So I would hope that my colleagues would vote for this Ed-Flex 
Conference Report, and we can build on the 112 Democrats that support 
it on the floor. We can build on the bipartisanship that we reached in 
crafting this bill and getting it through to the President. The 
President has indicated that he will support this bill in addition to 
the 50 governors supporting this bill.
  I look forward to helping children get a better education when this 
bill becomes law.

                              {time}  1045

  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. George Miller).
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I clearly want to 
recognize the hard work that the subcommittee chair, the gentleman from 
Delaware (Mr. Castle), and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) put 
into this legislation, and I clearly want to state that I strongly 
support the concept of increased flexibility to improve educational 
programs at the local level, and I have voted for the original 
legislation, Goals 2000, which was to establish the Ed-Flex program, 
but I must say, after viewing the conference report, that I come at it 
from a different direction with respect to accountability.
  I think it is time that the Federal Government, in its use of the 
taxpayers' money to fund the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 
start to hold the States and local districts accountable for the 
education of all children. We all know that public officials today are 
talking about holding people accountable but rarely do we, in fact, do 
it.
  Most recently, as we have started a program of high standards and 
assessment of how students are doing on those standards, we now see we 
are plagued with school districts all over the country that are taking 
poor performing students out of the testing pool so that it will look 
like they are doing better when they report to the parents in that 
school district. It will look like everybody achieved better. But what 
they did is they went around and took the tests of the kids that were 
not doing so well out of the pool. They rigged the results, and now 
they want to say that they are accountable.
  Just recently a prosecution was entered against a school district in 
Texas for tampering with the public evidence. That is why we need 
accountability. We need accountability because we must know how all of 
our children are doing, in rich school districts, in poor school 
districts, how minority children are doing, how poor children are 
doing, and others. Unfortunately, this legislation is weak on 
accountability. They have failed to require the States aggregate the 
data so that those States will be held responsible for all students. 
They give a passing notion that maybe they will look at it by groups, 
but even there the language has been weakened from what the House put 
in.
  In the committee and on the floor the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Kildee), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne), the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Scott), and myself offered an amendment to try to hold 
school districts accountable, to try to make sure that we, in fact, 
knew how children were doing, because the time has come when we must, 
in fact, make sure.
  We have now invested over the last decade maybe $50, $60 billion in 
this program, and one of the great hallmarks was touted the other day 
when it was suggested that the reading scores have improved. Yes, they 
have. They have improved back to where they were in 1990. So we have 
invested $60 billion in a program and we are getting ready to invest 
another $60 billion in the program and yet we are unable as public 
stewards of public policy and of the taxpayers' money to ask the States 
what is it we can expect in the way of success 5 years from now? 
Because what we have gotten over the last decade is failure.
  If we are going to put the public's money back into this program, we 
want to know how are they going to measure and how are they going to 
tell how these students are doing. Unfortunately, that evidence failed, 
and that is why I must oppose this legislation.
  I think a number of States that have engaged in some of the 
provisions that are allowed under flexibility have done some very good 
things, and the committee heard testimony from States like Texas and 
Maryland and North Carolina that do not have it but are engaged in that 
kind of process, to rethink how they are delivering education. But 
flexibility cannot be an excuse for accountability. They must go hand-
in-hand, and, unfortunately, the evidence we have to date through the 
GAO report, through the Inspector General's report tells us that the 
States have not done terribly well under the pilot program and, 
unfortunately, this legislation does not go far enough to hold them 
accountable.
  No longer can we as a society write children off. No longer can we 
accept the level of failures that we see today in our local school 
districts. The time has come to cut the mustard. The time has come to 
hold districts accountable, to hold States accountable for the uses of 
these dollars, and I do not think we can continue to accept a lot of 
rationales for why districts should not be held accountable.
  It is rather simple. We know there are proposals that have been 
submitted to the Federal Government to hold districts accountable in a 
very strict fashion. Then we would be able to tell how this Nation is 
doing in education. Today we cannot. Today, many of the States cannot 
put the data together to tell us how their schools are doing or, at 
best, they can tell us how the average student is doing but it does not 
tell us how the other students are doing.
  I urge a ``no'' vote on the conference report.
  Ms. PRYCE of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman 
from North Carolina (Mr. Hayes).
  Mr. HAYES. Mr. Speaker, I would like to report back to my colleagues 
of the enthusiastic response I received from my time in the district at 
a number of schools about the Ed-Flex legislation.
  I rise today to speak in favor of the rule, but let me begin by 
saying, Mr. Speaker, how deeply sorry I am for the parents, classmates, 
friends and families of the students who perished and were wounded in 
the tragic events of yesterday in Littleton, Colorado. I am truly sick 
with grief over this tragedy, and I pledge to the mourning families and 
all Americans alike that I will do all I can as a Member of Congress to 
end the senseless violence preying on our students, our families, and 
our communities.
  After initial passage of the Education Flexibility Partnership Act of 
1999 in

[[Page 7030]]

