[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9596-9603]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



             EDUCATION IN AMERICA AND PUBLIC SCHOOL REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sherwood). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I intend to be joined here in a few 
minutes by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) and possibly some 
other Members of the House as well.
  Mr. Speaker, we had the occasion today of holding a field hearing in 
St. Paul, Minnesota, and I want to talk a little bit about the content 
of that hearing, and also some other issues that are critical with 
respect to education in America in and public school reform in general.
  Mr. Speaker, the hearing was held, as I mentioned, in St. Paul this 
morning. It was conducted by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Hoekstra). The subcommittee that conducted the hearing was the 
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on 
Education and the Workforce, the committee that deals with most of the 
investigations not only that we have conducted with respect to waste, 
fraud, and abuse in the Department of Education, but also focusing on 
research and investigation into different innovative activities in 
public schools; finding out what works, for example, and what does not 
work; finding out and learning more and witnessing firsthand some of 
the innovative ideas that are taking place throughout the fifty States 
under the leadership of Governors and State legislators and other more 
local leaders.
  Today we met with the Superintendent of Schools and some State 
legislators and some others who are leading the way in education reform 
and providing some great examples in the State of Minnesota. That just 
adds, Mr. Speaker, to the collection of data and information that we 
have been assembling from throughout the country. The subcommittee has 
been now to 21 different States analyzing the various education reform 
efforts that are taking place in those States.
  One of the topics that was discussed at great length this morning at 
the hearing was charter schools. Charter schools really got their start 
in the State of Minnesota. The idea had been discussed and had been 
bantered around in the halls of State legislatures throughout the 
country from time to time prior to that. I think it was in 1991 that 
Minnesota became the first State to pass charter school legislation.
  Charter schools are public schools. They are still funded by the 
government, run by the government. In fact, they are owned by the 
government, but they are managed and operated often in different ways, 
largely defined by a specific contract or a charter, as it is called; 
hence the name ``charter schools.''
  That contract is one that is usually proposed by a group of parents, 
sometimes a group of teachers, sometimes

[[Page 9597]]

an organization of some sort. In many cases, charter schools are 
established by existing public education institutions that find 
particular difficulty with the policies, rules, regulations, or funding 
mechanisms of the State they are in or the district that they fall 
under. That usually constitutes the need or the origin of the charter.
  What motivates these groups and these operations or individuals and 
parents to venture off on their own and try a new way of educating, 
trying to, for example, break the mold of education delivery in a 
community, it is often motivated by test scores that are insufficient 
to meet the needs of the parents that consider charter schools.
  Sometimes it is a management-related issue. In many cases we have 
heard, for example, there is a strong desire to treat teachers like 
real professionals. Too often the union wage scale that is at play in 
most States around the country prevents teachers from being treated 
like real professionals. Consequently, most teachers are paid in a way 
where the absolute best teacher in a district is compensated on the 
same basis as the absolute worst teacher in a district.
  So often we find education professionals and parents who believe that 
their children learn best in a professional learning environment, where 
teachers are treated like professionals rather than all treated the 
same, as though there is no distinction between them.

                              {time}  2000

  Charter schools are flourishing throughout the country. We are seeing 
more and more of them. That is certainly the case in Minnesota, as 
provided in the testimony to the committee today. I think they said 
there are somewhere on the order of 60 or 70 charter schools, somewhere 
in that neighborhood, I do not remember the number exactly, charter 
schools that exist now in Minnesota. Some have closed, which is 
something that we should actually focus on a little bit tonight.
  These charters, these contracts, are usually for a limited duration 
and period of time, at the end of which the contract ends or expires 
and must be renewed between the charter applicant and the school 
district. If the charter has met all of the objectives and the goals 
that it outlined in the original application, then the charters 
presumably will be continued. Sometimes there are political battles 
that prevent that from occurring, but for all intents and purposes they 
are generally approved if they met the objectives that they initially 
set out to achieve.
  But if a charter school fails to meet those objectives, they 
frequently find themselves shut down, put out of business. Often it 
