Jeff Bingaman

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Minnesota.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. BINGAMAN. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, first let me yield myself 6 minutes off of my time at this point. I am offering this amendment on behalf of myself, Senator Jack Reed from Rhode Island and John Kerry from Massachusetts, and I believe they will both be here, I hope, to speak on behalf of the amendment as well. This amendment is intended to ensure greater accountability in our educational system and in the expenditure of title I funds. Let me make it very clear to my colleagues at the very beginning of this debate, this amendment does not add money to the bill. Instead, it tries to ensure that a small portion of the title I funds that we are going to appropriate in this bill are spent to achieve greater accountability and improvement in the schools that are failing, about which we are all so concerned. I think we can all agree that greater accountability in our schools is an imperative. It is particularly important to have this accountability where high concentrations of disadvantaged students are in order to ensure that all students have some semblance of equal educational opportunity. Although most States have adopted statewide standards, they have not directed adequate resources to schools that are failing to meet those new standards. Dedicated funds are necessary in order to develop improved strategies in those schools and create rewards and penalties that will hold schools accountable for continuous improvement in their students. The Federal Government directs over $8 billion, nearly $9 billion, in Federal funding to provide critical support for disadvantaged students under title I. But the accountability provisions in title I have not been adequately implemented due to insufficient resources. Title I authorizes State school support teams to provide support for schoolwide programs and to provide assistance to schools in need of improvement through activities such as professional development or identifying resources for changing the instruction in the school or the organization of the school. In 1998, however, only eight States reported that school support teams have been able to serve the majority of the schools identified as needing improvement. Less than half of the schools identified as being in need of improvement in the 1997-1998 school year reported that this designation of being a school needing improvement led to additional professional development or assistance. Schools and school districts need additional support and resources to address weaknesses soon after those weaknesses are identified. They need that support to promote a progressively intensive range of interventions, continuously assess the results of those interventions and implement incentives and strategies for improvement. The bill before the Senate does not identify specific funds for accountability enforcement efforts. I believe we need to ensure that a significant funding stream is provided to guarantee these accountability provisions are enforced. This amendment seeks to ensure that 2.5 percent of the funds appropriated to LEAs under title I--that is $200 million in this year's bill--is directed toward this objective. This money is to be used to ensure that States and local school districts have the necessary resources available to implement the corrective action provisions of title I by providing immediate and intensive interventions to turn around low-performing or failing schools. The type of intervention that the State and the school district could provide using these funds includes a variety of things. Let me mention a few: One would be purchasing necessary materials such as updated textbooks and curriculum technology. The second would be to provide intensive, ongoing teacher training. Inadequate training of teachers has been a problem in many of the failing schools. A third would be providing access to distance learning where they don't have the teachers on site who can provide that instruction. Fourth, extending the learning time for students through afterschool or Saturday programs or summer school programs so students can catch up to the grade level at which they should be performing. Next, providing rewards to low-performing schools that show significant improvements, including cash awards or other incentives such as release time for teachers. Sixth, intensive technical assistance from teams of experts outside the schools to help develop and implement school improvement plans in failing schools. The teams would determine the causes of low performance--for example, low expectations, an outdated curriculum, poorly trained teachers or unsafe conditions--and provide assistance in implementing research-based models for improvement. One example of the type of research-based school improvement model that needs to be introduced in failing schools and can be introduced in failing schools with the resources we are earmarking in this amendment is the Success for All Program. This program is a proven early grade reading program in place now in over 1,500 schools around the country, some in my own State of New Mexico. At the end of the first grade, Success for All Program schools have average reading scores almost 3 months ahead of those in matching controlled schools. By the end of the fifth grade, students read more than 1 year ahead of their control group peers. This program can reduce the need for special education placements by more than 50 percent and virtually eliminate retention of students in the grade they have just completed. This Success for All Program incorporates small classes, regular assessments, team learning, and parental involvement into a comprehensive reading program based on phonics and contextual learning techniques. In order to implement this program, however, schools need resources, particularly in the first year. The estimated costs is about $62,000 for 500 students in that first year; that decreases substantially to about $5,000 per year in the third year the program is in place. They must provide the initial training for the school's principal, the facilitators, the teachers, and 23 days of onsite training and curriculum materials. This is the kind of program of which we need to see more. It is the kind of program for which the funds we would earmark in this amendment would be made available. In my view, this is the type of thing the American people want to see. Instead of just sending another big check, let's try to attract some attention to the strategies we know will work so the failing schools can move up and the students who attend these schools can get a good education. I see my colleague, Senator Reed. I reserve the remainder of my time and yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Reed.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce two education bills for consideration in the context of reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (``ESEA''). Two weeks ago, I introduced two education bills related to raising standards and improving accountability for our public school teachers. Last week, I introduced three bills related to raising standards and accountability in our schools. The two bills that I introduce today focus on raising standards and accountability for student performance. One bill continues our commitment to provide support for the standards-based reform movement taking place in virtually every State by reauthorizing the National Education Goals Panel. The other bill, the Access to High Standards Act, which I introduce on behalf of myself and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, will provide our high school students with greater access to rigorous, college level courses through advanced placement programs. I think most people would agree that in order to compete and continue to prosper in our global economy, it is imperative that our students are provided with a world-class educational program. To that end, we owe it to our students to define high academic standards, monitor their progress and provide them with the resources they need to succeed. The National Education Goals Panel has played a crucial role in achieving these objectives by focusing attention on the need to raise standards and effective methods for achieving higher performance on the local level. As a founding and current member of the National Education Goal Panel, I am