March, I spent time during the Easter recess in the classrooms of the 
schools of my 8th District in North Carolina talking to teachers, 
students, and administrators about Ed-Flex. This bill will allow 
innovative ideas in teaching to evolve at the local level.
  I spoke with Captain Jack L. Ahart at A L Brown High School in 
Kannapolis, North Carolina, who is teaching civics in his JROTC class. 
He told me that Ed-Flex will allow him to incorporate more computers 
into his classroom and expand the students' learning experience.
  I spoke with Scott Bennett and his 9th grade history students at 
Ellerbee Junior High regarding their visit to Washington, D.C. and Mr. 
Bennett's creative involvement with the kids' experiences in the 
classroom environment.
  I spoke with Miss Pam Van Riper and Principal Kevin Wimberly at 
Wingate Elementary School about the challenges they face in a rural 
community.
  Each of these teachers are excited about the possibilities that 
greater freedom to work within their local school districts will 
provide in the way of a better learning experience for all their 
students.
  As I have said before, Ed-Flex addresses the basic fact that what 
works in New York City does not necessarily work in Rockingham, North 
Carolina. I encourage my colleagues to support the rule and to show our 
teachers in the classroom that we support their hard work and their new 
ideas.
  Ms. PRYCE of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman 
from Fort Wayne, Indiana (Mr. Souder).
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentlewoman from 
Ohio, and want to again commend those who have worked so hard for this 
bill; to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), and 
subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) castle, 
and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), my colleague from an 
adjacent district.
  It has been a long process, but we are nearing the end of at least 
this small step towards flexibility for schools in Indiana and around 
this country. I say it is a small step because we should not kid 
ourselves. We had other opportunities and will have more opportunities 
to actually make funding available. I personally am very disappointed 
that we had to withdraw the Senate amendment that would have allowed 
some of these funds to be used from last year's teachers program, if a 
school so chose, for IDEA.
  Because, in fact, this sets parameters for the Federal Government to 
grant waivers under certain conditions, but that would have given real 
dollar flexibility to schools if they felt that they had their class 
size down. Like in Indiana, where we have mandated that the class size 
go down, many of the schools have reached those class sizes. Therefore, 
they are not eligible for the teachers funds in most cases and they 
would like to be able to use their money for IDEA.
  So to some degree, when we micromanage from Washington, we punish 
those States that have actually done a better job of fixing certain 
conditions and problems in their States and to reward those States that 
have not done it. That is why we cannot micromanage schools all over 
America. We need to have flexibility.
  Unlike many bills that come out of the House, this is at least 
slightly better than when it went into conference committee. So we have 
a little bit more flexibility, but I am very disappointed that we had 
to yield on the House side and the Senate withdrew on the Lott 
amendment. We will revisit that subject.
  Because one consequence of looking at the terrible tragedy of 
yesterday in Colorado ought to be to say it is not the school's fault. 
The schools and the teachers are struggling with tremendous social 
problems in this country. We in Washington should not try to tell them 
how to do it. We need to help them in their local flexibility, not by 
having more standards or more accountability.
  The problem here is not that they are not reporting enough to us. The 
problem is they are fighting in their local communities with how to 
deal with the terrible problems of reading, of social adjustments, of 
violence on television. We need to give them the flexibility in their 
schools that says, what is that particular school's need for their 
high-risk students? Are some emotionally disadvantaged? Do some have 
physical handicaps that they are short of money on? Do some have 
particular reading needs where they have LDD or ADD, or is it their 
class size is too big, or do they need school construction or do they 
need it for computers?
  The local people know this. They are committed to education. We 
should not sit here in Washington and say we do not trust our teachers, 
we do not trust our principals, we do not trust our school boards, we 
do not trust our superintendents. They are on the line. They are 
fighting every day. They have terrible problems they are struggling 
with, and we need to help them by giving them flexibility, and this 
bill is a first step.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and 
I yield back the balance of my time.
  Ms. PRYCE of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my 
time, and just say in closing that I want to emphasize once again this 
is a bipartisan bill. The conference report is virtually identical to 
the bill that the House passed by a vote of 330 to 90. All of my 
colleagues who supported this legislation back in March should register 
their support again today.
  Let us take the first step toward education reform together by voting 
``yes'' on both the rule and the Ed-Flex conference report.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the 
previous question on the resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The resolution was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House resolution 143, I call 
up the conference report on the bill (H.R. 800) to provide for 
education flexibility partnerships.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McHugh). Pursuant to House Resolution 
143, the conference report is considered as having been read.
  (For conference report and statement, see proceedings of the House of 
April 20, 1999, at page H2144.)
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. 
Goodling) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) each will control 
30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling).
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  This morning we had a panel discussion on bipartisanship in 
education, and I indicated to them at that time that they really were 
missing some people that should be on the panel, and those people, I 
reminded them, were the press. Because just yesterday, as a matter of 
fact, my staffer said to the press, we will have a press conference on 
education flexibility and the response was, ``Oh, the fight's over. We 
only cover fights.''
  I say that simply because in the last 2 years we had the most 
effective education effort in the history of the Congress of the United 
States in a bipartisan fashion. The Higher Education Act, the new 
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Reading Excellence 
Act, the Perkins Vocational Educational Amendments, the Work Force 
Investment Act, the Head Start Reauthorization, the Charter Schools 
Expansion Act, and the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act all passed 
the House and the Senate with more than three-fourths of the total 
vote.

                              {time}  1100

  So we start out the new year with another bipartisan effort. As was 
mentioned several times, it passed overwhelmingly here in a bipartisan 
effort, and I think it was something like 97-1 or 98-2 or something of 
that nature in the other body.
  Well, the bill is Ed-Flex; and Ed-Flex is about giving local schools 
and districts the freedom to do things a little differently if they can 
demonstrate it is in the best interest of the children and then prove 
by using performance

[[Page 7031]]