does not even take that long for the renewal question to be raised. 
Often it comes down to a matter of cash flow. If charter schools cannot 
satisfy customers, in other words if they cannot satisfy the parents of 
those children, who care about them the most, in a way that convinces 
those parents that the education of their child is being accomplished, 
well, then they simply go somewhere else and the cash flow dwindles and 
the charter school cannot survive.
  It is always unfortunate to see a school fail, but it is important 
that it occur. And that competitive notion, that level of 
accountability placed in the hands of parents, rather than the hands of 
government workers, is what makes all the difference in this particular 
venue of education reform; and it is why charter schools work well 
generally throughout the country, and why almost every charter school 
in America has a substantial waiting list of customers that would like 
to be educated in those schools.
  That is the case in Minnesota as well. When a charter school fails or 
does not meet those objectives, the doors close. So the question ought 
to be for all of us here, if we look at charter schools as these 
microcosms of education research, of experimentation at some times 
certainly, but as laboratories of sorts where different educational 
methods are tested, we ought to also consider the customer-driven 
impacts that charter schools are subject to and ask ourselves when will 
we ever start applying the same kind of standards to the rest of 
government-owned schools in general?
  Mr. Speaker, what I mean by that is that when a regular government-
owned or public school fails to meet the needs of local parents and 
raise the academic standards and the opportunity for children, those 
are kind of handled administratively. But the children who are in those 
schools are frequently trapped there, their parents having virtually no 
opportunity or no choice to go somewhere else or leave. Consequently, 
there really is no recourse for those parents; no consequence for a 
school that is not meeting the needs of its community.
  So we ought to ask ourselves why, if charter schools and the presence 
of competition and parent-driven measurements of quality results in 
about 4 percent of charter schools failing, why is there no equivalent 
measurement with the regular government-owned schools? And that is 
something we ought to explore and we ought to perhaps provide. Because 
what really drives the agenda in regular community schools and 
government-owned institutions and neighborhoods, regular public schools 
as we know them, is the particular attributes that are assembled there: 
the principal that was assigned there by the district and the teachers 
that were hired there by a school district. Then the parents of the 
children who happen to live in a particular neighborhood pick these 
school for a variety of reasons.
  The school curriculum, the way it is managed, the way it is 
organized, and the way it is funded frequently have little to do with 
why a family decided to live in a neighborhood, let alone be enrolled 
in a particular education establishment and education institution.
  So it was an interesting hearing because the message that was given 
to members of the subcommittee was that Washington ought to go slow 
when it comes to charter schools. Charter schools were created at the 
State level. They were inspired by local initiative. They were a 
response to the demands of customers and the responsiveness of State 
legislators, primarily, in Minnesota, California, and Colorado and in 
other States since then, those early days in the early 1990s.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a response that is working and is providing a 
remarkable education opportunity for many, many children across the 
country.
  ``Keep your hands off of these schools for a while,'' is the way I 
would summarize today's message on charter schools. There are efforts 
here in Washington to try to address some of the problems that charter 
schools are confronting, namely start-up costs and getting themselves 
off the ground. Finding a way to organize an education institution from 
scratch is a very difficult endeavor indeed. Finding a building to 
house a charter school is a critical challenge as well.
  So there is a temptation on behalf of those of us here in Washington 
who want to see charter schools succeed to reach into the Federal 
coffers and find ways to get funds from Washington, D.C., to help these 
local problems; and that is a good problem to be concerned about. That 
is a sentiment that I find gratifying; and I am encouraged by it, that 
there are people here who want to help charter schools.
  But the concern voiced today on behalf of those who actually run 
those schools was one of appreciation for Federal concern, but a well-
placed fear of the mandates that typically follow the Federal funds 
that come out of Washington.
  I say a ``well-placed fear'' because that is the history, in fact, of 
the Federal involvement in education. Every time something good happens 
in education, people here in Washington want to celebrate it and then 
become a part of it, and politicians just cannot resist the temptation 
for claiming credit for it. The best way people have in Washington, it 
seems, to show compassion and concern for something that works well is 
by dishing out lots of cash. Ultimately, the cash gets attached to 
Federal rules, Federal guidelines, Federal regulations and pretty soon 
that enterprise that was a good idea, that started out as a remarkable 
reform, perhaps a