pleased to introduce a bill that would reauthorize the Panel so that it can continue its efforts to provide leadership and track progress for local efforts to raise standards for student performance. The Goals Panel is a bipartisan body of federal and state officials made up of eight governors, four members of Congress, four state legislators and two members appointed by the President. The Panel is charged with reporting national and state progress toward goals set initially by the nation's Governors during a National Education Summit meeting with President Bush and expanded during the 1994 ESEA reauthorization Summit meeting with President Bush and expanded during the 1994 ESEA reauthorization process in the Educate America Act. The Panel also identifies promising practices for improving education and helps to build a nationwide, bipartisan consensus to achieve the goals. The eight National Education Goals call for greater levels of: school readiness; student achievement and citizenship; high school completion; teacher education and professional development; parental participation in the schools; literacy and lifelong learning; and safe, disciplined and alcohol- and drug-free schools. We need to continue the Panel's work, because we are not yet where we need to be with respect to meeting the goals or with respect to supporting state and local efforts to put in place standards-based educational programs. Data collected by the Goals Panel has helped and can continue to help State and local officials to formulate comprehensive school improvement policies. The Goals Panel also has provided and can continue to provide guidance to federal, state and local policy-makers by providing a national picture for student performance. We have made good progress towards developing more competitive, high quality educational systems in our states and localities, but we must not leave the task incomplete. We must continue to focus attention and resources on incorporating high standards into public education. As Secretary Riley stated before the nation's governors and President Bush met in 1989, ``Significant educational improvements do not just happen. They are planned and pursued.'' I hope that my colleagues will support continuation of the Goals Panel so that we can continue to use the Panel as a tool for setting and achieving high standards for student performance. Building on the successful expansion of the Advanced Placement Incentive Program achieved in the last Congress, the Access to High Standards Act is intended to help foster the continued growth of advanced placement programs throughout the nation and to help ensure equal access to these programs for low income students. Advanced placement programs already provide rigorous academics and valuable college credits at half the high schools in the United States, serving over 1.5 million students last year. Many States that have advanced placement incentive programs have already shown tremendous success in increasing participation rates, raising achievement scores, and increasing the involvement of low-income and under-served students. Nevertheless students--particularly low-income students--continue to be denied or have limited access to this critical program. Despite recent growth in state initiatives and participation, AP programs are still often distributed unevenly among regions, states, and even high schools within the same districts. Just a few months ago, a group of students filed a complaint in federal court against the State of California seeking equal access to advance placement programs. Over forty percent of our nation's public schools still do not offer any Advanced Placement courses. The Access to High Standards Act is intended to take additional steps in fostering the continued growth of advanced placement programs throughout the nation and to help ensure equal access to these programs for low-income students. This bill creates a $25 million demonstration grant program to help states build and expand advanced placement incentive programs giving priority to districts with high concentrations of low-income students and to State programs targeting low-income students. In addition, the bill authorizes a pilot grant program for States seeking to provide advanced placement courses through Internet-based on-line curriculum to students in rural areas or areas where the lack of available advanced placement teachers make it impossible to provide traditional courses. The bill also make AP a part of other federal education programs such as the Technology for Education Act programs that I helped author in 1994. In this way, federal initiatives will be encouraged to incorporate the high standards and measurable results of the AP program. As many of my colleagues know, college costs have risen many times faster than inflation over the last decade, making attendance more difficult for high school graduates and creating tremendous financial burdens. Advanced placement programs address this issue by giving students an opportunity to earn college credit in high school by preparing for and passing AP exams. In fact, a single AP English test score of 3 or better is worth approximately $500 in tuition at the University of New Mexico, and the credits granted to students nationwide are worth billions each year. By promoting AP courses, we also address the need to raise academic standards. Many states and districts are struggling to develop and implement rigorous academic standards and concrete measures of achievement--an approach that is advocated by many experts, lawmakers, and the public. By implementing high academic standards and providing standardized measures for achievement through AP programs, we can help prepare students for college. This is clearly a necessary goal. Almost 33 percent of all freshmen fail to pass to pass basic entrance exams and are required to take remedial courses. And, at least in part due to academic difficulties, over 25 percent of freshmen drop out before their second year. In addition, expanding AP programs improve students' academic performance in college. And because the vast majority of AP teachers teach several non-AP classes as well, AP programs also have a tendency of raising schoolwide standards and achievement among the 400 new schools adopting the program each year. As Secretary Riley has said, expanded AP will ``help fight the tyranny of low expectations, which tragically hold back so many of our students.'' Of course, there is no single remedy or federal program that can hope to address all of the issues that public education must face in order to improve the achievement and preparation of our students. However, I believe that high college costs and low academic standards deserve our closest attention, and I am confident that expansion of advanced placement programs will help states address these issues effectively. I look forward to working with my colleagues to incorporate the two bills I am introducing today, as well as, the education bills introduced in recent weeks into the ESEA. I believe that they will go a long way towards improving education in the United States by focusing on raising standards and ensuring accountability for teacher, school and student performance.