[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 10049-10052]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                     AN EQUAL APPROACH TO EDUCATION

  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut for 
his very generous comments relative to my role in the Senate. I 
reciprocate. I admire the Senator from Connecticut immensely. I enjoy 
him as a colleague, especially his sense of humor and his ability to 
fashion thoughtful policy with which I sometimes agree and sometimes 
disagree. It

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is nice to have him as a colleague and especially to claim him as a 
fellow New Englander.
  He raises an issue that is one of the major debates revolving around 
the issue of education, both here at the Federal level and at the State 
level, as he pointed out in citing the New Hampshire Supreme Court 
decision in the Claremont case which has had a significant impact on 
New Hampshire's approach to education. I have always believed that 
decision was wrongly decided, but whether it was wrongly decided or 
not, it was still the Supreme Court of New Hampshire and, therefore, it 
is the law of the land in New Hampshire. It was decided based on the 
New Hampshire Constitution, not on the Federal Constitution. And as 
such, it is unique to New Hampshire, although there are other States 
that take the same decision.
  This concept that every part within a State must be equal in their 
approach to education is something that the New Hampshire Supreme Court 
has found to be true, or at least to be the law of New Hampshire. But 
it is not necessarily the law everywhere.
  Furthermore, the logic of that, if you were to carry it to its 
natural extreme, would be that everywhere in the Nation must be the 
same. If you carry that to its logical conclusion, it would be that in 
New Hampshire, if town A has a higher property tax base than town B, 
therefore some of town A's money must go to town B to support town B, 
thus reducing the money for town A but increasing the money for town B 
in order to reach equality of funds, which is essentially what the 
Claremont decision held in its practical application, unless you find 
new sources of revenue, which is what our State is trying to do right 
now. Then if you take that to its next logical step, which the Senator 
from Connecticut appears to be promoting as a concept, this idea of 
comparability, then why just New Hampshire?
  Logically wouldn't the next step be that New Hampshire's funding 
should be the same as Connecticut, or Connecticut's funding should be 
the same as Mississippi, that all State districts, all States, all 
communities across the country should have exactly the same funding or 
at least comparable funding in their school systems in order to be 
equal, in order to get quality education, in order to leave nobody 
behind, in order to have equality of opportunity as has been defined in 
the law?
  I don't think anybody is suggesting that, but that is the logical 
extension of the logic behind this amendment. Why stop it at the State 
level? Why stop at the community level? Why go community to community, 
or county to county? Why wouldn't you step it up to State to State and 
end up with Connecticut sending money, I presume, to Mississippi, for 
example, or to Louisiana so that Louisiana standards would come up in 
the amount of funding, and Connecticut's would go down in the amount of 
funding?
  It doesn't make any sense. Why? Because it doesn't necessarily 
improve education. Why doesn't it improve education? Because there has 
been study after study after study--some of the best ones have been 
done out of the University of Rochester where they have actually 
studied studies, 300 or so--which have concluded that education is not 
a formula where more dollars equal better results.
  In fact, there are a lot of instances where more dollars simply have 
not equaled better results. And you don't have to look too far from 
where we are holding this debate to find that case.
  Here in the city of Washington, regrettably, more dollars are spent 
per pupil than any place in the United States, or for that matter than 
at any place in all these other industrialized countries that are 
always listed as being better than the United States in education.
  More dollars per student are spent right here in Washington. Yet the 
quality of the education, the student achievement levels here in 
Washington are some of the lowest achievement levels of any urban area 
in the country. So it is not an issue of more dollars produces better 
education. It has been shown, after innumerable studies--and I have to 
also say just through common sense, just looking at the situation--that 
what produces better education is a lot of different factors:
  Parental involvement, parents who care about education; teachers who 
have flexibility in their classrooms to teach the way they think best; 
good teachers; principals who have flexibility to run their schools the 
way they think is important; superintendents who have the flexibility 
to run the school systems; community involvement, with businesses in 
the community that adopt a school and make it better by committing 
their employees and their employees' commitments to time and tutorial 
activity, with support groups such as Big Brothers and Big Sisters 
supporting people after school so the kids, when not in school, can 
learn things to help them get through the day when they are in school.
