[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 10022-10029]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Jindal). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, today is May 17, 2005. On May 17, 1954, the 
United States Supreme Court issued a decision in the Brown v. Board of 
Education of Topeka, Kansas case. Last year we celebrated the 50th 
anniversary of this landmark case. I expect to be joined by some 
colleagues of mine from the Congressional Black Caucus tonight to again 
take advantage of this anniversary, the 51st anniversary, to highlight 
problems related to education. Not only education as related to the 
African-American community, to minority communities or to poor 
communities but education in general needs more attention in America. 
Whatever activities there are that allow us to focus attention on 
education, they are very noble and worthwhile activities with a very 
useful purpose.

                              {time}  2030

  We need to spend more time focusing on the role that education plays 
in our

[[Page 10023]]

society, and this is just one more occasion where we can do that.
  I want to congratulate the people who participated last year in the 
50th anniversary celebration. We had a marvelous array of people who 
joined in highlighting that landmark case's 50th anniversary: 
corporations, foundations, all kinds of groups participated in 
highlighting that landmark decision. I want to particularly 
congratulate the Library of Congress, which had an exhibit which ran 
from May 13 to November 13 last year, 2004, which was entitled, ``With 
an Even Hand: Brown v. the Board At Fifty.'' It was a fantastic exhibit 
which laid out the story in great detail, a lot of inspirational 
background and facts.
  On May 17, 1954, the decision was issued declaring that separate 
education for children is inherently unequal. The Court held that 
school segregation violated the equal protection and due process 
clauses of the fourteenth amendment. African American activists laid 
the groundwork to challenge the racial segregation in public education 
as early as 1849 in a case called the case of Roberts v. the City of 
Boston, Massachusetts. The Brown case was initiated later and organized 
by the National Association For the Advancement of Colored People, the 
NAACP, recruiting African American parents in Topeka, Kansas, for a 
class action suit against the local board of education. In 1952, Brown 
v. The Board was brought before the Supreme Court as a combination of 
five cases from various parts of the country; it was not just Brown, 
but four other cases altogether; and they represented nearly 200 
plaintiffs at that time.
  The NAACP, through Brown, sought to end the practice of ``separate 
but equal'' throughout every segment of our society. It was to be a 
landmark decision. From education we went on to transportation, dining 
facilities, public schools, and all forms of public accommodation. So 
it was a decision that benefited us across the board, and I think we 
ought to take a moment to note the fact that it brought to all of us, 
brought to the attention of all of us the role of the Federal 
Government in education. It highlighted the fact that there is a major 
role that the Federal Government has to play in education. The Federal 
Government has always shown an interest in education. There are 
examples which I will talk about later of early, very early actions 
taken by the Congress with respect to guaranteeing that States carried 
out some educational function.
  On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the decision of the 
Court which stressed the importance of education in American life. This 
is going to read as if it was written yesterday. Chief Justice Warren 
said: ``Today, education is perhaps the most important function of 
State and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the 
great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of 
the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required 
in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even 
service in the Armed Forces. It is the very foundation of good 
citizenship. Today, it is the principal instrument in awakening the 
child to cultural values and preparing him for later professional 
training and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In 
these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to 
succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such 
an opportunity where the State has undertaken to provide it is a right 
which must be made available to all on equal terms. Today these words 
ring equally true as we prepare our children to live and compete in the 
global economy.''
  These are the words of Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1954. They show a 
great deal of profound insight and vision, and we are using the same 
language today and still having the same problem of convincing the 
American people, certainly those who make the big decisions about how 
we use our resources, that education should occupy the foremost place 
among our priorities for public activities.
  I am going to later on deal with a case history involving my own 
State of New York, which directly runs contrary to statements made by 
Chief Justice Warren in 1954. In the great enlightened State of New 
York, which prides itself on leadership in so many other areas, the 
failure to provide a sound, basic education for the children of New 
York City is a major item of controversy that has been raging for the 
last 10 or 12 years. Today we are at a critical point where the Court 
has ordered the legislature to stop swindling the children of New York 
City and provide additional funding from State funds to make up for 
some of the failures of the past and to also continue providing the 
kind of education needed. That case I will come back to later as 
exhibit number one of what the problem in education is.
  Regardless of whether we are talking about separate but equal, the 
lack of a decent education for minorities or the poor, or we are just 
talking about education in general, even the best education in America, 
the education offered in our best schools is inadequate; and every time 
we are measured against international standards, we are clearly falling 
behind. In the most powerful Nation in the world, in the Nation that 
rightly deserves the role of leadership, we are endangering ourselves 
and our future by failing to pay attention closely to education.
  The Congressional Black Caucus has consistently provided the impetus, 
been the conscience of the Congress on matters related to education. We 
have always made education the number one priority of the Congressional 
Black Caucus, and that is still true today under the leadership of the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt), who is the president of the 
Congressional Black Caucus.
  The emphasis is on closing gaps between a lot of different kinds of 
activities and services in America, closing the gap between the African 
American community and the mainstream community; but education is 
particularly singled out as number one, the need to close the gap 
related to achievement and opportunity in education. So we have again 
advanced that. There was a Congressional Black Caucus alternative 
budget; and in that budget, the stress was placed on education.
  We chose in that budget to highlight the fact that there is $8 
billion in the military budget for a missile system that most 
scientists and even military experts say is almost useless and never 
going to be fully completed, and that beginning with that $8 billion, 
we should be transferring funds for some of our other objectives, 
certainly those related to the fact of an overblown military budget, to 
critical measures such as education. The best final analysis will be an 
educated population. It is the best defense today; it will be even 
truer tomorrow as we go forward.
  The Congressional Black Caucus particularly singled out one bill that 
was introduced by a group of us under the leadership of the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah), which is called the Student Bill of 
Rights. The Student Bill of Rights has been introduced in several 
sessions, and it was reintroduced just recently on May 5 of this year. 
The Student Bill of Rights may be called accurately by many other 
names. In the past I have used the language, The Opportunities to Learn 
bill. The Student Bill of Rights means that the government has a 
responsibility to provide an opportunity to learn or to provide 
opportunities to learn in every way possible.
  When we break down the general Student Bill of Rights proposition, it 
breaks down into the right to have the necessary resources to be 
educated. The right to have the necessary resources means that we must 
start with decent funding for teachers' salaries so that the people who 
are actually doing the teaching, who are most important in the process, 
are paid reasonable salaries, can expect to have reasonable careers, 
will stay and make use of the investment we place in them to teach 
children. And as the world becomes more complicated, these same people 
will have an incentive to stay with their profession and get the 
additional education and be able to provide a more and more complex 
form of education.

