Hillary Clinton

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I am a big believer in the importance of testing students. I think that testing has an essential and appropriate role in the curriculum of any educational system. I think there is no doubt that we have to test in order to determine whether or not students are meeting high academic standards. It would be a delight, I suppose, to most students who think that we are not going to test them but, indeed, we are. I think this debate and what the Senator from Minnesota is attempting to bring our attention to is that there are ``tests'' and there are ``tests.'' Making sure that the tests are used for the purpose of measuring student performance, determining what kind of additional help a student might need, is really what we are focused on through the Senator's amendment. I appreciated very much Chairman Jeffords' important amendment that we voted on last week to make sure we have Federal support, financial support, behind the design and implementation of these tests because we want to send a clear message to States and local districts that we believe in accountability, but we want to put some dollars behind that belief by saying we want you to design and implement tests that are going to really measure what students learn. Right now, many teachers who contact my office, or the ones I see when I visit schools, as I did on Monday in New York City, are terribly concerned that what might very well happen is that more and more testing will be piled on without there being any requirement that they be worthwhile tests and without the resources to assist the teachers-- who, after all, are on the front lines in the classrooms--in knowing how best to address the needs of their students that are revealed by the tests. I was very impressed by this document put out by the Committee for Economic Development. My colleagues know that the Committee for Economic Development is a group of business people in our country. They are very committed to creating the conditions that will further economic development, and they know that one of the key conditions, if not the most important one, is the quality of our education. Looking at the board of trustees and the Committee for Economic Development, we have people from the leading corporations in America who see firsthand what their employees need when they come into the workplace, who are on the front lines of hiring people for a job. They have put out a publication that I really commend to my colleagues, to the administration, and to all of us who are concerned about using testing to improve student learning. It is called ``Measuring What Matters.'' It makes many of the same points that Senator Wellstone makes. It might be somewhat surprising for some of the people who serve on the board of trustees for the Committee for Economic Development to know that they agree with Senator Wellstone, but they do. They agree that what we need are tests that will actually improve student learning. That certainly is what the intent of the bill that we reported out of the Health Committee under Chairman Jeffords' leadership was aimed at doing. How do we make it clear that tests are a means, they are not an end, in school reform. We don't just give the tests and pick out winners and losers. We have never done that in the United States--one of the reasons our educational system is both unique and successful and has been for decades despite our problems, which we talk about endlessly. We should look at some of the reasons why we have been successful. I would rank near the top of that the flexibility of our educational system. We don't give a test when a child is 11 years old and say, all right, this group of children, you are consigned to a certain set of occupations; this other group, you did well on the 11-year-old test, so we are going to send you to different schools and put you on a different path. We don't test when children are 14 and make that conclusion. We don't say that there are some children who can only attend certain kinds of courses in certain schools and others are barred because of tests. We don't have the kind of one-test determination that opens the doors or shuts them in colleges in other parts of the world. I think that has served us well in our country. There are a lot of people who don't take school seriously until they are in high school. Sometimes they graduate and maybe then find their way to a community college. Then they really get energized; they know what they want to learn. So we have always viewed tests not as a stop sign for a child the system holds up and says: You are a loser; you don't know anything. We use them to say: Look, we need to help. How can we provide more support for you to be able to get the most out of your education? I think it is important for us to remember that tests are not an end; they are a means. They should be a means toward lifelong learning or improving the climate for learning or for giving individuals the tools they need to be successful, not just in the classroom but in life. It is also important, as the Committee for Economic Development points out, that tests need to be valid and reliable and equitable. There should not be any doubt that I think any good test would meet those three criteria. First of all, validity: Are we measuring what we intend to measure? If we spend the whole year teaching children one set of facts or studying one set of subjects and we test on something else, that is not a valid test. So we need to make sure that what we measure is what we are teaching, and what we are teaching is in some way reflective of the standards of what we expect from our educational system. Reliability is also a given. How consistent and dependable are the assessment results? Are these tests that teachers and parents and students and community leaders can depend on because they really reflect what we want our children to know? Finally, are they equitable tests? That doesn't mean there are two standards, one for certain children who live in affluent suburbs and one for children who live in our poorest neighborhoods. No, if we are doing anything with this effort, it is to try to make sure we combine both excellence and equity and we do everything possible to give the opportunities where they are most needed. We know we have to be very careful that our tests are fair, that they have no sign of bias toward any group of students. We need the help the Federal Government should provide if they are going to stand behind the regimen of testing we are considering in this bill. We also need to be sure, if we are going to be using tests, that we get timely results. I offered an amendment in the committee. If tests are going to be given, the results ought to be available in 30 days and no more. What is the point of giving a test in April and you get the results in June or July when the children have gone home or may not get them until the following year? We should have a sensible testing schedule, and we should require that the results be provided in a timely manner to parents, students, and especially our teachers if they are going to be used for diagnostic purposes and to measure and grade the curriculum as well as the children. There are a lot of tests that are currently being administered. We give tests for everything now. We give tests for graduation. We give tests for promotion. We ought to be sensible about this. If the Federal Government, through our actions in the Congress and the administration, are going to say we want a test every year from third to eighth grade to determine how effective our children are learning reading and mathematics, then States have to take a hard look at what else they are testing because it is getting so that many of our schools feel they are spending all their time preparing for tests, administering tests, and grading tests. We have to be sure the tests are appropriate in number as well as content. I also hope as we move forward on this important education debate that we recognize that accountability for students and teachers is best tied to school performance. I go into schools all the time that are literally within blocks of each other. Some are very successful and some are not. A lot of it has to do with how the school is organized and what their priorities are. I hope the testing we are discussing to be implemented in this bill will help us move entire schools toward better outcomes so that we lift up the performance of a school and create the atmosphere that will be conducive to learning and teaching. One thing that bothers me, though, is that in our rush for tests and in our implementation of so many tests, a lot of schools are finding it impossible to keep the more well-rounded curriculum that has been the hallmark of American education. I believe music, art, physical education, extracurricular activities, even field trips, are a part of the educational process. What I hear from so many schools in my State is that the tests take up so much time. The costs of the tests and all that goes with the tests mean that a lot of other important educational objectives are being eliminated. I hope we take a view of testing that puts it into the context of American education generally. I take a back seat to no one in saying education has to be a local responsibility and a national priority. I have had experience in advocating for testing. I believe I was the first person in the country who advocated testing teachers, using high-stakes tests. I even recommended schools be based on their performance in how many students they could bring up to grade level. But I am very cautious--and I guess I am putting up a caution light--that we not go so much toward testing as the definition of education that we forget what the learning process is and how unique the American education system is where people can literally wake up in 10th grade or 12th grade or a child can be exposed to art or music or some other part of the curriculum, such as a good science lab in the eighth grade, and all of a sudden learning becomes real and they are not consigned to a second-class citizenship because they did not get into gear before that time. We are starting to see, with our high-stakes testing in New York, a lot of dropouts. We are worried we are beginning to see an increase in dropouts. We have to take that seriously. Our goal is not to test children for the sake of testing, then telling them they do not measure up, and then holding them back for the sake of holding them back until they become so frustrated and discouraged they leave the educational system. I do not think that is the goal of any of us in this Chamber. Our goal is to have an accountability system so that we actually know what is being taught and what our children are learning, and use it for diagnostic purposes to make every child a success. Raising the caution lights that the amendment of the Senator from Minnesota raises is important for us to think about. I will add one additional caution light. I guess that is the biggest issue of all for me, and that is the resources. I am very