[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6719-6725]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



  BETTER EDUCATION FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--
                               Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Allard). The Senator from Utah is 
recognized.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, we have had a lot of conversation on the 
floor in the last week about education, and given that education is the 
No. 1 issue before us and the one that, according to the polls, is the 
No. 1 issue on the minds of most Americans, I think that is 
appropriate. So I am going to join in that conversation and make some 
comments on education tonight. I trust I will have an opportunity to 
make some comments on education a little later on as the debate 
proceeds.
  Members of this body have heard me before talk about my experience as 
far as education is concerned. It was the educational issue that got me 
back into public life. I was enjoying a career as a businessman at a 
relatively prosperous organization. I was the chief executive officer, 
so I got to make a lot of decisions. For example, I got to choose what 
kind of health care I had. None of the other employees got to do that, 
the way the health care system works in America, but I did because I 
was the chief executive.
  I got a phone call from the chair of the Utah State Board of 
Education asking if I would serve as a member of the strategic planning 
commission for that body, and I agreed. Then she called back a little 
later and said, ``We want you to chair.'' I said, ``Well, all right.'' 
So I became chairman of that planning commission and immersed myself in 
issues of education.
  It was a wonderful experience. The most distressing part of it is 
that happened over 10 years ago, and as I sit here in this Chamber and 
listen to the debate on education, it hits me that nothing has changed. 
The issues that were prominent 10, 15 years ago are still the issues we 
are dealing with, and that is very depressing.
  I go back to a comment that was made to me by one of the employees of 
the Utah State Board of Education when we were talking about changes 
that needed to be made. He said to me, ``Bob, don't be so hard on us. 
We are changing. We are changing a little bit all the time. It is just 
that we are not changing as fast as you want us to change. Some of the 
things you are asking us to do, it will take us 15 years to do.''
  I stopped and pointed out to him that 15 years is longer than it 
takes a child entering school in kindergarten to graduate from high 
school. I said, ``In other words, you are saying if we come to the 
conclusion that this is the right thing to do, no one currently in Utah 
schools will get the benefit of that. A whole 15-year cycle could go by 
and somebody could enter kindergarten and graduate from high school 
without getting the benefit of something we decide now has to be 
done.''
  The depressing thing is that conversation took place close to 15 
years ago and we are still having the same debates around here.
  I have put up a chart, which the Senator from Maine, Susan Collins, 
has used. I want to refer to it again because we need to reinforce a 
fundamental truth. The source for the chart is the National Center For 
Education Statistics, in the Digest of Education Statistics. The red 
line is expenditures on education in 1999 dollars. So these are 
constant dollars adjusted for inflation. Back in 1971, this is where 
they were, and now you see the line goes up. This is where they are 
today. It is roughly double the dollar amount. Here are the reading 
scores; it is absolutely flat. The yellow line is the fourth grade; it 
is absolutely flat. The eighth grade is also absolutely flat. The 12th 
grade is absolutely flat.
  We keep spending more and more money on education and keep getting 
exactly the same results. The former Senator from New York, Mr. 
Moynihan, once made a comment while looking at a chart that was even 
more distressing than this, where the expenditures per pupil were going 
up and reading scores were going down, and with his sense of humor and 
sense of irony he said, ``Maybe we can postulate that spending more 
money on education causes education to get worse, because that is the 
trend line. The more we spend, the worse things are.''
  Well, this chart indicates, at least, that the more we spend, the 
more things stay the same. If we are satisfied with what we are getting 
in education right now, then all we should do is leave things exactly 
as they are but spend more money on them. We will get exactly the same 
results we have been getting for the last 20 years. We will spend more 
money and we won't get anything any better.
  Unfortunately, as I listen to speeches in this Chamber, particularly 
the speeches from those who are disappointed with President Bush's 
proposal, I discover that there is an interesting attitude in 
Washington: If a program is good, Washington says spend more money on 
it. If a program is bad, Washington says spend more money on it. They 
don't seem to differentiate between one situation and the other because 
they have a one-size-fits-all solution, which is to spend more money. 
It makes us feel good to spend more money. It makes us feel good to be 
able to go home to town meetings and say, as I have said--I fall into 
the same category when somebody starts attacking

[[Page 6720]]

me on education--I have voted to increase the budget on education every 
time since I have been in the Senate. That kind of shuts them up. They 
can't attack Senator Bennett for being anti-education if he promises to 
keep spending more money on education. They never ask me the 
fundamental question: What have you done to change the system so that 
it gets better?
  What have you done to change the system so that the reading scores 
start to go up? Well, that is a little harder. It is much easier to 
say, well, I voted to spend more money, and send me to Washington and I 
will vote to spend more money.