  The formula is complex. It is not just more dollars equals better 
education. So when you set up standards that say everybody has to be 
paid the same, everybody has to have the same amount of money and you 
are going to produce better education, that simply doesn't fly. But 
that is a big argument that we have in this Senate and which is 
occurring across the country, and also certainly in New Hampshire.
  But I think it is one of those red herrings; that if you put more 
money in the system and bring everybody up to the same money level, you 
will get better education. That is not true at all. It has been proven 
time and again.
  Unfortunately, one example is right here in Washington, DC. There is 
no particular reason to pick on Washington, but Washington is a 
regrettable example of that. So the practical argument, first, is that 
it doesn't hold water because its logical extension is that every State 
across the country should have the same funding. Maybe that is the goal 
in the end. Maybe we are seeing the early steps of an attempt to 
actually evolve a national system where everybody gets the same amount 
of money and is targeted the same. But I don't think too many people 
would follow that course of logic. That would be the practical logic of 
this amendment carried to its full extreme.
  Secondly, the underpinning purpose of the amendment, which is to 
equalize dollars within a State because that produces better education, 
also doesn't hold a lot of water because nothing proves that is the 
case. In fact, just the opposite happens when you use a system that 
says everybody has to do everything the same. When you put everybody in 
a cookie-cutter system of education, you end up with mediocrity; you 
end up with school systems that, rather than producing quality, end up 
producing to the lowest common denominator and they fail. They fail the 
kids. That is what we have seen in our school systems recently.
  One of the prior speakers on the other side of the aisle attempted to 
define my value systems for me. He said my values are to support a 
system that supports dilapidated schools--or something to that effect--
because a community with a dilapidated school doesn't have enough money 
to support that school and a rich community can have a good school.
  That is not my value system. I am sorry it was characterized that way 
by the Senator from Delaware. My value system on education is that no 
child is left behind; that the low-income child doesn't get a second-
rate education in our system because they go to a second-rate school or 
they go to a school that failed year in and year out.
  What we have done in this country is to have spent $126 billion on 
education directed at low-income children and we have not improved 
their performance at all in 35 years. In fact, the children continue to 
fail in our system. The average low-income child in the fourth grade 
today reads at two grade levels less than his or her peers in the same 
school and across this country.
  The simple fact is that we have failed those children. We continue to 
fail those children because we use this system which believes that a 
command-and-control system from Washington can actually improve the 
educational

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system in local communities. That is not true at all. We need the 
creativity and imagination and commitment and involvement of the local 
community leadership--the parents, teachers, principals, and the 
support systems to focus on making their schools better and do it in a 
unique way that makes them special.
  Every community across the country is going to probably have some 
original way of doing this. There will be consistencies in text or 
maybe curriculum in some schools and maybe teaching styles, but each 
school will be as different as the teachers who are in the schools, the 
individuals who deal with these kids.
  So to try to impose on them a cookie-cutter system that says 
everybody has to be comparable--they have to do it all the same way or 
else they don't get their Federal dollars--is to fundamentally 
undermine the engine that will give these kids opportunities, which is 
the creativity, originality, and the enthusiasm of the local community, 
the teacher, the parents, and the principals.
  This bill that we have been debating today understands that fact. 
President Bush has proposed a bill that basically says four things: One 
is that we are going to focus on the child and stop focusing on the 
school system, on the bureaucracy, and on a cookie-cutter comparable 
standard. We are going to focus on every individual child, especially 
the low-income child who has been left behind. That is where the 
dollars are going to flow.
  Two, we are going to give the teachers, the community, the local 
school system flexibility in how they deal with that child and improve 
that child's capability. In exchange for that flexibility, we are going 
to require academic achievement by the low-income child. We are not 
going to let that child be left behind any longer.
