[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6024-6031]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



               THE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ACT

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I would like to spend a few moments this 
afternoon to bring our colleagues up to date on where we are on the 
Elementary and Secondary Education legislation. Over these past 2 weeks 
we have had an ongoing exchange of ideas and views with the 
administration and our colleagues. We have been trying to continue to 
find common ground and to make important progress.
  We are very much aware that this is an issue that is not only a high 
priority for the President of the United States, but also that it is a 
high priority for every family in this country, and certainly among the 
highest priorities for those of us on this side of the aisle.
  We welcome the fact that we have a President who has placed education 
at the top of his agenda. Eight years ago when the Democrats lost 
control of the Senate, one of the first actions the Republicans took 
was to rescind some of the funding of elementary and secondary 
education. We also fought against attempts by our Republican friends to 
abolish the Department of Education. But that was then and this is now. 
We welcome the opportunity to find common ground so we can move ahead 
and make a difference for the children in this country and for the 
families across the Nation.
  As we start off our debate on this issue, we have to understand the 
importance of preparing a child to learn, even prior to the time they 
enroll in elementary school. This is an area of very considerable 
interest on both sides of the aisle.
  Our colleague from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, has been a leader on 
these children's issues. Senator Jeffords has made this a special area 
of concern. And Senator Stevens has been very involved in early 
intervention for children. It is enormously important to continue to 
ensure a national commitment to have the nation's children ready to 
learn, as we did and as the Governors did in Charlottesville some years 
ago.
  I am hopeful we will be able to do that in a bipartisan way in 
Congress with solid legislation. We still have a ways to go, but we 
have made progress. We also have to understand the very serious and 
significant gap that still exists with regard to preparing children for 
grades K through 12th.
  We are still falling behind. We fund Early Start programs at 
approximately 10 percent for the earliest types of intervention. And 
for programs from birth to 3 years of age, we are down to either 2 or 3 
percent. This is an area of enormous importance. We are trying to help 
many children across the nation with this program. Hopefully, it will 
make a difference.
  Unfortunately there are going to be many children who will still fall 
through the cracks unless we come back to revisit public policy and 
resources for early intervention programs.
  It is all part of a mosaic. We must give our full attention to these 
efforts which are extremely important in preparing children for 
elementary school.
  I was disappointed that the administration zeroed out a very modest 
downpayment in the Early Child Development Program that had bipartisan 
support in the 106th Congress from Senators Stevens, Jeffords, Dodd, 
and Kerry, many others on the Health Education Labor and Pensions 
Committee, and myself.
  We have reached some very important agreements on the reauthorization 
of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, however, differences 
over funding remain. We are in the process of negotiating language for 
the legislation, and I expect that the earliest we could have this 
legislation is late Wednesday or Thursday.
  Money is not the answer to everything, but it is a pretty good 
indication of the Nation's priorities.
  Under the President's bill, there is a reduction in resources of $69 
billion for the Nation. However, we will only see an extremely modest, 
somewhat less than $3 billion, increase in the funding for programs 
which are targeted on the neediest children in this country. It is that 
kind of disparity which is of considerable trouble to many of us.
  We agree that every child should be tested each year in grades three 
through eight--not as a punishment, but so parents and educators know 
where every child stands and what more needs to be done to help them 
improve and achieve their full potential.
  We agree to create tough standards for schools and hold them 
accountable for improving student achievement.
  We agree that where schools fail, bold steps are necessary to turn 
them around, including requiring alternative governance arrangements.
  We agree parents deserve more public school options to ensure their 
children get a quality education.
  We agree that literacy programs should be expanded so every child 
learns to read well in the early years.
  We share these priorities with President Bush and believe these 
reforms will make a difference in our communities.
  We are still working on how to increase the flexibility while 
maintaining targeting and accountability. It is important that any 
additional flexibility is tied to strong accountability, and strong 
targeting to the neediest communities. We want to ensure that States 
and school districts do not ignore the children who need our help the 
most.
  We are also working hard to increase accountability and support for 
teachers. States and districts should be held accountable for putting 
qualified teachers in every classroom, particularly in the neediest 
schools. They

[[Page 6025]]