  President Bush wants to spend more money on education. A lot of 
people say, boy, that is unusual for a Republican. The Democrat 
reaction is, we want to spend even more money than President Bush wants 
to spend, and we are back in the same Washington trap, which is, if it 
is a good program, spend more money on it; if it is a bad program, fix 
it by spending more money on it.
  We need to get away from that. We need to break out of that syndrome 
and say: Let's not spend more money; let's spend smarter money; let's 
begin to demand a return on our investment; let's begin to say this is 
not good enough and we are not going to give you more money until we 
can be convinced that the money we are spending is producing better 
results.
  That brings me smack into the issue that has been discussed today, 
which is fully funding title I.
  That is a great political hot button: we must fully fund title I. 
That is why it is not working. That is why we are not getting the 
effectiveness. We have only funded it to this level, and we should be 
funding it to that level.
  That is a great way to put off this decision. That is a great way to 
continue doing what we have been doing without facing the fundamental 
question, which is, Why has title I not been effective? Is there a 
possibility there is a reason other than the fact that we have not been 
spending enough money on it?
  Oh, that is very hard to discuss in Washington because, as I say, the 
all- purpose answer to everything is, fund it; spend more money on it.
  Have we ever looked at title I to determine if there are other 
reasons why it is not as effective as it is supposed to be, other 
reasons besides money? The last comprehensive study of title I and how 
it works was made in 1994, 7 years ago. We have been flying blind for 7 
years. For 7 years we have been going on faith.
  I believe in faith. I will yield to no Member of this body in my 
faith in a religious concept to which I have made a very firm and solid 
commitment. But when it comes to things that are not of the spiritual 
world, I want some proof. I want something besides just blind faith. I 
think in 7 years we ought to be able to come up with some assessments 
and some understanding of how things are going that will cause us to 
spend our money smarter.
  We now have a President who is saying, let's test the results school 
by school and monitor who is doing well and who is not. I come out of 
the business community. That is a little like saying, let's start to 
keep books on our sales. Instead of just saying, well, we have a sales 
force, let's spend money on sales, let's start to keep track of which 
salesman or saleswoman is performing better than which other one.
  To a businessman and businesswoman, that is just obvious. You do not 
make an expenditure until you have an assessment of how things are 
going. You do not hire somebody or give somebody a raise or hand them a 
bonus until you have at least some understanding of how well he is 
doing. If you have somebody who is not doing very well, you do not give 
him a bonus. You try training him; you try motivating him; you transfer 
him to another position where he might be better suited; but you do not 
automatically say, Well, you are not doing it very well, but the way to 
solve your problem is to give you more money. That is the attitude in 
education: We do not really care whether you are doing well or not. All 
we know is we can feel good about spending money on education because 
we are all for education.
  The core of the Bush proposal is assessment of results. The core of 
the Bush position on education is to find out where we are. The driving 
force behind everything he is pushing is understanding what is 
happening, and that is so threatening to people who are committed to 
life as it has been, the status quo, that they can all find reasons to 
complain about it.
  One of the reasons to complain about it that I have heard is that it 
is going to cost money. Hey, we cannot spend money on assessments; we 
must spend money in the traditional way to get the traditional results.
  Some say, All right, we will go along with the assessments as long as 
the Federal Government pays for it. We should not put that burden on 
the States. We should not insist the States measure where they are 
without paying them to measure where they are.
  I ask the question, What responsible State superintendent is not 
anxious to conduct assessments right now? I can say that with some 
validity because in my home State of Utah, they are already doing the 
assessments. They are paying for it with State dollars.
  Why? Because they have come to the same conclusion that President 
Bush has: If you are going to spend the money smarter, you have to 
understand what is going on. So it is intelligent stewardship on the 
part of the State board of education in Utah for them to take precious 
money in the State and spend it on assessing where people are, what is 
happening, what are the outcomes, how well are we doing.
  One of the questions I will raise when the amendment comes up that 
says we have to have Federal funds to pay for the assessment is this 
one: What happens if the State is already paying for the assessment? 
Does it still get the Federal funds that it would otherwise get or are 
you going to penalize the States that are doing the right thing now by 
saying we will not give you the money and, thus, reward the States that 
are avoiding assessments by giving them the money?
  These are issues that are very different from the standard Washington 
answer which is: Just give them the money; just spend the money.
  No, we need to know where we are. One of the first places that we 
should start in assessments is appropriately title I. Yes, title I 
money and title I circumstances are very controversial. We have not had 
a complete analysis of how well that has been doing since 1994. Let's 
start to assess title I. Before we say the magic words ``fully fund,'' 
let's ask the magic question: What are we funding? Are we funding 
failure? We do not know. Are we funding mediocrity? We do not know. We 
are funding a wonderful sounding goal, but are we funding results or 
are we funding failure?