concerned, as I will state when we come to this in the days ahead, about the budget. We have been promised it will leave no child behind and will provide the resources for extra testing, to deal with special ed, to deal with more resources for our poorest children, to add teachers so we have lower class sizes, to modernize classrooms. I am worried that none of that will be in the budget. That puts many of us in a very difficult position because we know that accountability is necessary, but we also know that resources in our poorest schools are an absolute necessary condition for a lot of our kids to be successful. I enjoyed listening to the Senator from Wyoming talk about the very small school districts of fewer than 50 children. I have some very fond memories of districts that small in Arkansas. I remember going to graduating classes of three and four children. That is a very different and wonderful educational experience. I hope we never get away from that in our country; that we do have schools that are that small in States from Wyoming to upstate New York. I come from a State that has some different kinds of problems. I have a school system with a million children. I have school systems, such as that of Buffalo, where the school stock is so old they cannot wire them for computers because the buildings were built like forts. I visited a school called the Black Rock Academy that was built in 1898, last renovated in 1920. They are bewildered about what to do. They cannot figure out how to get those computers set up. They have wires coming up, going in a window, into a little room. They have about 30 computers, only 10 of which can be connected to the Internet. That is the best they can do under the circumstances. Buffalo has undertaken, using State dollars and local dollars, a tremendous school renovation and modernization program. Our needs in New York are different than the needs of the small districts in Wyoming. I hope we are going to look at all of our children from coast to coast and all of our local school districts to figure out what we can do to make everybody successful. Resources are key. It is more difficult to provide education in remote rural areas and in very concentrated poor areas in our inner cities. We need a bill and we need the resources in the bill that empower local communities to make the decisions that are best for them. There is a wonderful menu of opportunities in the bill where people can choose professional development or technology, but we would really be selling our children short if we do not also include lower class size and school modernization because in the absence of some Federal help on those two issues, much of what we want to achieve is going to be very difficult and beyond the reach of many of our districts, even those that are making a good-faith effort, such as Buffalo, to deal with a very old stock of schools. I kid some of my colleagues. We were educating people in some communities in New York before some of the States represented in this body were States. We were building schools before a lot of people had to build schools because of the centuries of history in New York. We have some of those schools that have been around a very long time. Good education can and does occur in those schools. But the conditions are worsening to the point where, as I said the other day, we have concrete falling out of a ceiling, hitting a teacher on the head. We have overcrowded classrooms. If we are going to be seeking both excellence and equity, we have to do more to provide the resources all districts need to do the job they want to do for their children. This is a very important issue that goes right to the heart of this budget. I, along with many of my colleagues, was very disturbed to learn there was no increase for education in the budget coming back from the House. This body voted in a bipartisan way for important measures that were attached to the budget. This was not just about numbers; it was about values, the value of making sure we put the dollars into our education system and many other important priorities, from defense to food safety. The budget coming back does not reflect that. It does not reflect the flexibility for the dollars that will be needed to do what we have already voted for in the Senate. I was very proud of the vote that said we need to fund special education. It is about as close as we can get to a mandate. A lot of school districts are under tremendous pressure because they cannot afford to do what they need to do. I was proud of this body for voting to fully fund title I. That was a values statement. It said our values are that we will invest in our poorest children. I was proud of our chairman's amendment that if the Federal Government puts this requirement of testing on our districts, the Federal Government should help to pay for the development and implementation of those tests. This body, in a bipartisan way, made some very important values statements about education--not that we were just going to pass a bill that sounded good but one that could actually produce results. I am very pleased that at least in the Senate we are crafting a bill that I think will make a difference in the lives of our children. If we continue on this path, it could revolutionize education across our country. But it cannot be seen in isolation from the budget which, after all, carries the resources that will determine whether we have anything other than an empty promise. I appreciate the opportunity to add my voice to what we are trying to do in this Chamber and to look for ways to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make sure it is real.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the career of an outstanding soldier and a good friend, Lieutenant General Daniel W. Christman, who is retiring after more than thirty-six years of active military service. General Christman's exemplary military career, culminating in five years as the Commanding General and Superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, exemplifies the professionalism and seriousness of purpose that have helped make the U.S. military the best in the world. Prior to his service at the United States Military Academy, General Christman had a remarkable military career for over 30 years. General Christman graduated first in his class from West Point and later taught in the Department of Social Sciences as an Assistant Professor of Economics. He has held several senior executive positions in the Army, all of which have taken advantage of his unique talents for creative leadership and strategic vision. Using his training in civil engineering, he has commanded a major U.S. Army Corps of Engineer District in Savannah Georgia and headed the Army's Engineer School in the early 1990s. Throughout his distinguished career, General Christman has played a vital role in development and implementation of some of the most important security policy issues of the last several decades. He served in the Ford Administration as a member of the National Security Council Staff. During the Gulf War, he directed a strategic planning group which advised the Army's Chief of Staff on war prosecution policies. He represented the U.S. in Brussels, Belgium as a member of NATO's Military Committee where he had active involvement in the historic expansion of NATO, pursuing peace in the Balkans and military dialogue with Russia. Immediately before arriving at West Point, General Christman served for two years as Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. In that position he advised the Secretary of State on a broad range of issues, including arms control with Russia and Middle East peace negotiations between Israel and Syria. General Christman's tenure as the 55th Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy has been marked by a forward thinking strategic vision and the development of a more cooperative and positive environment at the Academy. I met with General Christman soon after I was sworn in as Senator and have been greatly impressed by his leadership at West Point. His success at obtaining critical funding support has enabled West Point to continue to attract high quality young cadets willing to embark on Army careers. He helped to raise funds for the Center for the Professional Military Ethic, as well as endowments for several academic department chairs and improved athletic facilities. He helped to inspire the creation of a dynamic and forward-looking Strategic Vision for the U.S. Military Academy 2010. General Christman's exemplary service and devotion to duty, honor and country have left a lasting impact on the U.S. Military Academy, and indeed the U.S. Army. His numerous awards reflect the respect and admiration of those who have had the privilege to serve with him. I join my fellow Senators in wishing General Christman the best of luck in his future endeavors and my sincerest gratitude for his distinguished service to his country.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, today, I am so pleased to join my good friends, Senator Hutchison from Texas and Senator Bayh from Indiana, in supporting this legislation to help Medicare payments keep pace with the rising costs of hospital care, and to halt further Medicare reductions to teaching hospitals. Our hospitals are under tremendous strain. They face soaring costs from nearly every direction: The growing number of uninsured individuals coupled with the devastating shortages of skilled health care workers. The struggle to afford skyrocketing pharmaceuticals prices, while simultaneously investing in emerging needs, such as information technology. At the same time, reductions in Medicare payments have hindered hospitals' ability to respond to these increased demands. How can we expect patients to receive quality health care when we're asking our hospitals to do more with so much less? As you know, this week we are focusing on the crisis around the shortage of nurses. Ninety-one percent of hospitals in New York State report shortages of registered nurses, RNs. But this is really just the tip of the iceberg. The shortages in the health care workforce permeate the entire health care system, especially our hospitals. There are shortages in pharmacists, technicians, nurse aides, billing staff, and housekeepers that have all negatively impacted the quality of care New Yorkers are able to receive. As a representative of the State of New York, I am especially troubled by the growing strains that our hospitals have been forced to contend with on top of the devastating cuts that have resulted from the balanced budget agreement of 1997, BBA. I have heard numerous firsthand accounts of the adverse impact on New York hospitals and the facts speak for themselves: In the 2 years following the BBA, New York hospitals' financial health ranked worst in the Nation. In fact, almost two-thirds of New York hospitals had negative operating margins last year. And in addition to the workforce shortage affecting health providers nationwide, New York providers are also confronting labor costs increases of 5-7 percent