[[Page 9598]]

transformation of education, becomes co-opted by the Federal 
Government.
  That was the concern voiced by some of the most forceful charter 
school advocates that we heard from this morning in our hearing in 
Minneapolis.
  Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan), my colleague, 
has joined me on the floor. He has heard a little bit of the 
discussion, and I yield the floor to him.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) for his leadership on education in the 
Committee on Education and the Workforce. He is one of the bright, 
shining stars in Congress on pushing for education reform. I just 
wanted to come down and join him in this discussion about education. 
Specifically, about the kinds of unfunded Federal mandates that we are 
imposing on our local school districts.
  This week, Mr. Speaker, we are going to be considering the Labor-HHS-
Education bill. That is the bill that funds all the Federal Government 
education programs. Well, what I find is unique and interesting is that 
for the last 30 years we have been doing this, and then some, is that 
in 1975 Congress passed a law, a good law, the Individuals With 
Disabilities Education Act. Everybody calls this IDEA. Well, what that 
law basically did was to say that all children with disabilities should 
receive a quality education.
  That is a very prudent measure, and a law that I think the gentleman 
from Colorado and I both support. But what they did in that law was say 
that the Federal Government would fund 40 percent of IDEA spending in 
our local schools and that the State government would then fund the 
remaining 60 percent. So a local school district would not have to pay 
for the educational mandate being imposed on local school districts.
  Mr. Speaker, that was 1975. That just is not the case today. Today, 
in the First District of Wisconsin, Janesville, Beloit, Racine, 
Kenosha, they are getting about 7 percent of the funding for IDEA. Now, 
nationwide, the average is about 12 percent, because this Congress and 
a couple before have doubled the commitment to IDEA under the new 
majority in Congress. But that is just not enough.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to give a quick illustration of what this 
unfunded mandate does to our local schools. Many of us, and I know the 
gentleman from Colorado is a leader in this, are advocates for local 
control. I, and many others, believe that the educational decisions 
should best be left to those who know our children the best: teachers, 
parents, administrators.
  As a former Secretary of Education, Bill Bennett, once said: 
``Education is the moral obligation and responsibility of the parent, 
the ethical responsibility of the teacher, and the constitutional 
responsibility of the State.''
  But an education with respect to IDEA, it specifically is a Federal 
mandate that forces our local schools to pay for this. But when the 
local school districts come in and have to pay for this, where is 
Washington? In my case, where is Madison, the State government? They 
are nowhere to be found. Local school districts are being stuck with 
the bill.
  What this means is that local control is atrophying. Local control is 
being sucked out of our schools because our local school boards or 
property taxes are being driven toward chasing unfunded mandates from 
Washington.
  In a State like Wisconsin where we have a revenue cap on education 
spending and our education budget, it is even felt more. So when we 
have a revenue cap on what we can spend on education, on how high 
property taxes can go, and then Washington comes along, as it is doing, 
and imposes this mandate, a very costly one, a prudent one, but a very 
costly one, and does not live up to its end of the bargain, what we do 
is take every dollar out of those local education needs and put it 
towards chasing an unfunded Federal mandate.
  So every time Madison and Washington impose this mandate on our 
schools on a year-to-year basis, every time a school board in 
Janesville, Wisconsin, wants to come up with a new innovative program, 
a new innovative idea to treat the unique needs and problems of our 
schools in Janesville or Beloit or Kenosha or Colorado, every dollar we 
send is a dollar taken out of local control, a dollar taken out of that 
local resource decision-making.
  By imposing these unfunded mandates, as we are doing in IDEA, on our 
local school districts, we are taking money away from local decision-
making.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, that was the second point I wanted to get 
into, because we also heard today at that subcommittee hearing in St. 
Paul from State Representative Alice Seagren of the Minnesota House of 
Representatives. Alice was a very articulate spokeswoman for not only 
the charter school movement, but when it came to the discussion of 
whether the Federal Government ought to provide additional funding for 
school construction at the local level.
  She said, ``That is a nice thought and we appreciate the sentiment, 
but if you really want to help our schools, fully fund the mandate 
under the IDEA.''
  Going back to the 1970s, the gentleman is right. This is a mandate 
that was really handed down by the Supreme Court. And for those of us 
who are conservatives, and we are now joined by the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), as the three of us here are, we believe that 
the role of the U.S. Department of Education ought to be minimal when 
it comes to managing our local schools. The IDEA program is probably 
the one Federal program where we have an obligation to put the cash 
forward for it, primarily because the Supreme Court has interpreted the 
Constitution in a way that suggests we have to.
  But the gentleman is right. What started out as a program where the 
Federal Government promised to fund 40 percent of the total cost of 
implementing the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, under the 
Clinton and Gore administration that percentage was dropped all the way 
down to 6 percent. We fought for the last 5 or 6 years here as a 
Republican majority in the House and in the Senate to bump that up. We 
have got it up to I think it was 12 last year. It is scheduled to go up 
to about 15 this year. But it is still far short of the 40 percent.
  Mr. Speaker, getting us up to 40 percent ought to be our top 
priority, and I know we are all united in our agreement on that point.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. If the gentleman would yield, so when the 
gentleman is saying that the President, the Clinton administration 
dropped the commitment to the Individuals With Disabilities Education 
Act, did general Federal education spending drop at the same time?
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Not at all. General education funding has increased 
dramatically. But the priority of this one mandate that the Supreme 
Court has tasked this body with funding has gone in the opposite 
direction and has actually been reduced in funding.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. What we have been seeing with this 
administration, and the gentleman should correct me if I am wrong, is 
the fact that they have lessened our commitment. They have gone away 
from funding the unfunded mandate we are imposing on local schools, to 
funding more Federal education programs that have even more strings 
attached to them, which tie the hands of local education decision-
makers, and give us even more unfunded mandates in our schools?
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is precisely right. One of 
the expert witnesses we heard from today, Dr. Karen Effrem, who is an 
M.D., a pediatrician, put that figure at about 70 percent Federal 
mandate percentage. She said, paraphrasing her words: essentially, what 
Washington is doing to States is providing somewhere around 6 to 7 
percent of the total funding that actually gets to a classroom, and in 
exchange for that is attaching about 75 percent of all the rules, 
regulations, and mandates that a local school has to deal with.

                              {time}  2015

  So the effect of the Clinton-Gore administration in Washington on 
education is just as the gentleman from

[[Page 9599]]

Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) has described. It has been one to pump more cash 
into the Department of Education, not to classrooms, but to the 
Department, the bureaucracy, to spread that bureaucracy wider and to 
more and more Federal programs, none of which work very well. I might 
add that the end result at the end of the day is that the few important 
legitimate programs that Washington ought to be concerned about, 
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act being primary, is diffused 
in this morass of waste, fraud, and abuse of bureaucratic expenditures. 
The taxpayers are getting very little for their education funding when 
we talk about dollars that come to Washington.
  Our goal is to try to shrink the size of the Federal government, 
reduce its influence on managing the day-to-day activities in 
classrooms, and give the resources to where the local leaders tell us 
they need it most, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act being 
paramount.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I see we have been joined by the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), another education reformer. And 
I would like to include the gentleman from Michigan in the 
conversation, but I would like to inform my colleagues of an amendment 
that I have pending in the Committee on Rules right now that recognizes 
the fact that Washington has been creating new programs, growing new 
programs, putting new strings on these programs, and diminishing the 
commitment to IDEA. I have an amendment which seeks to try and put some 
more money within the existing appropriations bill into Individuals 
with Disabilities Education Act to try and help toward funding that 
unfunded mandate.
  What I found is if one looks at the 21st Century Learning Centers, it 
is a new program that started in 1995. In tracking this program, it was 
a program conceived of, authored by, and passed by a Republican 
Congressman from Wisconsin where I come from, Steve Gunderson, who is 
no longer serving in Congress.
  He passed that program at that time to do this, to open up schools, 
specifically high schools, to rural areas who do not have those kinds 
of facilities from other means. Meaning if one is in rural western 
Wisconsin, one does not have a YMCA, one does not have a library or 
village hall, allow the community as a large to use the swimming pool 
of a high school, the library of a high school, the computer lab of a 
high school after schools, during summers. That program was funded with 
$750,000 to basically keep the schools open for these purposes. Guess 
what that is funded at now in this bill, $600 million. We have seen an 
800 percent increase in the funding for the 21st Century Learning 
Centers.
  The other point is this, Congressman Gunderson, who actually offered 
this, came to the committee fairly recently and said, This program does 
not look anything like the program I wrote when I passed it into law. 
This program has gone well beyond its scope and intent. This program 
has nothing to do with its original intent. It is overfunded. Its 
mandate is much, much larger. Now it is duplicating other Federal 
programs we have in the Federal Government from the Department of 
Education.
  So we have another duplicative program from the Department of 
Education. It has gone beyond its original mandate. It has grown 800 
percent in the last 6 years when we are still sending this unfunded 
mandate on our local school districts, and we still have kids with 
disabilities who are being educated, and one is almost pitting those 
kinds of kids against all other kids in schools when Washington 
continues to send this unfunded mandate to our school districts.
  What my amendment would do is take half of the money from this new 
growing program that duplicates other programs and put it into 
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and simply say that, if we 
are going to be increasing programs from the Department of Education 
which already duplicates other programs by 800 percent, why do not we 
first take care of the unfunded mandates we have right now. Why do we 
not first pay our bills and tell our local school districts, we want 
you to at indicate the resources. We want you to make the decisions in 
our schools, in our classrooms, in our school districts.
  That is why I am hoping that this amendment will be made in order by 
the Committee on Rules so we can have a demonstration of our commitment 
on the floor of Congress for trying to get to this unfunded mandate, 
for saying no to growing new programs, duplicative programs by the tune 
of 800 percent, and getting to this unfunded mandate.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Will the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) yield?
  Mr. SCHAFFER. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I, along with three of our other 
colleagues, had a great hearing in Minnesota today. It really builds on 
what we have learned. I think today was the 21st State that we have 
gone to, the 23rd field hearing that we have gone to people at the 
local and at the State level. We have asked them what is working in 
education and then really, and we should maybe do this in future 
hearings, to give us a grade as to how Washington is either helping 
them or assisting them in getting them and enabling them to get done 
what they want to get done at the local level.
  I think one of the witnesses that we had today, I do not remember 
exactly which one it was, maybe the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
Schaffer) does, who said when one takes a look at the system that we 
have created here in Washington, of hundreds of different programs, 
hundreds of different mandates, and the number that we have heard today 
was, we get 6 percent of the money from Washington, we get 70 percent 
of the rules and the regulations.
  That is not outlandish. I mean, consistently when we go from one 
State to the next, Ohio, they have documented it. They said we get 7 
percent of our money from Washington, we get 50 percent of the 
mandates, 50 percent of the paperwork. So that is consistent from all 
the States that we have talked to.
  But one of the people said, ``Only you in Washington could come up 
with a system that looks like this. If you are actually focused on 
kids, if you were focused on results, which is kids learning, you would 
have a very different set of programs and requirements. Only a system 
that is focused on process, you know, that this is what we want to have 
happen and this funding stream and a system that measures process 
rather than kids learning is what we have created here in Washington.''
  Again, we heard it in Minnesota today. We have heard it at every 
single State that we have gone to; that is, the formula for kids' 
learning, parental involvement, number one. That is the key. A focus on 
basic academics.
  Again, we have got a charter school today talking, traditional public 
schools talking about a focus on basic academics. You have to provide a 
safe and a drug-free school. You cannot have learning go on where kids 
are concerned about their safety or they are concerned about what their 
colleagues or their peers are doing in the classroom or in the 
hallways. You have to focus on getting dollars into the classroom. That 
consistently is the formula.
  The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) is talking about we have got 
this program, we have got that program, what have we learned? We 
learned that, when one has got hundreds of education programs, one has 
got streams of paperwork of bureaucracy; that every time Wisconsin, 
Michigan, or Minnesota sends dollars to Washington for education they 
have got to come back to us begging to get some of their money back.
  We then give it to them. We give it to them with a whole string of 
mandates so they end up spending it on things they do not necessarily 
believe are their priorities. Instead of getting a dollar back for 
every dollar that they send here, when one calculates all the 
paperwork, all of the bureaucracy, all these types of things, we 
believe that at most they get 60 cents back.
  Maybe sometime later as we go through the process there are some 
other things that we can talk about.

[[Page 9600]]