  Let's find out. Let's do the assessments. Let's spend the money to 
find out what is happening with title I kids, how it could be done 
better, how it could be done smarter, how it could be done quicker, and 
then I am perfectly willing to vote for the money. I am perfectly 
willing to spend the money if I know it is being spent on something 
that will get results.
  My history as a businessman was that I was willing to take a risk 
with the shareholders' money. Some of the shareholders did not like it. 
They wanted business just as it was always done: Don't try anything 
new; don't launch any new product, that is risky; don't try to break 
into any new market, that is expensive. A business that takes that 
position is a business that dies over time.
  When I was running our business I tried some new products and some of 
them failed badly. They were expensive. I tried to go into some new 
markets and it turned out to be really stupid--heavy investiture with 
little or no return. But some of the products revolutionized the 
company. Some of the new territories we entered turned into vast new 
opportunities and overall, by being willing to try and assess and, yes, 
spend more money, we grew the company from a few hundred thousand 
dollars a year to a $400 or $500 million business. You say schools are 
different; you are not trying to grow the school

[[Page 6721]]

or trying to be entrepreneurial. I am not trying to grow the school, 
but I am trying to grow the trim lines and see that after 20 years of 
being flat, can't there be a wiser spending of money.
  If you want to get the results you are getting, keep doing what you 
are doing. That is a fundamental truth they teach in business school. 
If you want to keep getting the results you are getting now, keep doing 
what you are doing now. If you want different results, you have to do 
something different. That, ultimately, is the challenge of the Bush 
proposal on education.
  It has taken a little while for a lot of people to understand that, 
for a lot of people to come to grips with that. President Bush is 
proposing something different. How threatening that is. How unsettling. 
How disturbing. The President of the United States is saying we are not 
getting what we need to get; let's try something else. And he is 
willing to spend for it. The amount of money that the President has 
proposed as an increase in education spending is more than the Clinton 
administration ever proposed. So no one can say he is being cheap about 
this. No one is saying he is not willing to put his money where his 
mouth is, to use the language of the gambling community. He is willing 
to put up the money. But he is saying, I don't want to spend it in the 
same old ways; I want to try something new. I am willing to fund the 
experiment, but I want to find out if we can't do it better.
  In order to find out if we can't do it better, we have to start 
making assessments and then we have to pay attention to what the 
assessments tell us. Boy, is that revolutionary. Is that scary. Track 
what is happening as we spend this money in different ways and then pay 
attention to what that tracking says.
  No, the President's opponents say, it is all too threatening. It is 
all too different. Better fall back into the old political ruts we have 
been in forever in this town, which is, pick up the slogan, pick up the 
good-sounding title, and paste money on it. Then go home and brag to 
your constituents that you are pro-education. After 20 years of doing 
that, there has been no progress.
  Maybe it is time we did something different. Not ``maybe''--it is 
definitely time we did something different.
  Let me ask this question rhetorically. Suppose the Bush program 
doesn't work. Suppose we spend all of this money that President Bush is 
trying to get us to spend in different ways and the reading scores stay 
flat. What have we lost? What has that cost been compared to business 
as usual?
  Yes, President Bush can be faulted for spending that extra money on 
education and not getting any tangible results. But I suggest if we go 
the route many in this Chamber want to go, which is to say ``don't 
change the system in any fundamental ways, but do raise the money,'' we 
will get exactly the same result. Everybody will feel good about it, 
except the kids.
  That is where I want to end up because that is where the primary 
focus should be. That is the fundamental issue of education--the kids. 
We don't fund education in this country to make politicians feel good, 
or at least we shouldn't. We don't fund education because we want to 
maintain the sanctity of those buildings that we put up or because we 
want to provide employment for the teachers, the aides, the janitors, 
and the school lunch people. Boy, they would all be in the unemployment 
ranks if we did not keep funding education.
  That is not why we fund education. We fund education for one purpose 
and one purpose only: to empower our children to function effectively 
in society. Put in place whatever subdefinition you want. We fund 
education to empower our children to become good citizens. We empower 
our children to become good wage earners. We empower our children so 
they can become good parents. Put whatever subset you want, but the 
fundamental reason we fund education, the only reason we fund 
education, is so that our children will be able to function effectively 
in society, in whatever role they have.
  For far too long the focus of educational funding and educational 
reform and educational structure has been the system and not the 
children. I went through that when I was in my situation as chair of 
the strategic planning commission that I mentioned. Over and over 
again, everybody who came before me talked about ``the system.'' This 
is how we tweak the system; this is how we change the structure; this 
is how we work on the organization.