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in introducing the ``Medicare Beneficiary Access to Care Act of 1999.'' I want to commend the leadership in the development of this legislation and hope that the Congress will act upon this now, before we adjourn. The bill is designed to modify some of the many, unforseen consequences of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Daily I receive letters and calls citing the negative impact of the Balanced Budget Act on access to patient care and to the delivery of quality care in an ongoing and coordinated fashion. In my State of New Mexico, the health care delivery system has been particularly hard hit. Essentially, the system for delivery of health care that we have worked so hard to attain is being eroded and must be bolstered before patients face a crisis. I represent a state where 21 out of 33 counties are designated as health professional shortage areas. I represent a state that has seen an exodus of physician specialists and rural doctors this past year. Over the last year, New Mexico had 70 home care agencies close despite yeoman's efforts to keep these agencies open and serving our citizens. This represents closure of over 40 percent of our home health care agencies. We currently have one county, Catron, that has no home care entity available for serving patients. Failure to deal with the additional 15-percent cut that is slated to go into effect in October of 2000 would be the end of numerous other home health agencies throughout my state. It would be inexcusable not to address this issue this session. Additionally, the system is further under stress in the nursing home arena. We have seen one nationally based entity declare bankruptcy and face the demise of others. Long term care facilities must be reimbursed at a level that reflects the acuity of the residents for whom they care. Long term care is key not only for the residents but for their families near and far. Mr. President, several of my colleagues have addressed the issue of GME and the plight of our teaching hospitals. Hospitals have a multitude of services that they provide and which we should bolster. I must note, for example, that in New Mexico, declining Medicare reimbursement is forcing the only acute care hospital in Dona Anna County to close a 15 bed skilled nursing unit because of mounting financial losses. Realities such as this must make us mindful of the far reaching and adverse effects the BBA of 1997 is now having on communities and their residents. We want to ensure that no other facilities face closure. Finally, I must add that rural and frontier clinics are critical components to care for seniors and others in the community with limited resources and serve to allow for timely, geographic access where there otherwise would be no health care available. I am pleased that some redress of their needs is provided in this legislation. Others have outlined the components of this legislation and I will not repeat the specifics. It is sufficient to say, that these changes are needed to avert a crisis in the health care delivery system of this country, to maintain access to quality care for our seniors and to rectify problems for the system that were created inadvertently. We must act now to provide for easy access to quality, continued health care for our citizens. I look forward to working with all of my colleagues here in the Senate to see that this legislation is passed prior to adjournment.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, last week I introduced two education bills related to raising standards and ensuring accountability for the teachers in our schools. Today, I am pleased to introduce three bills that relate to raising standards and ensuring accountability for the performance of our schools--the Small, Safe Schools Act, the National Dropout Prevention Act and the School Improvement Accountability Act. Next week, I will introduce two bills which relate to raising standards and ensuring accountability for student achievement. All of these bills, which I hope to incorporate into the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, form the foundation for a comprehensive plan to improve the quality of our public education system. The three bills that I am introducing today focus on improving school performance. The Small, Safe Schools Act would help to ensure that children have a sense of belonging in their school by providing incentives for the construction of smaller schools and providing resources to create smaller learning communities in existing larger schools. In this way, we can create school environments that keep our children safe and make it easier for them to meet high standards for achievement. Research demonstrates that small schools outperform large schools on every measure of school success. In the wake of the tragedy at Columbine High School, one of the most important concerns regarding school quality is school safety. Issues of school safety can be effectively addressed by creating smaller schools or smaller learning communities within larger schools. Behavorial problems, including truancy, classroom disruption, vandalism, aggressive behavior, theft, substance abuse and gang participation are all more common in larger schools. Teachers in small schools learn of disagreements between students and can resolve problems before problems become severe. Based on studies of high school violence, researchers have concluded that the first step in ending school violence must be to break through the impersonal atmosphere of large high schools by creating smaller communities of learning within larger structures, where teachers and students can come to know each other well. School size also can have a critical impact on learning. Small school size improves students grades and test scores. This impact is even greater for ethnic minority and low income students. Small institutional size has been found to be one of the most important factors in creating positive educational outcomes. Studies on school dropout rates show a decrease in the rates as schools get smaller. Students and staff at smaller schools have a stronger sense of personal efficacy, and students take more of the responsibility for their own learning, which includes more individualized and experimental learning relevant to the world outside of school. Small schools can be created cost effectively. Larger schools can be more expensive because their sheer size requires more administrative support. More importantly, additional bureaucracy translates into less flexibility and innovation. In addition, because small schools have higher graduation rates, costs per graduate are lower than costs per graduate in large schools. The Small, Safe Schools Act would establish three programs designed to promote and support smaller schools and smaller learning communities within large schools. Schools or LEAs could apply for funds to help develop smaller learning communities within larger schools. The bill also authorizes the Secretary to provide technical assistance to LEAs and schools seeking to create smaller learning communities. In addition, the bill would provide funding for construction and renovation of schools designed to accommodate no more than 350 students in an elementary school, 400 students in a middle school, and 800 students in a high school. On behalf of myself and Senator Reid, I also offer the National Dropout Prevention Act, which is a bill designed to reduce the dropout rate in our nation's schools. While much progress has been made in encouraging more students to complete high school, the nation remains far from its goal of a 90 percent graduation rate for students by 2000. In fact, none of the states with large and diverse student populations have yet come close to this goal, and dropout rates approaching 50 percent are commonplace in some of the most disadvantaged communities during the period from ninth grade to senior year. The bill is based on many of the findings of the National Hispanic Dropout Project, a group of nationally recognized experts assembled during 1996-97 to help find solutions to the high dropout rate among Hispanic and other at-risk students. In addition to widespread misconceptions about why so many students drop out of school and lack of familiarity with proven dropout prevention programs, one of the main factors contributing to the lack of progress in this area is that there is currently no concerted federal effort to provide or coordinate effective and proven dropout prevention programs for at-risk children. In fact, there is currently no federal agency or office that is responsible for the multitude of programs that include dropout prevention as a component. The Act makes lowering the dropout rate a national priority. Efforts to prevent students from dropping out would be coordinated on the nation level by an Office of Dropout Prevention and Program Completion in the Department of Education. The Office would disseminate best practices and models for effective dropout programs through a national clearinghouse and provide support and recognition to schools engaged in dropout prevention efforts. In addition, this bill provides funds to pay the startup and implementation costs of effective, sustainable, coordinated, and whole school dropout prevention programs. Funds could be used to implement comprehensive school-wide reforms, create alternative school programs or smaller learning communities. Grant recipients could contract with community-based organizations to assist in implementing necessary services. The School Improvement Accountability Act, the third bill I am introducing today, sets more rigorous standards for States and