a year, while the Medicare rates for inpatient hospital rates, even with the full market basket update we are seeking in today's legislation, expected to rise only around 3.1 percent. In recent years, Congress has successfully provided some short-term relief to address areas where the cuts enacted in the BBA of 1997 went much further than intended. However, much of the relief merely postponed scheduled cuts in Medicare payments and that is why the legislation that we are introducing today is so important. This legislation today would eliminate some of those previously delayed cuts. First, it would restore the market basket update for inpatient hospital rates to the full level, rather than market-basket minus 0.55 percent, as scheduled for fiscal year 2002 and 2003. This important step will help hospitals nationwide keep up with the rising costs of inpatient care for Medicare beneficiaries. This provision helps all hospitals in New York State by increasing inpatient hospital payments across the board. I am especially pleased that this legislation would also address the cuts faced by teaching hospitals to their Medicare indirect medical education payments. Teaching hospitals are the crown jewels of our Nation's health care system and play a vital role in making our system one of the finest in the world. We rely on them to train physicians and nurses, care for the sickest of the sick and the poorest of the poor, and engage in research and clinical trials. Thanks to the research, for example, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, cancer patients will suffer less while receiving chemotherapy because of a drug that was developed there. As my predecessor and friend, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in whose footsteps I am so honored to be following, put it so well a few years ago, ``We are in the midst of a great era of discovery in the medical science. It is certainly not a time to close medical schools. This great era of medical discovery is occurring right here in the United States . . . And it is centered in New York City.'' This legislation that we are introducing today would address the cuts faced by teaching hospitals to their Medicare indirect medical education payments. Last year's Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Benefits Improvement Act of 2000, BIPA, provided some relief by delaying the cuts to help teaching hospitals cover the costs of caring for sicker, more complicated patients. Today's provision would make that relief permanent by freezing the indirect medical education adjustments percentage at 6.5 percent. In addition, teaching hospitals throughout the State would benefit, including rural hospitals such as Kingston Hospital, Benedictine Hospital, Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital Medical Center, Olean General Hospital, and Hepburn Medical Center in Ogdensburgh, NY. Today's legislation is essential to ensuring that our Nation's older and disabled patients can continue to receive the high quality of care that they deserve. I look forward to working with my colleagues and the administration to address this and other important health care priorities.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I associate myself with a number of the points made by my friend from Arkansas. Clearly, what we are attempting to do is to put the emphasis on what works and to provide to our children the opportunity to have the best possible education. I have been very privileged over the last 20 years to know quite a bit about education in Arkansas, which my good friend has the privilege of representing, and now I know a lot about education in New York. I have no doubt that my friend, were he still here, would agree with me that our goals are the same for the children in both States. We want to provide the best possible educational opportunities, but we face very different challenges. What I saw and worked on for many years in improving education in Arkansas, which was one of the great honors of my life, is very different from what I now see day in and day out in New York City, where we have more than a million children in our school system. I agree with my friend that what we are crafting is an approach that will give to local school districts, parents, and teachers the tools to make the right decisions for the children whose futures they hold in their hands. That is why I wish my friend were still here--and I will seek him out later to talk with him privately about this. That is why I am such a strong supporter of Senator Murray's amendment because what Senator Murray has done is point out very clearly that one size does not fit all; that what we need to do is provide the tools that will enable each school district in each State to deal with the problems they face. So I want to be part of passing legislation, in a bipartisan way, that will be the best for Arkansas, the best for Washington, the best for Vermont, and the best for New York because we will have honestly looked at all the different tools we need to provide our local educational authorities with in order that they can do the job we are now asking them to do their very best in achieving. So I am very proud to be a cosponsor of this amendment and to stand with my colleague in stating my commitment to supporting the Class Size Reduction Initiative, both because it is voluntary and provides additional funding to schools that are in desperate need of such funding and, maybe most important, because we know it works. I went back and reread President Bush's blueprint for education called ``No Child Left Behind.'' In it, he expresses dismay that over the years Congress has developed programs without asking whether or not programs produce results or even knowing the impact on local needs. Later on, the President goes on to suggest that under his education plan, which is really the core of what we are debating in this education debate, he will focus on what works and ensure that Federal dollars will be spent on effective, research-based programs and practices and that the funds will be targeted to improve schools and enhance teacher quality. That is certainly what the committee on which I am proud to serve, under the leadership of the Senator from Vermont, attempted to do in reporting out such a bill--to focus on what works and to target funds to improve our schools and enhance teacher quality. President Bush and I absolutely agree on this point. I have often said that I sometimes fear Washington is an evidence- free zone where, despite whatever evidence we have, we don't follow it, we don't put it to work, and we spin our wheels too much. Well, I believe we should look at what works, what has had a positive impact in raising student achievement, what has helped at the local level give very necessary resources; there is no better example of what works than reducing class sizes so that teachers can teach and children can learn. Allow me just a moment to review the research demonstrating that reducing class size has proven results. Teachers who teach in classes of 18 students or fewer in the early grades are helping to raise student achievement for our most educationally disadvantaged students who are attending schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, where we all know it is harder to teach. Senator Murray was a teacher. She was on a school board. I don't think any of us should kid ourselves; there are some school districts and some schools where it is just hard to teach, where children come to school with all kinds of challenges and difficulties. We know, as we look at the research done, that if we focus on getting that class size down with a qualified teacher--this should not be an either/or; it should be a qualified teacher and a small enough class size--then we can have very positive results. I particularly point to the work Senator Murray and I highlighted in a press conference a few weeks ago that was done at Princeton University by an economist named Dr. Alan Krueger, who tracked the performance of well over 11,000 elementary school students at 79 schools in a Tennessee pilot program known as Project STAR. This was done randomly. The results are scientifically provable. What he found, and what everyone who has studied it has found, is that smaller class sizes have a tremendously positive impact on student performance and, particularly, on African American students. We want to be supporting both excellence and equity. That is why I support accountability. I think we should know what our children know and what they don't know. I also believe everyone in this Chamber understands that we have to do more to increase the opportunity for excellence by focusing on the students who are most likely to be left behind. To me, the fact that African American students have such positive results from lower class size is a very strong argument for us renewing this commitment. There are other studies which have found exactly the same thing. A Rand study--and Rand usually studies issues such as the military and defense and national security--focused on cost-effectiveness of educational resources in raising scores on the NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It is a test that is given to a randomly selected group of our students across the country. We use it to track how well we are doing as a nation. What Rand found in looking behind these test scores was that the higher scores could be traced to investments in lower class sizes in the early grades--plus, higher prekindergarten participation, lower teacher turnover, and higher levels of teacher resources. So it is that complement of cost-effective strategies that I think we should be supporting in this legislation. Later in the debate, I will focus on the importance of supporting early learning opportunities and trying to retain our teachers because we are losing our teachers at an alarming rate. I brought this photo of P.S. 19 in Jackson Heights, Queens, which is one of the magnets for immigration into our country. People come to Kennedy or LaGuardia Airports and they end up in Queens. I wish I could take every Member of this body to the schools I visit in Queens where bathrooms are classes, hallways are classes, and where children speak 40 to 100 different languages, where they are packed in there and where a teacher, despite her best efforts, can't possibly connect with all these children. Yesterday, I was in a school that works in Manhattan, the New Manhattan School. It is a wonderful school. I met for a long time with the teachers, the principal, and the superintendent of the district. It is an old building, built in 1904. It is packed to the rafters. They are adding teachers into classrooms so if they do not have the additional classrooms, at least they have more qualified teachers in those classes so the children get the attention of the adult responsible for their learning. It is important we understand there have to be opportunities for local communities to make choices. I believe having this tool is essential for providing good opportunities for choices to be made. With the