[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9624-9629]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          PELL GRANTS FOR KIDS

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, a half century after Brown v. Board of 
Education, education on equal terms still eludes too many African-
American schoolchildren. Secretary of Education Rod Paige has called 
America's persistent racial achievement gap ``the civil rights issue of 
our time.''
  By the 12th grade, only one in six Black students and one in five 
Hispanic students are reading at their grade level. Math scores are 
equally as disturbing. Only 3 percent of Blacks and 4 percent of 
Hispanics test at proficient levels by their senior year. By another 
standard, about 60 percent of African-American children read at or 
below basic level at the end of the fourth grade while 75 percent of 
White students read at basic or above at the end of the fourth grade.
  There is still a huge achievement gap among African-American children 
and White children. The No Child Left Behind Act's system of standards 
and accountability is creating a foundation for closing the gap. But 
funding disparities between rich and poor--too often minority children 
attend poorer schools--school districts remain a stubborn contributor 
to inequality. Between 1996 and 2000, poor students fell further behind 
their wealthier peers in seven out of nine key indicators, including 
reading, math, and science.
  These outcomes cry out for a different model, one that helps address 
funding and equality without raising property taxes; that introduces 
entrepreneurship and choice into a system of monopolies; and that 
offers school districts more Federal dollars to implement the 
requirements of No Child Left Behind with fewer strings--in other 
words, more Federal dollars, fewer Federal strings, and more parental 
say over how the Federal dollars are spent.
  Does this sound too good to be true? I would suggest it is not. Look 
no further than our Nation's best-in-the-world higher educational 
system. There we find the Pell Grant Program, which has diversified and 
strengthened America's colleges and universities by applying the 
principles of autonomy and competition. This year, $13 billion in Pell 
grants and work study and $42 billion in student loans will follow 
America's students to the colleges of their choice. This is in sharp 
contrast to the local monopolies we have created in kindergarten 
through the 12th grade education, where dollars flow directly to 
schools with little or no say from parents.
  That is why I have proposed Pell Grants for Kids, an annual $500 
scholarship that would follow every middle- and low-income child to the 
school or other accredited academic program of his or her parent's 
choosing. These are new Federal dollars, so no district would see a cut 
in its share of Washington's $35 billion annual appropriations for K 
through 12, and increases in funding for students with disabilities 
would continue. Armed with new purchasing power, parents could directly 
support their school's priorities, or they could pay for tutoring, for 
lessons and other services on the private market. Parents in affluent 
school districts do this all the time. Pell Grants for Kids would give 
less wealthy families the same opportunities--an example of such a 
family are the Holidays in Nashville, TN.
  Raymon Holiday is a sixth grader who recently won the American Lung 
Association of Tennessee's clean air poster contest. I was there when 
he won the 10-speed bicycle you get for winning this poster 
competition. I met his father, an art major, and his grandfather, a 
retired art teacher. They told me his great-grandfather was a musician. 
So you can see where Raymon Holiday gets his instincts. His 
grandfather, the retired art teacher, lamented to me that art classes 
are usually the first to go when school budgets are cut. With Pell 
Grants for Kids, a typical middle school of 600 students where Raymon 
might be 1 of 500 middle- or low-income students who qualify to receive 
a $500 Pell Grant. His middle school would see a $250,000 increase in 
funding. Raymon would be assured of art lessons.
  The Pell grant model also encourages great American entrepreneurship. 
Enterprising principals, like Raymon's principal, might design programs 
to attract parental investment: advanced math classes, writing 
workshops, afterschool programs, English lessons--whatever is lacking 
due to funding constraints.
  Surveys continue to show that while Americans are concerned with the 
state of public education, most support their own child's public 
school.
  Herman Smith, superintendent of schools in Bryan, TX, would welcome 
the $6 million that would accompany 13,500 eligible Bryan students--90 
percent of his district. Bryan is right next door to College Station, 
home of Texas A&M where, according to Smith, their budget cuts are 
larger than Bryan dreams of spending for new programs and personnel. 
Property values there are double those in Bryan, as is the per-pupil 
expenditure. Not surprisingly, Bryan's population is almost half 
African American or Latino, while College Station is three-quarters 
white.