data that it works. Ed-Flex gives the local schools the freedom to 
request permission to make some of these changes.
  It is not that the Federal Government was necessarily wrong when it 
passed the law. It is impossible for Congress to design programs that 
effectively and adequately address the needs of every school district 
in the Nation.
  If a school district can demonstrate that they have a more effective 
way of helping poor and disadvantaged children improve faster and are 
willing to be accountable for the results, the Federal Government 
should want to remove all obstacles as soon as possible.
  And accountability we have in the bill is proportional to the 
flexibility we are giving. States cannot take their Federal dollars and 
turn it into a block grant, so we should not require any more of States 
than we give them.
  It was mentioned that some people in some areas removed people from 
tests in order to show that they have done better. Well, I want to 
remind my colleagues that those tests that were talked about were 
Federal tests, were the NAEP tests; and I assume the Federal Government 
permitted them to remove those students from taking those tests. If 
they did not permit it, then they should not have been crowing about 
the fact that there have been tremendous gains under this 
administration because of the results of those tests. They were Federal 
tests.
  I want to take this opportunity to thank those people who have been 
instrumental in crafting the legislation and guiding it through the 
legislative process. First of all, I would like to thank the gentleman 
from Delaware (Mr. Castle) and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) 
for all of their efforts to produce a bipartisan bill that grants real 
flexibility to States.
  I would like to thank the members of the conference committee, the 
Republican members of the House Committee for their efforts, as well as 
Senators Frist, Wyden and Jeffords, who moved this legislation through 
a grueling process on the Senate side.
  Many thanks to all the 50 governors who supported this bill, but in 
particular to Governor Ridge of Pennsylvania and Governor Carper of 
Delaware.
  Then I would like to thank many staff members, some of which I will 
forget, who worked long and hard on the legislation: Christine Wolfe 
and Kent Talbert; Sally Lovejoy and Vic Klatt; Melanie Merola and Booth 
Jameson; and Gina Mohoney, Jo-Marie St. Martin, and Pam Davidson, to 
mention a few.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. CLAY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I oppose this conference report for the same reason that 
I voted against the original bill, H.R. 800. This report fails to 
include strong accountability provisions and fails to adequately 
protect Title I provisions that target assistance to our poorest 
children.
  It is legislative folly, Mr. Speaker, to let States and school 
districts waive the Elementary and Secondary Act before its 
reauthorization has been even drafted or passed. To proclaim an urgent 
need for this bill is part of the folly and the foolishness.
  Current law authorizes Secretary Riley to give flexibility to States 
and school districts by waiver. And the Secretary has granted hundreds 
of waivers to school districts based on requests that permitted 
flexibility yet preserved the sound principles of accountability and 
targeting the funds to areas of greatest educational need.
  But, Mr. Speaker, this bill creates unprecedented loopholes for 
States and school districts to avoid their obligation to serve poor 
school children first. It eliminates the long established requirement 
that only schools with poverty rates of 50 percent or greater can 
create school-wide programs with these Federal funds.
  This bill permits States to serve wealthier schools before serving 
poor ones and allows States to reduce per-student allocations at poor 
schools or pass over poor schools entirely to fund those wealthier 
schools.
  This conference report also strikes the sunset provision sponsored by 
the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) which was contained in the 
House-passed bill. The Kildee provision would have required us to 
review these waiver provisions during the ESEA reauthorization. Despite 
the strong recommendation by Secretary Riley to consider the waiver 
provisions as part of the reauthorization of ESEA, the majority 
conferees agreed to strike the sunset provision.
  I am pleased however, Mr. Speaker, that the conferees did support my 
motion instructing conferees to strike the Lott amendment. This 
amendment was a reckless abandonment of our commitment to parents and 
students to reduce class sizes. By striking the Lott amendment, we 
ensured that the $1.2 billion class size reduction fund will be made 
available this July as promised.
  Now that we are nearing the completion of this bill, I hope that we 
can go to work on reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education 
Act and other education priorities. Mr. Speaker, we must act to 
authorize the class size reduction program so we can finish the job of 
hiring 100,000 new teachers that we started last year.
  We should help communities struggling to pay for school modernization 
by supporting the Clinton school construction legislation. We must also 
continue our work to help communities recruit new, highly qualified 
teachers, and to strengthen accountability for our elementary and 
secondary education programs.
  So I urge Members to vote ``no'' on this legislation because it fails 
to contain minimum accountability provisions and basic protections for 
poor school children. We should vote against this proposal because it 
permits Federal funds to be taken from those students in greatest need 
and given to those in least need.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I yield what time he may consume to the 
gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), former Governor of Delaware, one 
of the authors of the legislation and the subcommittee chair.
  Mr. CASTLE. Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. Goodling) not only for yielding but for the excellent input and 
value the assistance that he gave to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. 
Roemer) and to myself in getting this bill to the place where it is 
today. We appreciate that tremendously.
  I do rise today in absolute full support of the conference report to 
H.R. 800, the Education Flexibility Partnership Act of 1999. I cannot 
thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) enough. He was there 
through thick and thin. We went through about 8 or 9 months of this. We 
thought we were going to get it done last year. We were not able to do 
so. We were able to come back and get it done this year. And I think 
this is a day of great hope for both the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. 
Roemer) and myself and I think for all of us in Congress and the school 
kids across the country.
  I would also like to acknowledge particularly the help of my 
Governor, who is both my predecessor and successor because he is now 
the Governor of Delaware, Tom Carper. His pushing for this was 
tremendously helpful amongst all the governors, as well.
  The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) and I introduced this 
legislation because we believe it will provide schools and their 
students with the tools to improve academic achievement. It allows 
local school districts to think outside the box, which is something we 
needed forever, in order to design a system that is truly focused on 
improving student performance.
  Instead of having to plan a specific project around a set of separate 
and conflicting program requirements, which is so often the case now, 
now the districts will be able to develop a vision of how to use local, 
State, and Federal resources to more effectively improve student 
performance and to make that vision a reality.
  This will extend education flexibility to all 50 States. We all need 
to understand that 12 of our States have it now.

[[Page 7032]]

They have used it extraordinarily well. They have shown dramatic 
improvement in certain areas. Now all of our States are going to be 
able to use it, which we think is of vital importance, as well.
  We have measurably improved current law by increasing that 
flexibility and making more programs eligible for Ed-Flex waivers. In 
fact, one of the things in the conference was the Technology Literacy 
Challenge Fund, and that is I think an important step as well.
  Under the conference agreement, States are required to submit clear 
educational objectives and locals are required to set specific and 
measurable objectives. So while the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Miller) apparently is not going to support it, a lot of what he had to 
say I think ended up being incorporated, not as far as he wanted to go 
of course, in what we are doing. And in that way I think his position 
on this was constructive, as well.
  We have also improved current law by providing protections for Title 
I schools and students. Now, this is important, because Title I is a 
program that all of us should be legitimately concerned about. It is a 
program which basically is aimed at those school districts which have 
more children in poverty than others. And for the first time in a 
demonstrable way under Ed-Flex, particularly in Maryland and Texas, we 
are seeing test scores from Title I schools which are actually showing 
dramatic improvement for those students who are poorer students in 
those schools, because of things they were able to put together through 
the Ed-Flex program.
  That is something that has been un-demonstrated over all the years 
with all the monies put into Title I. So it is a tremendous help for 
that reason. I hope my colleagues will consider that when they come to 
the floor to vote on this particular piece of legislation.
  The Senate, as we know, prohibited waivers to the requirement that 
school districts must allocate funds to schools with more than 75 
percent poverty first, and in the rank order. And we said in the House 
provision, we had a different measure in the conference report that 
basically retained both of these measures, which provides a lot of 
protections to people in the Title I programs.
  Now, who supports this bill? And this is important I think for all of 
us to consider. It was reported out of committee in March here in the 
House by a vote of 33-9. It was passed in the House by a vote of 330 
yeas to 90 nays, both parties voting in the majority for it. It was 
passed in the Senate by a vote of 98 yeas to 1 nay.
  Last week it was reported out of conference by voice vote. It has the 
support of every single governor in this country. And as a former 
governor, I can attest to the fact that getting all 50 governors to 
agree to anything is a miracle.
  In addition, it has received support from the administration and 
other education organizations around the country. It is a good strong 
bill that each and every one of us can proudly support because it 
supports schools and students, it loosens the reins of the Federal 
Government, and allows for creativity in student learning. Ed-Flex will 
help our Nation's schools, and I hope we will all support it.
  I would like to close, Mr. Speaker, this probably will not help with 
the problems directly in Littleton, Colorado, and I do not even want to 
connect it to that. But since we are discussing education on the floor, 
my own grief in this situation and sorrow for the people out there is 
something that I should state and that everybody in this country feels.
  I do not know if the problem is with our ability to obtain guns, it 
is with our families, it is with the perhaps lack of help needed in 
school to help the children who seem to have troubles, or it is a 
societal problem at large with all the activities we read about, cults 
and everything else. So there are no easy answers. But I, for one, 
believe we need a national discussion on this issue; and I hope, if 
there is anything possibly good that could ever come out of a tragedy 
like that, it is that we have that discussion.
  I appreciate the time that the chairman has yielded me. I would ask 
for my colleagues' support for the Ed-Flex legislation.
  Mr. CLAY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Kildee).
  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding me 
the time.
  Mr. Speaker, the bill before the House today does not have the full 
scope of provisions which I and other Democrats have sought during the 
several months which we have worked on this legislation.
  The conference report on H.R. 800 does, however, make much-needed 
improvements to the existing Ed-Flex demonstration program in the areas 
of accountability and targeting of resources, and because of this will 
receive my support today.
  The existing Ed-Flex demonstration program is found by GAO to require 
little accountability for increased student achievement. The gentleman 
from California (Mr. Miller) and I offered an amendment, both in 
committee and on the floor, which attempted to address these concerns.
  While this amendment was not adopted, the legislation's provision 
requiring the Secretary to judge the specificity and measurability of a 
State's educational goals and strengthen reporting requirements, 
including the requirement to provide reliable and accurate data on 
student performance, are improvements over the existing demonstration 
program that will provide us with the information we need to truly 
analyze the link between flexibility and student performance.
  In addition, while the existing Ed-Flex demonstration program allows 
waivers of nearly all Title I targeting protections, this new 
legislation ensures that States must continue to fund the highest 
poverty schools and have only marginal flexibility in sending Title I 
dollars to lower poverty schools.
  It is important to note that even existing Ed-Flex States, such as 
Michigan, once their opportunity to operate under the present authority 
expires, will have to apply under the stricter requirements of this 
legislation.
  I was also pleased that the conferees realized the importance of 
dropping the Lott amendment dealing with class size reduction and IDEA 
funding. This amendment injected politics into what was a healthy 
debate over the policy objectives of expanding flexibility, and pitted 
the needs of disabled children against non-disabled children.