funds appropriated in 2001, it is expected the Federal Government's Class Size Reduction Initiative will bring nearly 40,000 qualified teachers into classrooms. Any one of us who goes into a large city in our country knows that if we do not have qualified teachers and we do not have low class sizes, we can test until the cows come home and we are not going to find anything other than what we already know: that children from high-poverty areas, from dysfunctional backgrounds without adequate training for academic work are not going to do well, but that a qualified teacher working with a small enough group of children, as Senator Murray knows so well, can make all the difference in that child's future. When we looked at this issue in New York City, we saw the results clearly. Two years ago, the program was initiated and class sizes in New York City were 25 percent larger than statewide. With both Federal and State initiatives, we were able to reduce class size for approximately 90,000 students in the early grades, almost 30 percent of the city's K-3 population. I want people to keep in mind, I am talking about a million children and 90,000 children. I know it is hard for some people who represent States without that many people in the State or maybe only half that many to understand we are dealing with huge numbers in a lot of the large cities. It is not just the numbers; it is the real lives behind those numbers. When we looked at the results, after 2 years of efforts, we were very pleased because achievement went up in those classrooms where, with Federal help, we were able to add a teacher. That does not mean the local communities do not have to continue doing their part, and it does not mean the State does not have to do its part, but we have gotten behind in what we need to do for our children. We need all hands on deck. We need everybody pulling together. Education is a local responsibility in our country, but we all know it has to be a national priority. Let us make sure we focus on both teacher quality and lower class size. That is why this amendment, which Senator Murray has championed and has been successful in persuading a bipartisan group of Senators to support in the past, is a critical component of this legislation. If we can make it possible for class sizes to remain small in the early grades, we improve the chances dramatically of producing a productive, functioning citizen who can find his or her way in this complicated society and global economy that awaits them in the 21st century. Yesterday, when I was in this wonderful school that was filled to the brim, they took me into a bathroom that had been turned into a guidance counselor's office. They did not have any other space. We went into the gym and children were doing their physical activity which I believe in strongly. We have to keep children's bodies active as well as their minds. There was a partitioned area in which there were more offices. They were making the best of a very difficult situation. They had just been told a school down the block, a little elementary school, had been condemned. We will get to that later in this debate, too. This school had been condemned. It is unsafe for our children and teachers. There is a school in Mechanicsville, NY, where a piece of concrete fell on a teacher's head while teaching in the classroom. There is a condemned school a few blocks from where I was yesterday. They are already packed. The school I visited will be taking in the children from that condemned school. This is a critical component of the commitment to excellence and equity, accountability, and resources that the President has called for which so many in this Chamber have championed for many years. We have the money to do this. We just have to determine whether we have the will. I call on my colleagues, and echo the very eloquent call of the Senator from Washington, that we recognize that continuing this initiative does help local communities meet the needs they see right in front of them and let us make sure we do everything possible to make every child believe he or she is important so that at the end of this debate the bill we pass truly will leave no child behind. I thank the Chair. I yield back my time.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I am delighted to be supporting this critical amendment, the Dodd-Collins amendment--and the Jeffords amendment-- because I think that both of them offer the kind of real support in terms of resources that are needed to make good on the promise of this legislation. I share the support my friend from Tennessee has put forth on the underlying structure of this bill, and what it offers our children and parents and teachers. But I also believe strongly that increasing accountability without also increasing and targeting resources to those children whom we know will have difficulty meeting the accountability measures is an essential and critical component to making this piece of legislation all that it should be, and hopefully fulfilling the promise of leaving no child behind. Earlier this week, I came to the floor to talk about my concern that increasing accountability without providing resources needed to help our children meet these high standards and pass these new tests would be an empty promise. Right now, we know from the independent, nonpartisan Congressional Research Service that in fiscal year 2001 Congress provided school districts with only one-third of the resources needed to fully serve eligible students in order to help close the achievement gap. With these limited funds, schools are using 70 to 80 percent of their funds to pay the salaries of teachers and instructional aides, and have little left over for other critical investments, from ongoing professional development to reducing class sizes, or for providing all students eligible for title I with the extra help they need to meet high standards. I have gone in and out of schools in our country for more than 18 years. I have spent a lot of time in the schools of New York. I know that we have the ingredients for improving education, but we have been reluctant to provide those ingredients in the quantities needed to the children who require them the most. Yet even with our limited Federal investment, our urban school districts have actually shown gains in reading and math. Since 1992, national reading and performance has improved for 9-year-olds in our highest poverty public schools by nearly one grade level. We know from local examples that title I is working. It will work if we target the funds where they are needed. Let me just raise one example. I could have picked many to talk about. I talked about some of them in my earlier remarks in this Chamber. P.S. 172 in Brooklyn, NY, enrolls over 600 students. Three-quarters are Hispanic, and virtually all of them receive free or reduced-price school lunches. The school has operated a title I schoolwide program since 1993. They have combined their Federal resources from title I, Goals 2000, title 7, with State and private funds to help all students achieve high standards. Since 1994-1995, P.S. 172's third and sixth grade reading and mathematics scores on the New York State assessments have exceeded district and city averages. For what have they used this money? They help teachers implement a literacy-focused curriculum through intensive professional development. A master teacher and a full-time staff development specialist mentor first-year teachers. We know how important that is. If we send a first year, inexperienced teacher into an overcrowded classroom, and in some of the most difficult neighborhoods in our country, and we say: ``You are on your own; try to teach these children,'' whose first language is not English, who come to school with all kinds of difficulties; ``teach them to read, bring them up to standards,'' we are asking a whole lot from a young, inexperienced teacher. But if we mentor that teacher and say: ``We are going to give you the help, the extra attention you need to be an effective teacher,'' we will get positive results. Teachers share their ideas and their expectations with each other and across grade levels. They learn how to work in a crowded classroom with children who may not have the attention span that is needed. They do everything they can to really marshal those title I resources to make it possible to bring about the results that every one of us in this Chamber want. I do not question any one of my colleagues on either side of the aisle about their commitment to improving the quality of education for our children, especially our most needy children. But what I do question is that we do not look at what has worked. We do not look at the best practices where title I is making a difference, where schools are able to take those resources and get the kind of results that we are seeking. In 1999, the Council of Great City Schools found that fourth and eighth graders in urban schools did boost their performance. I have heard a lot of talk from Senators who say the Federal Government has not made a difference, that title I has not made a difference. I respectfully ask you to look at the evidence. Go to the schools where I go. Talk to the teachers. In fact, 87.5 percent of the urban school districts showed reading gains in title I schools, and 83 percent showed improvements in math achievement for title I students. We also found that the percentage of title I students in urban schools below the 25th percentile has been declining. So we do have the formula. We have a recipe. We just need to make sure of the ingredients. Setting standards, testing to see whether children meet those standards, and looking for ways to bring more resources to bear is a winning strategy. I could not be more in favor of what my good friends, Senator Dodd and Senator Collins, are attempting to do because if we do not focus our resources on these children, then I think our attempt to reform education is not only an empty promise but really a fraudulent one. We are saying, fine, we are going to test these children. I have used this metaphor before. It is similar to handing out thermometers in the midst of an epidemic. We are going to find out we have a lot of sick children. We know that. We know we have children who are under tremendous stresses in the world today, who come from very difficult and dysfunctional environments, who cannot concentrate in school. Go in and do a random test for the children's eyesight, and you will find children who cannot see well enough to see the board, and they do not get any medical care for that. Do a random dental care check, and you will find children, as I have, who have abscessed teeth, who are not concentrating or learning to read because they have too much pain which is dulling their abilities. But we can today, with this debate, and with a bipartisan commitment with the administration, make the changes that we know will work. So I strongly urge all of my colleagues that we put our resources where our promises are. Let's not turn our back on the evidence of what works. I sometimes joke that Washington occasionally seems to be an evidence-free zone. We can come with stacks of evidence, with all kinds of reports; we can say, look, if we give a little more help, this title I school, using these best practices, will turn itself around. Instead, we say, it is not working because all of these children, with all of these difficulties, are not reading at grade level. I know that if we are true to the mission that brings us to this education debate, if we are willing to support, with resources, the kind of accountability we are asking from our children, we will see results. We have seen results in the past. I urge all of my colleagues to join in supporting this amendment which will make a tremendous difference for our children. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. As the Senator knows, when somebody says money doesn't make a difference, they are talking about somebody else and somebody else's money. Every one of us in this body goes to the extra length of making sure that our children and any children we care about are given those kinds of resources that will enable a child to learn. Money is not the only answer to what we need to do if we are serious about zeroing in on those children most in need. Most of our schools in this country are doing a fine job. I live in a district in New York that is one of the best in the entire country. Many of the other districts in our suburbs and rural and city areas are producing good students who care about learning. Our real problems are in those areas with concentrated poverty. I have seen the Senator from Connecticut come into the Chamber. He has a passion about getting our resources targeted where they can do the most good. So to anybody who says money is not the only answer, of course, I say money is not the only answer, but money helps when married to accountability and invested in getting rid of conditions such as the ones I am showing here on the picture where there are so many children in this classroom, where it is impossible for even the best trained teacher to be able to communicate effectively with these children. This is a classroom where the children are coming from backgrounds where English is not their first language, coming from concentrated poverty, often difficult family situations. So when somebody says we don't want to throw money at it, I say, that's right. I want to target money to make sure we clean up our dilapidated classes and schools and that we provide lower class size so that the teachers who are willing to go into our hard-to-teach areas will be able to have a decent chance to reach these children; to recruit and retain teachers who come in with idealism and find themselves in situations such as this and within a year or two are gone. For me, there isn't a contradiction here, as the Senator from Nevada knows so well. We need to have the kinds of accountability that is effective and will work but without the resources we are not going to be successful. We are going to find, as I have said in the past, that we are just passing out thermometers in the midst of an epidemic. We are going to find that everybody has a raging fever, but we don't have the resources or the will to help them get well. We can do both. That is what this opportunity provides. I appreciate the concern of the Senator from Nevada. We have to have a good debate. It is only fair, if we are asking that we invest more dollars in education from the Federal Government, we be able to justify the use of those dollars and we tell our constituents and our colleagues where they will go. I have pointed out they go to helping clean, repair, and construct schools we need. Second, they go to reducing class size. The situation shown in this picture is unacceptable. We are under court order in New York City to have only certified teachers in the classes. That sounds great, and I am for it, but in order to have certified, qualified teachers go into a situation such as this, we will have to make a contract with these teachers that this situation will improve; they will find they will have a chance, actually, to teach; otherwise, they will vote with their feet and either leave to go to a suburban district where they are paid a lot more, in a lot better situation, or they will leave teaching altogether. I am not talking about something that is anecdotal. We have research from Project STAR in Tennessee that demonstrates children assigned to smaller classes in grades K-3 received better grades, higher test scores, and were less likely to drop out of school or be held back through their entire educational careers. This is a research study that has gone on for 15 years in the entire State of Tennessee. I applaud the State because they made the investment to evaluate what they were doing. We found that the children who benefited the most were poor and minority children. By all means, test them and find out if they are failing. But be fair and give them a chance to succeed. That is what we are calling for when we ask for reduced class sizes. We know if we don't recruit teachers we will not be able to continue teaching anybody. Right now we have a national crisis when it comes to recruiting and retaining teachers. There isn't any more important factor than teacher quality in improving student achievement. Yet if you are a young teacher placed in a situation such as this, if your classroom is a hallway, as I have seen in some schools in New York, a closet, that makes it very difficult to teach. I recently heard from a constituent in Farmingdale, NY, who told me their elementary school alone needs 16 new teachers for kindergarten. In Buffalo, 231 teachers retired last year, compared with an average of 92 retirees in each of the preceding 8 years. We can't just mandate that school districts go out and hire certified, qualified teachers without providing some resources to make that possible. We tried that in New York City. The court order said hire only certified teachers and put those certified teachers into the classes where the kids are most at risk. So the school district went out, hired 2,000 certified teachers, assigned them to schools as depicted in this picture and the previous pictures, and the 2,000 certified teachers wouldn't take the job. Who can blame them? They are certified teachers, qualified; they pass the tests; they have taken the courses; they are assigned to a school where the conditions to teach are impossible. If we are going to say let's only have certified, qualified teachers, then for goodness' sake, provide help to districts such as those I represent so we can actually recruit and keep those certified, qualified teachers. I strongly believe this bill should include a teacher recruitment section. I am working with a bipartisan group to offer an amendment to help school districts meet the demands for certified teachers. Let me turn now to title I. I would like to paint a picture of what full funding for title I means for the children of New York City. Yesterday, several of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle came to the floor to talk about the failure of title I to improve student learning and dismissed the idea that fully funding title I could result in increased student achievement. I want to be sure the American people have the facts about title I. The real fact, as presented by the independent, nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, is that in fiscal year 2001 Congress provided school districts with only one-third of the resources needed to fully serve eligible students in order to help close the achievement gap. Even with this limited Federal investment, our school districts have shown real gains in reading and math. In 1999, the Council of Great City Schools found fourth and eighth graders in urban schools boosted their performance in reading and math. In fact, 87.5 percent of the urban school districts showed reading gains in Title I schools and 83 percent showed math gains. Moreover, the study found that the percentage of title I students in urban schools below the 25th percentile had been declining over 2- and 3-year periods while the percentage of title I students between the 25th and 50th percentile was increasing. There are those who will still deny these facts and make the claim that title I doesn't make a difference. I often think Washington is the only evidence-free zone in our country. The facts are the facts. Title I does make a difference. Imagine the results if cities such as New York, Buffalo, Rochester, or Syracuse were able to assist all our title I eligible students rather than just a third of them. It would mean, for example, in New York City, we could lower the current threshold and serve an additional 99,295 children. The city could invest in strategies that work better. We could provide extended time initiatives that we know make a difference with children. We could expand early literacy intervention, and intervention strategies, have classroom professional development for teachers. As we look at the bill, we need to look at a full investment in title I. It is not just a game of imagination but a real investment in student improvement that will pay off down the road. I will support Senator Dodd and Senator Collins in their efforts to include full funding of title I in this bill. Finally, let me touch on the issue of testing. In 1983, I called for student tests, high-stake student and high-stake teacher tests. I take a back seat to no one when it comes to using testing and other measures of accountability to find out how well we are doing and hold ourselves accountable. But let's be sure the tests are actually going to accomplish the purpose for which they are intended. We need to look at how children do from year to year, to help teachers modify and individualize curriculum, and provide parents with timely information. We have to make sure that if they take a test in the winter, they get the results that winter, not the following fall when the children have moved on. We have to help schools know what the standard should be so they are not teaching to the tests but they are trying to measure the standards they have set. And we have to help pay for the tests. In New York alone, it would cost $16 million to comply with these new Federal testing requirements. Only $8 million would be provided by the Federal Government; the other $8 million is from scarce State resources. We need to be sure we are fair to our States. If we are going to mandate testing, let's not make it an unfunded mandate. Let's provide the resources needed. If we do develop and implement the tests, we need to have the resources to ensure that our children from the most disadvantaged circumstances can pass and excel in those tests. I think that means smaller classrooms, modern schools, quality teachers. As we go forward in this debate, I hope we will think hard about the impact we will have on our children, and that we do everything we possibly can to make sure we don't just pass a bill but we really do provide the resources to reform education and produce better results across our country. I yield the floor.