[[Page 9625]]

  With 30 million American schoolchildren eligible for Pell Grants for 
Kids, my fellow fiscal conservatives are probably raising an eyebrow. 
But please listen. Every year, Congress appropriates increases in 
funding for kindergarten through the 12th grade. What I am offering 
here is a plan to earmark most of these new dollars--aside from 
increases for spending for children with disabilities--for parents to 
spend on educational programs of their choice. Otherwise, we will 
continue to invest in the same bureaucracies that have disappointed 
poor and minority families for too long.
  Pell Grants for Kids could be implemented gradually, starting with 
kindergarten and first grade at an initial cost of $2.5 billion. If the 
program had been in place during President Bush's first 2 years in 
office, the extra $4.5 billion spent on K-through-12 education--again, 
not counting another $3 billion for children with disabilities--would 
have created $500 scholarships for all 9 million middle- and low-income 
students through the third grade.
  We have had 50 years to deliver an American education on equal terms 
to all students. But a baffling commitment to the status quo has 
prevented us from living up to Brown's noble legacy. This anniversary 
presents the perfect opportunity to inaugurate a new era, one that uses 
the strategy that helped to create the best colleges to help create the 
best schools. Let us start with Pell Grants for Kids and move on from 
there ``with all deliberate speed.''
  I would like to make two or three additional remarks about Pell 
Grants for Kids.
  As I mentioned, the idea is a pretty simple one--significantly new 
Federal dollars, fewer Federal strings, and more say by parents about 
how the money is spent.
  To give you an idea of how much money that would be, I have taken a 
quick look in my home State of Tennessee. Tennessee has 938,000 
students in kindergarten through the 12th grade. Pell Grants for Kids 
would be eligible to all those students who are from families below the 
state median income. The state median income for a family of four in 
Tennessee is about $56,000. So for families who have an income of 
$56,000 or below, each of their children would have a $500 scholarship 
that would follow that child to the school or other approved academic 
program of their parents' choice. We estimate about 60 percent of all 
of Tennessee students would be eligible for a $500 Pell grant. In some 
of the rural counties where there are a great many poor children, it 
might be 90 percent of the students. In other counties--Davidson, 
Maryville, Oak Ridge--it might be a smaller percentage.
  But all in all, there should be about 562,000 students in Tennessee 
who would be eligible. This would bring an additional $281 million to 
Tennessee for K-12 education, and parents would have a say over how 
that money is spent.
  Often when this issue comes up and we talk about spending more 
Federal dollars for local schools, the Senators on my side of the aisle 
get a little hot under the collar. We do not want to spend any more 
Federal money for local schools. On the other hand, when we say let's 
give the parents more say on how the money is spent, the collars get a 
little hot on the other side of the aisle because they are reluctant to 
give parents more choice.
  This is a conflict of principles. It is the principle of equal 
opportunity--giving parents more choices. But there is another valid 
principle on the other side. It is called E pluris unum. We have public 
schools, common schools, to teach our common culture, and we do not 
want to harm them. It is a proper debate in this body to say let's ask 
questions if we are giving parents more say, more choices. Will that 
harm our common schools? And there is a proper way to ask in this 
Senate: Can we wisely spend that much more money? This is quite a bit 
more money. Fully funded Pell grants for kids programs would cost 15 
billion in new Federal dollars a year. It would add about $500 to the 
$600 we now spend on each of the children in America today from the 
Federal Government. Only about 7 or 8 percent of the dollars we spend 
on children comes from the Federal Government. So it would be about a 
70-percent increase in Federal funding for every middle- or low-income 
child fully funded.
  We are proposing to do this over a long period of time. Basically, to 
add to the new money that we would appropriate every year for K-12, and 
give most of that to Pell grants for kids. This would create more 
equality in funding for poor districts. It would especially help 
African-American and minority kids. It would provide extra dollars to 
implement the standards of No Child Left Behind, and it would introduce 
for the first time into our K-12 system the principle that has created 
the best colleges in the world, the idea of letting money follow 
students to the institution of their choice.
  Over the next several weeks, I will be discussing this with 
individual Senators. I have not prepared a piece of legislation yet 
because I don't want to stand up and say: Here it is, take it or leave 
it. Let's say one team says no choice and one team says no money, then 
we are back where we were. I am looking for ways to advance the debate. 
I don't believe we are going to be spending much more money through the 
Federal Government in the same way we are doing it today. A lot of 
Senators, and I am one of them, do not want to spend more Federal 
dollars through programs that have lots of Federal controls. We have 
seen the limit of command and control from Washington, DC, with No 
Child Left Behind. That program will work. But I don't believe we can 
expect to give many more orders from Washington to make schools in 
Schenectady, Nashville, and Anniston, AL, and Sacramento, better. That 
has to happen in local communities.
  The right strategy is significantly new Federal dollars with fewer 
Federal strings and more parental say about how those dollars are 
spent. This does not have to be a Republican versus Democrat idea. I am 
not the author of this idea.
  In 1947, the GI bill for veterans was enacted. Since that time, 
Federal dollars have followed students to the colleges of their choice. 
Today, 60 percent of America's college students have a Federal grant or 
loan that follows them to the college of their choice.
  When I was president of the University of Tennessee, it never 
occurred to me to say to the Congress: I hope you do not appropriate 
any money for children to go to Howard University or Notre Dame or 
Brigham Young or Vanderbilt or Morehouse or the University of Alabama. 
We give people choices. Or put it another way, in my neck of the woods 
we told everyone where they had to go to college. We said, Senator 
Sessions, you have to go to the University of Tennessee. We said to 
young Lamar Alexander: You have to go to University of Alabama. Civil 
wars have been fought over such things.
  That is exactly what we do in K-12. We give people choice and have 
created the best colleges in the world. We give them no choices and we 
have schools that we wish were better. So the idea would be to try what 
worked for colleges here in K-12.
  I said I was not the only one to think of this. There was the GI bill 
for veterans--that was bipartisan--after World War II, maybe the best 
piece of social legislation we ever passed in the history of our 
country.
  In 1968, Ted Sizer, perhaps the most renowned educator in America 
today, proposed a poor children's bill of rights, $5,000 for every poor 
child to go to any school of their choice, an LBJ power-of-the-people, 
liberal, Democratic idea at the time. In 1970, President Nixon 
proposed, basically, giving grants to poor children to choose among all 
schools. The man who wrote that speech for President Nixon was a man 
named Pat Moynihan. He was a U.S. Senator. In 1979, he and Senator 
Ribicoff, two Democrats, introduced essentially exactly the idea I am 
proposing today. In fact, in 1979 Senator Ribicoff and Senator Moynihan 
proposed amending the Federal Pell Grant Act and simply applying it to 
elementary and secondary students.
  At that time, when the Pell grant was $200 to $1,800, a third grader 
could