  I kept saying, Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Your focus is in the 
wrong place. Your focus should be on the children.
  They would say, Sure, sure, sure, that's right. Now, let's go back. 
In order to fix things we have to change the structure, we have to 
change the organization, we have to change the reporting relationship.
  No, no, no, I would say. Your focus isn't on the children.
  Finally, I came up with this analogy. It is imperfect, but I hope it 
makes the point. I remember when the big three auto manufacturers had 
one common enemy, the one thing they were absolutely united on. That 
enemy was named Toyota. They were determined they would do everything 
they possibly could to see to it that Toyota did not enter the United 
States; that Toyota cars were stopped at the shore and not allowed to 
come in. Toyota was so threatening to them, they even came to the 
Congress and asked for legislation that would have effectively kept 
Toyota out.
  Why was Toyota so threatening? There was a fundamental difference in 
focus. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler were focused on the car. What 
does the car look like? How does the car drive? What is the engine in 
the car? What can we change in the car? The whole focus was on the car.
  Toyota came to America with the focus on the driver. What does the 
driver want? Well, they did a little surveying and they discovered that 
the driver wanted, among other things, reliability in the car. They 
didn't want it to break down after 20,000 miles. The driver wasn't as 
interested in style as he was in stability. Toyota said, Find out what 
the driver wants and then design a car that fits it. By focusing on the 
driver, they made cars smaller so they could fit in parking lots. By 
focusing on the driver, they made cars cheaper to operate so you didn't 
buy as much gasoline. They found a ready market in the United States 
for their cars.
  Fortunately, the American manufacturers were not successful in 
keeping Toyota out, and the pressure of the competition of Toyota made 
the American cars substantially better. The American manufacturers 
decided they had better focus on the driver, too, and each manufacturer 
picked a niche of drivers and began to produce products that would fit 
those drivers and they began to prosper and discovered that Toyota was 
not going to put them out of business. They had a shift in their focus: 
one group focusing on the car, the other group focusing on the driver. 
The group focusing on the driver was winning until the other group 
started focusing on the driver as well.
  I use that analogy to say, You people are focusing on the car. You 
are focusing on the school building. Should it be painted blue or 
yellow? How many rooms should it have? What kind of air conditioning 
should we have in the school? What kind of landscaping should there be? 
What should be the structure of organization? Should the principal have 
one aide or two aides? You are focusing on the system. Who is focusing 
on the kids?
  It is just possible that the kids are going through this school, this 
system you have built and created, and they are not being empowered to 
function effectively in society. What do the kids need to function 
effectively in society? As soon as you put your focus on that, you may 
discover a very different kind of school needs to be constructed around 
the needs of the children. That is what President Bush is talking 
about. Let's make some assessments of what is happening with the 
students and then see if, from those assessments, we can create a 
system that will meet those needs. If we can, we can start to see these 
test score lines

[[Page 6722]]

on this chart begin to come up along with the expenditure line.
  President Bush is not afraid to raise the top line, the expenditures. 
We Republicans are not afraid to do it with him. But we don't want to 
do it focusing on the system. We want to do it focusing on the child.
  So when somebody says fully fund title I, my question is, How is 
title I helping the children? How is title I working?
  Well, we don't know.
  Why don't we know? Because the last study that has been done on the 
effectiveness of title I was done in 1994.
  All right, I have gone around the argument. I do not want to repeat 
it one more time. But I do want to summarize it and make the point one 
more time. This is a fundamental crossroads for the Senate, the 
Congress, the Government as a whole. Are we going to keep doing what we 
have always done, which gives us a warm, personal, political feeling 
and political cover when we go home, by saying we spent more money on 
education, to prove how much we love education? Or are we willing to 
take the risk that President Bush is asking us to take, to say the time 
has come to think about doing it differently? The time has come to 
think about spending the money differently. The time has come to make 
assessments and evaluations that will help us direct the money more 
intelligently.
  The time has come, instead of congratulating ourselves on the fact 
that we make the red line go up, to say, Let's hold ourselves 
accountable for the fact that the blue and the green and the yellow 
lines have not budged in 20 years.
  That is the challenge President Bush has given us. I hope we are 
equal to it.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennett). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I listened to your comments with enormous 
interest because I think you made some very good points. I wanted to 
bring some comments to the floor from a neighbor's perspective, a 
neighbor of the great State of Utah, what I have been hearing about 
education in Colorado.
  Colorado has taken a very progressive approach to education with the 
new Governor of Colorado, Governor Owens, and the Colorado Legislature. 