Mrs. CLINTON. As the Senator points out, I have been involved in improving education and reforming our accountability measures since 1983, when ``A Nation At Risk'' was first issued by then-President Reagan's Commission on Education. I was one of the first in our country to ask for much stricter accountability, to test not only students but also teachers, and to hold schools to a very high standard. If they did not succeed in passing 85 percent of their children beyond a level of acceptable learning outcomes, the school would be in danger of being taken over. That was 18 years ago. So there is really nothing new in what we are discussing today, as the Senator from Nevada knows so well. We want to do the best job we can in raising standards; yes, we do. That is something many of us have worked on, and we have actually seen some positive results in some of our schools over the last 18 years. But we know there have to be the kind of conditions in learning circumstances in our classes, in our schools, that will enable these accountability measures to be successful.

Mrs. CLINTON. Yes, that is.

Mrs. CLINTON. Yes, I will.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I appreciate the dialog that just occurred between the leaders because, certainly, it is critical that the debate on education commence and that we do everything within our power to provide more resources, greater opportunities, and accountability to our children around the country. As a new Member to this body, I am one who shares the concern about actually seeing the language of the bill and trying to be sure that we know what it is we are debating and that the people back in our States who we represent have a chance to be part of this debate by being able to read and study and provide comments about what it is we are considering in the Senate. I know it may, from time to time, be a little frustrating, but until we actually have a bill with language that will determine the future of education funding from the Federal Government for 5 to 7 years, it is a wiser course for us to be prudent and thoughtful and to wait until we actually know what it is we are debating and what the potential impact of these provisions could be on the lives of real children. After all, this debate is going to set the stage for how much or how little we as a Nation will do for elementary, junior high, middle, and high schools. I am particularly concerned about the impact we will have on our neediest children, those who are too often left behind. We still have too many children who are not reading at grade level and who are being taught by uncertified teachers, and too many who are in overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated school buildings. I know that all of us on both sides of the aisle agree that we can do better than this. We can't just sign a blank check or decide that we can proceed on bill language we have not even seen and discharge our responsibilities to the children we represent in this body. Many of my colleagues and I have serious concerns about the substance of the bill. For example, the block grant demonstration program, so far as we are aware of it without having seen the language of it, does not target enough funds to our highest-need districts and will mean less control for local school districts on how best to invest their Federal education dollars. Because we have not yet seen the final version of the bill we are considering, we don't know whether there is a genuine commitment to devote the resources necessary to make the promise of greater accountability a realistic outcome. Just as we expect teachers, administrators, and students to abide by a high standard of accountability, we should bring our backroom negotiations to the floor of the Senate for all of us to hear. That is why I voted to proceed with the bill. But we should do it on the basis of an actual bill. I, for one, am willing to wait and to be patient until we actually get the bill and then to proceed in an expeditious manner. If we look at where the negotiations are and what we are attempting to achieve, we have a great opportunity to accomplish some very important goals for the people of this country. We all share the goal of improving our Nation's schools. We agree that everyone should be held more accountable for turning around failing schools. There is a bipartisan agreement that is very strong for ensuring that all children should be taught by high quality teachers and that parents should know the quality of the schools their children attend. This bill, so far as it is reported to us, does a tremendous job of strengthening accountability. I applaud Senators Kennedy and Bingaman for leading the negotiations that have resulted in important accountability provisions. Some have asked: Why don't we just call it quits. Let's just put in more accountability. Let's just test our children every year from third through eighth grade. We don't need to do any more than that. I ask: What is it we are attempting to achieve? If all it does is to put more accountability on the already existing testing systems that every one of our States have employed, what is it we hope to achieve? The answer is that in order to have real accountability, we have to marry those accountability measures with targeted additional resources, invested wisely, that will really make the difference as to whether the tests actually create better educational outcomes. Resources would make a difference for children such as Delano Tucker, a fifth grader from PS 41 in the Bronx, who wrote me that his entire fifth grade class was asking for help to improve education. Here is what Delano said: We need more books, but we can't do that without more money. My second reason is we need more teachers because classes are too crowded. The third reason is children are passing without knowing how to read. We don't need to get a bunch of experts or Senators who can come up with a better analysis than what Delano just gave us. We need better teachers, more books, less crowded classrooms, and we should not be passing children who don't know how to read. Resources would make a difference for the nearly 168,000 children who go to school every day in overcrowded classes in New York City. We are losing teachers every single day because teachers can't teach in the kind of circumstances that we are presenting for the state of education in many of our cities. One New York City parent recently shared her thoughts with me, writing that: I am a parent of two young children--one in kindergarten and one in third grade. They are both bright, but they suffer from learning difficulties, in part, because they are trying to learn in classes of 28 children. They are unable to get the individual attention they need because they are competing for the teacher's attention with so many. How can we expect children in classes that are that crowded, given the difficulties and issues that children bring to school today, to be able to get the same quality of education that we know works so well when classes are smaller in the early grades? Resources would have made a real difference for the fourth grade teacher at the 82-year-old Mechanicville Elementary School, just north of Albany, NY, who last year was struck in the head by concrete from the ceiling as she was teaching because the school was in such disrepair. My colleagues and I have heard similar stories from students and teachers in every State around the country. Although education is, and always will be, a local issue, it has to be a national concern. Some of the most severe problems in education today require national solutions. I think that is why we are here today debating education. How will investing in school repairs and renovations help to raise student achievement? I think the answer is self-evident, especially if you have a teacher hit in the head with concrete falling from the ceiling. We know from research that children benefit when they attend school buildings that are in good physical condition. A 1996 study of large urban high schools in Virginia found that student achievement was as much as 11 percentile points lower in substandard buildings as compared to standard buildings. Another study found that the quality of air inside public school facilities may significantly affect students' ability to concentrate. In fact, the evidence suggests that children under 10 are more vulnerable than adults to the types of contaminants found in school facilities. We have seen reports and studies about working conditions in urban schools, concluding that they ``have direct positive and negative effects on teacher morale, their sense of personal safety, their feelings of effectiveness, and on the general learning environment.'' That kind of scientific conclusion is reinforced by the experience of students in Mount Vernon, NY, who go to school with air ducts that are so old and so clogged up and filled with pigeon and rat droppings that they can't even breathe decent air; or the students in Cohoes, NY, who go to a school that banned the use of chalk because they have inadequate ventilation, and the chalk dust would hang like a curtain in the air. Too many of our students are trying to learn in cramped trailers such as in this photo taken in Queens. These may be so-called ``temporary'' trailers, but they can end up representing a big part of a child's educational experience. Too many of our children are in hallways with many distractions and far too little room. This photo represents a common sight in schools in New York. This is not a classroom. This is a hallway. The children aren't in a classroom that you and I remember, where there is a chalk board, a teacher's desk, and the desks of the children, and bulletin boards with pretty displays. This is a hallway and this is their classroom. I don't know how much longer we can keep hearing stories about hallway classrooms, falling concrete, conditions in the classroom that are unhealthy, and not recognize that we should be helping our school districts, many of which cannot possibly afford to raise their property taxes. We can't ask hard-pressed parents to put even more money into the property tax base. We should be helping the parents in those school districts. During this debate, I will do everything I can to urge my colleagues to support Senator Harkin's efforts to include authorization for an emergency renovation and repair fund that would certainly make a difference for some of the schools we just saw. I will also be offering my own amendment to examine the impact of dilapidated schools on the health of our children. It is simply unacceptable in America in the beginning of the 21st century that our children should have to attend schools that not only impair their ability to learn but even make them sick.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Thank you, Senator Smith and Senator Voinovich. I think everyone would agree with you that it is important for states to be responsive to citizens' concerns, and that many states are doing just that. regarding information