LEAs receiving Title I funds by strengthening the accountability provisions in Title I. The Title I program provides supplemental services to disadvantaged students and schools with high concentrations of disadvantaged students. These students and these schools are often short-changed by our educational system. The bill seeks to ensure that all schools are often short-changed by our educational system. The bill seeks to ensure that all schools receiving Title I funding achieve realistic goals for student achievement and that all students reach those goals, narrowing existing achievement gaps. Recipients will be required to set goals for student achievement which will result in all students (in Title I schools) passing state tests at a ``proficiency'' standard within 10 years of reauthorization. The bill also requires States, LEAs and schools to focus on elimination of the achievement gap between LEP, disabled & low-income students and other students and to ensure inclusion of all students in state assessments. The bill also modifies the corrective action section of the bill, which is the section that is triggered when schools identified as being in need of improvement, have not made sufficient gains towards the goals set out in the schools Title I plan. The School Improvement Accountability act would require schools failing to meet standards must take one of three actions affecting personnel and/or management of the schools: (1) decreasing decision-making authority at the school level; (2) reconstituting the school staff; or (3) eliminating the use of noncredentialed staff. Students in failing schools also would have a right to transfer to a school which is not failing. In order to ensure equal educational opportunities for all our children, we must ensure that schools are safe, welcoming places. We also must ensure that students in danger of dropping out of school are not lost, but instead graduate high school with the skills that they need to be productive members of our society. We must provide special support to students with greater obstacles to learning, such as disadvantaged students, students whose first language is not English, and disabled students. We must ensure that schools serving these students can provide high quality educational programs and that those schools are held accountable for the success of all students. The bills I offer today will do much to achieve these goals. I hope that my colleagues will support these efforts.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I wish to take a few moments today to offer some remarks on a matter of extreme importance to this Nation and to the world--the matter of preventing the further proliferation of nuclear weapons among the nations of the world through ratification and implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Two weeks ago--September 10--was the third anniversary of the United Nation's overwhelming vote to approve a treaty banning the testing of nuclear weapons. The General Assembly voted 158 for to 3 against the treaty, with a handful of abstentions. Last week, on September 24, the United States observed the third anniversary of signing that treaty and, on September 22, marked the second anniversary of its receipt by the Senate for our advice and consent. In accordance with article 14 of the treaty, preparations are now underway to convene an international conference of states which have ratified the treaty to negotiate measures to facilitate its implementation. I'm sorry to say, Mr. President, that unless the Senate acts immediately to ratify this treaty, the United States--an original signatory to the treaty and a leader in the global movement to stop the testing of nuclear weapons--will not take part in that conference. Our absence sends a troubling message to the international community looking for our leadership. Mr. President, I am very sorry to say that essentially nothing has happened since President Clinton signed the treaty on behalf of the United States on September 24, 1996, and sent it to the Senate for consideration on September 22, 1997. There have been no hearings, there has been no debate on the Senate floor, there has been no vote on ratification. This is an extremely important treaty that I believe, and the great majority of Americans agree, would help to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons during the coming millennium. And yet the Senate has not even begun the debate. Mr. President, I believe the United States and the nations of the world have come to a historic crossroads--a crossroads that symbolizes America's view of the future and the potential direction of the international system regarding the control and eventual eradication of nuclear weapons. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty lies at the center of the crossroads, and provides us with two basic options. We could elect to ratify the treaty and seek its broadest implementation in order to prevent the further proliferation of nuclear weapons; Or, we could elect not to ratify the treaty, having decided as a body that permitting the testing of nuclear weapons by all current and future nuclear powers is in the interest of safety and security of the United States and the world. If we chose not to ratify the treaty, that choice would permit us to pursue future avenues for nuclear superiority in response to nuclear weapons developed by our real or potential adversaries. Mr. President, I believe that our Nation has already been down that road. It was called the nuclear arms race. It cost the Nation over a trillion dollars according to a recent study by the Brookings Institution. And that's just money. It doesn't include the opportunity cost of brainpower and skills not used to address other national problems such as medical and environment science or education. The fact is, Mr. President, that the way things stand, we are not being permitted to make either choice. Despite repeated requests by Members of the Senate to address this vital national and international security issue, the Senate has done nothing to move this treaty forward and debate it. The Foreign Relations Committee has taken no action with respect to the treaty and is preventing the Senate from debating and voting in this most critical issue to the future of world peace. By his actions, the chairman of the committee is preventing the Senate from carrying out its constitutional duties and obligations to give advice and consent regarding the CTBT. Mr. President, I support the call to hold hearings and bring this treaty to the floor for a debate and a vote. The American people strongly support this treaty and deserve to have that view represented and debated in the Halls of Congress. Will the treaty be an effective means to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons? Let's debate the point. Will the treaty be verifiable? Let's hear from the experts on that crucial issue. Will the CTBT serve America's national security interest? Let's examine that from every angle. As I mentioned at the outset of my remarks today, Mr. President, I believe the Nation and the world stand at a historic crossroads with respect to the spread of nuclear weapons. I believe it is our duty and obligation to the American people to choose the proper road to take. The key word, Mr. President, is ``Choose.'' The Senate is currently being prevented from making a choice--and in so doing, a choice is being made for us--by a few individuals seeking to advance an unrelated political agenda. I'm certain I share an abiding faith in our democratic system with the Members of this body. If that's so, a debate, discussion, and vote on perhaps the most critical security issue facing our Nation today should be placed before the Senate as soon as possible. Failure to permit such a debate and vote suggests to me either a lack of faith in the democratic process or a disdain for its importance or validity. Mr. President, I strongly urge my colleagues to support efforts to bring the CTBT to the floor.