[[Page 10024]]

  So a bill of rights means an opportunity to learn. One of those 
opportunities has to be the opportunity for providing decent teachers 
and decent administration personnel and decent counselors. The whole 
apparatus of human resources for the school system comes first. But 
there are many other opportunities to learn which also must be taken 
care of.
  The facilities. We need to have a decent place for teaching to take 
place. Yes, it is true that Aristotle, in the days of Aristotle and 
Plato and Socrates, they defined a school as being a log with a teacher 
on one end and the student on the other end. That was adequate. That is 
not adequate today in a world where we are trying to educate young 
people to play a role in this complex society of ours. We need 
laboratories. We need libraries. We need a physical infrastructure 
which houses all of this appropriately. That is as much a part of the 
opportunity to learn as anything else. A bill of rights for students 
means that that opportunity to learn should be there.
  School construction is a vital part of the process. School 
construction and the failure to have adequate school construction has 
led to a situation where many, many teachers who are quite dedicated 
and people who want to remain in the school system leave the school 
system because, one, they are teaching in facilities which are outdated 
and make it difficult to teach; two, they are teaching in facilities 
which are endangering their health.
  There are situations where the health of the children and the health 
of the teachers is endangered. Large amounts of asthma cases were found 
in certain areas in New York City. It has only been about 3 or 4 years 
since we eliminated the last coal-burning furnace in a school in New 
York. That took a drive and a whole campaign to highlight the fact that 
we still had coal-burning furnaces. Our high asthma rate often ran 
parallel, high asthma rates in children ran parallel to the schools 
with coal-burning furnaces. Teachers themselves were having respiratory 
problems and illnesses. So you cannot separate the physical facility 
from the whole process of education.
  And, of course, most of our schools in a place like New York City and 
like New York City have very meager libraries. Elementary schools have 
rooms that are called libraries, but they are really not anything near 
the kind of libraries which are recommended by library professionals. 
The kind of libraries we will find in any suburban school we will not 
find in an elementary or junior high school within New York City and 
many other urban cities.
  I use New York as an example because the case history there is very 
pertinent. The pattern of what has happened in New York City is a 
pattern of what has happened all over the country. We have large 
concentrations of minorities and the poorest people in the cities, and 
that is where we have the worst education. Why? Because they are 
segregated? No. Even if you had maximum integration, we would still 
have the same problem, unless we deal with the problem behind the 
problem.
  Why did we have segregation in the first place? Why did we need Brown 
v. Board of Education to end segregation? If the white power struggle 
insisting that we had segregated schools had been willing to raise the 
money and provide the resources to make every school for a nonwhite 
equal to the white schools, the issue probably never would have come 
up. It was the great disparity that existed between the schools for the 
African American students, the Hispanic students, and the poorest 
students of other minority groups, that great disparity which kept 
causing the problem.
  The disparities were great when the schools were separate, and the 
unfortunate fact is that in 2005 those disparities still are great. You 
can go into any city, big city, and you will find several different 
classes of schools. You will find very good schools in some areas, and 
the poorest of schools in other areas, because of the fact that the 
problem is, the problem behind the failure of the education system in 
America is that the people with the power, those who make decisions in 
the Congress, State legislatures, in the city councils, in the 
executive offices of the President, the Governors and the mayors, those 
people who make the decisions and have the power to transform the 
school system do not really believe in public school systems anymore. 
They do not believe that they are vital.
  When we believe things are important, we take action. We do not stand 
around and complain about how much they cost. We take the necessary 
action. When we wanted to put a man on the Moon, the extra billions of 
dollars that it took to put a man on the Moon was not an issue.