                              {time}  1115

  This was an ill-advised amendment, and its absence from the 
conference report is critical to the success of today's legislation.
  Overall, I believe this bill makes some needed improvements to the 
present Ed-Flex demonstration programs. It is not the bill I would have 
written, but it is a bill I will vote for. I think it is vital to 
reexamine the decisions made in this legislation in the context of the 
policy decisions we make during our work this Congress. That is why I 
wanted the sunset, but we put language in the report talking about this 
reexamination.
  While I will support the legislation before the House today, I 
strongly believe we need to revisit Ed-Flex to ensure that the steps 
taken by this bill to ensure accountability and protect targeting of 
resources are sufficient. I look forward to this reexamination of Ed-
Flex during our deliberations in ESEA.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to 
the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Roukema), a senior member of the 
Committee on Education and the Workforce.
  Mrs. ROUKEMA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for having yielded 
this time to me.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this legislation and 
appreciate the fact that we have yet again seen another demonstration 
of bipartisan support, and I think that is very important for all of us 
to understand, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) has 
already referenced. But

[[Page 7033]]

I want to make a couple of points here about how I think we are meeting 
the needs here.
  Certainly one of the most important things, in my opinion, is that we 
are preserving State and local control in terms of what Ed-Flex is 
doing for us. The decisions about our children's education should be 
made by parents and educators and at the local and State level, not by 
politicians in Washington, D.C., and I think that is terribly important 
for us to protect. We in Washington should be supporting and 
supplementing those efforts and giving direction but not overriding 
them.
  So, aside from, however, the local control and State control aspect 
of this, I think this legislation very well preserves accountability, 
accountability that will require the States and the school districts to 
make their own decisions, but they must meet specific and measurable 
educational objectives. The school may apply for a waiver, but they 
must justify that waiver when the application is made, and I think the 
bill very well puts that into not only perspective but into enforceable 
ways. Ed-Flex gives greater authority to the States to determine their 
particular goals but holds them accountable.
  In terms of the accountability, I think this bears repeating and 
stressing. The accountability means first that under the monitoring 
provisions the States and local educational agencies must report their 
progress on how they are specifically meeting their goals. Secondly, 
regulations relating to parental involvement cannot be waived. I think 
that is very important. And third, by providing public notice and 
comment for application for waivers Ed-Flex recognizes the importance 
of community input and so that there must be notification for that kind 
of waiver.
  In summary I guess, Mr. Speaker, I would say that this legislation 
gives authority over decisions concerning children's education to 
principals, teachers, parents and local communities, where in my 
opinion it belongs. That is the only way we can strengthen our public 
school system, and I think this will be an extraordinarily valuable 
tool for advancing the quality of education across the Nation.
  Mr. CLAY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Roemer).
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and my ranking member, the 
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) for the time, and I appreciate his 
friendship while we have disagreed on the policy of this legislation.
  I rose to speak on the rule, Mr. Speaker, so I will not get into the 
specifics and the minutiae and the detail of the legislation that I 
have offered with my good friend from Delaware (Mr. Castle). I did want 
to thank two additional people. I want to thank Governor Frank 
O'Bannon, who worked this issue very, very hard for our delegation in 
the State of Indiana and with his colleagues at the National Governors' 
Association, and I also want to thank Gina Mahony, who without good 
staff, we do not go as far as we would like and we are not as important 
as we think as a Member of Congress, where we have and are blessed with 
great staff in this body, and I wanted to thank her for her help.
  I also want to talk about the larger picture of education. It has 
been very difficult, Mr. Speaker, to penetrate through the press, 
through the stories of impeachment and now war, about some of the 
successes we have had in bipartisan ways on education. We have written 
a bipartisan bill on charter schools and public choice, which is 
helping. We have written and passed a bill on alternative route 
certification to get more people in mid careers into the teaching 
profession. That is helping. We passed a down payment on teacher ratio 
last year, 30,000 of the 100,000 teachers, and we need to emphasize 
quality of those teachers. That is helping. And now today we have 
education flexibility, which will soon pass.
  But we need even more arrows for the quiver. We need a national 
dialogue. James Madison talked about a larger vision of America, and we 
need that now for our most important issue in America, which is 
education.
  When we talk about Kosovo, Mr. Speaker, and we will soon talk about 
an emergency supplemental for our troops in Kosovo, we do not talk 
about are we going to fund Apaches, or F-16s; are we going to fund F-
15s, or are we going to fund B-2 bombers? We are going to get the 
troops the support they need. And now, with the most important issue we 
face in this country, our next step after Ed-Flex, we need to make sure 
we fund IDEA, but it does not have to come out of education funds, it 
should be out of a tax cut. We need to look at how we fund more troops 
to teachers. That is an idea that has worked, moving people from the 
military into the teaching profession; we need to move it into the 
private sector. We need to look at ways by which we put safe schools as 
a priority and have a national dialogue on more of our guns in society 
penetrating more of our schools, more of our hatred in society 
penetrating our schools.
  Let us rise to James Madison's call for a national dialogue, and let 
us address all these education issues in a fair and bipartisan and 
thorough way in the future.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), our newest member on the 
committee and an outstanding Member.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. Speaker, I consider it a fortunate privilege for me 
to have been elected to this House in a special election, even more 
fortunate to have met the two principal cosponsors in my first 
committee meeting in education and for that to have dealt with the Ed-
Flex bill, and I obviously stand in support of the conference report 
and in support of the initiative, but in particular to address the 
question of the national dialogue.
  I would like to share for just a minute what a great first step I 
think this Congress is taking, but I would like to share it not from 
the perspective of a Congressman who stands and thinks he knows a lot 
about a subject, but rather from one who just fortunately, the last act 
I did in Georgia before I left to come here was a submission of the $5 
billion state education budget for the State of Georgia, 97.2 percent 
of which was State tax dollars and local government tax dollars, but 
2.8 percent of which was money, much of it covered by the flexibility 
we are now granting in terms of regulations and rules within seven 
categorical programs.
  Giving flexibility and the ability to waive Federal and state 
standards on the spending of this money with accountability to ensure 
that after 2 years there must be improvement and cannot be a decline is 
a great gift to the people in public education, our States. The fact of 
the matter is the amount of money necessary for creativity in education 
at the local level is shrinking every day because of mandates that we 
pass on in our areas or mandates the general assemblies pass on. But it 
is those small dollars that sometimes flexibility is granted upon that 
bring about the greatest of change.
  I just like to give one example which both gives credit to a school 
back in Georgia, but also demonstrates precisely what I think we are on 
the verge of doing in this country. I attended a school that was about 
to be closed 3 years ago. It is 100 percent free and reduced lunch, 
total poverty, surrounded by a chain link fence with razor wire. It was 
my first visit as the chairman of the State Board of Education, and my 
visit was because we had been asked to grant substantial waivers by 
that principal, a new principal, of State rules to try and allow him to 
get his hands around the problems of discipline and despair and a 
system that was failing. Two years later the school was turned around 
in large measure because we granted at the State level the flexibility 
to allow that school to deal with the difficulties it was confronting, 
and a school that was hopeless, maybe even hapless, was turning around 
the lives of poor and disadvantaged children.
  It is my belief that the flexibility granted in this act, in the 
programs that it governs, is the beginning of greater flexibility that 
we can grant to educators that deal with the most precious asset we 
have and hopefully will