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, last week I introduced two education bills related to raising standards and ensuring accountability for the teachers in our schools. Today, I am pleased to introduce three bills that relate to raising standards and ensuring accountability for the performance of our schools--the Small, Safe Schools Act, the National Dropout Prevention Act and the School Improvement Accountability Act. Next week, I will introduce two bills which relate to raising standards and ensuring accountability for student achievement. All of these bills, which I hope to incorporate into the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, form the foundation for a comprehensive plan to improve the quality of our public education system. The three bills that I am introducing today focus on improving school performance. The Small, Safe Schools Act would help to ensure that children have a sense of belonging in their school by providing incentives for the construction of smaller schools and providing resources to create smaller learning communities in existing larger schools. In this way, we can create school environments that keep our children safe and make it easier for them to meet high standards for achievement. Research demonstrates that small schools outperform large schools on every measure of school success. In the wake of the tragedy at Columbine High School, one of the most important concerns regarding school quality is school safety. Issues of school safety can be effectively addressed by creating smaller schools or smaller learning communities within larger schools. Behavorial problems, including truancy, classroom disruption, vandalism, aggressive behavior, theft, substance abuse and gang participation are all more common in larger schools. Teachers in small schools learn of disagreements between students and can resolve problems before problems become severe. Based on studies of high school violence, researchers have concluded that the first step in ending school violence must be to break through the impersonal atmosphere of large high schools by creating smaller communities of learning within larger structures, where teachers and students can come to know each other well. School size also can have a critical impact on learning. Small school size improves students grades and test scores. This impact is even greater for ethnic minority and low income students. Small institutional size has been found to be one of the most important factors in creating positive educational outcomes. Studies on school dropout rates show a decrease in the rates as schools get smaller. Students and staff at smaller schools have a stronger sense of personal efficacy, and students take more of the responsibility for their own learning, which includes more individualized and experimental learning relevant to the world outside of school. Small schools can be created cost effectively. Larger schools can be more expensive because their sheer size requires more administrative support. More importantly, additional bureaucracy translates into less flexibility and innovation. In addition, because small schools have higher graduation rates, costs per graduate are lower than costs per graduate in large schools. The Small, Safe Schools Act would establish three programs designed to promote and support smaller schools and smaller learning communities within large schools. Schools or LEAs could apply for funds to help develop smaller learning communities within larger schools. The bill also authorizes the Secretary to provide technical assistance to LEAs and schools seeking to create smaller learning communities. In addition, the bill would provide funding for construction and renovation of schools designed to accommodate no more than 350 students in an elementary school, 400 students in a middle school, and 800 students in a high school. On behalf of myself and Senator Reid, I also offer the National Dropout Prevention Act, which is a bill designed to reduce the dropout rate in our nation's schools. While much progress has been made in encouraging more students to complete high school, the nation remains far from its goal of a 90 percent graduation rate for students by 2000. In fact, none of the states with large and diverse student populations have yet come close to this goal, and dropout rates approaching 50 percent are commonplace in some of the most disadvantaged communities during the period from ninth grade to senior year. The bill is based on many of the findings of the National Hispanic Dropout Project, a group of nationally recognized experts assembled during 1996-97 to help find solutions to the high dropout rate among Hispanic and other at-risk students. In addition to widespread misconceptions about why so many students drop out of school and lack of familiarity with proven dropout prevention programs, one of the main factors contributing to the lack of progress in this area is that there is currently no concerted federal effort to provide or coordinate effective and proven dropout prevention programs for at-risk children. In fact, there is currently no federal agency or office that is responsible for the multitude of programs that include dropout prevention as a component. The Act makes lowering the dropout rate a national priority. Efforts to prevent students from dropping out would be coordinated on the nation level by an Office of Dropout Prevention and Program Completion in the Department of Education. The Office would disseminate best practices and models for effective dropout programs through a national clearinghouse and provide support and recognition to schools engaged in dropout prevention efforts. In addition, this bill provides funds to pay the startup and implementation costs of effective, sustainable, coordinated, and whole school dropout prevention programs. Funds could be used to implement comprehensive school-wide reforms, create alternative school programs or smaller learning communities. Grant recipients could contract with community-based organizations to assist in implementing necessary services. The School Improvement Accountability Act, the third bill I am introducing today, sets more rigorous standards for States and LEAs receiving Title I funds by strengthening the accountability provisions in Title I. The Title I program provides supplemental services to disadvantaged students and schools with high concentrations of disadvantaged students. These students and these schools are often short-changed by our educational system. The bill seeks to ensure that all schools are often short-changed by our educational system. The bill seeks to ensure that all schools receiving Title I funding achieve realistic goals for student achievement and that all students reach those goals, narrowing existing achievement gaps. Recipients will be required to set goals for student achievement which will result in all students (in Title I schools) passing state tests at a ``proficiency'' standard within 10 years of reauthorization. The bill also requires States, LEAs and schools to focus on elimination of the achievement gap between LEP, disabled & low-income students and other students and to ensure inclusion of all students in state assessments. The bill also modifies the corrective action section of the bill, which is the section that is triggered when schools identified as being in need of improvement, have not made sufficient gains towards the goals set out in the schools Title I plan. The School Improvement Accountability act would require schools failing to meet standards must take one of three actions affecting personnel and/or management of the schools: (1) decreasing decision-making authority at the school level; (2) reconstituting the school staff; or (3) eliminating the use of noncredentialed staff. Students in failing schools also would have a right to transfer to a school which is not failing. In order to ensure equal educational opportunities for all our children, we must ensure that schools are safe, welcoming places. We also must ensure that students in danger of dropping out of school are not lost, but instead graduate high school with the skills that they need to be productive members of our society. We must provide special support to students with greater obstacles to learning, such as disadvantaged students, students whose first language is not English, and disabled students. We must ensure that schools serving these students can provide high quality educational programs and that those schools are held accountable for the success of all students. The bills I offer today will do much to achieve these goals. I hope that my colleagues will support these efforts.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I see the report encourages the National Science Foundation to ``strengthen its activities with respect to international cooperation in research and education.''