They have decided to try to do something about education. In that 
regard, they are probably somewhat ahead of what we see happening in 
other States.
  What they are attempting to do is very much the same type of program 
that the President is proposing to the Congress. As a Congress, we need 
to help the President give the States more control over the educational 
system--with accountability. I do think accountability is the key. I 
share the observations of my colleague from Utah that test scores are 
not getting better. I am looking at the test score trend, not recently 
but over several decades, as to how we compare with other countries in 
math scores, how we have been doing over time in math and English 
scores, and I am disturbed by the trend.
  We need to do things that will improve the math skills of our 
students. We need to do things that will improve the English-
proficiency skills of our students. Not only am I responding to what I 
am observing as to the scores, but when I go out and visit the 
employers of the State of Colorado, I hear the same message that I have 
observed as far as test scores; that is, students are not as well 
prepared for math or not as well prepared to deal with the English 
language in the workplace. I think that goes right down to the 
Senator's bottom line, that education is to prepare people to carry on 
with their daily activities in a democracy such as we have in the 
United States. I do think education is key to that.
  I am here to praise President Bush for his commitment to education, 
making it his top legislative priority. I like his commitment to making 
sure that no child is left behind.
  Over the last 35 years, the Federal Government has spent $120 billion 
on poor kids. They have shown no improvement in basic math and reading 
skills. The President's education blueprint demands accountability. He 
is asking the States to set higher standards. I think that is great. 
Then he holds the States and school districts and individual schools to 
those standards and allows some flexibility because not all States are 
the same, not all school districts' problems are the same, certainly 
not all community problems are the same. School districts and local 
agencies should have more flexibility to spend the Federal money.
  In addition to that, he has suggested we need to come close to 
tripling the amount of money we provide for education, an increase as 
compared to the rest of the budget. In other words, the rest of the 
budget he proposed had a 4-percent increase. Education was somewhere 
around an 11-percent or 12-percent increase. With added flexibility 
must come more accountability. So he is saying to the States: OK, 
States, go ahead and design a test so you can measure performance, 
which is very important, grades 3-8.
  Then you measure the progress within the State. That allows the 
students as well as the parents to measure what is happening as far as 
their educational effort in the various school districts. It allows the 
parents to take a greater role in the progress of the child's 
education. I think that is entirely appropriate.
  I have talked with educators in the State of Colorado. I have members 
in my family who are educators. I have a great uncle who is president 
of the Teachers College. Obviously, education is important to our 
family. It is important to me.
  We have to develop a ``can do'' attitude in education. We need to 
encourage the fact that we can do better than what we have been doing. 
We need to look at ways in which we can give local school districts the 
flexibility they need to do a better job in educating students and 
allowing parents to have a greater role in educating students. It is 
going to require a team effort with parents working within the school 
system to make sure that things get better.
  I admit that in some cases we need to look at the disciplinary 
situation in classes. When I talked about education and improving 
education, I mentioned the fact that we needed to do something to 
improve discipline in the classroom. One of the problems I see with 
discipline in the classroom is the type of liability the school 
district and the teacher may incur trying to impose discipline on the 
classroom. I think that is a Federal problem as well as a State 
problem, and it is certainly something that perhaps as a Congress we 
ought to investigate at a later date. I think the State legislators 
themselves ought to look at the liability of the teacher and school 
districts in trying to apply discipline in the school districts or 
within the classrooms.
  This is a good first step that the President is suggesting. I think 
what is coming to the floor of the Senate and that was reported out of 
the education committee is a good first step. It is moving us in the 
right direction.
  I hope we can quickly get this piece of legislation moved out of the 
Senate without any further delay. It disturbs me when I see the delay 
in one piece of legislation after another. And the education bill we 
now have before the Senate went through some of that delay process. 
Then when we vote to move it on, we get a very substantial margin in 
moving forward with a particular piece of legislation.
  It is important to the history of this country that we do something 
about education. It is important to the employer. It is important to 
the future of the child. We want to make sure that no child gets left 
behind.
  The solution in the past was that we would have more money for 
education from Washington but with more mandates. We are seeing some of 
those issues that will probably come up as amendments on the floor as 
we debate

[[Page 6723]]

the education bill. Some of these amendments are going to say we will 
take the flexibility from the school districts and put it in the 
buildings, or they will say we will have to put it in teachers. I think 
the proper and sensible approach is to give maximum flexibility for 
those dollars to the school district to decide where their needs are. 
It may be that they just built a new school building and they don't 
need more money for a school building. So they can't participate in the 
dollars that go towards a new school building. Their need is for 
teachers. So the school district, in that case, needs to have the 
flexibility to move that money into teaching. It may be that they have 
plenty of teachers and the school building is not in good shape. So 
they need to have the flexibility to take those dollars and put it in a 
building program so they can have a better environment for learning.