should also have to provide professional development and mentoring 
support for teachers so that teachers can make these new tough reforms 
work.
  We are also working to ensure that after-school programs are expanded 
so that more children have the opportunity to catch up with their 
schoolwork if they have fallen behind.
  We are working to ensure parent involvement and that parent 
involvement is a cornerstone for all the new reforms.
  We are working to ensure schools and districts and States are held 
accountable to the public through mandatory report cards that include 
important information about how well their schools are doing.
  We are working to ensure that the Class Size Reduction Program is 
continued so children can get the individual attention they need to 
succeed.
  We are working to continue the School Renovation Program so 
communities can ensure children are learning in safe, modern school 
buildings.
  We hope we can address all these issues and come to a bipartisan 
consensus on them.
  We must also know that reforms minus resources equals failure. You 
cannot say education is your top priority and not put enough resources 
in the budget to do the job.
  We are disappointed in the President's budget. According to OMB, 
President Bush's budget contains only a $669 million increase next year 
for elementary and secondary education programs. That is an increase of 
one-fifth of one percent of what we are spending on our public schools 
today at the national, State, and local levels; we are spending $350 
billion a year.
  Testing and accountability are important, but they are only the 
measures of reform, they are not reform themselves.
  Investment without accountability is a waste of money, but 
accountability without investment is a waste of time.
  We need the resources to make sure that slick, easy, and quick tests 
that have mostly multiple choice questions and which cost $3 or $4 will 
not be developed. We want to make sure we have a quality teacher 
teaching a quality curriculum to a quality test. That takes investment.
  It is not just the money, it is the resources to do the job: well-
qualified teachers, thoughtful tests, good curriculum, the examination 
of the tests and reporting back in a timely way.
  At the current time, we are meeting only about 20 to 22 percent of 
the supplementary services that are necessary for children. If we are 
not going to have a significant increase in resources, we are not going 
to be able to provide the good quality supplementary services for those 
children who need them.
  We know with a very modest increase--about $1 billion--we could 
provide 1.6 million children with quality supplemental after-school 
academic opportunities. Even if you take what was paid last year and 
adding about $850 million this year, we are still only reaching about a 
third of all latchkey children, ages 8 to 13, who go home alone in the 
afternoon.
  Resources are important because they are translated into substantive 
issues that make a difference in advancing the quality of education for 
children.
  This chart compares the investments in ESEA programs for fiscal year 
2001 to the Administration's 2002 proposal. In 2001, funding for ESEA 
programs increased by $3.6 billion or a 24.2 percent. This 
Administration has requested an increase of $669 million, which is only 
a 3.5 percent increase.
  Even with their willingness to go higher, it does not come close to 
the increases in 2001. This recognizes that we are only reaching one-
third of all of the children who are disadvantaged or eligible under 
the Title I program.
  Look at the appropriations for the Department of Education. In 2001 
there was an 18.2 percent increase, $6.5 billion. The Bush budget for 
all the education, is increased by 5.9 percent or $2.5 billion.
  The Department of Education over the period of the last 5 years shows 
a 12.8-percent increase in resources. However the proposed budget 
starts with a 5.9-percent increase in the Department of Education.
  This is a time with record surpluses, when we are going to give back 
$69 billion in tax reductions. There is a great deal of talk about 
investing in education, but we are still not putting in the resources.
  This chart is the State of Texas education equation. It shows that 
from 1994 to 2002, school funding went from $16.9 billion to $27.5 
billion, a 57-percent increase under Governor Bush. Interestingly, we 
see an alarming increase in student achievement, from 56-percent of the 
students performing at a proficient level on the State test in 1994 to 
80-percent of students performing at a proficient level in 2000--
showing you cannot educate on the cheap.
  The next chart shows the difference between the proposal the 
Democrats support and the Bush budget. We know there are 10,000 failing 
schools that need to be turned around. The best estimate is that it 
costs $180,000 to turn around a school. There are 57 different, 
accepted, scientifically evaluated ways in which schools can be 
restructured and organized that have been found to have been 
successful. Taking 10,000 schools and $180,000--that is, $1.8 billion--
to turn around the schools that we know are in need. With the other 
proposal, effectively, we are leaving 7,556 schools behind.
  We know what needs to be done. We know we have failing schools, and 
we have ways of turning them around. We know we have unqualified 
teachers, and we know what needs to be done to make them qualified. We 
know we have an inadequate curriculum, and we know what needs to be 
done to strengthen curriculum. We understand what will benefit the 
children and the teachers and we know how to strengthen their needs 
with supplementary services.
  If we don't have the supplementary services, trained teachers, 
effective tests, modern and safe schools, and smaller class sizes, then 
we are failing ourselves. We fail ourselves when we fail to provide the 
resources to ensure the nation's children with a sound education.
  Finally, I hope during this debate we have some discussion about the 
issue of IDEA. Full funding for IDEA will help immeasurably in allowing 
special needs children to get additional resources.
  I hope we can move ahead with ESEA and get the commitment of 
essential resources to meet these important needs. In doing the job, we 
need to give children across the nation the best opportunities which we 
all understand they deserve.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brownback). The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Clinton speak 
next for 15 minutes and I be allowed to speak after for 10 minutes, and 
the Republicans then be allowed to have the time they need to respond.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from New York is recognized.
  Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague from 
Minnesota. I associate myself with the remarks of the education Senator 
from Massachusetts who so eloquently laid out our dilemma, the dilemma 
that will be occupying the Senate as we move forward on this very 
important debate.
  People always talk about important debates, but it is fair to say as 
we debate, we will set educational policy for our Nation for the next 7 
years. There is hardly a subject we can think of that will have more 
direct impact on our families, on our communities, on our economy, and 
especially on our children. We are setting the stage for determining 
how much we as a nation will do to make good on the promise of a 
quality education for all children, and particularly for our country's 
neediest children.
  I first became involved in education reform back in 1983 with the 
issuance of the report called ``A Nation at Risk,'' which was issued 
under President Reagan's watch. Many took that call to action very much 
to heart that we were a nation at risk. We began

[[Page 6026]]