We can talk about exactly how effective the bureaucracy is here in 
Washington.
  This is a Department that now, for 2 years in a row, has failed its 
audit, meaning that it cannot come back to Congress, it cannot come 
back to the American people, the people that fund this agency, and say 
we have been very careful in managing your money and we can tell you 
exactly where it goes. We know for 2 years they failed their audit. We 
know that for at least 3 more years, they will not be able to get a 
clean audit.
  We all know that, in that kind of environment, there have been a 
number of opportunities for waste, fraud, and abuse. We can maybe 
outline what some of those are later on as we go through this process. 
Then we can also talk about what some of our priorities are for 
addressing this issue.
  My colleagues have already mentioned one, which is let us fully fund 
and meet the commitments that we have made to local school districts by 
increasing and meeting our commitment on IDEA.
  We can talk about eliminating bureaucracy and red tape through the 
Ed-Flex program, giving school districts more flexibility through the 
State, the straight A's program where we give them the money and say 
you decide whether you want to hire teachers, train teachers, reduce 
class size, or whatever, and also we want to focus on getting 95 cents 
of every Federal education dollar into the classroom. So there is a 
whole series of things that we can talk about as we continue through 
this hour.
  I yield back to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) to either 
build on some of these thoughts or on some other ideas that he may 
have.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to express my 
appreciation to the gentleman from Minnesota (Chairman Hoekstra) for 
holding that hearing in Minnesota. I, as a member of the subcommittee, 
have benefited greatly just by having the chance to travel to many 
communities throughout the country and hear the various ideas that have 
been invented in States with respect to school reform, but to also have 
the opportunity to hear the frequency and the consistency of the 
message my colleagues just described.
  It does not matter whether we are in Minnesota, in Florida, in 
Colorado, or in California, the message never really changes with 
respect to the Federal involvement in education; that is, we really 
appreciate all you folks back there in Washington caring about schools, 
but stop trying to run them from out there. You do not know the names 
of our kids. You do not even know the names of the schools that we have 
here much less know about the specific qualities of a neighborhood or 
the needs of a specific community.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Hoekstra).
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I think the best example today was we know 
that most States or many States, I think it is over 30, 33, 35 States, 
have embarked on a charter school initiative. We have gone around and 
we have heard and we recognize each State is different. This week we 
are going to embark here in Congress on a program to help charter 
schools. Part of that is going to be a school construction program. The 
State representative from Minnesota.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. That was representative Alice Seagren was her name.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Ms. Seagren said, Before you go off on this 
construction program, giving us construction money, let me tell you 
what we are doing here in Minnesota. We do not build schools. We do 
lease plans. So if you come up with a construction program for charter 
schools in Washington, D.C., I am telling you right now that here is 
one State where this only does not work, it flies directly in the face 
of the strategy that we have put in place for charter schools in our 
State. So what is going to happen is people from Minnesota are sending 
money to Washington, and we are not going to be able to get any of it 
back unless we let you in Washington change our strategy for funding 
charter schools. We think we have got a pretty good system. We think it 
makes sense. It is not perfect, but this works for us, and this is what 
we want to do. Now, all of a sudden, to get our money back, we are 
going to have to change our program. Well, up until today, we did not 
even know that Minnesota had that kind of a strategy in place.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. That is precisely right. I want to go back to the 
gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) and his proposal because I assure 
him, he is going to have lots of support here on the floor for an 
amendment that moves to fully fund IDEA at the expense of lower 
priorities that are funded or proposed to be funded in the education 
budget.
  I think there will be other proposals like that, because we are a 
long, long way from being just up to the 40 percent. When we say full 
funding, we are only talking about 40 percent of the total cost of the 
program. This is expensive.
  I do not think any of us deny that those who suffer from various, 
whether it is behavioral disorder or learning disability of some other 
case or so on, that those individuals, those students deserve an equal 
opportunity and access to quality education. We think that is 
important. That ought to be a national priority. The Supreme Court has 
certainly established it as a national priority.
  Our point, though, is if we really believe that, if we really are 
sincere in our belief that all children deserve to learn, and no child 
should be left behind, then we cannot just come up with the rules and 
expect somebody else to pay. That is what is going on in America today. 
So we just want to get up to our commitment to pay 40 percent of the 
cost associated with these Federal mandates. We are not even close. We 
are at about 15 percent today.
  But the direction of the amendment of the gentleman from Wisconsin 
(Mr. Ryan) is really the ultimate local control, because the tremendous 
cost associated with complying with the Individuals with Disabilities 
Education Act steals dollars from every other important priority that 
might exist in the State of Wisconsin, the State of Michigan, my State 
of Colorado, and all States. If we just focus on getting the dollars to 
the one priority we know we have to deal with through the concept of 
fungibility, that frees up funds for everything that is important.
  So for those States, the gentleman mentioned the 21st Century 
Learning Centers earlier, for those States that believe 21st Century 
Learning Centers are what they want and important in that State, paying 
for IDEA frees up the cash to buy 21st Century Learning Centers. But in 
my State, it might be something else. It might be teacher pay in my 
State which is a high priority for us.

                              {time}  2030

  Funding IDEA is a way to provide better pay for teachers. And other 
States they want to lower the property taxes to make it more business 
friendly, and fully funding IDEA frees up funds to lower the property 
taxes in other States.
  So the key and the strength of the argument that I think the 
gentleman has in his favor when he comes to the floor with that 
amendment is that fully funding IDEA really is at the heart of local 
control in Washington, and it ought to be. It seems counterintuitive to 
some. Here we are as conservatives talking about pouring money into a 
program. The reason it works and the reason it is a conservative idea 
is because it does have a liberating effect on States. It focuses our 
emphasis here on Washington more narrowly than what the Clinton/Gore 
administration has tried to do by diffusing dollars to so many programs 
that do not work, and it ultimately results in more dollars getting to 
children, which is what we are for.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, If the gentleman will yield, the 
gentleman has interpreted my amendment precisely correct. I have had 
the opportunity as a freshman Member to have many, many, many meetings 
with school board members, superintendents, teachers, administrators, 
all the different school districts in the district I represent. I have 
an educational advisory board with these types of people

[[Page 9601]]