                              {time}  2045

  President Kennedy said we will go to the moon, and one President 
after another endorsed going to the moon and to outer space and on and 
on it goes, because we consider that important.
  It is important, because it had a military objective if nothing else. 
At that time it had a military objective, and we were driven very much 
by the fact that the Soviet Union beat us into outer space. The Soviet 
Union sent Sputnik up circling the globe at a time when Congress and 
our executive branch said that the Federal Government should not be 
involved in education, that it is a matter for States, and the States 
would be offended if we got involved.
  They looked at the situation and saw that the way the Soviet Union 
beat us into outer space was to build a system of scientific education. 
We produced a massive number of scientists and engineers who could do 
the job. So we had the Defense Education Act. Many Members of Congress 
are too young to remember. The Defense Education Act was the first 
great forward movement of the Federal Government into education.
  The Defense Education Act provided funds down to the elementary, 
secondary level, and up to the colleges, to improve education in the 
areas of math and science. And if you do that, of course it helps to 
improve education overall, because the resources provided for education 
in math and science can be then transferred to other areas, and 
education would benefit overall.
  Later on under Lyndon Johnson, it became more codified in terms of 
understanding that this Nation was embarking upon a venture in history 
which required a massive amount of people who had education. So Lyndon 
Johnson, of course, came forward with the Elementary and Secondary 
Assistance Education Act, which provided funding for the schools on the 
basis of helping the poorest schools, the recognition that if there was 
a fear that the Federal Government would take over education at the 
local level, then we should proceed only to help those local education 
agencies that had problems with poverty, they could not afford to 
educate all of their students, so the poorest districts were the 
beneficiaries of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
  Title 1 is a major title under that, and that is still true today. 
Title 1 is primarily focused on the poorest schools. No Child Left 
Behind, which encompasses Title 1 now, focuses primarily on the poorest 
schools. So it is understood that the Federal Government has a role to 
play in education, it is understood that no nation at this point in 
history can survive unless it pays a great deal of attention to its 
education system.
  There is an immediate threat that we are feeling economically already 
in the area of high-tech education, where we thought we will always be 
the leader, we will have the most people who are scientists and 
engineers in the information industry area, that always no one can 
catch us there and keep producing better and better technicians and 
scientists and our manufacturing operations and design operations would 
always be ahead of the rest of the world.
  We still are ahead of the rest of the world. We still are. But there 
is a great problem that has already been introduced at the lower levels 
where you cultivate the programmers, the technicians, the first level 
scientists. They

[[Page 10025]]

are finding in all of the information industries that they can get 
cheaper personnel at the same education level or even at higher 
education levels by going overseas to places like India and Pakistan, 
and the Chinese are learning English very rapidly themselves.
  The most renowned university in the area of science and engineering 
and information industry now is not Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, it is a university in India that is recognized in the world 
as being the leader in the field of science engineering that has 
overtaken and left MIT behind.
  That is just one indication of what is happening in the world because 
there are people who clearly understand. But the people who make 
decisions in our Congress and in our State legislatures do not seem to 
want to understand. We want to spend billions of dollars more for 
missile systems that do not work, billions of dollars more for jet 
planes that already nobody can catch. I mean, we already have planes 
that nobody can keep up with anyhow, no other force, no other nation is 
manufacturing planes of the caliber of the ones that we have, but we 
want to go forward and do new ones.
  We want to go and fight a war in Iraq, solving a problem that had to 
be solved in the worst and most expensive way. And last week we just 
voted another $82 billion dollars for the war in Iraq, bringing the 
total up above $300 billion.
  So we are setting priorities, but the wrong priorities. No nation, no 
matter how powerful it is, and how rich it is, can endure by wasting 
its resources in the way that we are presently wasting ours. Instead of 
investing our resources in our people and our infrastructure, and our 
own Nation, we are wasting our resources in numerous ways and one of 
them of course is the war in Iraq which is a war that we certainly can 
never ever win.
  The war in Iraq's best conclusion, peace, will mean that the Shiites, 
who are the predominant population, will take over. If you have 
democracy, they will have the votes, and they will take over, which is 
wonderful, democracy should work. Whoever is in the majority should be 
there.
  It just so happens that the Iraqis are right next to Iran, which is a 
Shiite nation overwhelmingly ruled by Shiites, and they have their own 
agenda, which is not friendly to our Nation. So we are going to hand 
them some partners and hand them a nation as a result of our blundering 
in Iraq, trying to solve a problem with force that had to be solved in 
some other way.
  But, let me return to the celebration, the recognition of this day as 
the day where the landmark decision of the Supreme Court, Brown v. The 
Board of Education was decided, and say again that it highlights a 
turning point.
  It forced the issue up to the national level. And we are still 
struggling with that today. As I said before, the Congressional Black 
Caucus has followed through and continued to put it on a front burner 
before the Nation. We are the foremost advocate for education reform. 
We are willing to spend the money necessary for education. We are 
willing to take it away from wasteful expenditures in places.
  And the concrete piece of legislation is our Bill of Rights, which I 
will talk about in more detail in a minute. But in the last alternative 
budget, the Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget, under 
Function 500, education and training, we alone had large significant 
increases for education.
  School construction we said should be increased by $2.5 billion, at 
least. You really need to spend more like $10 billion a year for the 
next 10 years to just get our schools back to a reasonable level so 
that local and State governments can then take care of them.
  There is a great deal of lack of resources at the State and local 
level, unlike ever before. Our State and local governments are broke. 
All of the more reason why our Federal Government, which has the most 
money, all funds are local, we do not make any money here in Washington 
really, we print something we call money but it is all based on what 
happens at the local level. All taxes come from the local level. People 
live some place in the Nation, who pay their income taxes, and their 
other taxes, and that generates what runs our Government.
  So all taxes are local. The money does not belong to the Federal 
Government. And we should have a greater voice in spending the money 
for the priorities that benefit the greatest number of people at the 
local level, not for a military machine that is somebody's dream, a 
Star Wars dream, a military machine that is out of control, very poorly 
planned, could not even fight the limited war that it undertook in 
Iraq.
  But getting back to the Congressional Black Caucus alternative 
budget. School construction, we proposed to spend $2.5 billion more. 
That is $2.5 billion more than zero. We are spending almost nothing on 
school construction now. We have some funds in the budget for charter 
schools. Charter schools are a favorite of the majority party, the 
Republicans like charter schools.
  The President likes charter schools. So they went contrary to their 
own philosophy, because the philosophy and the rationale that they have 
used is that we should not get involved in funding school construction, 
because that is a local and State matter. But if you like charter 
schools, as they do, they are willing to go right ahead and fund 
charter schools at the State and local level because they like charter 
schools.
  But the funding for charter schools is a small amount too, I assure 
you. No Child Left Behind, which is the encompassing Federal education 
program, Title 1 and all others, we propose another $12 billion for No 
Child Left Behind.
  Elementary and secondary school counseling, we impose vocational 
education, $1.5 billion more. In that same area of Function 500, 
related to education is job training. Adult education, we propose great 
increases there.
  Head Start we propose a $2 billion increase. Head Start has over and 
over again been certified and cited by numerous scientists, numerous 
scientists, I mean education scientists, numerous experts as being a 
very successful program. And yet we keep chopping away at it, 
evaluating it to death, and finding excuses not to fully fund Head 
Start. $2 billion increase in Head Start would still not fund all of 
the children who were eligible, but it would move us in that direction.
  I might add that Head Start is not a program for minorities. Head 
Start is a program for poor children. And as a result, I would wager 
that at least 50 percent of the children who are served by Head Start 
now are not minorities, they are from the mainstream, they are poor. 
And it is important to have Head Start for them as it is for anybody 
else.
  Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, we propose $2 billion. 
What is that? That is part of special education. Special education has 
become quite a problem at the local level, because the Federal 
Government has mandated that special education must be provided as a 
right to any child with disabilities. We mandated it. At the time that 
law was authorized and mandated, we said we would pay 40 percent of the 
costs. But we have never paid 40 percent of the cost. We are up to 
about 12 percent of the cost of special education.
  So what we do is we mandate this, they must do it at the local level. 
It puts a strain on the local education agency's budget, and hostility 
is generated toward people with disabilities or children with 
disabilities as a result of the extra costs that is necessary to 
educate children with disabilities. We propose a $2 billion increase as 
we move toward the original authorization of 40 percent of the total 
cost.
  Historically Black colleges and universities, we propose a $500 
million increase there. Hispanic-serving institutions, $400 million 
increase. TRIO. TRIO is a program which helps to prepare youngsters for 
college and helps those who are in college to get off to a good start. 
We have found that in the year 2005, in the last few years, enrollment 
in colleges is going down rapidly among minority and poor students. We 
do not need enrollment going down, because in the final analysis, for a 
complex society the way you increase the pool of educated people is not 
by educating those who are normally going to