[[Page 9626]]

get a Pell grant, or if you were a high school student and you were 
poor, you could get a Pell grant.
  Senator Moynihan said to this body in 1979:

       Precisely the same reason ought to apply to elementary and 
     secondary schooling--if, that is, we are serious about 
     education and pluralism and providing educational choice to 
     low- and middle-income families similar to those routinely 
     available to upper income families.
       This was the impulse behind the basic educational 
     opportunity grants program as enacted by Congress in 1972.

  He was talking about Pell grants.

       It was the impulse by the Presidential message to Congress 
     which I drafted in 1970 which proposed such a program. It is 
     the impulse to provide equality of educational opportunity to 
     every American, and it is as legitimate and important an 
     impulse at the primary and secondary school level as it is at 
     the college level.

  I am going to strongly urge my colleagues not to make a reflexive 
reaction to this idea because, on the one hand, it has too much money, 
or on the other hand, it has some choice. Think back over our history 
and think of our future and realize we have the best colleges and we do 
not have the best schools. Why don't we use the formula that created 
the best colleges to help create the best schools?
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the 
conclusion of my remarks Senator Moynihan's statement in the Senate in 
1980, and following Senator Moynihan's remarks, an article which I 
wrote for the publication Education Next, which is being published this 
week, entitled ``Putting Parents in Charge.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit No. 1.)
  Mr. ALEXANDER. This article goes into some detail about the Pell 
grants for kids proposal.
  I look forward over the next several weeks to working with my 
colleagues, accepting their ideas and suggestions about how we improve 
our schools.
  In June sometime I hope to introduce a piece of legislation, 
hopefully with a bipartisan group of Senators. In July, Senator Gregg 
and I have already discussed a hearing which we will have in the 
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. And then perhaps next 
year, the President of the United States might want to make this a part 
of his budget.
  I believe it is time in this country to recognize we need to give 
poor and middle-income parents more of the same choices of educational 
opportunities wealthier families have, that we may be able to do this 
without harming our public schools. We have had, since World War II, 
scholarships that have followed students to the educational 
institutions of their choice, and they have done nothing but help to 
create opportunity and create the best system of colleges and 
universities in the world. I think we ought to use the same idea to try 
to create the best schools in the world.