on there, including parents and home schoolers, to talk about these 
issues. I get the same thing over and over, let us do our job.
  Just in the district I represent, they have vastly different needs, 
vastly different problems. In one end, in Kenosha, you have different 
problems; in the other end, in Janesville you have far different 
problems, let alone the problems that may exist in Harlem or East L.A. 
or Sante Fe, New Mexico. The point is we have a very vast and different 
country.
  We have a priority of educating our children, but the problems we are 
experiencing in our school districts are so different. There are so 
many different ideas out there, so many different solutions out there. 
By funding IDEA, you free up that decision-making power. So when I 
bring an amendment to the floor, which I am hoping the Committee on 
Rules will allow me to do, by funding IDEA or getting closer to meeting 
that mandate, you are not just voting against one program to put money 
into another, you are voting for all those programs out there that 
could be created, if school districts did not have to chase these 
unfunded mandates.
  You are voting for freeing up the hands of parents, teachers, and 
administrators to get involved in their school districts, to tackle 
problems, to address the needs that we have in our individual school 
districts. As a Member of Congress, when you vote to fund IDEA, to free 
up those local resources, reduce property taxes, find the problems and 
address them. My school districts that I represent right now cannot do 
that. They do not have the resources to do the things they think are 
necessary. And you know why? It is because they are chasing unfunded 
Federal mandates. That is really the crux of the matter.
  I noticed that all of these new programs that are coming up here in 
Washington through the administration and the Department of Education 
look pretty good to a politician in Washington. You do not get a lot of 
political kudos when you simply say let us put more money on unfunded 
Federal mandates that has been around since 1975. You get more press, 
you get more notoriety, you sound more proeducation, when you stand up 
here and have a press conference saying I have this brand new program 
or this new program or this new program. But what actually ends up 
happening is each of these new programs takes on a life of their own. 
They put new mandates on our local school districts; they tell the 
administrators how to dot every I, how to cross every T. It is a 
cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all mandate on all of our schools, 
regardless of the uniqueness, regardless of the individual problems 
they may have; and it comes at the expense of funding a mandate that 
the Supreme Court said we have to fund, that current law says we have 
to fund, a mandate that we should fund.
  That is why I think it is important that as we look at our spending 
priorities in any budget in Congress, you prioritize; and that is why I 
am trying to pass an amendment to prioritize this unfunded mandate 
before going down the road of creating new programs or expedientially 
increasing new programs that are actually duplicative of other 
programs. If we fund unfunded mandates like IDEA, you can have a safe 
drug-free program in every district if you wanted. You could have 21st 
century learning centers in every school district if you want it.
  But guess what, the decision would not be made by politicians in 
Washington who can take credit for it. It would be made by local 
decision-makers, school board members, administrators, parents, 
teachers. That is what the whole debate is about, whether we want 
Washington to micromanage education or we want our local people, those 
who know our kids the best, the names of our schools, to manage 
education. That is what it is really all about.
  I just want to say it is a pleasure to be here on the floor of 
Congress with two of the leaders in education reform, the gentleman 
from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Hoekstra). They have really set the trend, set the way for education 
reform in America. They have wakened up the call for reform for 
education in America, and they have really done this country a great 
service by highlighting some of the waste, fraud, and abuse that is 
occurring at our Department of Education. I just really applaud the 
gentlemen for that.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. I thank the gentleman for the nice comments. I 
appreciate that. The theme of local control is really at the core of 
our reform efforts that we are pushing here. I want to yield back to 
the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), and I am hoping I can 
persuade him to reflect a little bit and share with the Members here 
and those that are monitoring tonight's proceedings about the testimony 
of John Scribante, who is the businessman who was at the hearing this 
morning, who started out in his testimony, I know he referred to the 
Minnesota State constitution which talks about the responsibility of 
the State of Minnesota for educating all of the children in Minnesota 
in order to preserve their liberty and by focusing on their 
intelligence. He focused on that word and underscored the word 
intelligence; and he said that is not skills, it is intelligence.
  He spoke of the importance of the intellect and the training of the 
young minds of Minnesota, how critical it is to maintain their liberty, 
that is not an idea he thought of; but it is one that he saw fit to 
reference from Minnesota's State constitution. And I was moved by his 
patriotic compassion at one point in his testimony in which he spoke 
about the devastating impact that the Federal Government is having in 
preventing Minnesota from achieving its constitutional objectives.
  I am wondering if the gentleman from Michigan can comment further on 
that. Go ahead.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I also wanted to build on the comments of 
our colleague from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) because he said some very nice 
things about us in awakening the call for educational reform. I do not 
think we have done that. What we have done is we have kind of provided 
an echo chamber for what people at the local level are demanding. They 
want their schools back. They know the names of their kids. They know 
what is best for their kids. Governor Carlson today talked about going 
back into his public school in the Bronx. We have been to the Bronx. We 
have had hearings there.
  I do not know if we went through the litany with the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) of the places where we have been; but it was 
almost every place that he outlined, we have been there. I mean, we 
have been in to Albuquerque. We have been into L.A. We have been to the 
Bronx. We have been to Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis. We have been 
all over the place.
  The response we continually get is from local officials and local 
parents, and they do not exactly say it this way; but what they do say 
in so many words is Washington has gotten to the point where you want 
to build our schools, you are going to give us 6 percent of what it 
takes to build a school, but we will give you the regulations to tell 
you exactly how to build the whole thing. You want to hire our 
teachers. You want to train our teachers. You want to develop our 
curriculum; you want to teach our kids history, set history standards; 
you want to teach them about art. You want to have school health 
clinics. You want to buy our technology. You want to feed our kids 
breakfast. You want to feed our kids lunch. You want to do after-school 
programs. You want to develop safe and drug free programs, and this is 
just a small litany of the programs. But after you give us 6 percent of 
each of the dollars required for each of these programs and you burden 
on a whole set of rules and regulations, then you step back and say, 
but other than that, it is your school.
  I think, again, one of the witnesses today said that, and we were 
talking about the school-to-work program, it is like we have received 
$16 million from Washington to conduct our school-to-work program, but 
receiving that $16 million has really driven about a half a billion 
dollars of State spending, State

[[Page 9602]]