[[Page 10026]]

be educated anyhow, the rich and the middle class are normally going to 
find ways to be educated. They always have. But as the demands on our 
society become greater for more educated people and more people, more 
education at different levels, you know, a plumber, a plumber's helper, 
all kinds of people need greater knowledge than they needed 20 years 
ago. If you do not educate that class, you are not meeting the needs of 
a modern society.

                              {time}  2100

  So the pool has to continue moving. The pool has to grow; and if you 
do not grow the pool, you are failing to build for the future.
  Our children will spit on our graves when they look at how we have 
squandered so many billions of dollars on meaningless activities while 
our education system crumbled. They will wonder what happened to this 
generation, what were those men and women in Congress doing, where were 
their heads, how dumb were they, how stupid they were at looking at the 
situation and understanding the implications of where the world is 
going.
  They will wonder why we chose to waste $300 billion on Iraq, a war 
which has been discredited by the fact that the President led us into 
it with a group of false assumptions, a war which we cannot win, a war 
which only hands the Iraqi nation over to Shiites which control Iran 
right next door. The kingdom of Iran will be expanded as a result of 
the end of this war.
  We had a situation which backfired on us totally. They will wonder 
why we did it, why we were so dumb. Everybody makes decisions, whether 
they are in Congress or local legislatures and State legislatures or in 
the White House. Everybody who makes decisions should be held 
accountable. We are expected to have the information we need in order 
to go forward. So if our population in general is not wise or is greedy 
and they want massive tax cuts instead of expenditures for necessary 
infrastructure services, expenditures for education, if they are 
unaware of the implication of what is happening right now in China, 
what is happening in India and Pakistan, to say nothing of the Soviet 
Union, which is overlooked, we assume that the Soviet Union is standing 
still, but the massive education system of the Soviet Union has been 
cranked up again, and the Russians, the young Russians, are learning 
English rapidly, too.
  We are concerned about Social Security. A displacement of our young 
working population will take place on the level of a tsunami. It will 
be so massive in about 10 to 20 years that we will just never know what 
hit us because outsourcing will be so much cheaper than hiring people 
who live and work in the country and pay taxes in the country.
  Outsourcing to the Soviet Union, to India, to Pakistan, to China is a 
very interesting phenomenon. The Chinese have a Communist government 
still. They do not pretend they have a democratic government. They are 
Communists, and there were times when the business community of 
America, every businessman would foam at the mouth and go crazy if you 
mentioned communism or Communists having some kind of advantage. Yet 
our business community has embraced this Communist authoritarian, 
totalitarian regime fully, wholeheartedly because they can get a few 
extra pennies from the relationship, because they can profit greatly.
  They have a program called Guided Capitalism, mongrel capitalism; but 
at the top of it, you have a totalitarian, authoritarian group that is 
no different from the Communists who were there 50 years ago. They have 
enlightened ideas about economics. They are smart enough to know that 
they can build their economy on the backs of the American people and 
the American economy. They are even loaning us a great deal of money 
now to take care of our deficit. They are very bright people. After 
all, they have been in existence for more than 2,000 years as a unit. 
They have been operating together so they have the ability to see all 
of this and to proceed with these kind of machinations, which overwhelm 
this Nation and is not surprising; but we are smart enough, it seems to 
me, to wake up, and we must wake up, to the fact that the first threat 
of China is the educational threat.
  When I was in grade school, I remember very vividly and was impressed 
by the fact that China was such a huge nation. It has always been a 
huge nation with a huge population, but the geography books kept 
repeatedly saying that China is a backward nation. The word 
``backward'' sticks in my mind. China is a backward nation, but Chinese 
are backward people. Some kind of assumption in a young mind, you 
think, well, do they walk backwards. What does backward mean? Well, it 
was a racial slur. It was saying that they are inferior, the Chinese; 
but we know now if we did not know before that there are no inferior 
human beings on the planet.
  Education makes the difference, and when you have a government like 
China's, even though it is a totalitarian, Communist, authoritarian 
government, it places a high priority on education. It knows that 
gaining a large amount of power over a short period of time is directly 
related to the number of people they educate.
  Osama bin Laden, why are we so fearful of Osama bin Laden? Because 
Osama bin Laden is not some fanatic out there with a beard in the 
wilderness. Osama bin Laden is an engineer. Osama bin Laden is a well-
educated man. The 19 murderers who crashed their planes into the World 
Trade Center and the Pentagon and headed for this Capitol, they were 
educated. The financing structure for al Qaeda is a very well-
orchestrated financial structure. They are using experts. They are 
taking advantage of every weakness in America, every weakness in the 
developed nations, as well as the developing nations, too, of course.
  We had earlier here tonight a presentation by one of my colleagues 
about the drug industry and the way in which the Afghan warlords are 
still being financed and the way in which the Islamic extremists are 
still being financed by drugs. Who is buying the drugs? Who are they 
manipulating in this situation but the developed nations?
  So what I am saying is that at this point in history it would be wise 
for us to take note of Brown v. The Board of Education as an important 
time to each year examine where we are in education in general.