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I thank Chairmen Smith and Chafee and Senators Reid and Boxer for agreeing to further enhance opportunities for public participation in state brownfields programs under S. 350. Specifically, the bill as amended would provide an opportunity for individuals to request that a nearby brownfields site be assessed under a state program, and for such requests to be considered and responded to in an appropriate manner by the State. Although states complying with the other state program elements in the bill must survey and inventory sites in the state, there may be rare instances when sites are inadvertently overlooked. I am particularly concerned about this happening in communities that may be small or sparsely populated, low- income, minority, or otherwise socially or politically disenfranchised. This new provision will help to ensure that in those rare circumstances that a site is overlooked in a State's survey process, someone who lives or works in the community can bring a potential brownfields site to the attention of the State and request that the site be assessed under the state's brownfields program. The intent is to provide states with the flexibility to set up this element of their state brownfields program as they best see fit, and the provision does not create an appeals process. Is that your understanding of the provision?

Mrs. CLINTON. I thank my friend from Nevada.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I am pleased to support this important legislation to provide States and local communities with the tools and the resources they need to clean up and reuse polluted industrial properties, turning them from eyesores into opportunities and leveraging literally billions of dollars in economic benefits. The legislation we are voting on today, S. 350, the Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act of 2001, represents the ultimate form of recycling. It is the recycling of one of our most precious and scarce natural resources; namely, our land. Our environmental resources, as our financial resources, are not limitless. The cleanup and reuse of brownfield sites allows businesses and developers to use existing infrastructure so we can reduce sprawl and preserve our precious green space and farmland and, at the same time, it provides an opportunity to energize local economies and create new jobs. I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of S. 350, the Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act of 2001, an act which, as the President knows so well, enjoys broad bipartisan support of a majority of the Senate, as well as of the administration, a diversity of State and local government organizations, business interests, and environmental advocacy groups. This bill, S. 350, is an important step in building on the proven success of existing brownfields efforts. The bill authorizes the establishment of a flexible program to provide grants and loans to State, tribal, and local governments and nonprofit organizations to assess, safely clean up, and reuse brownfields. It includes important provisions that promote assistance for small, low-income communities, as well as supporting efforts to create or preserve open space and furthering participation by the public in cleanup decisions. The bill provides appropriate liability relief for innocent parties who want to clean up and reuse brownfield sites, while maintaining the necessary Federal safety net to address serious cleanup issues. Last week, I was delighted to learn that the EPA was making grants for additional brownfields funding for Utica, NY. I remember the first time I visited downtown Utica and saw all of the old mill and factory buildings, which already were tied in with existing utilities, providing an excellent opportunity for remediation that could be then followed by immediate redevelopment, only to be told because they were built on old industrial sites, because the manufacturing processes that occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries involved dangerous chemicals and other contaminants, these brownfield sites in the middle of downtown Utica were too expensive for private developers and the local community to clean up. I am delighted that Utica and other such places around New York, including Albany and Chautauqua Counties and a village of Haverstram in Rockland County also received brownfields funding. We have seen the benefits of brownfields cleanup and revitalization throughout New York, from Buffalo to Glen Cove, and all the places in between. I stood on the shore at Glen Cove, one of the most beautiful communities on the north shore of Long Island, and could see the effects of the cleanup of brownfields that are going to turn what had been a contaminated waste area into a place that can be part of waterfront redevelopment. To date, over 20 communities across New York have received assistance through EPA's existing brownfields program. It is my hope and belief that there will be many more when we finish this legislation, which will more than double the resources currently available for brownfields cleanup across our country. This bill strikes a delicate balance. There are compromises and tradeoffs. I appreciate the hard work of the committee in a bipartisan fashion to move this legislation forward. I take this opportunity to thank the leadership of the Environment and Public Works Committee on which I am honored to serve, particularly our chairman, Senator Smith, and our ranking member, Senator Reid, and the two Senators who pushed this legislation forward because of their respective chairing and ranking positions on a subcommittee; namely, Senators Chafee and Boxer. I also thank the staffs, including my staff, the committee staff, and the individual staffs of the Senators who worked so quickly and diligently to move this legislation to the floor today. The managers' amendment includes a number of significant provisions. Again, I applaud and thank everyone who was part of this process. I am grateful; two of the managers' amendments I personally sponsored will be part of this legislation. One provision will help focus the delivery of brownfields assistance to communities that experience a higher than normal incidence of diseases such as cancer, asthma, or birth defects. Two weeks ago, I was very fortunate and honored to go with my friend, the Senator from Nevada, Harry Reid, to Fallon, NV, where we held a hearing on a cancer cluster. It is a lovely community, 50, 60 miles from Reno. It is a small community, maybe 30,000 people at most, in a sparsely populated county. They have had 12 cases of leukemia among children in the last 2 years. Clearly, it is a cancer cluster. We don't know what is causing it. Many believe, and much of the testimony we heard certainly suggests, this rate of cancer in this kind of a cluster could be linked with exposure to hazardous substances. The important provision we have added to the bill will offer assistance to communities already burdened with severe health programs, to help them clean up the polluted sites that may contribute to these problems. We will have to do a lot more, and I will be working with Senator Reid under his leadership to think about what else we can do to address environmental health issues. We certainly have more than our share in New York. I am hoping that in the future we will have a hearing in New York, perhaps on Long Island, to talk about the cancer clusters. We have asthma clusters; we have diabetes clusters. We need to figure out what we are doing or what we could stop doing or how we can clean up whatever might be associated. Under S. 350, States that receive brownfields funding must survey and inventory sites in the State. I was concerned there might be sites that would be overlooked in communities that are small or sparsely populated such as Fallon, or low-income or minority such as those in New York City. I am pleased that with this provision in the managers' amendment we will be able to include public participation so individuals can request a nearby brownfield site be assessed under a State program. States would maintain discretion and flexibility to set up this process however they best see fit, but concerned citizens would not be shut out of the process. They could participate and ask their particular brownfield site be given some attention and perhaps even expedited cleanup because of the impact on their local community. In every corner of our country there are abandoned, blighted areas that used to be the engines of the industrial economy or served in our national defense. We were privileged to hear testimony from the admiral who runs the naval airbase that trains the top gun pilots outside of Fallon. They use a lot of jet fuel. They have to occasionally burn it. They sometimes have to drop it in their flight. They were very willing to come forward and talk about what the defense industry can do to help in this area. Many of the places suffering from brownfields were in the forefront of creating the strong economy and the strong national defense system we enjoy today. I think we have to pay attention to the needs of these communities. I thank all who have made it possible for us to consider this bill today. I urge my colleagues to join in passing this important piece of environmental and economic and health care legislation. I hope our colleagues in the House will work to move their own brownfields bill so we can finally get about the business of revitalizing these sites so they can realize their economic potential and preserve our country's beautiful, open spaces, and revitalize our downtown areas. I yield the floor.