  That is just one example. There are a number of other examples that 
most of us could point to as to what could be done in the way of adding 
more flexibility to the school districts so they can meet their various 
needs.
  I travel throughout the State of Colorado, and I don't think we are 
any different than any other State. But there are a lot of differences 
in Colorado between the various school districts depending on where you 
are in the State.
  We have a lot of different problems throughout the country because 
there are different types of school districts. I think to try to put 
forth a solution in Washington where you have a one-size-fits-all 
program is a mistake.
  When the President says he wants to have more flexibility, I believe 
this is what he is talking about. That is why I think it is important 
that we give school districts the flexibility they need.
  A teacher in Weld County recently told me that his school is using a 
janitor's closet as a classroom because of the lack of space available. 
If we can give him more dollars for flexibility, then that would give 
him an opportunity to change that classroom situation. If we pass 
amendments that say our extra dollars will go to hiring more teachers, 
it is not going to do that school any service in trying to create a 
good education for its students.
  I am here to support the bill that we have on the floor. I think it 
is moving us in the right direction. I am here to support President 
Bush because I think he is moving in the right direction. I like his 
theme that we don't leave any child behind because it provides 
flexibility to States and school districts. It promotes accountability 
and it increases parental involvement.
  My hope is that as we move forward with this debate, we don't linger, 
and that we get the bill passed quickly and be supportive of what the 
President is trying to do. He is bringing some new ideas to education.
  I know there are individuals in this body that get real apprehensive 
when you start talking about new ideas for education. But we need to 
take some of those inherent risks. I think that the risk is minimal 
when you put the confidence in local school districts and you measure 
results. We do that with a flexible testing program that is established 
with the States.
  I am one who is saying we ought to change education, and we need to 
move forward. We need to take a positive attitude in education. We can 
do better with math and we can do better with English. We need to 
measure those results.
  I yield the time. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Allard). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from New York is recognized.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I am here also to add my voice to those 
who have already spoken on this bill. I would like to talk on two 
particular subjects. I am not going to elaborate on how important 
education is to America. We all know that. Nor the problems that our 
schools are having. We know those, too. But I would like to talk about 
two areas that I will be addressing as we move to debate this very 
important bill.
  The first area is funding. Frankly, I have been--I couldn't use a 
better word--shocked at the low level of funding proposed by the 
administration. Initially, the administration proposed a $700 million 
increase. And this from the President who says he is the education 
President I find--to be kind--troubling.
  We all know that throwing money at a problem does not always yield a 
solution. We also know that the starting salary for teachers is very 
low. We know that class size has dramatically increased. We know that 
the property tax which has funded education throughout America is such 
an unpopular tax that local school boards--any one of them you talk 
to--are totally strapped in terms of providing the new dollars that 
they need to lure teachers, to keep teachers, to expand their schools, 
to wire them.
  My children attend public schools in New York City. I believe in the 
public school system. It was good to me; it is being very good to them. 
But go to any school and talk to the principal--it can be in a large 
city; it can be in a small rural town; it can be in a suburban area--
and they will tell you that these days, with all the demands placed on 
education, they do not have the dollars, plain and simple. And their 
school boards tell them that the property tax taxpayers, justifiably 
and understandably, believe that the property taxes are so high they 
cannot raise them.
  That may not be true in every school district that I visit, but it is 
true in the overwhelming majority throughout my State, and my State is 
so large it has school districts that mirror those in just about every 
other State. There are even many that resemble those in rural Colorado, 
such as in the Adirondack Mountains, I say to the Presiding Officer.
  So money is a problem. We will debate during the consideration of 
this bill how to spend money, as we should. I tend to be supportive of 
the President's desire for accountability in testing. Testing isn't the 
only answer, but it is part of the answer. If you have too subjective a 
test, teachers, recognizing they will only be measured by how they 
grade their own students, will inflate the values. So you need some 
kind of objective testing. I agree with the President on that.
  I do not want to lower the bar. I do not think a child should be 
promoted from the second grade to the third grade if they are reading 
at the first grade level. I do not think there should be teachers in 
our schools who do not know much about math who are teaching math. But 
keep the bar high, my colleagues. You have to provide the wherewithal 
to get people over that bar. The localities can no longer do it.
  So if you believe that education is a national imperative--which I 
do--if you believe in this country, and want us to stay the leading 
economic power in the world, and you believe that education, No. 1, 
will keep us there or sink us, you have to then increase the Federal 
role.