looking for ways to improve education, to provide more resources to 
provide more accountability measures. We have made progress over those 
last years.
  When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was last reauthorized 
in 1994, we sent a strong signal that although education was absolutely 
a matter of local concern, it had to be a national priority; that we 
all had to recognize we were failing our children by not providing 
adequate educational resources and by not expecting them to do the very 
best they could do. We put a high priority on academic standards, and 
we worked to help teachers and administrators, parents, and communities 
improve education.
  The results of this strong Federal response to local and State 
educational demands has been heartening. Mr. President, 49 States plus 
the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have developed State standards 
and are working to implement them. These reforms are producing results.
  We often only focus on the negative side of the ledger about how much 
we still have to do. I give some credit to the children and the young 
people, our students, and their parents, and especially their teachers, 
because we have seen progress. Reading and math scores for fourth 
graders in our highest poverty school districts have improved by nearly 
a grade level from 1994 to today. SAT scores are on the rise. More 
students than ever are attending college.
  We cannot rest there. We know there is still far more to be done. We 
have too many children, particularly in our underserved urban and rural 
districts, who are not reading at grade level. We have too many 
children being taught by uncertified teachers, in overcrowded 
classrooms, in crumbling school buildings. We cannot stand by idly 
while these conditions persist. The issue is, what is the best way to 
address them? How better can we equip parents, teachers, communities, 
and our students to meet the tests of the 21st century?
  I applaud President Bush for calling for greater accountability. I 
agree with him on the importance of that. I was among the very first in 
our Nation, in Arkansas in the early 1980s, to call for the testing of 
students and the testing of teachers because I believed then we had to 
know what we didn't know in order to make progress. We couldn't just 
pretend that everything was fine and engage in social promotion and not 
face up to the fact that we had children graduating from high school 
who couldn't read a job application. We had teachers who had been 
themselves passed through the education system who were unprepared to 
teach the substance of what it was they were assigned to teach.
  Accountability is key, to me. I have been a strong supporter of that. 
In fact, I welcome the Republicans and I welcome the Bush 
administration which has gone forward with accountability measures that 
are like the measures Democrats have proposed for several years. Many 
on the other side of the aisle resisted such approaches for many years. 
In fact, they wanted to abolish the Department of Education. So I 
applaud my colleagues on the Republican side for the progress they have 
made in moving toward a common recognition that this is a national 
priority that must be beyond politics and partisanship.
  The accountability that is in the bill that is proposed would ask 
that we test our children every year from third to eighth grade. That 
is designed to ensure that they are meeting high standards. But here is 
where the rubber really hits the road. If all we do is order more 
tests, if we do not combine those tests with the resources that are 
needed to help the children who have been left behind, then we will 
have, at best, a hollow victory and I believe, worse than that, we will 
have committed educational fraud on our children, our teachers, and our 
country.
  The Bush plan orders more testing while providing only half the funds 
needed to design and implement these tests. What would this mean to the 
State of New York, for example? It would mean that of the $16 million 
that is estimated to have to be spent to comply with these new Federal 
requirements, our State would only get $8 million. So we would have to 
find 8 million more dollars, take it out of something else--from hard-
pressed school districts, from teacher pay, from whatever other 
important objective we are already trying to meet. We should not be 
passing on an unfunded mandate to our States.
  If it is a national priority, if it is a priority for this 
administration to order these tests, then the Federal Government ought 
to pay for these tests and make sure that, as the Senator from 
Massachusetts pointed out, they are good tests; they are quality tests; 
they are not just make-work kinds of tests.
  Passing tough new accountability standards without the resources to 
help our schools and students is similar to handing out thermometers in 
the midst of an epidemic. The thermometers certainly can tell us that 
there are a lot of sick people, but they do absolutely nothing to help 
people get better. Unfortunately, the administration's proposal has 
plenty of thermometers but precious little medicine to help our schools 
improve. The administration has not even yet committed to providing the 
Federal funds necessary to marry accountability with student 
achievement.
  We already know that despite the rhetoric, this is not an increase of 
more than 11 percent; it is only 5.9 percent because the administration 
tried to count money that had been appropriated last year. We are glad 
to have that money, but let's have honest accounting about how much 
more money is going in. A 5.9-percent increase barely keeps up with 
inflation and population increases.
  What also does it mean on the school level? Let's focus and ask 
ourselves: If we pass this accountability measure, and everybody goes 
home, pats themselves on the back, there is a big press conference, and 
a big signing ceremony, what have we really done to help the districts 
such as the ones I worry about in the State of New York?
  In New York City, for example, we are facing a severe teacher 
shortage. The city will need to hire approximately 40,000--that is 
right, 40,000--teachers over the next 4 years. In addition, the 
district is under a court order to place those certified teachers it 
hires in the lowest performing schools. That makes sense because right 
now we have uncertified teachers, ill equipped to teach, teaching the 
children who need the best teachers. So the idea, which is a good idea, 
is let's put the certified teachers in the schools where the children 
need them the most.
  But what has happened? Last week we learned from the chancellor of 
the New York City schools that the certified teachers turned down the 
jobs in the hard-to-teach schools. Why? Because those are the schools 
that are already overcrowded; those are the schools that are crumbling; 
those are the schools that hardly have a book in the library; those are 
the schools without the computers connected by the cables they need to 
be able to be functional, let alone to be accessible to the Internet.
  We cannot in good conscience demand that school districts hire 
certified teachers without providing the resources to help these hard-
pressed districts recruit and retain these teachers. And we have to do 
more to make these schools attractive to certified teachers.
  Answer me, why you would go into a very difficult school to teach 
children who are under lots of stress at home and in their 
neighborhoods if the school is not well equipped to give you the 
resources you need to try to do a good job with those children?
  I will be working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to 
introduce a bipartisan teacher recruitment amendment. We all know if we 
do not place the recruitment of our teachers at the top of our national 
agenda we will have school districts that are barely able to open their 
doors in the next couple of years. We will be asking people literally 
to come off the streets and start teaching because we will not have the 
teachers we need. I meet people all the time who want to be teachers, 
but they

[[Page 6027]]