Mr. BINGAMAN. I thank the Senators for their consideration. NOx SIP call

Mr. BINGAMAN. I'd like to continue to work with the Chairman and Ranking Member as this appropriations bill moves forward to see if there isn't some way to provide a grant from EPA's State and Tribal Assistance Grant Program to help fund a portion of the cost of the wastewater treatment plant in Bayard.

Mr. BINGAMAN. The estimated cost of the new wastewater treatment plant is almost $3 million. Is the Ranking Member aware that Mayor Kelly and the city council in Bayard are working very hard to obtain partial funding for the new plant from all available local, state and federal sources?

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I want to thank the Chairman and Ranking Member for their fine and fair work on this appropriations bill. I acknowledge how difficult their job is and fully appreciate their efforts. I understand the tight budget situation the committee finds itself in and the many requests the Chairman and Ranking Member face for water and wastewater funding from the EPA's State and Tribal Assistance Grant Program. Unfortunately, the committee could not find sufficient funding for a critical wastewater treatment project in Bayard, New Mexico. This community, along with the Village of Santa Clara and the Fort Bayard State Hospital, face a loss of their wastewater treatment plant. Three years from now, the Cobre copper mine will no longer accept wastewater from these communities and an alternative must be found. If not, these communities will essentially return to the days of the outhouse. May I ask the Chairman if he is aware of the critical wastewater situation facing the citizens of Bayard and Santa Clara?

Mr. BINGAMAN. I thank the distinguished Chairman and Ranking Member. Barry University

Mr. BINGAMAN. Well, unfortunately the program was authorized too late in the year to make it into the President's budget request for FY 2000. But NSF, including the top leadership is quite enthusiastic about the program. They've had a day-long workshop to help design the program, and I understand may even release the report from that workshop soon. My point is I think that they could be ready to get the program started this coming fiscal year. Would the Chairman agree that to the extent there is some discretionary money available at NSF in FY 2000 and that NSF's leadership believes they have a solid program plan, they can and should begin the East Asian Science, Engineering, and Technology program in FY 2000? Moreover, that NSF should budget for the program in FY 2001 and beyond? I think that would be consistent with your interest in seeing more international cooperation in science and engineering.

Mr. BINGAMAN. The Chairman may be aware that as part of last year's Higher Education Act, working with thirteen of our colleagues, I was able to get a program in East Asian Science, Engineering, and Technology authorized at NSF. This new program, which is a successor to a program at the Defense Department, will teach American scientists and engineers about East Asian languages, technological developments, management techniques, and research institutions. It will improve our understanding of East Asian research and train a cadre of American researchers who can effectively cooperative with their East Asian counterparts.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I would like to express my support for more section 8 housing vouchers to help local housing agencies meet local housing needs. Although many Americans have benefited tremendously from the current economy, many others have not shared in that wealth. In my state, housing costs in communities like Santa Fe and Albuquerque have risen faster than the incomes of low- and middle- income workers. Many working families can no longer afford housing in the cities where they work, and many are forced to commute long distances just to stay employed. Section 8 vouchers fulfill a very great need in the communities where entry level housing costs are seven to eight times the annual income of its residents. The need for vouchers in New Mexico far exceeds the number of vouchers currently available. The waiting list for section 8 vouchers is 14 months in New Mexico. The waiting time is even higher in places like Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Mr. President, the elderly, disabled and working families with children cannot wait 2 years to get into decent, affordable housing. Those on the waiting list do not have many alternatives in New Mexico as the waiting time to get into public housing is 9 months. Voucher recipients are not asking for free housing, they are asking for assistance in obtaining one of the most basic needs we have--shelter. Although Congress authorized 100,000 new vouchers for fiscal year 2000, this bill failed to fund those new vouchers. Mr. President, I hope we can pass an amendment today that will adequately address the housing needs of our working families, disabled, and elderly.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. The Senator from Nevada is correct. The House version of the fiscal year 2000 Interior appropriations does not contain a moratorium prohibiting Indian tribes from entering into or expanding existing Self-Determination Act contracts, grants or compacts with the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the Indian Health Service.

Mr. BINGAMAN. The Senator is correct. During the debate of H.R. 2466 in the House, Representative Dale Kildee of Michigan raised a point of order against the provision containing the moratorium on the grounds that the language violated a rule against legislating on appropriations bills.