spending that came from the Minnesota taxpayers and went to the State 
government. And I think this is what Mr. Scribante was talking about 
saying, we love our kids. We want control of our schools, and we want 
our schools to be focused on developing the skills of each and every 
child in our community. And the quote that he had from Winston 
Churchill, I think he is going to get us that so that we get it right, 
but maybe my colleague from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) has it, but it is 
really saying, this battle of who controls our schools is important 
enough to fight and debate today, because now is when we can still have 
an impact, where there really is still a lot of local control, but 
where that has been eroding.
  I will yield to my colleague from Minnesota, who maybe has the quote 
right there. He is smiling. He must have it. I appreciate the gentleman 
very much being a wonderful host today, helping us get an excellent set 
of witnesses. I think we had 10 or 11 witnesses in Bloomington, I guess 
we were at today, and just excellent testimony that I think really 
helped us. I yield to my colleague.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Let me, first of all, say I thank the gentleman, and 
second I do not have that quote; but I do have it in my office now, and 
I will be sharing it from time to time. He quoted Winston Churchill, 
though; and I think the point was well taken.
  Let me give you a simplier quote from Winston Churchill, it is one 
actually my wife needlepointed for me on my office wall, and it is 
simple, it says, ``Success is never permanent. Failure is never fatal. 
The only thing that really counts is courage.''
  And what we saw today in Minnesota, and I cannot thank the gentleman 
enough, I left that meeting so excited about the future of education, 
not just in Minnesota, but around the country, because it renewed my 
belief that Americans do care. They care about their kids, and they 
want to make certain that every child, and this was what really came 
through with virtually all of the testimony today, that every child, 
whether they come from a family of privilege or a family of poverty, 
every child deserves a first-rate education in this country today.
  The truth of the matter is, and we all know this, people on all sides 
of the political aisles of every spectrum philosophically, we all know 
that too many kids today are being cheated by the system, and we in 
Washington cannot completely change everything, but I think we can make 
some reforms. And the gentleman is making reforms, and I want to thank 
the gentleman for that and we see it happening.
  I was so impressed, and I have worked for many years with Governor 
Ernie Carlson, now former Governor Carlson; but his testimony today was 
powerful. I think the only regret I have is that more Americans did not 
get a chance to actually see and hear that testimony today because it 
was from the heart. He grew up in a tough section of New York. He told 
us about PS36. He told us about what it was like when he was growing 
up, but the great thing was he told us what is happening today with the 
right leadership, with the right flexibility, allowing that new 
principal there to control his school, to motivate his teachers, to 
motivate those students; and, guess what, the results are there.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will just yield, PS36 is 
Public School 36.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Yes.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. For those who may be observing or watching this 
discussion, not knowing what is PS36, it is a public school. It is 
Public School 36 that Governor Carlson went to in the Bronx. When we 
were there, we were not at Public School 36, but probably a very rough 
neighborhood, probably low income; and he talked about some of the kids 
who would come to school and the first thing they would get from their 
principal each and every day was kind of talking about what happened at 
night because a number of them may have had a rough night.
  So it is a tough part of New York City, and this principal and this 
public school has gone in and they have embraced these kids and are 
really making a difference; and what the gentleman said, what the 
gentleman saw today in Minnesota, I think that is what the gentleman 
from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) and I have had the opportunity to see 
around the country, is that you get to the local level, these parents, 
these administrators, these legislators, they have got a passion for 
their kids.
  They absolutely have a passion for their kids, and they are kind of, 
you know, wanting us to get out of the way so that they can really do 
and help for these kids, and Governor Carlson's public school 36 is 
just one phenomenal example where they are having great success, not 
because of what we are doing, but because they are going in and taking 
the leadership.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the gentleman would yield back, and that was the 
thing that really impressed me, virtually everybody who testified today 
did not talk about preserving the status quo or protecting certain 
vested interest. It was not about protecting, you know, these rights 
and so forth. It really was all about what can we do to improve the 
quality of education for kids. And it was not us versus them. 
Unfortunately, what we hear so many times in the debate about 
education, both here in Washington and around the country, sort of a 
trench warfare mentality.
  I want to congratulate Dr. Keith Dixon, who is a superintendent of 
schools in Faribault in my district, and he came to us from Colorado, 
and I was so impressed with him, because, you know, he did not get into 
this debate about charter schools versus public schools versus private 
schools. His concern was for the kids. He said to us that he really 
considered himself the superintendent of all of the children in the 
district, and it was his job to see that they got a chance. And for 
some kids maybe it worked out better for them and their parents that 
they got to charter schools.
  He said some of them went to charter schools part of the day and part 
of the day they went to the public schools, and some went to the public 
schools part of the day and part of the day the private schools, but 
they are working out arrangements; but it is all about what is best for 
the kids.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, I thought he was a 
wonderful breath of fresh air in how he viewed that job, in saying, I 
am a superintendent for all the kids; and I recognize that, you know, 
my traditional public school may not be the best for all of the kids in 
this district each and every day, and so what I am doing is, in the 
business world we call it mass customization.

                              {time}  2045

  He says, I am using the resources that I have been given and I am 
going to help parents put together a structured program that matches 
the needs of every child. And so, if some of the parents believe that 
home schooling, for whatever reason, is best for their kids, you know, 
if they come through and they want to use the school for band, for some 
extracurricular or advanced science classes, we are going to be there 
and we are going to open the door and we are going to work that out for 
the parents.
  And it is the same for the charter and the parochial. It really was a 
demonstration of what he said, a superintendent for all of the kids in 
the district. And what I would guess they are doing in that district is 
just building a phenomenal partnership and a phenomenal loyalty in that 
community with all of these groups coming together, with the focal 
point being the kids, not home schooling, not charter schools, not 
public schools, not parochial schools, but they are developing a 
trusting relationship between all of the providers of services to these 
kids that says, let us keep the kids and learning at the center, let us 
put aside our differences and let us come together and make sure that 
we have a relationship that enables us to be creative to meet the 
needs.
  I thought it was awesome testimony.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, it absolutely was. I would bet long money 
and short odds that all the kids in Faribault are going to benefit from 
that kind of an attitude.