will not, they cannot, and they should not work under the conditions 
under which many of our teachers are asked to function.
  I am also concerned about the proposal the President includes called 
Straight A's. This is a demonstration project that would give 7 States 
and 25 school districts the chance to block grant Federal dollars. 
People are often talking about how important it is to give authority 
back to the States, and I agree with that in most instances. But we 
know from years of education research that block granting funds--which 
means taking the Federal dollars and sending them to the State 
capitol--means that those dollars do not get to the students and the 
schools that need them the most in the amount that they should. They 
get siphoned off in the bureaucracy of the State capitol. They get sent 
to other places that do not need them but, for political purposes, have 
the influence to get them. We should be targeting those hard-earned 
Federal dollars to those school districts and those students who are so 
far behind.
  Right now in New York we know, because of a court decision, that the 
children in New York City do not get their fair share of education 
funding. So we should do everything possible to get the dollars to the 
students who need them the most in the schools where the teachers have 
a chance to try to help them.
  We also know from research that smaller class sizes make a huge 
difference, and the Class Size Reduction Initiative has worked wonders. 
We now have teachers in New York who are federally funded who are 
helping to lower class size. We have already seen positive results from 
the school achievement scores.
  We also know that construction funding to help schools repair their 
buildings and modernize them and even construct the buildings they need 
is very necessary. These two important programs, class size reduction 
and school construction, are eliminated for all purposes in the Bush 
administration proposal. I say this is a mistake, and I ask the 
administration, with all respect, to please reconsider this decision.
  The administration says that reducing class size with Federal dollars 
and helping to construct and repair schools are not Federal 
responsibilities. I know they are not totally Federal responsibilities, 
but I do not think in today's world they are also solely local 
responsibilities. The districts that need the help the most are not the 
districts like the one I live in where, with very high property taxes 
from affluent people, the children have everything they could possibly 
dream of. But in so many districts, suburban taxpayers cannot pay 
another penny to fix their schools and do what is necessary to have up-
to-date labs. In many rural districts they do not have the tax base to 
do that, and in many urban districts they don't have the dollars 
because they don't get their fair allocation from the State, and they 
cannot tax themselves to be able to meet the needs of children for whom 
English is not their first language, who come to school with 
undiagnosed mental illnesses, who live in a system of deprivation and 
violence and who cannot perform at the same level as the children in my 
district.
  Let's have a shared responsibility. That was the whole idea behind 
the Class Size Reduction Initiative and School Construction Initiative. 
If education is to be a national priority, let's invest in what we know 
works--and we know reducing class size and providing good facilities 
actually works--to make for better education.
  I hope we will continue in the spirit that we began in the education 
committee as we marked up this bill, in the negotiations that are 
currently ongoing with the administration. But I am very concerned that 
this particular proposal falls way short of what we need to be doing. 
It falls short for a very simple reason. The administration would 
rather invest in a large, fiscally irresponsible tax cut than in the 
education of our children and particularly those who are most needy in 
rural and urban districts.
  I hope this will be reconsidered because this failure to properly 
fund education, to me, is disappointing at a time when we have 
surpluses, when we do not have to squander these surpluses on large tax 
cuts that will go disproportionately to the already wealthy whose 
children already attend schools that have all the computers, all the 
bells and whistles, all the extra help they could possibly have.
  Let's, instead, take a moment and step back. I hear a lot about the 
greatest generation. My parents were part of the greatest generation, 
the World War II generation. I think they probably have to take a 
second seat to the greatest generation being the Founders of our 
Country. But there is no argument that those who survived the 
Depression, won World War II, and set the stage for winning the cold 
war, were among the greatest if they were not the greatest generation 
our country has ever seen.
  We have been living off the investments and sacrifices of our parents 
and our grandparents for more than 50 years. My father, who is a rock-
ribbed Republican, voted for higher school taxes because he knew the 
education of his children depended upon good schools. We invested in 
the Interstate Highway System. We set a goal to send a man to the Moon. 
We had big dreams, and we worked to fulfill those dreams.
  Today, at the beginning of this new century, it is up to us to make 
the decisions, the hard decisions to invest in our children's 
education. And shame on us if we do not make the right decisions. We 
can pass a bill that is filled with testing and sounds good but 10 
years from now we will still have children in overcrowded classrooms 
and crumbling buildings who are being deprived of certified, qualified 
teachers, and we will wonder what went wrong.
  Let's instead be sensible about the best practices that we know work. 
We have research. We have practical experience. We know what needs to 
be done. The issue is, do we have the political will to make those 
decisions?
  I support working hand in hand with the administration in a 
bipartisan way, with the parents and teachers and community leaders of 
our country, to make education a real national priority. But I cannot--
I could not--support a bill that is a hollow, empty promise.
  Let's do both. Let's increase accountability so we get better results 
by making sure we have the resources to hold our children and our 
teachers accountable. If we do that, then we will be setting the stage 
to leave no child behind. If we do any less, then I think we have 
missed a historic opportunity.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, could I ask the Senator one or two 
quick questions?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I have been very moved by what she said. On the 
question of accountability and then the whole issue of unfunded 
mandates, one argument I heard the Senator make was we have to provide 
the funding for the actual tests to make sure these are high quality, 
which means we should not confuse accountability, testing, and 
standardized tests as being one and the same thing; is that correct?
  Mrs. CLINTON. Yes, it is.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. The second point I want to make and I want to be sure 
we are clear about is that it would also be an unfunded mandate, even 
if you provided the funding for the administration of the testing, 
without the investment in our children and our schools to make sure 
each and every child had the same chance to achieve and do well in 
these tests. Then I tried to remember what you described it as. You 
said it was hollow, and you said it would be an educational fraud. That 
is fairly strong language. I will put the Senator on the spot, but 
could I ask her why she feels so strongly about this point?
  Mrs. CLINTON. Certainly. My feelings go back many years. As the 
Senator knows, children have been my passion for more than 30 years. I 
have worked on improving and reforming education for nearly 20 years. I 
know how difficult it is, today, to try to help many of our children 
achieve educational competence.
  The reason for that is that we are not living in the same world in 
which the

[[Page 6028]]