                               Exhibit 1

       Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am today introducing a bill 
     to make basic educational opportunity grants available to 
     needy elementary and secondary school students. This 
     complements the tuition tax credit bill that we recently 
     introduced and in no way substitutes for it. Just as I 
     believe that both need-based grant aid and tuition tax 
     credits should be available to assist with the costs of 
     college education, so also should the two alternatives be 
     available for needy students with tuition costs at the 
     elementary and secondary level.
       As amended by the Middle Income Student Assistance Act of 
     1978, the basic grants program covers students from families 
     with income up to $25,000; the grants range from $200, for 
     students near the upper end of that scale, to $1,800 for 
     students from very low-income families. Many students are not 
     eligible for grant aid, and for them we have proposed tax 
     credits. Some students would be eligible for grant aid, and 
     they will presumably choose the one that suits them best. 
     This will not necessarily be the form that produces the most 
     assistance; for some, the simplicity of the tax credit may 
     make it more attractive than the complex forms required to 
     apply for a basic grant, particularly where the respective 
     amounts of aid are not much different. Others, particularly 
     the neediest, will plainly fare better under the grant 
     program. But there is no redundancy or overlap between the 
     two forms of aid: The tax credit would be available only for 
     tuition which the student or his family actually pays; 
     insofar as a basic grant (or other aid) covers tuition 
     expenses, those expenses would not be eligible for a tax 
     credit.
       Precisely the same reasoning ought apply to elementary and 
     secondary schooling--if, that is, we are serious about 
     educational pluralism and about providing educational choices 
     to low- and middle-income families that are similar to those 
     routinely available to upper income families.
       This was the impulse behind the basic educational 
     opportunity grants program as enacted by Congress in 1972. It 
     was the impulse behind the Presidential message to Congress 
     that I drafted in 1970 which proposed such a program. It is 
     the impulse to provide equality of educational opportunity to 
     every American, and it is as legitimate and important an 
     impulse at the primary and secondary school level as it is at 
     the college level.
       The basic grants program, and the other major student aid 
     programs authorized under title IV of the Higher Education 
     Act, will expire during the 96th Congress, and one of our 
     important responsibilities in the next 18 months is to reform 
     and extend them. I shall have more to say on that subject on 
     other occasions. But it is none too early to introduce the 
     idea that one reform that must be seriously considered is the 
     inclusion of needy elementary and secondary school students.
       It will doubtless be argued by some that this legislation 
     is unconstitutional, inasmuch as many students with tuition 
     costs at the elementary and secondary level are enrolled in 
     church-related schools. I see no distinction of 
     constitutional significance between the aid we already 
     provide to students in church-related colleges and that which 
     I propose to provide at the primary and secondary level, but 
     I do not assert that the Supreme Court will necessarily agree 
     with me. As with tuition tax credits, however, this question 
     can only be resolved by the Supreme Court, and that can only 
     happen if the authorizing legislation is passed by the 
     Congress.
                                  ____


                  [From Education Next, Summer, 2004]

                       Putting Parents in Charge

                          (By Lamar Alexander)

       In 1990, as the new president of the University of 
     Tennessee, I was trying to understand what had made American 
     colleges and universities the best in the world. I asked 
     David Gardner, then the president of the University of 
     California, why his university has such a tradition of 
     excellence. ``First, '' he said, ``autonomy.'' The California 
     constitution created four branches of government, with the 
     university being the fourth. The legislature basically turns 
     over money to us without many rules about how to spend it.
       ``The second is excellence. We were fortunate, at our 
     beginning, to have a corps of faculty dedicated to high 
     standards. That tradition has continued. And third, generous 
     amounts of federal--and state--money have followed students 
     to the schools of their choice. That has increased 
     opportunity for those who couldn't afford college, created 
     choices that made good fits between the student and the 
     school, and stimulated competition that encouraged excellent 
     programs.''
       Autonomy. High standards. Government dollars following 
     students to the schools of their choice. That was the formula 
     for the GI Bill, passed by Congress in 1944. The program gave 
     World War II veterans scholarships redeemable at any 
     accredited institution, public or private. Those veterans who 
     didn't hold a diploma could even use the scholarships at 
     Catholic high schools. With these scholarships came few 
     federal rules, thus preserving the universities' autonomy. 
     And by allowing students to choose their college, the GI Bill 
     encouraged excellence and discouraged weak programs.
       Not all university leaders welcomed the program. ``It will 
     crate a hobo's jungle,'' warned legendary University of 
     Chicago president Robert Hutchins. Instead, the GI Bill 
     became the most successful piece of social legislation 
     Congress ever enacted. It became the model for the federal 
     grants and loans that today follow 58 percent of America's 
     college students to the schools of their choice. In 1972, 
     when Congress debated whether future federal funding for 
     higher education should go directly to institutions or be 
     channeled through students, the model of the GI Bill helped 
     carry the day for the latter approach, which was surely the 
     right one. Pell Grants (named for Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-
     R.I.), Stafford Loans, and other forms of financial 
     assistance to students followed. This year the federal 
     government will spend nearly $17 billion on grants and work-
     study programs and will provide an additional $52 billion in 
     student loans.
       Rarely has the federal taxpayer gotten so much bang for the 
     buck. These federal vouchers trained the ``greatest 
     generation'' and made it possible for a greater percentage of 
     Americans to continue into higher education than in any other 
     country. At the time of the GI Bill's passage in 1944, only 
     about 6 percent of Americans held a four-year college degree. 
     Today that figure stands at 26 percent.
       Moreover, these scholarships have strengthened public 
     institutions. At the end