  Three, we are going to have accountability standards to show that 
that academic achievement has been accomplished. It is at this point 
where we put the testing in place, where the President suggested 
testing in six grades instead of three, as is presently required, to 
which the Senator from Connecticut feels he has the logic to pursue a 
comparable standard. He says, if everybody is going to have to be 
tested--and this was the argument by the Senator from Delaware--then 
the systems that will bring the child up to a standard of ability to 
meet the test also have to be comparable.
  If everybody is going to be put to one test, then everybody should 
have comparable support facilities necessary to reach the ability to 
compete on that test.
  The problem is you are essentially saying there can be no creativity 
in the local school systems, and instead of giving local school systems 
flexibility in exchange for academic achievement, you are saying we are 
going to require academic achievement and we are also going to require 
that we have a bureaucracy that tells you exactly what to do--at least 
in this amendment--right down to curriculum, range of courses, 
instructional material, instructional resources--I mean, everything 
from the time you walk into that classroom is going to have to be 
comparable with everybody else in the system.
  This is a country that takes great pride in individuality, not in 
being uniform. That individuality is what produces our creativity and 
strength, whether it is in education or in the marketplace or whether 
it is in higher learning. Yet this amendment asserts that we should 
have everything comparable. If you are not comparable, you don't get 
any Federal money, which says that the Federal Government is coming in 
and we are going to take the State standard, whatever it is, and force 
it on every community in that State if they want to get Federal money.
  You can call that anything you want, but to me that is a 
nationalization of the system. You are essentially saying local school 
systems will be required to do a whole set of activities, from 
classroom size, to qualifications of teachers, professional staffing, 
curriculum, range of courses, instructional material--right down the 
list. They are going to be required to meet a set of standards which 
the State may initially set but which the Federal Government enforces. 
The Federal Government is enforcing this because it is demanding it be 
met or else the Federal funding doesn't come through--or a portion of 
it does not come through.
  So it is a huge expansion of the role of the Federal Government in 
deciding exactly what is going to happen at the local school districts. 
I don't think any of the debate on the other side of the aisle denies 
that fact.
  I think it confirms that fact because basically what the other side 
of the aisle has been debating--not the whole other side of the aisle 
but those presenting this amendment and defending it--is, yes, that is 
right, we have to require that every local community does everything 
comparable with the other communities in the State to assure equality 
of opportunity, as they define it.
  It is the wrong approach. The President's approach is you get 
equality of opportunity by assuring the school has the resources but 
letting the school, the parents, the teachers, and the faculty make the 
decision as to how the child is educated, and then you test whether or 
not the child has achieved the goals set out.
  If the child has not achieved those goals, then we start putting 
sanctions on the school systems and start giving the parents some 
opportunities to give their child additional help through supplemental 
services in this bill or the States with Straight A's.
  The issue of achievement is not done by some arbitrary input system; 
it is done by actually figuring out in what children are succeeding. As 
a result, we hopefully change this system which has produced 36 years 
of failure generation after generation of children who have not had a 
fair break.
  I find it ironic that the Senator from Delaware tried to characterize 
my values as being for failed schools, dilapidated schools, schools 
where kids were not learning, when what we propose in this bill is an 
attempt to reverse what is a clear, undeniable, factual, confirmable 
point, which is that generation after generation of low-income kids 
have been left behind.
  Even today, after spending $26 billion, the average low-income child 
in this country simply is not getting an education that is competitive 
with their peers in the school system.
  While we are on it, let me mention a couple points we put into this 
bill to give that child a little more opportunity because they have not 
been talked about much and should be talked about because this bill has 
interesting and creative initiatives.
  There was a package pulled together, negotiated, and agreed to by 
both sides. It took a long time to do that. It was done under the 
leadership of Senator Lott and Senator Daschle. Many of us met for many 
months to work it out.
  I mentioned we had four goals: Child centered, flexibility, academic 
achievement, and accountability. We set up a structure to accomplish 
the goals.