  The President campaigned on that. Thank God he said the days when 
many wanted to abolish the Department of Education are over. He 
understood there was a Federal need and a Federal role. In the way he 
campaigned, I was very enthusiastic about his role in education. If you 
had to sum it up, you would say: Do not lower the bar but provide some 
of the wherewithal to help the localities, the students, the teachers 
to get over that bar. I think that is a great way to do it.
  I think there are many on our side who will meet the President on 
standards. But we wish he would be more forthcoming in meeting us on 
increasing the dollars that education needs because no matter how you 
slice it, every school board is pressed and cannot do the things it 
wants to do.
  So when we propose that there be full funding of title I, when we 
propose, in relation to IDEA, that the Federal Government finally live 
up to its promise and fund 40 percent of what we mandate on localities 
in terms of special education, we are supported by

[[Page 6724]]

just about every school board in the country, just about every teacher, 
and almost all who study education.
  We need to do this to keep our country great. When I see that the 
President proposed $700 million, and then goes up to $1.7 billion, but 
proposes 5 times that increase in the military, and proposes 50 times 
that increase in tax cuts, I say, this is not the education President 
because, my colleagues, you cannot just talk the talk. You have to walk 
the walk. Part of the walk is standards and part of the walk is 
upgrading our schools, but part of the walk is more dollars.
  So I will be offering an amendment, on which I will be working with 
the Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, as well as our minority 
leader, that will say, No. 1, there ought to be a certain amount of 
money there but, No. 2, the teeth of this amendment says that if we do 
not appropriate the amount of money that we authorize, then parts of 
this legislation will not take effect.
  If we emerge with a paltry increase in education funding, I believe 
that, first, the President will pay a price, and those who are against 
increased funding will pay a price but, far more importantly than that, 
America will pay a severe price.
  We cannot continue to attract the best people into teaching if the 
salaries are going to be so low, particularly in areas such as math and 
science. We cannot educate our children very well if they do not have 
up-to-date technology in their classrooms. We cannot educate children 
in schools where the plaster is falling from the ceiling.
  When my daughter attended kindergarten in PS 230, there were two 
kindergarten classes in one classroom because they did not have enough 
classroom space for the students. She does not get the extra curricular 
activity going to a New York City public school that she should. It is 
a price we are willing to put up with because of the other advantages 
that she has going to a public school. But that is just the frills. It 
is the sinew of education that is suffering. As costs go up--the 
energy, the salaries, and everything else--and education budgets fall 
flat, we fall further and further behind.
  So if I could make one point to my colleagues it is this: All the 
verbiage and all the legislative language are not going to make much 
difference if we do not fund them. I urge my colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle just to look at our priorities as a whole and ask, Is 
the tax cut more important than adequately funding education? Is an 
increase in a new military program more important than funding 
education? Admittedly, all three are important. But the priorities in 
terms of the amount of money the Republican majority and the President 
have proposed in this bill are out of whack, not only out of whack with 
the priorities I might have but out of whack with their own rhetoric. 
It just does not add up. And that is not right.
  The second area I would like to talk about is a related area, which 
is teacher quality and attracting teachers. Since I care a lot about 
education, I go around my State, as I mentioned earlier, and I talk to 
the superintendents of school districts, principals of schools, 
teachers, and parents.
  When you ask them what their largest problem is, it is very rarely 
things we talk about. It is recruiting and retaining good teachers. I 
will talk more about this later because I have some amendments that I 
have been working on with some of my colleagues--many of them are 
bipartisan--to try to improve the quality of teachers.
  In almost every corner of America, you cannot get new, good teachers 
in math and science because the starting salary for a teacher in those 
two areas is so outweighed by the amount that the private sector will 
pay you just cannot get good teachers. We had 40,000 new math and 
science teachers in America last year, and 3,000 majored or minored in 
math or science--3,000. The other 37,000 did not have the background. 
Some of them might be good teachers, but if this is such an important 
subject, don't we want someone with an adequate background?
  In every corner of my State, people talk about this problem. In the 
past, we were lucky in America. We had captive cohorts of people who 
went into teaching. In the 1930s and 1940s, we had Depression babies, 
people who knew the pain of unemployment in their homes. They went out 
and got a civil service job. It might not have paid that much, but they 
had job security.
  Then in the 1950s and 1960s, we had fabulous women go into teaching. 
In those days, so many other careers were not open and available to 
women, so they became teachers. Some became nurses. I am talking about 
teachers today, but for both fields the cause was the same. Because of 
the lifting of the barriers, half the medical school enrollees today 
are women and half the law school enrollees are also women. That is 
great. That is America living up to its potential. We no longer have a 
captive audience of teachers.