  Segregation was the first problem, but the problem that caused 
segregation is still a major problem of education in America. The 
problem that caused segregation was the refusal of the power structure, 
those people who control the resources and the money, to provide the 
funds to equally fund and create equal education. If equal education 
had been created, if they had built schools in the black community 
which were as good as schools in the white community, if they had had 
salaries for the black teachers which were the same as the salaries for 
the white teachers, the administrator structure and everything else, 
you probably never would have had an issue being made out of 
segregation. But the very heart of the inequality is the failure and 
the refusal of people in power to use the resources for those who have 
no power and who have little power.
  The failure in our big cities is that we have people in our big 
cities who are suffering because they have very little power. The 
people who are making decisions, the mayors, what we call the permanent 
government, the businessmen behind the scenes are who decide which 
candidates they are going to finance. Usually they place the highest on 
cutting taxes, keeping taxes low. It does not matter what the needs 
are. They used to be willing to sacrifice the school system and have an 
inferior education system, but now they are beginning to cut into the 
firemen and the police, and any public activity is now on target since 
they have gotten a taste of what tax cuts can do.
  It is monumental greed that can only be counteracted by leadership, 
people elected, and people elected should have time to study the 
situation. People elected should be accountable to our children and our 
grandchildren about

[[Page 10027]]

what kind of society we are building, and we should let the people who 
are greedy and selfish and do not want to pay another penny in taxes as 
a first instance, make them understand that they care about their 
children, they care about their grandchildren. We are like every other 
living thing in this world on this planet.
  Our offspring, the continuation of our species, is a major concern of 
ours, a major motivation of ours; and when we take our resources and 
refuse to develop them, to promote a structure which is going to 
support the development of a society for our children and our 
grandchildren, we are doing them a great disservice.
  Everybody talks about education. Everybody should be concerned about 
education. Education is very complicated and folks are trying to 
oversimplify it all the time.
  The story of the blind men who were feeling an elephant and each one 
came to a different conclusion because of the part of the elephant they 
felt, they assumed that that could define the elephant. Well, in the 
case of education, it is just blind men feeling a dinosaur. There are 
so many different parts. It is so complicated until we should not 
oversimplify. We should not expect easy answers.
  If a missile system can be tested again and again and each time it 
fails and one of its missiles explodes accidentally it is 18 to $20 
million and we are willing to live with that, we should live with 
experimentation in our schools. We should live with systems that are 
not evaluated or up for evaluation every 2 years, but are given a 
chance to succeed.
  In the New York Times today, May 17, 2005, research finds a high rate 
of expulsions in preschool. Kids in preschool are being expelled from 
school at a higher rate than children in the normal pattern from 1st 
grade to 12th grade. We have a difficult problem here. It is an 
increasing problem. Some say, well, we have got more kids in school so 
we have got different backgrounds. But basically, we have a problem 
taking place at the pre-kindergarten level which has already shown 
itself in the early grades and in junior high school and high school.
  We have an excitement gap. We have children who live in a very 
electronically hyped world. They have television, all kinds of devices 
and gadgets. They go to school and it is too dull, and some of the 
brightest kids are some of the first who act out. It means that it is 
just one more area where more resources have to be put in instead of 
expelling kids, which is ridiculous. We should be finding ways and 
doing whatever is necessary to make sure that they are there.
  I said before that the Indians, Pakistanis, a number of developing 
nations understand the need for education in order to develop their 
societies, their economies; but a greater threat still and more 
immediate threat I started to talk about and did not complete, and that 
is educating people who are extremists and people who hate our way of 
life, the people who are ready to die in order to destroy us. They are 
educating them, also. They know that a human being can be taught to 
become a brain surgeon, a bomb maker who then can be taught to 
effectively man a machine gun or fly a plane into the World Trade 
Center. Human beings have that capacity.
  So you have what you call a network of madrassas. Ever heard the term 
madrassas? It is a new term. After 9/11 we discovered that there are 
schools in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and a 
number of other places where they are learning not just science, math 
and religion; but they are learning how to hate and learning how to be 
willing to sacrifice themselves if necessary against the infidels.
  So you have a massive number of people at various levels who are seen 
as resources. If we do not see our own population the same way, 
everybody as a resource for our goals, then we are going to also 
experience some of the same kind of problems internally that we are 
facing externally.
  By that I mean you are going to have youngsters who live in America, 
who come to the American system, who hate America, who hate in general, 
who are willing to take up any kind of cause and fervently pursue it in 
some kind of suicidal venture. Yes, we can always defeat them and 
always have a strong Navy and Army and Marines, but we have to pay a 
very costly price if we do not understand that every human being 
deserves to be developed and should be developed for the benefit of the 
Nation, and his mind and his skills should be shaped in a way which 
benefits and not cut them off and ignore them and let them become 
driftwood.