[[Page 9627]]

     of World War II, 50 percent of American college students were 
     attending public institutions. Today 76 percent choose to 
     attend public colleges and universities. So many foreign 
     students want to attend American university that some 
     institutions impose caps in order to make room for lower-
     achieving homegrown students. British prime minister Tony 
     Blair is overhauling his nation's system of higher education 
     because he sees a growing gap between the quality of American 
     and British universities. Likewise, former Brazilian 
     president Fernando Henrique Cardoso recently told a small 
     group of U.S. senators that the most important thing he would 
     remember about his residency at the Library of Congress is 
     ``the uniqueness, strength, and autonomy of the American 
     university.''
       Meanwhile, federal support for elementary and secondary 
     education has taken just the opposite approach--with opposite 
     results. Instead of allowing tax dollars to follow students 
     to the schools of their parents' choice, the federal 
     government gives $35 billion directly to the schools 
     themselves (or to the states, which then give it to schools). 
     In addition, thousands of pages of federal and state 
     regulations govern how these funds are spent, thereby 
     diminishing each school's autonomy. Measured by student 
     learning, rarely has the taxpayer gotten so little bang for 
     so many bucks. In 1999, 8th-grade students in this country 
     were ranked 19th in math and 18th in science compared with 38 
     other industrialized nations. The National Assessment of 
     Educational Progress, known as the nation's report card, 
     shows other alarming trends. For example, between 1996 and 
     2000, the gap between affluent and poorer U.S. students 
     actually widened in seven out of nine key indicators--like 
     reading, math, and science. Two out of every three African-
     American and Hispanic 4th graders could barely read. Seventy 
     percent of children in high-poverty schools scored below even 
     the most basic level of reading.


                        enhancing local control

       It is time to try a different funding approach, and Pell 
     Grants, the college scholarships offered to low-income 
     students, provide a useful model. Congress should enact 
     ``Pell Grants for Kids,'' which would provide a $500 
     scholarship to each middle- and low-income child in America. 
     Children could use these scholarships at any public or 
     private school or for any educational program, such as 
     private tutoring. Homeschooled children would also be 
     eligible for the scholarship, as long as the money was spent 
     on an accredited educational program. Overall, the grant 
     would be available to about 60 percent of America's 50 
     million primary and secondary school students, those whose 
     families earn $53,000 or less. It would put the parents of 
     approximately 30 million children directly into the education 
     marketplace, each of them armed with a $500 grant, thereby 
     encouraging choice and competition.
       This idea has a distinguished lineage. In the late 1960s, 
     Theodore Sizer, then at the Harvard Graduate School of 
     Education, proposed a ``Poor Children's Bill of Rights'' that 
     would have supplied scholarships of $5,000 per child to the 
     poorest half of children in the United States, for use at any 
     accredited school, public or private. In 1992, while I was 
     serving as secretary of education under President George H.W. 
     Bush, the president asked Congress to appropriate a half 
     billion dollars to create a pilot ``GI Bill for Kids.'' The 
     program would have awarded $1,000 scholarships to 500,000 
     children in states and cities that wanted to try the idea, 
     but the Democrat-controlled Congress refused to enact it.
       The most important point to make here is that most of this 
     new scholarship money is likely to be used at the public 
     schools that nine out of ten students now attend. I believe 
     parents are likely either to give the money to their school 
     to meet its general needs or to seek the school's advice on 
     how best to spend the money to help their child. Surveys show 
     that while many Americans are discouraged about the state of 
     education generally, most parents support their own child's 
     public school. Parents in affluent school districts regularly 
     augment their schools' budgets with contributions for extra 
     programs, particularly in the arts. Pell Grants for Kids 
     would give children of low- and middle-income parents the 
     same opportunity.
       Pell Grants for Kids would provide more federal dollars for 
     schools while also encouraging more local control--I mean 
     more control by parents and teachers--over how that money is 
     spent. Once parents make the decision about where the $500 
     will be spent, the principal and teachers in that school or 
     program decide how it will be spent. For example, in a public 
     middle school with 600 students, if two-thirds of the 
     children are eligible for the grant, that's $200,000 in new 
     federal dollars each year following those children to that 
     school. This would be manna from heaven for schools, many of 
     which engage in time-consuming charity sales to net $500 or 
     $1,000 for needed programs and projects. Enterprising 
     principals surely would design programs to attract parents' 
     investment--perhaps an after-school program, an extra math 
     teacher, or an intensive language course. And if they didn't, 
     parents would have the option to spend the money on another 
     accredited educational program that suited their child's 
     needs, such as tutoring.
       Aside from stimulating competition, these new federal funds 
     would help to narrow the gaps in spending between wealthy and 
     poor districts and make more real the promise that no child 
     will be left behind. For example, in Bryan, Texas, property 
     values average about $128,000 per student. Next door is 
     College Station, home of Texas A&M University, where property 
     values are $305,000 per student. As a result, College Station 
     is able to collect far more in property taxes and its schools 
     thus spend twice as much per student as those in Bryan. Last 
     year Herman Smith, superintendent of schools in Bryan, told 
     me, ``College Station is talking about cuts in programs and 
     personnel that we could only dream of.''
       About 90 percent of Bryan's 13,500 students would be 
     eligible for the $500 Pell Grants for Kids, putting more than 
     $6 million in new federal dollars into the hands of Bryan 
     parents. They could then provide more funds to Bryan's public 
     schools, as is likely, or use the scholarship to help pay for 
     enrichment programs or private school tuition. Bryan would 
     still have fewer dollars to spend than College Station, but 
     the gap would narrow.