Senator and I grew up. It is harder to teach our children. Our children 
come to school with more problems and more stress. They are exposed to 
many more things than we ever faced.
  We have to understand that if we don't really provide the resources 
to reach the children as they are today, not as we wish they would be, 
not as we thought they were back when I was sitting there with my hands 
folded and listening to every word, but as they are today with all the 
other pressures that are on families and children, then we are not 
going to have the results and the kind of achievement to which the 
Senator from Minnesota is referring.
  But there is no reason we have to make this choice. It is not an 
either/or choice. We have the resources to assist our local districts 
so they do not have to reach any deeper. Many of the districts from my 
State can't afford to raise their property taxes any more.
  I was on Long Island last night talking to a group of about 1,000 
people. I explained to them, if we have this large Federal income tax 
cut, and then we have these unfunded mandates for education, where is 
the rubber going to hit the road? It is going to hit the road in the 
local property tax levies.
  I would rather be, I am sure, part of an administration that gets to 
take credit for cutting income taxes than the poor souls down at the 
local level having to vote to raise property taxes in order to meet the 
mandates they have put on them. I think we should not be raising false 
hopes. We should be looking at how we help every child be successful.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. When I go back to Minnesota, I try to be in the 
schools every 2 weeks. For the last 10\1/2\ years there has been 
concern about the testing, especially standardized tests; people have 
to kind of teach within a straightjacket. But what about the issue? I 
ask the Senator from New York because this is also, I think, part of 
her passion and part of her work. I hear a lot about two other things: 
The IDEA program, which isn't within ESEA, but it seems to me that we 
have to be very clear with some kind of trigger amount so that testing 
doesn't take its place unless we fully fund IDEA, because that is 
really a threat and a strain that a lot of districts feel. The other 
one is prekindergarten.
  With all due respect, I want to get the Senator's opinion. If we 
start testing kids at age 8, I might argue at age 12 or 13, ``Schools, 
what have you done?'' But at age 8, I would argue that much more of 
what will explain how that child is doing is what happened to the child 
before kindergarten. Where is the administration, if the administration 
is going to talk about leaving no child behind? Where is the community 
in early childhood development to make sure that these children are 
kindergarten ready? Shouldn't that all fit within what is defined as 
reform?
  Mrs. CLINTON. I think my colleague is absolutely right, because if we 
are looking at the comprehensive reform, we cannot leave out the 
funding of IDEA. We can't leave out doing something to help parents 
understand their obligations to be a child's first teacher and provide 
quality preschool.
  I hear so much about the IDEA program, otherwise known as the special 
education program. I hear it mostly in suburban districts, 
interestingly enough, because suburban districts have activist parents 
and they know the law. The law is that we have to provide an education 
for every child. And I support that law. It was the first project I 
ever did for the Children's Defense Fund. I went door to door in 
communities back in--I hate to say--1973 to find out where the children 
were because they weren't in school. We found a lot of children with 
disabilities who were being kept out of school.
  I am a 100-percent supporter of mainstreaming our children and giving 
every child a chance. But we are bankrupting a lot of our suburban 
school districts. We are saying you have to provide special treatment 
and education for children who need it and deserve it. If that means 
you have to shut down the band program or only have one physics session 
or do away with art, that is the tough choice to make.
  The Federal Government said in the 1970s that you have to provide 
this education. Furthermore, it is not only, as our colleague Tom 
Harkin likes to say, a Federal mandate, but it is a constitutional 
mandate to provide this quality education. The Federal Government is 
going to tell districts they have to provide special education. Where 
is the full funding so suburban districts and all other districts can 
try to keep up with their expenses?
  I could not agree more with the second point the Senator made. Those 
of us who have been parents read to our children. We take them to 
museums. We get them a library card. We monitor their television. We 
worry about any kind of childcare arrangements. We know those early 
years make a difference. Why don't we make a commitment based on the 
resources we now have about the brain to do more to provide quality 
preschool opportunities both at home and outside the home so that more 
children can come to school ready to learn? That might be the very best 
investment we could make in terms of long-term academic success.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Senator from New York.
  In the time I have remaining, I would like to make the point that I 
think this is truly a matter of values and truly a matter of 
priorities. Either we are going to be talking about close to $2 
trillion in tax cuts--most of it Robin Hood in reverse. Again, if 
somebody wants to prove me wrong, about 40 percent of the benefits go 
to the top 1 percent of the population.
  Any day of the year, I would stake my reputation back in Minnesota on 
being able to say, as opposed to those Robin-Hood-in-reverse tax cuts, 
that I am going to be a Senator from Minnesota who is going to insist 
that if we are going to say a piece of education legislation is the 
best, we had better make it the best for our children. That means there 
is a commitment to making sure kids are kindergarten ready. That means 
we live up to our commitment to fully funding the program for children 
with special needs, which is getting to the 40-percent level and not 
the 14-percent level. That means we ought to be moving toward fully 
funding the title I program for kids who come from disadvantaged 
backgrounds. That means we ought to be funding afterschool programs and 
we ought to be talking about teacher recruitment. We ought to be 
talking about how we can provide the supportive services.
  I say to Senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, that you will rue 
the day you voted for a piece of legislation that mandated that every 
school and every school district in your State every single year had to 
have tests, starting as young as age 8 and going to age 13, and you did 
not at the same time vote to provide the resources so that those 
teachers and those schools and those school districts and, most 
important of all, the children had the tools so they could succeed and 
do well.
  I will tell you something. I hope my colleagues on the Democratic 
side will draw the line on this question. It seems to me that before we 
proceed to this kind of legislation, before we talk about a piece of 
legislation as being reform, we should say we want to make sure there 
is a commitment of resources. Before we have this mandate on all of our 
States and all of our schools, we ought to make sure we have provided 
the funding. If we can't do that, then this becomes very hollow. If we 
can't do that, then this piece of legislation I believe does nothing 
but set up the schools and the kids and the teachers for failure.
  My colleague was saying get it down to the school level. I sometimes 
think what we have been doing has a sense of unreality to it. If you go 
down in the trenches, and especially it you go to the schools, a lot of 
the inner-city neighborhoods and rural areas, you have kids on free or 
reduced lunch programs. You have homes where sometimes they have to 
move two or three times a year. You have schools that are crumbling, 
schools that don't have the resources, schools that don't have the 
laboratory facilities, and schools that don't have the textbooks. Now 
what you are saying is you are going to have tests and state with 
precision the obvious: Guess what. Children who come to school hungry, 
children who come from families who don't have adequate housing or are 
even homeless, children who