  A couple things we did I think are creative. We took all the teacher 
money and merged it and said to the school districts: You pick how you 
want to improve your teachers. You can hire more teachers; you can 
improve their educational ability; you can improve their technical 
support or simply pay the good teachers more. It is your choice. You 
decide how you do it. We are not going to tell you.
  That is a big change because it is giving local districts flexibility 
over those teacher dollars.
  We also said to the small districts in the small school areas, the 
rural districts, we are going to give you all this money that comes 
from the Federal Government that comes with these categories, and there 
are literally hundreds of them. There is a category for arts in some 
specific area or for language in some specific area.
  Most of these little school districts in States such as New Hampshire 
and Maine--this was an idea of Senator Collins--or even in upstate New 
York or, I suspect, parts of California, cannot access these 
categorical programs. Why? Because they simply do not have

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the staff, plus they do not have enough students to draw down enough 
money to make it worth their time.
  We suggested we merge that. We have something called rural ed flex 
where all this money will flow into these school systems without the 
strings attached where they can actually get a bang for the dollar, 
using it effectively.
  We also set up something called Straight A's, which is an attempt to 
give a few States the opportunity to show some creativity with low-
income kids. We say we are going to take the formula programs, merge 
them and you, the State, can take those dollars and spend them however 
you want, but at the end of the year you have to prove that your low-
income children, who are today, remember, not achieving at all--in 
fact, they are achieving at two grade levels less than most kids--
actually achieve a standard that exceeds other kids in their class.
  This is an attempt to give a real incentive to States and communities 
which are willing to be creative to do something about improving the 
lifestyle and the educational ability of their low-income kids.
  Another area we addressed was if a child is in a school that has 
failed--remember, the States designate whether a school has failed; the 
Federal Government does not. If the school fails 1 year, we go into the 
school system under this bill and give it a lot of resources and try to 
turn it around. If it fails 2 years, we go into the system, start to 
replace people--under the bill, we give authority to the school system 
to do that--and put in more resources. If after 3 years a child is in a 
school that fails--and by failing, that is defined by the State but 
essentially it is going to mean that school is not educating the 
children up to the standards to which the other schools in the 
community are educating their kids--if a child is in that school for 3 
years, if you are a parent, you are pulling your hair out because for 3 
years in a row you know your child has fallen behind because they are 
in a school that does not work. It has been designated as not working 
by the State or by the community.
  What is your option under present law? Nothing. You have to stay in 
that school unless you happen to be wealthy enough to go to a private 
school. It is especially a problem for inner-city moms, single mothers 
raising kids in the inner city, where their kids are going to schools 
that are filled with drugs and violence, and they have more fear of 
their life than they have opportunity to learn. Those kids are trapped.
  Under this bill, we propose something called supplemental services 
where, after 3 years in a failing school, a parent is going to have 
some authority of their own. They are going to be able to take a 
portion of the money which goes to title I and some other programs and 
take their child and get services outside the school system. They still 
have to stay in the public school, but they are going to get services 
out of the public school system to get their children up to speed 
academically.
  They can go to Sylvan Learning Center, or the Catholic school across 
the street has a tutorial program in math, they can do that. It will be 
the parent's discretion to get decent support services. That is going 
to be a good change for a lot of parents. It is going to be an 
opportunity for a lot of parents.
  There is a lot of good in this bill directed at trying to give low-
income kids a better break and a better chance. But the surest and 
fastest way to undermine the purposes of this bill is to subject it to 
the cookie-cutter event and to what I think would be a nationalization 
of that, of requiring comparability from school district to school 
district to be asserted as a precondition of whether or not you get 
Federal funds or a portion of Federal funds.
  Obviously, I think this amendment represents a very significant 
undermining of the President's proposal and the agreement we reached 
through literally hours of intense and very constructive negotiation.
  Madam President, I thank you for your courtesy. I especially thank 
the staff for their courtesy. I yield the floor.

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