[[Page 7034]]

be the foundation upon what national dialogue we do have on many other 
areas where this Congress and this country must focus on our greatest 
asset and resource of all, and that is the children of the parents of 
the United States of America.
  Mr. CLAY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Payne).
  Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, the bill before us today boasts better 
flexibility while allocating Federal funds in school districts, but I 
have to say a number of times, as I have done in the past in reference 
to Ed-Flex, if we want to give States the flexibility they desire, we 
need to get in return some type of assurance that funds will still go 
to low income Title I children as Title I was created to do.
  Title I funds are supposed to go to children in disadvantaged school 
districts or children who are disadvantaged. This bill will give school 
districts and States the right to take Title I funds and spread them 
among other students in the school that are not necessarily 
disadvantaged. This dilutes the entire purpose of Title I, and it will 
leave students who are poor and indeed in need of special attention 
without the help they need.
  The final version of the bill will ensure schools with poverty levels 
of above 75 percent are served Title 1 funds first, and it retains 
language from the House bill that allows a larger number of schools to 
receive Title I funds only if the number of children living in poverty 
is at most 10 percent below the districtwide poverty level. This seems 
the least we can do to protect the children who are most in need of 
Title I funds.
  But I was supportive of even stronger measures to assure that those 
students were being served during the House consideration of the Ed-
Flex bill, and I continue to believe that language addressing targeting 
in Title I schoolwide programs must be included in this bill. The 
absence of such language is one of the reasons that I cannot support 
the final version of this bill we are asked to vote on today.
  Additionally, as the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) 
has stated, much of the language in the House bill that improved the 
reporting and accountability measures of those states and school 
districts that are given Ed-Flex authority has been removed from the 
final version of this bill. The absence of strong accountability 
language will leave us in the dark about how effective Ed-Flex has 
been, and I know no one wants to revisit Ed-Flex issues, preferably 
during the reauthorization of Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 
with little or no information about how it works and who it is working 
for. But it looks like that will be the case because without 
accountability and without targeting for schoolwide programs, I 
continue to oppose this bill, because it is not, in my opinion, in the 
best interest of people that Title I was supposed to serve, those who 
are disadvantaged, and with the lack of accountability we are moving in 
the dark as we move towards more legislation.

                              {time}  1130

  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman 
from Florida (Mr. Foley), and I want to take this opportunity to thank 
his father publicly, since I never wrote a thank you note, for the fine 
golf match we had when I visited Florida a couple of years ago.
  Mr. FOLEY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, while the gentleman brings up the subject of my father, 
I am the proud son of an educator, a public school teacher and a public 
school principal. So I have grown up in a home where education came 
first, and dealing in the public setting, public education was vitally 
important. So I suggest, as we look at the Education Flexibility 
Partnership Act of 1999, capably brought to this floor by the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania (Chairman Goodling), we see an issue now that can 
give local schools, local officials, the tools they need to educate our 
students.
  We know the Federal Government contributes less than 7 percent to our 
overall budget for schools, but it is our responsibility here in this 
Chamber to ensure that this funding has the greatest possible impact, 
and Ed-Flex, this bill, does just that. By handing control back to 
local educators, Ed-Flex gives schools the flexibility to navigate the 
mire of federally imposed and often conflicting program requirements.
  Our good friend, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), traveled 
to Florida on his own time this past month to visit with educators, to 
visit with school board members, to visit with parents and students in 
a panel we set up, and there was over 3 hours of discussion and debate.
  One of the things that became most clear from each of those who 
contributed to the dialogue was please unleash us from the shackles of 
mandates from the Federal Government. We want to teach. We want to be 
face-to-face with students. We want to make a difference. We want to 
seek alternatives. We want to do things that will enable us to bring 
children up in the 21st Century with the tools they need to be 
successful.
  Regrettably, in Washington, everybody here in this city thinks they 
have got a better idea of how to mandate just a little opportunity for 
the kids back home.
  My father is a principal and a Marine and a person who loves this 
country. He was often spending hours at his desk just trying to read 
the books that they were sending from the DOE down to the Department of 
Education in Tallahassee. He would read all these volumes of books, and 
he was conflicted about what to do, how to teach, how to give guidance 
to teachers in his school.
  So I rise in very strong support of this measure. I know it will 
result in efficiencies, in greater improvement in the school system, in 
higher academic achievements, because we will unleash the potential of 
teachers who best know how to solve the academic dilemmas of their 
students.
  Mr. CLAY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).
  Mr. KIND. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. 
Clay), the ranking member, for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, first of all I want to commend my good friends, the 
gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) and the gentleman from Indiana 
(Mr. Roemer) for the bipartisan spirit in which they approached this 
legislation. It is a good peace of legislation.
  As a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, I am 
proud to stand here on the floor in support of the legislation. As I 
travel around my district in western Wisconsin meeting with the 
educators and parents, one of the constant refrains they continuously 
tell me in regards to programs that they are in charge of implementing 
is to give us some flexibility so we can implement some creative and 
innovative ideas that work at the local level. That is what this 
legislation will give them.
  I think the other provision, important provision in this legislation, 
is equally as important, and that is the accountability provisions that 
exist. That is what we policymakers need so when we go home and face 
the people that we represent and look them in the eyes we can tell them 
that their money is being wisely spent.
  One of the other issues that the administrators and educators and 
parents continuously tell us is, yes, we like the flexibility; in fact, 
heap on all the accountability on us, but do not underfund the programs 
that we are being asked to implement. Give us the resources we need to 
make the changes that are necessary to improve quality education at the 
local level.
  The Committee on Education and the Workforce just this last Monday 
had a field hearing in Chicago with the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Hastert), where we met with Paul Vallas, chief executive officer of 
Chicago Public schools, and others in charge of the reforms happening 
at the Chicago public school system. That was something that he 
emphasized time and time again, is that give us flexibility, give us 
all the accountability as well, but