[[Page 6029]]

are not kindergarten ready, children who do not receive all of the good 
stimulation and all of the nurturing that they need to have before 
kindergarten, those children who come to schools without the 
facilities, without the best teachers, without the salaries for the 
teachers, we are going to find out through tests that those children 
and those schools aren't doing as well as a lot of other schools which 
have all the resources in the world with which to work.
  That is what the test does. Absolutely nothing--not without the 
resources.
  I can say this from the floor of the Senate. It sounds a little 
jarring. But in a lot of ways I think the best way you can move to 
vouchers is to design a system where you guarantee over the next 4 or 5 
years that many schools are not going to succeed because you don't give 
them the resources. Then you can state with precision the obvious; that 
is, the children who come from low- and moderate-income backgrounds 
with the least amount of help to do well are continuing to do poorly. 
The schools are continuing to do poorly because they do not have the 
resources. Then you use that as a reason for an all-out broadside 
attack on public education.
  Some of the harshest critics of these teachers in these schools 
couldn't last an hour in the classrooms they condemn. I have never met 
a teacher and I have never met a parent who has said to me what we need 
is more and more tests, tests, tests.
  I have had a lot of people in Minnesota talk to me about the IDEA 
program, the title I program, afterschool programs, how we can make 
sure kids are kindergarten ready, and how we can make sure we have the 
best teachers and get the resources to the teachers and have the 
support for the teachers and the kids.
  We have a budget from the President of the United States of America 
who says education is his No. 1 priority, and it is a tin cup budget. 
How are you going to realize the goal of leaving no child behind on a 
tin cup budget? At the moment, I agree with Senator Clinton. I think it 
is an educational fraud bill. Without the resources to back the 
rhetoric, it becomes nothing more than symbolic politics with 
children's lives.
  I will oppose it with all of my might until we get resources to 
invest in our children--all of our children.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 
minutes in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we will be turning to the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act reauthorization bill soon. I want to speak a 
bit about the subject of education.
  This will be an interesting debate and one that is very important for 
our country. All of us come to the Senate from different backgrounds 
with different interests. I happen to come from a small town of about 
300 people in the southwestern corner of North Dakota, down by the 
Montana and South Dakota border. I graduated in a high school class of 
nine.
  That little high school in Regent, ND, where I went to school, held 
its last prom this year because the high school is not going to be 
continuing any longer. In order to have a prom in a school that small, 
they have to gather a fair number of classes. That is the only way to 
have a prom in a school that size.
  I was saddened to read that, because of the challenges facing rural 
areas of North Dakota, schools are seeing fewer and fewer students 
coming into the school system. In my State, we had 16 counties that had 
fewer than 25 births in a year, and in almost all of those counties 
they have at least two school systems. Divide up those births 5 or 6 
years from now and see how many children are going to enter first grade 
and see what the challenges are for those schools. They are very 
significant.
  Despite having gone to a small school, I always felt I got a very 
good education. It was not a fancy school. It was a school with a 
library no larger than a coat closet, but we had teachers who cared, 
and it was a school that provided an awfully good education.
  Even though all of us have different backgrounds, we also share 
common goals. All of us want the same thing for our country. We want 
our country to do well, our children to be well educated, our country's 
economy to grow and provide expanded opportunities for people.
  In this debate, we are going to talk a lot about what is wrong with 
education. That, I guess, is the nature of things in this country. We 
talk about what is wrong and how we will fix it. We almost never catch 
our breath to talk about what is right. In fact, when you listen to 
people talk about what is wrong with education in America, you wonder 
how on Earth this country became what it has become.
  Anyone who has done any traveling throughout the world understands 
there is not any other country like this. Go to Europe, Asia, South 
America, Africa--just travel and ask yourself: Have I visited a country 
with the same conditions that exist in the United States? Is there a 
country quite as free as this, as open as this, with an economy as 
strong as this, where every young child goes into a school system which 
allows him or her to become whatever his or her God-given talent 
allows? That is what our school system provides our children.
  This is not true in many other countries in the world. By the eighth 
grade, often other countries have moved kids into different tracks 
where only selected children have an opportunity for higher education. 
A lot of countries do that.
  Our country has said for a long while that we believe in universal 
education. All children in this country, no matter their background, 
ought to have the opportunity to be whatever their God-given talents 
allow them to be.
  Yet when hearing this debate, one wonders what has allowed this 
country to be as successful as it has been? This is the country, after 
all, that has split the atom and spliced genes. We have invented radar 
and the silicon chip. We have invented plastics. We learned to fly, and 
then we built airplanes. We flew those airplanes, and then we built 
rockets. We took those rockets to the Moon and walked on its surface. 
We cured smallpox and polio. We discovered how to create a telephone 
and then used it, invented radios, television, computers.
  One almost wonders how on Earth this happened in a country like this 
with an education system that some say has totally failed us.
  The reason all of this has happened is the education system has not 
failed this country at all. There are some significant challenges and 
some significant problems in certain areas of our education system, but 
by and large this education system has been the most productive in the 
world for a long period of time.
  If one wants to evaluate where the world-class universities are, by 
far 80 percent of them are in the United States of America. We house 
the world-class universities in this country.
  Let me talk a bit about the status of this country's educational 
system. Some say we have an educational recession. The President, 
during his campaign, said that, among others.
  Yet reading achievement is up in this country. The National 
Assessment for Educational Progress, called NAEP, says that during the 
last decade, reading achievement has significantly improved in all 
grades tested.
  Are there some challenges in some schools in this country with 
respect to reading skills? You bet your life there are, and we need to 
address them.
  But on the average, reading skills are up. Mathematics and science 
achievement is up. NAEP scores in mathematics have improved during the 
past decade, and in science NAEP reports scores have increased 
significantly for older children in the last decade.

