[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 20530-20531]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                   TRIBUTES TO CHAIRMAN BILL GOODLING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 19, 1999, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague from Ohio (Mr. 
Sawyer).
  Mr. SAWYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. 
Hoeffel) for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, in a few days, or maybe a little longer, all of us will 
be heading home. Most of us will be flying. Bill will be driving. And 
for the first time in his more than 25 years in Congress, he will be 
going home without the expectation of returning for the long term. That 
will be sad for all of us who have worked with him.
  He has provided lessons to us all in more ways than we can count. I 
want to concentrate on just one though. When most of us go home, we 
will go home by getting on airplanes. And at some point before that 
plane takes off, there will be a flight attendant who comes and stands 
before us and announces all of the emergency procedures and will say 
that in the unlikely event of an emergency, that oxygen masks will 
deploy from the compartment overhead. If we are traveling with 
children, they will tell us to put on our own oxygen mask first and 
then put on those for the children.
  It seems kind of counterintuitive, those of us who care as deeply as 
all of us do about children. We do not think that that is the right 
thing to do. But in the end, it is, of course, the right thing to do, 
because we need to be in a position to take care of those children.
  Mr. Speaker, Bill Goodling has understood that in a way that has 
borne itself out in policy across this Congress throughout his 13 
terms. One of his proudest accomplishments I am sure is the development 
of the Even Start program. When he was superintendent at Spring Grove 
area schools, Bill Goodling noticed that the youngsters who were having 
the most difficulty in school were often the children of some former 
students who had also not performed well academically. Working

[[Page 20531]]

with his best teachers, he developed a program which would provide 
focused literacy assistance to those children and to their parents at 
the same time, so that the parents could help reinforce the skills of 
the children.
  When he came to Congress, he developed this into the Even Start 
program, which has been a model of what it means for parents to be 
their children's first and most important teacher by improving the 
academic skills of the parents themselves.
  His work on the National Literacy Act, during a time when we were 
having enormous difficulty getting anything passed through this 
Congress, the National Literacy Act was the only education legislation 
that was enacted into law during that session of Congress.
  Today, the Literacy Involves Family Together Act, the LIFT Act, will 
extend his literacy legacy into the 21st century and beyond.
  The truth of the matter is that what the gentlewoman from New York 
(Mrs. McCarthy) implied is a vivid truth in the life of Bill Goodling. 
If one has ever really been a teacher, they are always a teacher.
  Mr. Speaker, I say to the gentleman, We are learning from you still, 
Bill.
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman 
from Ohio for his eloquence.
  Mr. Speaker, those of us in Pennsylvania are very proud of Bill 
Goodling. I would simply like to add my best wishes to him and my 
congratulations to him for his long and illustrious career and note in 
particular with my support and gratitude, his dedication to the concept 
of local control of education.
  Every time we try in Congress to deal with educational matters, we 
can be accused of trying to interfere somehow with the very valid 
principle of local control of education. I think that Mr. Goodling has 
always held our feet to the fire as an institution to make sure we did 
not interfere with that. But he has supported notable legislation, like 
the Education Flexibility Act, which gives more flexibility locally, 
while also understanding that the Federal Government has a significant 
role to play in promoting public schools.
  I think that Bill Goodling got that balance just about right, and we 
will remember his leadership on that, and so many other educational 
issues, after he has left these halls, but certainly not left our 
memory. We will be grateful to him for many years to come.

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