                         overcoming objections

       Let's consider some questions and criticisms that might 
     accompany the Pell Grant for Kids proposal:
       In a time of tight budgets, can the nation afford to offer 
     $500 scholarships to 30 million schoolchildren? If it were 
     enacted today, Pell Grants for Kids would cost $15 billion a 
     year. A number of measures could be taken to ease the burden. 
     First, implement the program gradually, providing $500 
     scholarships only to kindergarten and 1st graders in the 
     initial year. This would cost just $2 billion. Second, over 
     the next several years, devote most of the new appropriations 
     for K-12 education (not related to children with 
     disabilities) to Pell Grants for Kids. Done this way, it 
     would not take many years to fully fund the scholarships 
     while staying within a reasonable budget. For instance, if 
     Congress had allocated two-thirds of all new federal spending 
     (non-disability related) on K-12 education since 1992 to this 
     program, $10 billion would have been available for 
     scholarships this year--enough to provide full $500 
     scholarships to all middle- and low-income children in 
     kindergarten through the 8th grade.
       Or consider this: In just the first two years of the 
     current administration, Congress appropriated $4.5 billion in 
     new dollars for K-12 education (not counting another $3 
     billion more for children with disabilities). That $4.5 
     billion would have been enough to fully fund $500 
     scholarships for all nine million low- and middle-income 
     children in kindergarten through 3rd grade.
       Aren't K-12 schools and colleges so different that the Pell 
     Grant analogy is invalid? It is true that schools and 
     colleges sometimes emphasize different public purposes. For 
     example, schools are asked to teach children what it means to 
     be an American, to inculcate moral values, and to make up for 
     poor parenting. Universities have research and public service 
     missions that schools don't share. But the core mission of 
     both schools and colleges is the same: teaching and learning. 
     Most high schools teach some college courses. Most community 
     colleges teach some high-school students. That is why it is 
     so odd that the way the federal government funds K-12 
     education is so different from the way it funds colleges.
       Aren't you overlooking some real problems that colleges 
     have? No doubt universities have significant problems. Some 
     college students don't pay back their loans. Some for-profit 
     institutions are shams. Some courses are weird. Some tenured 
     faculty members are worthless. In the context of rising 
     tuition costs, there is too little interest in creating a 
     less leisurely university calendar, in proposals such as 
     requiring professors to work over the summer. Such abuses are 
     the price of institutional autonomy and choice. Overall, 
     however, American colleges and universities are by far the 
     best in the world--and therefore useful models for how to 
     improve our other educational institutions.
       Can we trust middle- and low-income parents to spend $500 
     wisely on their child's education? I would remind those who 
     make this condescending argument that Congress currently 
     appropriates $8 billion each year to provide childcare 
     vouchers to 2.3 million low-income parents. These parents may 
     use the voucher at any licensed center, public, private, or 
     religious. Likewise, 9.5 million low-income students may 
     spend their federal student aid dollars at any accredited 
     college. If Congress trusts low-income citizens to choose 
     childcare and higher education providers for themselves, why 
     not trust them to spend $500 on K-12 education programming 
     for their children? In addition, because of our experience 
     using established accrediting agencies to monitor Pell Grants 
     for colleges, it should be relatively easy to create a 
     similar system to make sure that Pell Grants for Kids are not 
     spent on fly-by-night operations.
       Will more federal funding mean more federal control over 
     education? Pell Grants for Kids would actually reduce federal 
     control over education. The current funding process dictates 
     how federal dollars are to be spent and imposes heavy 
     regulations on local

[[Page 9628]]