[[Page 6030]]

  Students were better prepared for college throughout the 1990s. 
Scores on both the SAT and ACT climbed steadily. Mathematics SAT scores 
are at an all-time high. The average SAT math score increased from 509 
in 1992 to 514 in 2000. Verbal SAT scores improved over the same period 
from 500 to 505.
  Some say if you compare the SAT scores in the United States to the 
same scores in other countries, the United States ranks well down the 
list or that our scores have decreased over time. But those people are 
not comparing apples and apples. Only the best students in other 
countries are taking the ACT and SAT, while in our country a majority 
take them. Thirty years ago, only the top 25 percent of U.S. students 
would take the SAT tests. Now, perhaps the top 60 or 70 percent of the 
universe of students take the same tests. Would you perhaps get a lower 
score on average by taking 70 percent of the universe instead of taking 
the top 25 percent? Yes.
  But compare the top 25 percent now to the top 25 percent 30 years 
ago? What do you find? Higher test scores. You need to compare like 
comparisons if you are going to make judgments.
  Our students are taking tougher courses. Between 1992 and 1997, the 
number of high school students taking advanced placement courses in all 
subjects increased by two-thirds, from 338,000 to 581,000.
  It is hard to make the case we are in an educational recession.
  I have two children in school. They study hard. They do their 
homework. They do not necessarily enjoy doing that every night, but 
they do their homework. They are in a good school with great teachers. 
The fact is that is true in much of this country.
  There is a very simple formula to determine whether education is 
going to work, and it is true in every neighborhood in every school in 
this country. To make education work, we need several things: One, a 
student who is interested in learning; two, a teacher who knows how to 
teach; and, three, a parent who is going to be involved in that 
student's education.
  When those three elements are present, education works and works 
well. When they are absent, we have great difficulties.
  I know from firsthand experience that there are some schools with 
significant challenges. I visited an inner-city school that had 
significant challenges. I knew that at the front door. I walked through 
metal detectors, saw security guards, watched teachers try to deal with 
a series of problems in the class. Those problems were identical to the 
problems of the neighborhood surrounding that school: poverty, 
dysfunctional families, a whole series of issues that those children 
then brought to that school.
  Some weeks after I visited that school, I read in the paper there was 
a shooting at that school. That was a few years ago. Some kid bumped 
another kid at a water fountain, and the other kid took out a pistol 
and shot him, despite the fact they had obviously gone through a metal 
detector as they walked into that school.
  If schools are not safe places of learning, they are not going to be 
good places of learning, so we must deal with that issue.
  We need good teachers, students willing to learn, parents involved in 
education, and a safe environment in which students can learn.
  In addition to that, in this debate, we are going to have to 
understand that we have a responsibility as a country to send children 
through classroom doors into classrooms of which we can be proud. 
Children cannot learn in classrooms that are not modern.
  I have toured schools, especially Indian schools attended by children 
for whom the Federal Government has a trust responsibility to educate. 
This is not an option. Yet these Indian schools where desks are 1 inch 
apart, classes are so crowded you just cringe when you see them pack 
these kids into those classrooms. These are schools where you cannot 
hook up a computer because the facilities are so old they do not have 
the capability of supporting a computer; schools where you would not 
want to send your child to school because it is in such disrepair.
  Is that a good safe place in which to learn? The answer clearly is no 
and we need to do better. We need to deal with the issue of school 
construction. We built schools all over this country just after the 
Second World War. The GIs came home, they married, had children, and we 
built schools all over this country. Many of those schools are now 50 
and 60 years old and in desperate disrepair.
  None is in greater disrepair than the schools on Indian reservations. 
I talk about that a lot because we have so much to do in those areas. 
We have a responsibility to deal with these crumbling schools around 
the country. If we will have a first-class education, it ought to be in 
a first-rate classroom.
  Second, we also know from experience and from research that children 
learn best in classrooms of 15 to 18 students. I have had children of 
mine in classrooms in mobile trailers, the temporary classrooms with 32 
and 34 kids. It doesn't work well. We know that. We know a teacher who 
is teaching 15 to 18 children has much more time to spend individually 
with those children and does a much better job. We have a 
responsibility to try to help and do something about that as well.
  At the Federal level, we only do niche financing for education. Our 
schools are financed, by and large, by State and local governments and 
especially by local school boards. No one is suggesting we change that.
  But we ought not brag in this country, as some are wont to do, that 
we don't have any national objectives for our school system. It is not 
a source of pride, in my judgment, to brag that we do not have or want 
national standards or objectives for our children to meet upon their 
graduation. We ought to aspire to meet certain objectives. Of course we 
ought to have national objectives we aspire to reach.
  In order to do that, some feel strongly we ought to improve our 
school buildings. This Congress can provide funding to help local 
school districts meet their construction and repair needs. We ought to 
reduce classroom size and provide funding to do that. We ought to do it 
in this legislation, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 
reauthorization.
  President Bush is correct when he talks about the need for testing. 
Many have stood for years on the floor of the Senate saying we need to 
have some testing. People also need to know what our schools are 
producing, how our schools are doing. I will offer an amendment dealing 
with the issue of school report cards. Many States have them. But there 
are no standards for school report cards and no parent can understand 
how their school is doing. They know how their child is doing because 
they get a report card every 6 to 9 weeks. But how is their school 
doing? Is this school doing a good job of educating that child? How 
does this school relate or compare to another school? How does our 
State compare to another State? What are we getting as taxpayers for 
the investment we are making in these schools? We have a right to know 
that. We have a right to get report cards on our schools. All parents 
have that right. All taxpayers have that right. I intend to offer an 
amendment on that during the consideration of the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act.
  There is so much to say about education. Let me mention two stories 
that illustrate the value of education.
  I toured a refugee camp one day in an area near the border between 
Guatemala and Honduras. It was some while ago when Honduras was having 
a lot of terrorism and difficulties. At this refugee camp, the United 
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was running a refugee camp and 
had people living in tents. As I was going around the camp, viewing the 
conditions, there was a fellow, probably in his mid-sixties, who could 
not speak English but he knew I was a visitor to the camp. He beckoned 
to me and wanted me to come with him. I asked the guide from the United 
Nations what the fellow wanted and the guide said: I think he wants you 
to go into the tent area. So we did. He reached under his cot for some 
of his belongings, which is all he had. He had a cot and a couple of 
belongings stored under a cot in the refugee camp. He reached under the 
cot