[[Page 7035]]

also make sure that the programs are funded that we need to succeed.
  That is going to be the true mark of whether or not we succeed in 
this session. The hallmark of the 106th session should not just be how 
much we can increase defense spending but whether or not we are going 
to increase the commitment of education reform and the quality of 
education for our children. That is the test that we face in this 
session of Congress.
  Let us hope that, working together in a bipartisan spirit, we are 
going to rise and meet that test and not fail it, for the sake of our 
children.
  Mr. CLAY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. George Miller).
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I think it comes down 
to this: We ran a pilot project on educational flexibility with 12 
different States and when we got back the results of that pilot 
project, what we found was that essentially 9 or 10 of those States 
gave us back educational babble about what they were going to do with 
this money and how they were going to be accountable for the money in 
terms of the performance of their students, in terms of how well their 
students were able to improve their mathematics scores, their reading 
capabilities and their critical thinking.
  We got back educational babble about realizing the potential of the 
educational atmosphere to enhance the environment, to improve the 
capabilities of the students to perform better. Babble.
  One State, the State of Texas, came back to us and said, in exchange 
for flexibility our goal in the State of Texas over the next 5 years, 
in a numerical sense, is to have 90 percent of our students pass the 
Texas State Assessment, and to go beyond that, to have 90 percent of 
our Hispanic students, 90 percent of our African-American students, 90 
percent of our poor students, pass the Texas State Assessment. That is 
how we wish to be measured, and we put into the State law and into our 
agreement with the Federal Government that that is our goal.
  I do not know whether Texas will make it or not, and I am not here to 
micromanage the system to tell them how to make it, but at least they 
came forward and set down on the table a numerical means by which they 
were prepared to be measured. They also told us that they would be 
using the same assessment from year-to-year.
  This bill does not require the same assessment from year-to-year. 
Numerical goals, this bill does not require numerical goals. There is 
no requirement here that States make the effort to close the gap 
between minority students and majority students, and yet in the most 
recent assessment we have received, after pouring billions of dollars 
into this program, the gap between Hispanic and white students, the gap 
between African-American and white students, continues to increase, 
continues to increase, but there is no requirement here or 
accountability for school districts to try and to close that gap.
  There is no accountability here that we have an assessment system so 
we can measure that over the life of this program. I think it is 
important to understand that that is the difference about why we 
support or oppose this legislation, that this legislation continues to 
put the Federal Government in the position of being the enabler, being 
the enabler of States not having to be accountable, not having to be 
accountable for the performance of all students, not the average 
student, not some students but all students, so then we can measure 
whether or not we as the investors of the public money, some $60 
billion to $70 billion over the next 5 years, whether or not we are 
getting a return on our investment that the public is in fact entitled 
to.
  We cannot assure the public that we can get that return on the 
investment and therefore I will vote ``no" on this conference report.
  Mr. CLAY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, let me say that I once again urge all Members to vote 
against this legislation for two reasons. One, that it fails to contain 
minimum accountability provisions and, two, that the basic protections 
for spending Federal money in the poorest districts have been stripped 
away from this legislation. I urge a ``no'' vote on this.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I too want to join my colleagues in indicating to the 
people of Colorado who are going through a very, very difficult time, 
and many of those young men and young women will have that scar with 
them for years to come, that our thoughts and our prayers in the 
Congress of the United States are certainly with them.
  Some years ago, the State of Pennsylvania introduced a program called 
Communities that Care. They gave an opportunity to local school 
districts to join in that effort if they wished. Communities that Care 
is a research-based prevention program that identifies and seeks to 
reduce the risk factors that make children vulnerable to crime. I am 
very proud of one of several of the districts in my district that took 
advantage of this opportunity.
  I, at one point, was the president of the school board, and the 
Dallastown area school district joined in this effort. They joined with 
the Healthy York County Coalition, which is an affiliate of the York 
Health Systems, because that system had determined that the greatest 
health problems that we faced in the area were those dealing with 
violence.
  One of the things that the Dallastown area school district did is 
started tracing early in the elementary career of a student just 
exactly what their attendance factors show. It became very evident to 
them that as these early childhood children, in elementary school, were 
missing more and more school, there certainly had to be a reason and a 
cause.
  One of the things that they did was assign a high school mentor to 
each of these children that were having difficulty in elementary 
school, and in 90 percent of those cases those mentors became very, 
very positive role models for those children. The whole effort was to 
steer them away from violence, to keep them in school and to do well in 
school, just a program that is working and a program that, of course, I 
think will be duplicated and replicated and is being replicated all 
over the country.
  Early intervention is very, very important and those signs show up 
very, very early in a child's life in elementary school. We need to 
deal with those problems early on to prevent what we have seen happen 
yesterday and what is happening across the country on an all too 
regular basis.
  Ms. SANCHEZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 800, the 
Education Flexibility Partnership Act of 1999. But on behalf of the 
students, parents and educators of my district in Orange County, 
California, I'd like to remind you of a few things.
  Yes, the ``Ed Flex'' bill returns the decision-making power to our 
local school districts. And that's why I support this bill, because 
teachers, parents and administrators know what's best for our kids.
  But remember that this isn't the only problem facing American 
schools. You don't have to look any further than the TV screen in the 
wake of yesterday's tragedy to know that schools have other problems to 
deal with.
  Particularly in states like California, schools are struggling to 
keep up with the demands of educating a student population with growing 
needs. And they're doing it with a level of federal support that hasn't 
kept up with these trends.
  In particular, schools are bursting at the seams. Kids are going to 
school in portables and rooms that used to be closets. They're going to 
school in split schedules, they're going to school on different year-
around plans, they're taking double lunches--all in order to keep them 
from overflowing our buildings.
  I've introduced HR 415, The Expand and Rebuild America's Schools Act. 
It enables local communities to raise the bond money they need--if and 
when the voters approve--to build new schools and classrooms.
  My fellow colleagues, Ed Flex is great. But all the educational 
flexibility in the world does no good in a school with no place to put 
it to use. So as we prepare to give this bill our final stamp of 
approval, let us not forget that this is just a beginning. We have so 
much more work to do.

