[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19789-19790]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



          A BIPARTISAN SOLUTION TO EDUCATION CRISIS IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, of the many challenges that our 
country faces in this new century, there is none greater than 
education, educating our populace so that we have a skilled workforce 
and so that everybody has the level of education that they need in 
today's economy.
  When I go around my district and go visit businesses and it does not 
matter what size or what level of skill they are looking for and I ask 
them what their greatest challenge is, the answer is always the same, 
finding employees. This is particularly true certainly of high-skilled 
jobs, computer, engineers, math, science, but it is also true across 
the board of just about any level of job that you could need in any 
business. We are not educating our population to fill the jobs that are 
available in our country. If we are going to maintain the economic 
growth that we have enjoyed for the last 7 or 8 years, we are going to 
have to start doing that.
  Increasingly, the battle over education has broken down into an 
either/or partisan debate that is not benefiting either party or 
certainly not benefiting the people of this country. On the one side 
you have people saying that all we need to do is spend more money on 
public education and the problems will be solved. On the other side, 
you have people saying all we need to do is privatize the system and it 
will magically be solved. The truth is that neither answer really works 
or really applies to the challenge we face in this country.
  I rise today to talk about a new solution to this that will bring 
some of the ideas from both sides and hopefully forge a bipartisan 
solution to the education crisis that we have in our country. As a 
member of the New Democrat Coalition, this is something that Members 
like the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) and the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Dooley) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Davis) and 
the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), myself, and many others have 
been working on to forge a solution to our education problem that gets 
away from the old partisan polemic, that gets away from the idea of 
trying to score political points on education and to actually work 
towards a solution. And it blends together a couple of very basic 
ideas. Yes, we need to support public education. Ninety percent of the 
students in this country, more in most places, are educated in public 
institutions. They need our support. Anyone who says money does not 
matter in education is not being realistic.
  I do not think you would hear any businessman say that money does not 
matter in his or her ability to run their business. It matters. But it 
also matters every little bit as much how you spend that money. Not 
only do we need to support public education, we also need to make sure 
that there is accountability and choice at every level of the education 
establishment. Right now in K-12 education that really is not true. 
Either for the students or the employees, whether it is administrators, 
teachers, principals, students, whatever, we really do not have many 
methods to measure results, to measure how well our students are doing, 
how well our teachers are doing, how well our administrators are doing. 
The people of this country are demanding that accountability. They will 
support public education, they will support lower class sizes, better 
school construction, mandatory preschool, a variety of different things 
but they want to make sure they are getting their money's worth.
  What we need to advocate is programs that give parents and students 
reasonable reason to believe that we are going to have that sort of 
accountability within our education system. We need to measure results. 
I understand that nobody is excited about having their results 
measured. If you show up to work and someone says, ``Okay, today we're 
going to do a 2-week evaluation of how well you're doing at your

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job.'' It is not something that anybody is looking forward to nor is it 
easy to do. I am not advocating that we simply have one multiple choice 
test fits all. It is a complicated process to evaluate. But some 
evaluation has to be done.
  It is not enough for those of us who advocate public schools to stand 
up and say, ``Well, it's too tough to evaluate. We can't really tell 
you what schools are working and which ones are not.'' We need to 
figure that out.
  We also need to give parents choice. Expanding charter schools in 
this country would give parents realistic public school choice. They 
could mold and shape their local community school and be invested in 
it. Those options would help improve public schools. But at the end of 
the day, we also need to fund schools. If we are going to tell teachers 
that we are going to hold them more accountable, we are going to have 
to pay them more. You will not attract people to the teaching 
profession if they know they are starting out at $24,000 and topping 
out at $50,000 when they have other options.
  Another good idea, something that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Davis) has worked on a lot, is the idea of alternative certification, 
the idea of taking people who have been working in the business world, 
have developed skills and giving them an alternative method to allow 
them to teach perhaps for a short period of time to help fill that 
quality issue. So we are going to have to increase quality through 
increasing pay and increasing accountability if we are truly going to 
move forward in education.
  In this election year, I ask both parties to step up to this problem. 
This should not be an issue where we try to advance an idea or a piece 
of legislation for the political purpose of making the other party look 
like either, A, they do not support public schools or, B, they do not 
support accountability. We need people working together who both 
support public schools and support accountability and choice. I think 
that is the majority of this body, frankly. We just need to forge that 
coalition and work on that so that we can move forward.
  Mr. Speaker, one final point. Local control is going to be a critical 
aspect of this. This cannot be solved from Washington, D.C. Local 
schools have to make the difference, and we have to empower them to 
make that difference.

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