[[Page 6031]]

and pulled out a book. It was an education reading primer book in 
Spanish. It was the Spanish version of the ``See Dick Run'' book we 
would have had in first grade. He was, for the first time in his life, 
in his mid-sixties, being taught to read. He wanted to show me, a 
visitor, that he could begin to read. He pulled out the book and began 
to read in halting Spanish, ``See Dick Run.''
  He had a huge smile on his face after he finished the first two 
lines, looked up at me with only two or three teeth, someone who was 
living in great difficulty, in a refugee camp, with perhaps not enough 
to eat, never having had an opportunity for education, and he was so 
enormously proud of being able to learn.
  Education, even at the later stage of his life, was so important to 
him that he wanted to show a visitor he was learning to read. Think of 
that.
  The second story is one I have told my colleagues about before, but I 
will tell it again because it also describes how important education 
is. It is the story of a woman who was a janitor at a tribal college, 
cleaning the bathrooms and the hallways of a tribal college. Her 
husband had left her. She had four children and was over 40, with no 
means of support except this job as a janitor. She wanted to go to the 
college somehow so she could earn a degree and find a better job. The 
day I showed up to give a graduation speech at the tribal college, this 
woman was a graduate of the college. She had pulled herself up by the 
proverbial bootstraps and gotten an education and was no longer the 
janitor of the school. She was wearing a cap and a gown and a huge 
smile because, despite it all, and through it all, with all the 
adversity in her life, she had become a college graduate. You could 
read ``pride'' all over her face. It is something she had done for her 
own future that no one will ever take away from her. She invested in 
herself against all the odds.
  Education means so much to people at every stage: When they are 
retired, when they are 40, when they are 20, when they are 10. We are 
talking about the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act. There is not much that is more important for this 
country than to improve this law for America's kids. There is a lot on 
which we can agree, some we will disagree on in the coming days, but I 
hope at the end we can look at this bill and say we did something very 
important for this country's future.
  I will take the floor later in the debate and offer a couple of 
amendments I have described. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). The Senator from 
Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business 
for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I commend my colleague from North Dakota for his 
eloquent statement on education. I come to the floor today to join a 
number of Democratic Senators who have been here this afternoon to 
speak about the issue of education which is going to come before the 
Senate this coming week. I share their passion and their concern as we 
look at reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
  It is critical we understand we all share the same goals. President 
Bush stated very rightly that no child should be left behind. Everyone 
in this body wants to make sure that no child is left behind. The 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act is our opportunity to do that 
because, as we all know, education is the key to a child's future. If 
they know how to read, they will make it in this world. If they can do 
math, they will be able to move on. If they can converse, they will be 
able to get a job and be successful. That is our goal for every single 
child.
  The Elementary and Secondary Education Act that is being worked on 
now has a number of compromises in it. It is not everything everybody 
wants, but the one concern that I want to express adamantly to this 
body before we bring this bill to the floor is the lack of available 
resources. It is so easy to say we set standards, we set goals that we 
demand our children and their schools reach. But if we don't provide 
the dollars for them to be able to reach those goals, we are simply 
putting out a mandate, an unfunded mandate, to districts which means 
the kids will fail. There is no doubt that if you want a child to learn 
to read, you have to provide the resources for a teacher who is 
capable. You need to make sure the class size is small enough, that the 
child has enough personal time with the teacher, an expert, to be able 
to learn to read.
  It is not magic. It takes a qualified teacher. We want to make sure 
all of our kids pass the annual tests. Just giving tests as required in 
the bill does not assure the students will do better. I fear it means 
without the backing of the resources behind it, so the children can 
learn what is required of them to pass the test, the children will fail 
and drop out of school. And, yes, 5 years from now we may have a higher 
percentage of kids doing better on tests but nobody will be testing the 
kids who didn't make it, who dropped out, who failed, who are not in 
the school system anymore. Those are the kids we cannot leave behind.
  Without the resources that are so important for success, and a 
commitment from this White House to have the resources available, we 
will have failed America's children if we move this bill forward.
  We know what works in public education. Any one of us who has been to 
a school recently knows what makes a difference. A teacher makes all 
the difference. A good teacher and a good principal makes an incredible 
difference. A parent who is involved makes an incredible difference. 
Unfortunately, that doesn't happen in every school. A lot of classrooms 
don't have qualified teachers. That is a concern. It doesn't happen 
just because we mandate it. It happens because we provide the resources 
to recruit good teachers, to help school districts hire them, and to 
make sure that every child is in a classroom with a qualified teacher.
  We know the facility that a child learns in makes a difference. I 
have been in classrooms, as I believe several of my colleagues have, 
where children are wearing coats, where there are buckets catching 
raindrops, where there is no electrical outlet for the children to even 
plug in a computer much less have a computer, where there isn't even a 
restroom facility in the building; they have to go outside across the 
way to get to one.
  How do you expect a child to learn in that kind of environment? It 
does not happen. Unless we put investments into bringing our buildings 
up to code and providing a partnership at the Federal level for those 
districts and schools that need it the most, we cannot expect children 
to learn. We cannot require that children only pass or move on if they 
have the best teacher and the best classroom and the best facility. If 
we do, we will have failed numbers of children in this country, and 
that is really the wrong policy.
  I will have much to say about many of these issues as we move through 
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the coming days or weeks. 
But I just want our colleagues to know that the worst thing we can do 
is pass an Elementary and Secondary Education Act without adequate 
funding for the requirements we are making, because several years from 
now we will have every school district, every school administrator, 
every school board member, every parent, and every teacher at our door 
saying you passed an unfunded mandate down to us. Instead of recruiting 
good teachers and building our classrooms and working hard to teach our 
kids, we are failing them because the only thing we are doing is 
providing testing.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask consent to speak in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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