                              {time}  2115

  We are increasing our expenditures at a much more rapid rate in our 
prison system than in our education system. We are willing to pay 
$20,000 to $25,000 a year to incarcerate an individual. We are the 
Nation now in the world with the largest number of people in prison, 
more than 2 million and climbing. It used to be mostly men, now we have 
an increase in the number of women who are in prison. That is a 
statement about the wrong way to educate, the wrong way to proceed in 
developing our population.
  Mahatma Gandhi said, when he went to visit a big nation, a big city, 
he said where are your exploited people? Who is oppressed? And he was 
told by the mayor and leaders of the place at the city, we have no 
oppressed. He said, oh, yes, you do. Take me to your prisons and I will 
show you who are oppressed. Take me to your prisons, and the people 
there, the types of people there will be an indication of who is 
oppressed in your society.
  Take me to your prisons and you will find African American males way 
out of proportion to their numbers in the population. You will find 
Hispanic males way out of proportion to their numbers in the 
population. Take me to your prisons and you will find $20,000 to 
$25,000 a year being spent on those individuals while we complain in 
New York City about spending $8,000 a year on children in the schools 
of New York.
  I want to close by just quickly highlighting the Bill of Rights that 
I talked about that the Congressional Black Caucus sees as its 
centerpiece in its effort to maintain a high profile for education 
matters. As I said, the bill was reintroduced on May 5, 2005 by the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) and numerous other sponsors. 
Among its findings is stated: A high-quality, highly competitive 
education for all students is imperative for the economic growth and 
productivity of the United States, for its effective national defense, 
and for achievement of the historical aspiration to be one nation of 
equal citizens. It is therefore necessary and proper to overcome the 
nationwide phenomenon of educationally inadequate or inequitable State 
public school systems in which high-quality public schools serve high-
income communities and poor-quality schools serve low-income, urban, 
rural and minority communities. That is finding number one.
  Finding number two. There exists in the States an ever-widening 
educational opportunity gap for low-income urban, rural and minority 
students characterized by the following: Highly differential 
educational expenditures among school districts; continuing disparities 
within the States in students' access to fundamentals of educational 
opportunity; radically differential educational achievement among 
public school districts within the States; and on and on it goes adding 
up to eight major findings that are part of the introduction to the 
Bill of Rights, H.R. 2178.
  Mr. Speaker, at the conclusion of this special order I will submit 
for the Record the findings of the Bill of Rights for Education, as 
well as other items relating to this topic.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude with the case history 
that I mentioned before, the case in New York City which points out 
exactly, in a specific example, what is wrong with our education system 
in America.
  We have a rich State like New York. It is not a poor State at all. We 
have a huge budget. We spend large amounts of money on numerous items 
that could be considered optional and luxuries. We are now embarking on 
the

[[Page 10028]]