Mr. BINGAMAN. I say to the senior Senator from Nevada that I am very familiar with this reality. In my home State of New Mexico, I have seen several instances where Indian tribes have been unable to provide their members with the most basic of services because the moratorium prohibits them from contracting with BIA or IHS.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Certainly. While this moratorium was established to address the growing shortfall between allowable contract support costs and the amounts appropriated for such costs, the practical effect of the prohibition has been to prevent many Indian tribes from providing their members with the most basic of services, whether it involves health services, social services, law enforcement or road maintenance.

Mr. BINGAMAN. I am familiar with this provision. Section 324 extends the one-year moratorium established last year prohibiting Indian tribes from entering into or expanding existing Self-Determination Act contracts, grants or compacts with the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the Indian Health Service.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise to offer my views on this year's Defense authorization conference report. I plan to vote for the conference report. It is a bill that, like other defense bills of the past, contains a great many excellent provisions that enhance our military capability and the quality of life for our service personnel and their families. My normal enthusiasm for the Defense bill this year is tempered, though, by a number of provisions that, in my view, do not serve the interest of national security well. I would like to review the positive aspects of the conference report first, though, before discussing its troubling aspects. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I have worked very hard to see that issues and programs that I care about were addressed in this conference report. I am pleased to say that many of the concerns that I raised in subcommittee, full committee, the floor, and finally, in conference have been met. A few examples are worth emphasizing: This conference report does a lot of very good things for the men and women in the military and their families. The services reported difficulties in recruiting and retaining key personnel during the past year--raising concerns that this might grow more serious in years to come. In response, the conference report includes a 4.8 percent pay raise for military personnel, and raises the annual increase for service people by a half a percentage point above increases in the cost of living over the next five years. That's good news. The conference report extends, and, in some important instances, increases special pay and bonuses for key skill categories that were due to expire at the end of this year. Of particular interest to many New Mexico families at our Air Force bases at Holloman, Kirtland, and Cannon, junior and mid-career Air Force aviation officers could qualify for additional bonuses of $25,000 for each year they promise to extend active duty service. That is good news in our State and for the Nation. The conference report also increases authority for re-enlistment bonuses from $45,000 to $60,000. For retirees and folks in the military contemplating retirement, the conference report fixes the inequity that penalized those who came under the Redux system after 1986. Those military personnel may now elect to transfer to the old system, or to accept a $30,000 bonus while remaining under the Redux program. Recent retirees and those soon to retire in New Mexico enthusiastically welcome this provision. Veterans and their families will also benefit from a very important measure in this year's conference report--a change that have been advocating for the last couple of years. Any veteran's family seeking an honor guard at the funeral of one of our veterans is now guaranteed to have one. Uniformed personnel, the presentation of an American flag, and the playing taps will be provided in recognition for service to the nation whenever requested. That is good news for our veterans community. There is another initiative for veterans that I strongly support in this conference report. It could lead to authorization for veterans to use National Guard armories to receive services and counseling regarding a wide spectrum of veterans' benefit programs. This measure could go a long way toward making it easier for our veterans to receive the benefits that they are due. That is a bit about the ``people part'' of the conference report--an area where I think it has quite a bit to offer. The conference report also makes some important contributions on key policy matters--for example, programs that have to do with preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly through cooperative programs with Russia and other countries of the Newly Independent States. The conference report includes, for example, $475 million for the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program to accelerate the disarmament of Russian strategic weapons, assist in chemical weapons destruction, and support efforts to increase security for Russian nuclear materials in order to prevent them from being smuggled aboard. I urge the Congress to fully support this program through authorization and appropriation of the necessary funds. It remains fully in our own security interests to do so. There is also funding for programs to prevent Russian weapons scientists from selling their skills to the higher bidder. The Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention and the Nuclear Cities Initiative will help us to keep that from happening, while at the same time building important people to people relationships that we hope will sustain improved relations between our nations during coming decades. Again, although I believe these programs are worthy of more funding than they received, I am pleased that funding has been authorized and I urge the Congress to appropriate those funds as well. This conference report also authorizes funds for another important cooperative program that will serve our security interest well--the Russian-American Observation Satellite program (RAMOS). RAMOS is being designed to take the uncertainty out of early warning of missile attacks. It is meant to ensure that in case a missile firing is detected, a military order to respond with nuclear missiles is not made in error. Fully funding a robust RAMOS program will greatly serve our nation's nuclear security. I urge the defense appropriators to ensure that those funds are available. Looking toward the future of the Nation's military capability, this conference report includes funding for basic science and technology research in accordance with my hopes and intentions to increase that level of funding by 2 percent in real terms. That level of funding was not won without a fight, however, and I remain concerned that future defense budgets may fall short in this area. If that happens, the technological advantages that we have witnessed in the Persian Gulf and in the Balkans will erode quickly, and international military challenges could result in significant casualties and losses of expensive military equipment. As you know, the conference report also authorizes funding for defense programs within the Department of Energy (DOE). This bill authorizes $4.5 billion for DOE weapons programs including the science- based stockpile stewardship that enables the Department to certify the safety and reliability of our nuclear weapons without having to test them. Stockpile Stewardship is providing challenging science to a new generation of scientists employed at the labs that will not only certify the stockpile, but assure the nation that the best scientific talent available