[[Page 9603]]

  But the other thing I wanted to mention about Governor Carlson, he 
said something really profound; and that is that, for too long in 
public education and education in general, we have measured quality 
education by inputs. And he sort of reversed. Maybe it is because he 
came from PS-36. Maybe it is because he was State auditor. But when he 
was governor, he said, we better start measuring outputs. Because we 
have all labored under this Lake Woebegone mentality that all our 
children were above average, and that is not necessarily true. And when 
we began to actually test the students, we began to find out they were 
not doing nearly as well in many of the areas as we thought they were 
doing.
  And so, we are starting to measure quality now in Minnesota not by 
how much we put into the process, and we put an awful lot of money in 
public education in the State of Minnesota, as my colleagues do in 
Colorado and in Michigan, as well. But we want to find out how well the 
students really are doing in terms of learning. And I think that if we 
focus on the students, if we focus on the children, and if we focus on 
outputs, what we are really getting out for the resources we put into 
it, I think in the long run the real winners are going to be the 
children.
  So the testimony today was excellent. I cannot thank my colleagues 
enough. I came away charged up reminded that the Forefathers were even 
smarter than we thought they were when they created the system that we 
have today where each State becomes the laboratory of democracy.
  We are seeing this happening in places like Milwaukee and in 
Minnesota and all around the country from governors, State legislators, 
private nonprofit groups. We heard from a number of them. The Executive 
Director of Partnership for Choice and Education spoke to us. Kids for 
Scholarship Fund. They are offering 1,200 scholarships a year now in 
the State of Minnesota to poor kids to go to the school of their 
choice. And we heard from some parents excellent testimony of the 
benefits of allowing students to have that kind of choice.
  So I really came away with a renewed optimism that Americans do care 
about education, they do care about the children, and, in places like 
Minnesota, there are a lot of people doing the right things and, 
ultimately, the kids will be the beneficiaries.
  So I want to thank my colleagues for coming to Minnesota. I thought 
the hearing was excellent. As I say, the only regret that I had was 
that we did not get more people at that hearing so more people could 
see what is really happening in places like Minnesota. We would love to 
have our colleagues come back and perhaps bring some of those folks 
into Washington to share with some of our colleagues what really is 
happening in terms of educational reform in Minnesota.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, the constituents of my colleague were 
perfect people to testify; and Minnesota turned out to be a perfect 
place to hold the hearing that we did because their comments were 
reflective, I think, of the same kind of comments that we have heard 
throughout the country.
  But one of the interesting perspectives that I think we probably 
spend more time on in Minnesota than most other States is on the topic 
of the School to Work Program, which passed in 1994 by Congress. It was 
a program that was inspired by the Nation's desire to see 
schoolchildren graduating with the skills necessary to help them become 
more gainfully employed and ready to go to work.
  And so, as classically happens here in Washington, there is a 
legitimate need that is identified by the country; and we throw lots of 
money at it in Washington. Now, this was before we took the majority. 
This was when the Democrats ran the House, and we saw even more of that 
then. But create a new program, throw hundreds of millions of dollars 
into a program called School to Work; and these dollars were funneled 
back to the States and once again the States were told, if you want 
your money back, you have to spend it the way we tell you to.
  The School to Work Program is something that is in full force today 
in all 50 States. It is a mandatory program, there is no voluntary 
quality about it, that even from the very young ages of kindergarten 
starts orienting more and more students toward workplace skills. And 
the concern we heard voiced today was that that focus on workplace 
skills often comes at the expense of developing one's intellect in an 
academic approach to learning.
  This is a complaint we are hearing more and more about. The School to 
Work Program, again, built around the right motives and identification 
of a very legitimate problem that occurs, but the solution is one that 
deemphasizes academic performance and academic progress in schools and 
moves the focus to actually an objective that is outside even the 
Department of Education, that includes the Department of Labor, where 
this morning the Medicare program is involved in School to Work. And it 
is kind of a comprehensive Government effort to try to change the way 
we have educated our children for hundreds of years in America.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, and that is going on at the same time. I 
still remember the first hearing or one of the first hearings that we 
did. We did a run through California. And then as we were doing the 
education at a crossroads hearing, we also did a hearing and we did it 
in California and we met with a number of the college presidents or the 
deans of various universities in California. And it was right after 
this process had started and as we were gathering the data. In one of 
these initial hearings, the deans came in and said, you know, one of 
the programs that we need more funding for is for remedial education. 
And we kind of get a startled look on our face, and these are from some 
prestigious colleges telling us that they need more money for remedial 
education. And we hear that from two or three of these experts from the 
colleges and we finally say, excuse me, why does a prestigious 
university with high academic standards and high entrance requirements, 
what do they need money from us for for remedial education?
  The answer is, well, 25 percent of the students that are coming to 
college today are not ready for college requirements. And what does 
that mean? It meant that they were not at an 8th or 10th grade level 
for reading, writing, and math. And so, it is one of those key criteria 
again for successful schools is, rather than overlaying a whole new 
system on to our education, which is focusing on developing the skills 
to work, the emphasis should be on teaching our kids and getting them 
basic academics.
  We have seen that on international standards, international 
comparisons. We are not doing well enough on our kids learning the 
basics. So before we go off and try to dilute this process any further, 
let us focus on basic academics.
  I do not know if the gentleman was in Arkansas when we went to 
Arkansas in Little Rock when we were at Central High School.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I was not there.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Again, it was fascinating. The school in Arkansas that 
gets some of the highest test scores, we asked them the question, Why 
are you getting such high test scores? Because they were the lowest 
funded school in the State? The answer was, We only have the time, 
energy, and money to focus on basic academics.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Hoekstra) for joining us in this special order. I see we are almost out 
of time. I hope this topic of School to Work is one we will be able to 
spend more time on and explore the impact that it has had in other 
States. I suspect the testimony we heard in Minnesota is similar to the 
impact to that which we would hear from other States. And it is one 
example where, once again, Washington is diffusing the emphasis of 
education on academic learning in a knowledge-based education.
  We need to stop that, really, and we need to start allowing schools 
to focus on what they believe to be important locally.




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