  Then there was a third cohort. We often forget, but large numbers of 
young men in the late 1960s and early 1970s went into teaching because 
you would get draft deferment. And particularly during the Vietnam war, 
when millions of young men did not want to go fight that war for 
whatever reason, they became teachers. Many stayed.
  At open school night for my daughter, who is in the 11th grade, I 
asked her six teachers in her six subjects how they became teachers. 
There were three women. They fit the category I mentioned. And there 
were three men, all three of whom started teaching in the late 1960s.
  Those captive audiences of teachers are gone. In fact, the average 
age of a teacher in America is around 50. Half our teachers will retire 
in the next decade. If we don't do anything, the people we replace them 
with will not be close to as good or as dedicated, and our educational 
system, which has trouble now, will get worse.
  Studies show that the most important things in how well a student 
does in school are the values and input from that student's family. We 
are not here changing that right now. We need prayer and internal 
workings and spirituality and a lot of other things to bring the family 
back up. I believe strongly in that, although I don't think it is a 
governmental matter. But the second largest thing that influences how 
well a student does is the quality of the teacher.
  I have always supported reducing the number of kids in the classroom, 
but I don't think it is as important as improving the quality of the 
teacher. I would rather have a good teacher for 21 kids than a mediocre 
teacher for 18. If we can't replace all the good teachers for the 21 
kids, we have real trouble. We can't even start talking about class 
size. Yet that is what is happening. We have to change that. If we 
could do one thing in the educational system, that is what we have to 
do.
  Now, how do we do it? Well, certainly we want teachers to have more 
prestige. I am totally befuddled by those who would try to improve the 
educational system by bashing teachers. It makes no sense to me. Most 
teachers I meet are pretty good and pretty dedicated. There are some 
bad apples, as there are in every profession, but overall they are 
pretty good.
  I just flew home last night. My young daughter, who is 12, was in her 
school concert. She plays the oboe. We have been hearing the oboe play 
``Watermelon Man'' for the last 3 months in the house. Why the oboe? 
Because she is a nice kid, and her music teacher said: Alison, if you 
don't play the oboe, we will have no oboe in the Hudde Junior High 
School band. She said: OK.
  Now she regrets it because she is more a trumpet-type girl than an 
oboe-type girl. But the music teacher was fabulous, a dedicated man; 
you could see him get up there. These kids who were in the sixth grade, 
who had only been playing their instruments for 6 months, were great. 
Last night, that person personified, to me, the dedication of so many 
teachers, to take these kids, sixth graders, 12-year-olds--they would 
rather be doing a lot of other things--and get them to play so well 
together.
  We have to make teaching more prestigious, and we should praise our 
teachers when they do good. We have to give teachers more authority in 
the

[[Page 6725]]

classroom. The rules and regulations that prevent a teacher from 
dealing with an unruly student go overboard. I would rather see those 
changed and give the teacher more authority and not see teachers 
worried that they will be sued for this or that if they try to exercise 
some authority. All those things are necessary. Most of them are up to 
the locals.
  But we will not improve teachers unless we raise the salaries. The 
reality is, right now we ask people to make sacrifices. In New York 
City, we can't get certified teachers for all the reasons I mentioned. 
How about in our wealthy suburbs where a starting salary for a teacher 
is pretty good, $35,000, which in New York, Long Island, for instance, 
is not a lot. You can do a lot more with $35,000 in Mississippi than 
you can in Long Island, but it is still not bad. When do they all quit? 
Three years later when they have to buy a home.
  Unless we do more for teachers' salaries, we won't solve the problem. 
Unless we do more to help give prestige to teachers, we won't solve the 
problem. Unless we give teachers some support in the classroom, we 
won't solve the problem. It takes money, and it takes standards, both. 
You can't have one; you can't have the other. You need both. Just 
money, low standards, forget it. It is wasted. Just standards, low 
money, you won't get the people who can meet the standards.
  The second area I will be focusing on as we debate this bill in the 
weeks ahead is how to improve the quality of our teachers. It is key. I 
wouldn't want this choice, but I would rather have a school that is a 
little old and a little grimy with a teacher who really cared and did a 
great job than a brand spanking new school and a mediocre teacher. I 
would rather have almost nothing in the education world except for 
parents who watched their kids and taught them values and helped them 
with their homework. That is probably first. But second? Good teachers.
  You get what you pay for, when the starting salary for a teacher now 
in America is $26,000 in what should be the exalted profession of the 
21st century, particularly in math and science, but even some other 
areas, special ed, languages, computer skills.
  I hope my colleagues will pay attention to this debate. It is crucial 
for America. I hope it will be a long and full debate. I hope that I 
will get the kind of bipartisan support that I think the measures I am 
talking about deserve.
  I thank the Chair 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. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sessions). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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