building of a great stadium in Manhattan for one football team, the 
Jets, and for the Olympics, and the city proposes to put $100 million 
in, and the State will put $100 million in. They say the rest will be 
paid for by the Jets' ownership. But all estimates are that before it 
is over the city and State will put in more like $.5 billion in order 
to make it work. We are selling valuable real estate at pennies on the 
dollar, on State-owned property upstate. The Governor recently gave 
away a major property for $30,000, and on and on it goes. The money is 
there but the will and the power is not there to use the money for 
education.
  In New York City, a case was brought more than 10 years ago by a 
group called the Committee for Education Equity, CFE. That committee 
won the case at the first level. Justice Leland DeGrasse ordered that 
the State must spend $5.6 billion in operating funds over the next 4 
years. In addition to the State aid it was giving the city already, it 
had to give additional aid, and $9.2 billion in capital funds over the 
next 5 years to bring them up to par.
  Why is this necessary? Because for the last 30 years the New York 
City students have been receiving less money per pupil than students in 
the rest of the State, and this is to correct an inequity, an 
injustice. It took the courts to do this. But the judge ruled it and 
the case has been thwarted and avoided for the last 3 or 4 years by the 
Governor of the State.
  The Governor first appealed the case, and so it went to the appellate 
division of the New York State court system. That is the next level. 
The appellate division overturned the original judge's decision; said 
he was wrong, you do not need additional money because in New York 
State all you need to do is to provide an 8th grade education for 
students to be able to come out of school, get a decent job and 
function in the society that we have at this point. All you need is an 
8th grade education is what the appellate decision decided.
  Fortunately, the court system has checks and balances and there was 
one higher level above the appellate division which looked at the 
decision of the appellate division and said it was nonsense, and they 
supported the original decision by the original judge. So it went back 
to the judge to make the decision which he has made, ordering the State 
in 90 days, 90 days was some time ago, to come up with a plan to comply 
with the court order.
  So the Governor appealed it again and he got a stay on the order on 
the basis of the fact that this one had particular figures in it, and 
so it has been sent back to the appellate division. Let me just sum up. 
The same level of the judicial system which decided that all you need 
in New York City and the State is an 8th grade education 2 years ago, 
they now have the case back in front of them as a result of the 
machinations of our Governor. And so I sent a letter to the Governor, 
to the Attorney General, to the Speaker of the Assembly of the State of 
New York, and to the majority leader of the State Senate and asked them 
all to please obey the law.
  There is a question about the power of courts around here. We are 
having big discussions here in Washington about selecting judges, and 
we think in the final analysis sometimes we have had bad decisions; 
other times we have had beneficial decisions. But either way our court 
system is a magnificent system with a set of checks and balances built 
in, and the kind of effort being made in the Senate now to take away 
the minority's right to have a meaningful role in the selection of 
judges is going to jeopardize this.
  But, presently, the courts are there and they ought to be obeyed. 
They ought to be obeyed. Sometimes judges order our legislatures to do 
things, and when they do not do them they fine the legislature so much 
per day for every day that they do not comply. There have been examples 
of this. And other times there are State governments and legislatures 
that have ignored courts and the courts have done nothing about it.
  An historic example of Andrew Johnson being ordered by the Supreme 
Court of the United States to let the Cherokee Nation alone and not 
drive them off their land in Tennessee. Andrew Johnson ignored the 
Supreme Court, and of course nothing was done about that. So we have a 
problem which needs to be clarified in law in our society. The courts 
ought to be obeyed. You go to the courts as a last resort.
  So I wrote this open letter to Governor Pataki, the Attorney General, 
and the other people where I said please obey the law. New York's 
highest court has ordered the State of New York to provide New York 
City schools an additional $5.6 billion in operating expenses over 4 
years, and $9.2 billion in facilities funding over 5 years to ensure 
that the city's children have their constitutional right to the 
opportunity for a sound basic education. And I go on and on to say that 
the case has been lingering; it has been 262 days since the court 
deadline was passed, and we would like some action.
  Mr. Speaker, I will enter this letter to the Governor of New York 
State, Governor Pataki, for the Record, because it is an example of the 
kind of case which pinpoints the fact that the children of our Nation, 
the parents of our Nation, the people who care about education in our 
Nation are at war with a group of leaders and decision-makers who are 
the major problem. They do not want to understand in many cases, they 
do not understand in some cases, but they are the major impediment to 
the building of an educational system which will cost money. It will 
cost resources.
  Folks talk about we are spending so much more than we used to spend. 
When Pearl Harbor was attacked, the United States owned only four 
vehicles, four cars. No airplanes for the President. Look where we are 
now in terms of our military apparatus, our governmental apparatus. The 
government moved on and the United States of America moved on. We 
produced what we needed for World War II. We won the war because we 
cared about it. It was vital. We went to the moon because we cared 
about it. It was vital. We can do anything we care about if it is 
vital.
  We do not understand how vital education is and that is our central 
problem. The leadership, including the Members of Congress, have to 
come to grips with the problem that we are failing the generations to 
come by not providing an adequate education structure. The ruling in 
Brown v. Board of Education set off a domino effect which has built the 
knowledge that the Federal Government does have a role. It has a major 
role, and we must stop trying to thwart that role but cooperate with it 
in order to build a better Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, at this point I will conclude and submit for the Record 
those documents I referred to earlier:

       (a) Findings--The Congress finds the following:
       (1) A high-quality, highly competitive education for all 
     students is imperative for the economic growth and 
     productivity of the United States, for its effective national 
     defense, and for achievement of the historical aspiration to 
     be one Nation of equal citizens. It is therefore necessary 
     and proper to overcome the nationwide phenomenon of 
     educationally inadequate or inequitable State public school 
     systems, in which high-quality public schools serve high-
     income communities and poor-quality schools serve low-income, 
     urban, rural, and minority communities.
       (2) There exists in the States an ever-widening educational 
     opportunity gap for low-income, urban, rural, and minority 
     students characterized by the following:
       (A) Highly differential educational expenditures among 
     public school districts within States.
       (B) Continuing disparities within the States in students' 
     access to the fundamentals of educational opportunity 
     described in section 112(a).
       (C) Radically differential educational achievement among 
     public school districts within the States, as measured by the 
     following:
       (i) Achievement in mathematics, reading or language arts, 
     and science on State academic achievement tests and measures, 
     including the academic assessments described in section 
     113(b)(1).
       (ii) Advanced placement courses offered and taken.
       (iii) Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and ACT Assessment 
     scores.
       (iv) Dropout rates and graduation rates.
       (v) College-going and college-completion rates.

