[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 38, Number 45 (Monday, November 11, 2002)]
[Page 1995]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Statement on Signing Legislation To Provide for Improvement of Federal 
Education Research, Statistics, Evaluation, Information, and 
Dissemination, and for Other Purposes

November 5, 2002

    Today I have signed into law H.R. 3801, an Act to provide for 
improvement of Federal education research, statistics, evaluation, 
information, and dissemination, and for other purposes. This Act will 
substantially strengthen the scientific basis for the Department of 
Education's continuing efforts to help families, schools, and State and 
local governments with the education of America's children. This Act is 
an important complement to the No Child Left Behind Act enacted earlier 
this year.
    The executive branch shall construe sections 115, 116(f), 117(d), 
119, 156(b), and 186 of the Act in a manner consistent with the 
President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive 
branch and shall construe section 116(f) in a manner consistent with the 
President's authority under the Recommendations Clause of the 
Constitution to submit for the consideration of the Congress such 
measures as the President shall judge necessary or expedient. Also, in 
accordance with the President's constitutional power to select 
individuals for nomination, the executive branch shall construe section 
116(c)(2) as advisory only. In addition, the Director of the Institute 
of Education Sciences shall implement section 186(a) of the Act subject 
to the supervision and direction of the Secretary of Education. Finally, 
the executive branch shall construe section 156(b) regarding the 
furnishing of compilations or surveys in a manner consistent with the 
principles enunciated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1983 in INS v. 
Chadha, which do not permit the Congress by law to authorize a 
congressional committee to direct an executive branch entity to create a 
compilation or survey.
    The executive branch shall construe provisions of the Act that 
require taking account of race, culture, gender, age, region, 
socioeconomics, ideology, secularity and partisan politics, including 
sections 111(b)(2)(B), 114(f)(7) and (8), 115(a)(1), 116(b)(8) and (10), 
133(c)(7), and 151(b)(3), in a manner consistent with First Amendment 
freedoms and the requirements of equal protection and due process under 
the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
    The executive branch shall construe section 174 and title II of the 
Act as imposing duties on a State or its officials only when the duties 
are a condition of a Federal grant or contract accepted by or under the 
authority of a State, as is consistent with the principles governing 
Federal-State relations enunciated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997 in 
Printz v. United States.
                                                George W. Bush
The White House,
November 5, 2002.

Note: H.R. 3801, approved November 5, was assigned Public Law No. 107-
279.