[[Page 7036]]


  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the 
managers of this bill. This a very important step in the process to 
move educational control back to the local level. After all, a 
government that governs closest to the people governs best, and this 
bill promotes this principle.
  I do, however, want to express my disappointment that language that 
would have allowed school districts to use class-size reduction funds 
to cover their special-education budget shortfalls was removed from the 
H.R. 800 conference report. This was an important piece of the 
education flexibility bill and it would have been a great benefit to 
schools struggling to fund their special-education budgets.
  Mr. Speaker, the state of Wisconsin is experiencing a huge special-
education shortfall. In the name of special-education, the federal 
government has put in place unfunded manages that are crippling schools 
in Wisconsin and throughout the country.
  For example, I have spoken with Mr. Tom Everett, the Janesville, 
Wisconsin school superintendent back in the First District about his 
special education budget shortfall. Dr. Everett explained that the 
Janesville School system has a $191,000 special-education budget 
shortfall. Average class-size in the Janesville School system for 
grades K-3 is between 18-20 students. Janesville doesn't have a problem 
with overcrowding. Had the special-education provision been included in 
the conference report, Dr. Everett would have been able to use the 
$187,000 allocated to his school system under the President's class-
size reduction to cover their special-education shortfall. In fact, it 
would have covered the shortfall almost completely.
  Mr. Speaker, I will vote in favor of this legislation because it will 
promote flexibility at both the state and federal level, and it will 
provide the opportunity for schools administrators to ``think outside 
the box'' and design systems that truly focus on improving student 
performance. This is a very good bill. However, the special-education 
language would have made it an even better piece of legislation.
  Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, today I am glad to support the 
conference report for the Education Flexibility Act of 1999.
  As one of the twelve pilot states, Oregon has been able to utilize 
this program to avoid bureaucratic hurdles and simplify efforts to 
reform our school system.
  The Ed-Flex program has provided new opportunities to create 
partnerships between community colleges and high schools throughout my 
state.
  Rather than creating two separate and duplicative programs, community 
colleges and high schools have worked together to improve their 
professional technical education programs.
  This flexibility has resulted in an increased number of students 
graduating from high school.
  The Act also allows for flexibility in regulations and requirements 
so that schools can maximize efforts to produce results.
  The Oregon Department of Education has been able to utilize the 
program to simplify its planning and application process.
  This has allowed local school districts the ability to develop a 
single plan that meets state and federal planning requirements, 
consolidate applications for federal funds, and request waivers of both 
federal and state requirements.
  For these reasons, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to 
support this report.
  Mr. McKEON. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the conference 
report accompanying the Education Flexibility Partnership Act, 
otherwise known as Ed-Flex.
  I am pleased to see that the House and Senate conferees were able to 
quickly reach an agreement on this very important legislation.
  Already, our states and school districts are implementing reform 
plans that would be aided by providing them with Ed-Flex waiver 
authority.
  Our states want it. Recently, all of our governors--Republican and 
Democrat alike--recently came to Washington and asked for quick passage 
of this legislation.
  Additionally, when I was home over Easter recess, I met with my local 
school superintendents. Every one of them expressed support for this 
legislation, because it provides them with the latitude they desire in 
order to ensure our children go to the best and safest schools 
possible.
  Through the passage of this conference agreement, this Congress 
furthers its efforts to return dollars and control to the classroom.
  The states currently participating under this program have shown 
remarkable achievement. Now, with this legislation, all of our States 
will be able to have more flexibility to cut redtape so that they can 
implement the effective programs and reform efforts that are being held 
back by Federal requirements and regulations.
  It is too important for this Congress to ignore the successes of the 
Ed-Flex program. Even more important, we must not ignore the needs of 
our state and local education leaders to pass this bill. Our children 
are just too important.
  Again, I rise in support of the conference report and urge all my 
colleagues to support its passage.
  Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of our Nation's 
children. Our children are this country's most precious resource and we 
must place them at the front of our agenda. H.R. 800, the Education 
Flexibility Partnership Act of 1999 will grant states greater 
flexibility in using federal education funds.
  The goals of ``Ed Flex'' are very simple. H.R. 800 will allow schools 
to best meet the needs of their individual students by allowing school 
districts to spend federal education dollars as they see fit. This 
legislation will get our education system back to the basics by sending 
dollars back to the classroom, and encouraging parental involvement.
  Mr. Speaker, the fact is, Washington doesn't know best how to educate 
our children, parents and local school boards do. H.R. 800 will send 
money where it belongs, back to our local communities. Federal dollars 
should be helping students and schools, not hindering them.
  A child's educational success is crucial to their future and the 
future of our Nation. I urge my colleagues to support the Ed Flex 
Conference Report and support our children.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mica). Without objection, the previous 
question is ordered on the conference report.
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the conference report.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a 
quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not 
present.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
  The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 368, 
nays 57, not voting 9, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 94]