[[Page 10029]]

       (vi) Job placement and retention rates and indices of job 
     quality.
       (3) As a consequence of this educational opportunity gap, 
     the quality of a child's education depends largely upon where 
     the child's family lives, and the detriments of lower quality 
     public education are imposed particularly on--(A) children 
     from low-income families; (B) children living in urban and 
     rural areas; and (C) minority children.
       (4) Since 1785, the Congress of the United States, 
     exercising the power to admit new States under article IV, 
     section 3 of the Constitution (and previously, the Congress 
     of the Confederation of States under the Articles of 
     Confederation), has imposed upon every State, as a 
     fundamental condition of the State's admission, the following 
     requirements:
       (A) One, and sometimes two, square-mile lots in every 
     township were to be `granted and . . . reserved for the 
     maintenance and use of public schools'.
       (B) `[S]chools and the means of education [are to] be 
     forever encouraged'
       (C) `State conventions [were to] provide, by ordinances 
     irrevocable without the consent of the United States and the 
     people of said States . . . that provision . . . be made for 
     the establishment and maintenance of systems of public 
     schools which shall be open to all children of said States'.
       (See Ordinances of May 20, 1785, and July 13, 1787; Act of 
     March 3, 1845, 28th Congo 2d Sess., 5 Stat. 789, Chap. 76 
     (admitting Iowa and Florida); Act of February 22, 1889, 50th 
     Cong., 2d Sess., Chap. 180 (admitting States created from the 
     Dakota Territories); and the Acts of Congress pertaining to 
     the admission of each of the States.)
       (5) Over the years since the landmark ruling in Brown V. 
     Board of Education, when a unanimous United States Supreme 
     Court held that `the opportunity of an education . . . , 
     where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right 
     which must be made available to all on equal terms', courts 
     in 44 of the States have heard challenges to the 
     establishment, maintenance, and operation of educationally 
     inadequate or inequitable State public school systems. (347 
     U.S. 483, 493 (1954)).
       (6) In 1970, the Presidential Commission on School Finance 
     found that significant disparities in the distribution of 
     educational resources existed among public school districts 
     within States because the States relied too significantly on 
     local district financing for educational revenues, and that 
     reforms in systems of school financing would increase the 
     Nation's ability to serve the educational needs of all 
     children.
       (7) In 1999, the National Research Council of the National 
     Academy of Sciences published a report entitled `Making Money 
     Matter, Financing America's Schools', which found that the 
     concept of funding adequacy, which moves beyond the more 
     traditional concepts of finance equity to focus attention on 
     the sufficiency of funding for desired educational outcomes, 
     is an important step in developing a fair and productive 
     educational system.
       (8) In 2001, the Executive order establishing the 
     President's Commission on Educational Resource Equity 
     declared, `A quality education is essential to the success of 
     every child in the 21st century and to the continued strength 
     and prosperity of our Nation. . . . [L]ong-standing gaps in 
     access to educational resources exist, including disparities 
     based on race and ethnicity.' (Executive Order 13190).
                                  ____


               [From the New York Newsday, May 3, 2005.]

                   State Refuses To Overturn CFE Stay

                             (By Wil Cruz)

       A state Appellate Division panel Tuesday refused to 
     overturn a stay in Gov. George Pataki's appeal of a court 
     order giving city schools billions of dollars in additional 
     funding.
       The court also said it would hear the appeal of State 
     Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse's order in October.
       DeGrasse ruled earlier this year that city schools need an 
     additional $5.6 billion in operating funds over the next four 
     years and $9.2 billion in capital funds over the next five 
     years to bring them up to par.
       The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which filed suit in 1993 
     accusing the state of shortchanging city schools, had asked 
     that the stay be lifted.
       ``Even though the stay was not lifted, we're gratified that 
     the court granted our motion to expedite review of the 
     case,'' Michael Rebel the group's executive director, said of 
     the planned October hearing.
       Pataki has maintained that in issuing his order, DeGrasse 
     overstepped his judicial boundaries and failed to address 
     accountability measures.
       ``Justice DeGrasse's ruling ignores important, fundamental, 
     separation-of-powers principles and requires the state to 
     spend too much and reform too little, so it's appropriate 
     that it be reviewed by a higher court before taking effect,'' 
     Kevin Quinn, a spokesman for Pataki, said in a statement 
     Tuesday.
       The Campaign for Fiscal Equity pushed to have the stay 
     lifted in hopes of having the issue resolved in time for the 
     upcoming academic year. Yesterday's decision eliminates that 
     possibility.
                                  ____


     An Open Letter to Governor Pataki on Law & Order for Education

                                                   April 19, 2005.
       Dear Governor Pataki: I call on you to OBEY THE LAW. New 
     York's highest court has ordered the State of New York to 
     provide New York City schools an additional $5.6 billion in 
     operating expenses over four years and $9.2 billion in 
     facilities funding over five years to ensure the city's 
     children their constitutional right to the opportunity for a 
     sound basic education.
       To properly shape the character and enhance the moral fiber 
     of our children we beg you, Governor Pataki, to show respect 
     for law and order. You are an important role model in the 
     lives of the youth of New York State. The spectre of public 
     officials refusing to obey a court order baffles and 
     discourages law-abiding citizens. We have been taught to 
     believe that in America the courts have the power to render 
     justice when all other avenues have closed. New York City 
     students have been denied their fair share of funds for 
     decades and now the courts have ordered that this injustice 
     be corrected.
       It's been 262 days since the CFE court deadline!
       Governor Pataki, you have further deprived our kids by 
     defying/appealing a court order to fairly fund our schools. 
     The law clearly states the responsibility for giving a sound 
     basic education to our children lies with New York State. As 
     a public servant who has served for twenty-three years on the 
     House of Representatives Education Committee, and prior to 
     that, eight years on the Education Committee of the New York 
     State Senate I want to stress the importance of this vital 
     law and order moment in the history of New York State. After 
     years of legislative deals, which resulted in great 
     inequalities, the court has proclaimed justice. Along with 
     other elected officials we urge you to OBEY THE LAW.
       Please OBEY THE LAW. Set an example for our students, for 
     our communities. Show them everyone must OBEY THE LAW.
           Yours For Improved Education,
                                                   Major R. Owens,
     Member of Congress.

                          ____________________