continues to support science programs at our national laboratories such as those in my State, Sandia and Los Alamos. These aspects of the Defense conference report are all very favorable, and normally I would vote for such a report with the greatest enthusiasm. My enthusiasm, though, is diminished by the provisions of the conference report dealing with the management of the Department of Energy. These provisions cause me deep concern, as I believe they will be damaging to our national security in the long term. These troublesome provisions are largely found in Title 32 of the conference report. This is a wholly new Title that was inserted in conference. It was not part of the original Defense bill passed by the Senate or by the House. It differs substantially, in a few crucial respects, from the DOE reorganization proposals considered and agreed to by the Senate in the intelligence authorization bill. Title 32 contains the most sweeping revisions in DOE organization since the founding of the agency in 1977. Yet, there was not a single Members' meeting throughout the entire conference to discuss its provisions. When you consider the importance of our nuclear arsenal, the lack of a role for Members in fixing the terms of its reorganization is striking and very hard to justify. The result is a statute that, in my view, will be exceptionally difficult to implement. Coping with the ambiguities and internal contradictions of Title 32 will needlessly distract the new administration and the Department of Energy from the mission of maintaining the safety and reliability of the nuclear stockpile. This is not just my personal view. The ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee commissioned a study of title 32 from the experts in law and government organization at the Congressional Research Service (CRS), after the conference report was filed. The CRS produced a sobering assessment of this new title, highlights of which my colleague has shared with us. I have also received an expression of deep concern from 43 State attorneys general about the impact of the changes that were made in Title 32 on the applicability of the Federal Facilities Compliance Act to the new administration. Their concern merits our attention, and I hope that the Armed Services Committee arranges for hearings at which they can present their views directly for our consideration. In addition to these issues, the new title 32 creates what looks to me to be a complete muddle in the area of counterintelligence and responsibilities and authorities. The problems that the conference report create for DOE counterintelligence programs can best be described by looking at before-and-after organizational charts of counterintelligence responsibilities related to one of DOE's facilities, the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Chart 1 shows the current flow of responsibility and authority for counterintelligence at DOE and Los Alamos. It is very simple, and Secretary Richardson is to be commended for putting it in place. The DOE Chief of Counterintelligence, Ed Curran, is in charge. He has hire- and-fire authority over the Chief of Counterintelligence at DOE facilities like Los Alamos. If we discover a loss of classified information at Los Alamos tomorrow, we know where to look for answers. Chart 2 depicts the lines of authority that will exist under title 32. Secretary Richardson's reforms will be completely reversed. Under title 32, DOE will have two competing centers of control over counterintelligence in the nuclear weapons complex. Which of these individuals is in charge of counterintelligence? If you define ``being in charge'' as being able to issue direct commands to the labs, where the counterintelligence threat exists, it would appear that neither person is in charge. The Director of DOE-wide Counterintelligence is statutorily forbidden from exercising any direct control over the laboratories. He can issue policy pronouncements, and has to go up through the Secretary of Energy and then down through 4 layers of bureaucracy to get in touch with a lab like Los Alamos. And the Chief of Defense Nuclear Counterintelligence is not in a much better position, either. He also has to go up through his boss and down through a lateral chain of command to impose his will on anyone at the laboratories. He can talk to everyone, hence the dotted lines, but he cannot tell anyone anything definitive on his own authority. The lack of clarity for counterintelligence responsibility in title 32 is perhaps the most ironic and distressing aspect of the whole DOE reorganization scheme. Right now, these responsibilities in the Department are clear, thanks to Secretary Richardson's reforms. When we started debating changes to DOE organization, the one change that everyone seemed to agree on was the need to have clarity on matters of counterintelligence. Yet, after this Defense bill is enacted, we will be back to the days of diffuse responsibility for counterintelligence. I have no illusions that we are going to vote down this conference report because of the defects in title 32. There are too many other important things that got done right in this bill. But we have created a real muddle at the Department of Energy in the area of nuclear weapons and their management. We will have to come back in next year's Defense bill to fix it. There is one other issue that we will have to address next year. That is the issue of polygraphs. The section on counterintelligence polygraphs in the conference report is a slight improvement over the corresponding provision in the Senate-passed Defense bill. But there are still fundamental problems with what we are asking DOE to do. We are asking DOE to use polygraphs as a screening tool--the one application where the scientific validity of polygraphs is most suspect. I don't have a big problem with using some forms of polygraphs in the context of an investigation, where there is already evidence of wrongdoing. There is scientific support for that sort of polygraph test. But polygraphs as a screening tool have little or no track record in the scientific literature. We shouldn't be using them in the nuclear weapons complex. And the way that DOE has proposed to use polygraphs in its recent Federal Register notice goes beyond what we actually call for in this bill. I have taken a public position in opposition to this proposed DOE rule on polygraphs, because it is not based on sound science and does not represent reasoned decision making, in my view. I hope that DOE will rethink its proposed rule. This conference report, although it encourages the use of screening polygraphs, also gives DOE the flexibility to study the matter further. I hope that DOE will seek review from the National Academy of Sciences on the reliability of the types of polygraph screening it plans to implement. I also recommend that the DOE reconstitute and reconvene the Chiles Commission to study the rule's likely impact on the critical human resources needed to ensure the safety and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile. The Senate could, in my view, profit from such studies in revisiting this issue in next year's Defense bill. In the end, then this year's conference report is more of a mixed bag than in most years. What we have done through the normal committee and conference process, on a bipartisan basis, has been done well, and we can be justly proud of it. What was done in a rushed and less cooperative fashion is much less satisfactory. I support the conference report overall, and I expect that the problems that have been needlessly created will manifest themselves for corrective action in fairly short order. I hope that when they do arise, we are able to address them in a more bipartisan and thoughtful way.