                               YEAS--368

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Aderholt
     Allen
     Andrews
     Archer
     Armey
     Bachus
     Baird
     Baker
     Baldacci
     Baldwin
     Ballenger
     Barcia
     Barr
     Barrett (NE)
     Barrett (WI)
     Bartlett
     Barton
     Bass
     Bateman
     Bentsen
     Bereuter
     Berkley
     Berman
     Berry
     Biggert
     Bilbray
     Bilirakis
     Bishop
     Blagojevich
     Bliley
     Blumenauer
     Blunt
     Boehlert
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bono
     Boswell
     Boucher
     Boyd
     Brady (TX)
     Brown (CA)
     Brown (OH)
     Bryant
     Burr
     Burton
     Buyer
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Camp
     Campbell
     Canady
     Cannon
     Capps
     Capuano
     Cardin
     Castle
     Chabot
     Chambliss
     Chenoweth
     Clement
     Coble
     Coburn
     Collins
     Combest
     Condit
     Cook
     Cooksey
     Costello
     Cox
     Cramer
     Crane
     Cubin
     Cunningham
     Danner
     Davis (FL)
     Davis (VA)
     Deal
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     Delahunt
     DeLauro
     DeLay
     DeMint
     Deutsch
     Diaz-Balart
     Dickey
     Dicks
     Dixon
     Doggett
     Dooley
     Doolittle
     Doyle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Edwards
     Ehlers
     Ehrlich
     Emerson
     English
     Eshoo
     Etheridge
     Evans
     Everett
     Ewing
     Farr
     Fletcher
     Foley
     Forbes
     Ford
     Fossella
     Fowler
     Frank (MA)
     Franks (NJ)
     Frelinghuysen
     Frost
     Gallegly
     Ganske
     Gejdenson
     Gekas
     Gephardt
     Gibbons
     Gilchrest
     Gillmor
     Gilman
     Gonzalez
     Goode
     Goodlatte
     Goodling
     Gordon
     Goss
     Graham
     Granger
     Green (TX)
     Green (WI)
     Greenwood
     Gutknecht
     Hall (OH)
     Hall (TX)
     Hansen
     Hastert
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayes
     Hayworth
     Hefley
     Herger
     Hill (IN)
     Hill (MT)
     Hilleary
     Hinojosa
     Hobson
     Hoeffel
     Hoekstra
     Holden
     Holt
     Hooley
     Horn
     Hostettler
     Houghton
     Hoyer
     Hulshof
     Hunter
     Hutchinson
     Hyde
     Inslee
     Isakson
     Istook
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Jefferson
     Jenkins
     John
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones (NC)
     Jones (OH)
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur
     Kasich
     Kelly

[[Page 7037]]


     Kildee
     Kind (WI)
     King (NY)
     Kingston
     Kleczka
     Klink
     Knollenberg
     Kolbe
     Kuykendall
     LaFalce
     LaHood
     Lampson
     Largent
     Larson
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Lazio
     Leach
     Levin
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (KY)
     Linder
     Lipinski
     LoBiondo
     Lofgren
     Lowey
     Lucas (KY)
     Lucas (OK)
     Luther
     Maloney (CT)
     Maloney (NY)
     Manzullo
     Mascara
     Matsui
     McCarthy (MO)
     McCollum
     McCrery
     McGovern
     McHugh
     McInnis
     McIntosh
     McIntyre
     McKeon
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Metcalf
     Mica
     Millender-McDonald
     Miller (FL)
     Miller, Gary
     Minge
     Moakley
     Mollohan
     Moore
     Moran (KS)
     Moran (VA)
     Morella
     Murtha
     Myrick
     Napolitano
     Neal
     Nethercutt
     Ney
     Northup
     Norwood
     Oberstar
     Ortiz
     Ose
     Oxley
     Packard
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Paul
     Pease
     Peterson (MN)
     Peterson (PA)
     Petri
     Phelps
     Pickering
     Pickett
     Pitts
     Pombo
     Pomeroy
     Porter
     Portman
     Price (NC)
     Pryce (OH)
     Quinn
     Radanovich
     Rahall
     Ramstad
     Rangel
     Regula
     Reyes
     Reynolds
     Riley
     Rodriguez
     Roemer
     Rogan
     Rogers
     Rohrabacher
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Rothman
     Roukema
     Royce
     Ryan (WI)
     Ryun (KS)
     Sabo
     Sanchez
     Sanders
     Sandlin
     Sanford
     Sawyer
     Scarborough
     Schaffer
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Shaw
     Shays
     Sherman
     Sherwood
     Shimkus
     Shows
     Shuster
     Simpson
     Sisisky
     Skeen
     Skelton
     Slaughter
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Smith (WA)
     Snyder
     Souder
     Spence
     Spratt
     Stabenow
     Stearns
     Stenholm
     Strickland
     Stump
     Stupak
     Sununu
     Sweeney
     Talent
     Tancredo
     Tanner
     Tauscher
     Tauzin
     Taylor (MS)
     Taylor (NC)
     Terry
     Thomas
     Thornberry
     Thune
     Thurman
     Tiahrt
     Toomey
     Towns
     Traficant
     Turner
     Udall (NM)
     Upton
     Visclosky
     Walden
     Walsh
     Wamp
     Watkins
     Watts (OK)
     Waxman
     Weiner
     Weldon (FL)
     Weldon (PA)
     Weller
     Wexler
     Weygand
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wilson
     Wise
     Wolf
     Wu
     Wynn
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)

                                NAYS--57

     Becerra
     Bonior
     Borski
     Brady (PA)
     Brown (FL)
     Carson
     Clay
     Clayton
     Clyburn
     Conyers
     Coyne
     Crowley
     Cummings
     Davis (IL)
     Dingell
     Engel
     Fattah
     Filner
     Gutierrez
     Hastings (FL)
     Hilliard
     Hinchey
     Jackson (IL)
     Kennedy
     Kilpatrick
     Kucinich
     Lee
     Lewis (GA)
     Markey
     Martinez
     McDermott
     McKinney
     Meek (FL)
     Meeks (NY)
     Menendez
     Miller, George
     Mink
     Nadler
     Obey
     Olver
     Owens
     Pastor
     Payne
     Pelosi
     Rivers
     Roybal-Allard
     Rush
     Scott
     Serrano
     Stark
     Thompson (MS)
     Tierney
     Velazquez
     Vento
     Waters
     Watt (NC)
     Woolsey

                             NOT VOTING--9

     Lantos
     McCarthy (NY)
     Nussle
     Salmon
     Saxton
     Schakowsky
     Smith (MI)
     Thompson (CA)
     Udall (CO)

                              {time}  1207

  Messrs. HILLIARD, GUTIERREZ, MARTINEZ, CROWLEY, RUSH, Ms. BROWN of 
Florida, and Ms. PELOSI changed their votes from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
  Mr. DEUTSCH changed his vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
  So the conference report was agreed to.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
  Stated for:
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 94, I was stuck 
in the No. 4 elevator in the Cannon House Office Building. Had I been 
present, I would have voted ``yea.''
  Mr. THOMPSON of California. Mr. Speaker, during rollcall vote No. 94 
on April 20, 1999. I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I 
would have voted ``yea.''
  Mrs. McCARTHY of New York. Mr. Speaker, I was absent for rollcall 
vote No. 94. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on the 
Conference Report to H.R. 800--the Education Flexibility Act.

                          ____________________