     schools. Letting federal dollars follow children to the 
     school of their parents' choice would put control back into 
     the hands of parents and teachers.
       Would Pell Grants for Kids violate the principle of 
     separation of church and state? Federal grants have followed 
     students to parochial colleges since World War II and to 
     parochial daycare centers since 1990.
       Will giving individual schools so much autonomy leave some 
     mired in mediocrity? Autonomy need not mean a lack of 
     accountability. The No Child Left Behind Act requires states 
     to establish tough academic standards and to measure 
     students' and schools' performance on an annual basis. With 
     these accountability systems in place, the argument for 
     choice is that much stronger. Parents will have the knowledge 
     of school performance to make informed choices about where to 
     spend their new federal dollars. For this reason, students 
     who decide to use their $500 scholarships at private schools 
     would still be required to participate in their state's 
     testing program.
       Why not let all Title I money follow children to the 
     schools of their choice? For now, I believe a gradual 
     approach is warranted. The nation should begin by letting 
     parents control how most, not all, of newly appropriated 
     federal dollars for K-12 education are spent. Let's monitor 
     parents' spending patterns and school performance for a while 
     and then evaluate whether to expand the program.
       But private school tuition costs far more than $500. 
     Correct. So those who worry that vouchers will hurt public 
     schools should relax. But six hundred parents armed with $500 
     each can exercise $300,000 in consumer power at a public 
     middle school. Five hundred dollars can also help pay for 
     language lessons or remedial help. At Puente Learning Center 
     in South Los Angeles, Sister Jennie Lechtenberg teaches 
     students of all ages English and clerical skills at an 
     average cost to the center of $500 per year.


                         toward better schools

       Of course by themselves Pell Grants for Kids would not 
     create the best schools in the world. As David Gardner said, 
     it took autonomy and high standards in addition to generous 
     funding following students to schools of their choice to help 
     create the finest university system in the world. To increase 
     schools' autonomy, Congress should provide generous support 
     to the charter school movement, offer waivers from federal 
     rules to successful school districts, and use its oversight 
     power to simplify federal laws and regulations. To help 
     schools aspire to the excellence most colleges enjoy, 
     Congress needs to give schools more flexibility in 
     administering the mandates of No Child Left Behind. To make 
     it easier for schools to pay teachers more for teaching well, 
     just as colleges do, Congress should encourage the National 
     Board for Professional Teaching Standards and other efforts 
     to reward outstanding teachers. These organizations, in turn, 
     must make the measure of students' progress a key ingredient 
     in a teacher's evaluation.
       It is a mistake to expect that merely switching to the 
     higher education model for funding is all Congress needs to 
     do to help transform public schools. To help children arrive 
     at school ready to learn, Congress should heed President 
     Bush's challenge to strengthen Head Start by improving 
     coordination, emphasizing cognitive skills, increasing 
     accountability, and involving governors. So that state and 
     local governments can remain financially sound enough to 
     support good schools, Congress should keep its promise to end 
     unfunded federal mandates. So that children can learn what it 
     means to be an American, Congress should help states put the 
     teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful 
     place in school curricula.
       Finally, no plan for better schools is complete without 
     better parenting. In his research James Coleman found that, 
     until a child is 14, parents are twice as important as school 
     for the child's learning. Yet the United States has gone from 
     a society that values the job of being a parent to one that 
     has been waging a war on parents. Liberal divorce laws and 
     the diminished importance of marriage, higher taxes, poor 
     schools, trash on television, unsafe streets, uncontrolled 
     illegal drugs, and inflexible work arrangements have all made 
     it harder for parents raising children. No part of American 
     society has paid a higher price for this than our schools. 
     Giving every middle- and low-income child a $500 scholarship 
     to help encourage choice within education is a start, but 
     only a start, toward putting government and society squarely 
     on the side of parents raising children.
       Nonetheless, enacting Pell Grants for Kids should be the 
     next central thrust of federal efforts to improve the 
     nation's schools. For the past half century, the United 
     States has actively supported the expansion and improvement 
     of higher education through a generous funding system that 
     encourages autonomy, choice, and competition. Our 
     institutions of higher education have helped produce the 
     research that has been responsible for creating half our new 
     jobs since World War II. They have sculpted an educated 
     leadership and citizenry that have made our democracy work 
     and made it possible to defend our freedoms. It is past time 
     to take the formula that has worked so well to help create 
     the best colleges in the world and use it to help create the 
     best schools for our children.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I express my appreciation to Senator 
Alexander of Tennessee for his wise remarks. Listening to the Senator, 
it reminded me of that advertisement: When E.F. Hutton speaks, you 
should listen. When Senator Alexander talks on education, we ought to 
listen, and, indeed, when he speaks on a lot of subjects. He has served 
as Secretary of Education for the United States. He has been the 
president of the University of Tennessee. He has also been the Governor 
of Tennessee who had to run their school systems. He brings tremendous 
wisdom and experience and insight to this issue.
  It must be our goal to improve the quality of education for children 
in America today. We have to work on that issue. We are not where we 
ought to be. There is too much inequality today.
  I also think about Brown v. Board of Education, as we celebrate that 
historic decision today, and that Senator Alexander clerked for Judge 
John Minor Wisdom, one of the judges who is famous in the old Fifth 
Circuit for enforcing Brown v. Board of Education.
  Brown v. Board of Education had more impact than most decisions have 
ever had from the Supreme Court. As a young student in school, I rode a 
bus every day 15 miles to school. As we went north on the road to my 
school, we would pass a bus with African American children heading 
south. So the white kids went to the school up in the northern end of 
town, and we would pass one another. I went further than I should have 
traveled to get to school, and they went further than they should have 
traveled to get to their school.
  In addition, the schools of the African-American community were not 
as good, and their schoolbuses were not as good, for the most part, 
either. It was not an equal system.
  The Supreme Court of the United States considered the issue in 1954, 
and they evaluated what was happening. They said the laws of the United 
States should treat people equally, and that it is not equal treatment 
to say to a person: You cannot go to this school, although you may live 
quite close to it, simply because of the color of your skin. We had 
grown up with that situation. People did not give it much thought. They 
accepted it as the way things were. The Supreme Court ruled 
differently, and people complained about it. Some even said it was 
activism and the Supreme Court was overreaching. But if you read the 
Constitution and the law, it seems to me the Supreme Court at that 
point was not an activist court, it was not an overreaching court; it 
was a court founded on law, and they went back and read the plain 
language of the Constitution, and they said this process of denying one 
person the right to attend a school simply because of the color of 
their skin violated our Constitution. I think that was a plain ruling, 
a fair ruling, and a good ruling.
  I know we are about to take up the defense bill in a few minutes, but 
I would say this: Things have changed in many different ways. My two 
daughters grew up in Mobile, AL, not too far from Murphy High School. 
Murphy is one of the oldest, largest schools in Mobile. The Mobile 
County school system is a very large system. I believe they have 60,000 
students. It is a great historic school. Fifty years ago, it was an 
all-white school. There were all-African-American schools in the 
community. They have, as a result of Brown, integrated the school 
system. My daughters went to that school, and the racial mix was almost 
exactly 50-50. They enjoyed their time at Murphy High School. It is an 
excellent high school. In fact, I remember Secretary Bill Bennett, when 
he was Secretary of Education, came down and gave them a blue-ribbon, 
topflight national school award for the excellence in education there. 
They loved that school. They had friends who were White, friends who 
were African American, friends who were Asian, and friends who were 
from India. They were all in that

[[Page 9629]]

school system. They benefited from that experience and did well as a 
result of it.
  I believe the decision was beneficial legally. I believe the decision 
was beneficial for the children. It made a statement, with crystal 
clarity, that people could not be denied the right to public activities 
simply because of the color of their skin.
  That is an important principle in this country. We were very slow to 
recognize it. The South was openly segregated in so many different 
ways, and this decision broke it down. It took many years before the 
decision would be fully implemented, but it has been implemented, and 
much good has come from it.
  President Bush has said in his philosophy of education that we must 
not let children fall behind. He has used the phrase ``the soft bigotry 
of low expectations.'' What he means is, if our children are going to a 
public school that is doing pretty well, and they are doing fine, and 
minority students are going to a school that is not doing so well, we 
should not have the attitude, well, we are not too concerned about 
that.
  In fact, more dangerous than that is a philosophy that we have low 
expectations, and we are not going to demand the same quality in all 
school systems in America. That is not acceptable. Our children can 
learn. All children of all races can learn. We need to challenge all 
students to be their very best. We cannot allow children to fall 
behind. We need to identify children who are falling behind early.
  If you love children, if you care about the poor, if you care about 
minority students, and you want them to succeed, you will find out how 
they are doing. That is why the President said we want to test. The 
Government plan of No Child Left Behind is not to test to punish or to 
put down a child; it is to find out how they are doing in school. If 
they are falling behind, we need to intervene promptly and quickly to 
lift them up so they can reach their fullest potential.
  Secretary Rod Paige, our Secretary of Education today, is an 
experienced educator who was the dean of a school and was the 
superintendent of the huge school system in Houston, TX--he has said by 
the time children get to the ninth grade, if they are not up to speed, 
if they are substantially behind in reading and math and cannot 
compete, that is when they drop out.
  So the President's legislation--what we worked on--is designed to 
find out much earlier if children are falling behind, to give them that 
intensive support and extra resources necessary to have them catch up 
so they will no longer be behind, so when they get to the 8th grade, 
the 9th grade, or the 10th grade, they will be able to function and do 
high school work and go on and complete their degree and be successful 
in the world rather than becoming frustrated or becoming a discipline 
problem, and maybe even dropping out of school because they know they 
are so far behind they cannot keep up.
  That is what we focused on when we crafted the No Child Left Behind 
Act. That is ultimately one of the keys to American movement in this 
new century; and that is, are our children reaching their highest 
possible level of achievement. The more children who achieve their 
highest and greatest potential, the greater the benefit will be for our 
country.
  I see my time is up. We are about ready to go to the defense bill. I 
again express my appreciation to Senator Alexander for his insights and 
commitment to education. There is much we can do to make our system 
better.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________