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. I think my colleague is absolutely right, because if we are looking at the comprehensive reform, we cannot leave out the funding of IDEA. We can't leave out doing something to help parents understand their obligations to be a child's first teacher and provide quality preschool. I hear so much about the IDEA program, otherwise known as the special education program. I hear it mostly in suburban districts, interestingly enough, because suburban districts have activist parents and they know the law. The law is that we have to provide an education for every child. And I support that law. It was the first project I ever did for the Children's Defense Fund. I went door to door in communities back in--I hate to say--1973 to find out where the children were because they weren't in school. We found a lot of children with disabilities who were being kept out of school. I am a 100-percent supporter of mainstreaming our children and giving every child a chance. But we are bankrupting a lot of our suburban school districts. We are saying you have to provide special treatment and education for children who need it and deserve it. If that means you have to shut down the band program or only have one physics session or do away with art, that is the tough choice to make. The Federal Government said in the 1970s that you have to provide this education. Furthermore, it is not only, as our colleague Tom Harkin likes to say, a Federal mandate, but it is a constitutional mandate to provide this quality education. The Federal Government is going to tell districts they have to provide special education. Where is the full funding so suburban districts and all other districts can try to keep up with their expenses? I could not agree more with the second point the Senator made. Those of us who have been parents read to our children. We take them to museums. We get them a library card. We monitor their television. We worry about any kind of childcare arrangements. We know those early years make a difference. Why don't we make a commitment based on the resources we now have about the brain to do more to provide quality preschool opportunities both at home and outside the home so that more children can come to school ready to learn? That might be the very best investment we could make in terms of long-term academic success.

Mrs. CLINTON. Certainly. My feelings go back many years. As the Senator knows, children have been my passion for more than 30 years. I have worked on improving and reforming education for nearly 20 years. I know how difficult it is, today, to try to help many of our children achieve educational competence. The reason for that is that we are not living in the same world in which the Senator and I grew up. It is harder to teach our children. Our children come to school with more problems and more stress. They are exposed to many more things than we ever faced. We have to understand that if we don't really provide the resources to reach the children as they are today, not as we wish they would be, not as we thought they were back when I was sitting there with my hands folded and listening to every word, but as they are today with all the other pressures that are on families and children, then we are not going to have the results and the kind of achievement to which the Senator from Minnesota is referring. But there is no reason we have to make this choice. It is not an either/or choice. We have the resources to assist our local districts so they do not have to reach any deeper. Many of the districts from my State can't afford to raise their property taxes any more. I was on Long Island last night talking to a group of about 1,000 people. I explained to them, if we have this large Federal income tax cut, and then we have these unfunded mandates for education, where is the rubber going to hit the road? It is going to hit the road in the local property tax levies. I would rather be, I am sure, part of an administration that gets to take credit for cutting income taxes than the poor souls down at the local level having to vote to raise property taxes in order to meet the mandates they have put on them. I think we should not be raising false hopes. We should be looking at how we help every child be successful.

Mrs. CLINTON. Yes, it is.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague from Minnesota. I associate myself with the remarks of the education Senator from Massachusetts who so eloquently laid out our dilemma, the dilemma that will be occupying the Senate as we move forward on this very important debate. People always talk about important debates, but it is fair to say as we debate, we will set educational policy for our Nation for the next 7 years. There is hardly a subject we can think of that will have more direct impact on our families, on our communities, on our economy, and especially on our children. We are setting the stage for determining how much we as a nation will do to make good on the promise of a quality education for all children, and particularly for our country's neediest children. I first became involved in education reform back in 1983 with the issuance of the report called ``A Nation at Risk,'' which was issued under President Reagan's watch. Many took that call to action very much to heart that we were a nation at risk. We began looking for ways to improve education, to provide more resources to provide more accountability measures. We have made progress over those last years. When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was last reauthorized in 1994, we sent a strong signal that although education was absolutely a matter of local concern, it had to be a national priority; that we all had to recognize we were failing our children by not providing adequate educational resources and by not expecting them to do the very best they could do. We put a high priority on academic standards, and we worked to help teachers and administrators, parents, and communities improve education. The results of this strong Federal response to local and State educational demands has been heartening. Mr. President, 49 States plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have developed State standards and are working to implement them. These reforms are producing results. We often only focus on the negative side of the ledger about how much we still have to do. I give some credit to the children and the young people, our students, and their parents, and especially their teachers, because we have seen progress. Reading and math scores for fourth graders in our highest poverty school districts have improved by nearly a grade level from 1994 to today. SAT scores are on the rise. More students than ever are attending college. We cannot rest there. We know there is still far more to be done. We have too many children, particularly in our underserved urban and rural districts, who are not reading at grade level. We have too many children being taught by uncertified teachers, in overcrowded classrooms, in crumbling school buildings. We cannot stand by idly while these conditions persist. The issue is, what is the best way to address them? How better can we equip parents, teachers, communities, and our students to meet the tests of the 21st century? I applaud President Bush for calling for greater accountability. I agree with him on the importance of that. I was among the very first in our Nation, in Arkansas in the early 1980s, to call for the testing of students and the testing of teachers because I believed then we had to know what we didn't know in order to make progress. We couldn't just pretend that everything was fine and engage in social promotion and not face up to the fact that we had children graduating from high school who couldn't read a job application. We had teachers who had been themselves passed through the education system who were unprepared to teach the substance of what it was they were assigned to teach. Accountability is key, to me. I have been a strong supporter of that. In fact, I welcome the Republicans and I welcome the Bush administration which has gone forward with accountability measures that are like the measures Democrats have proposed for several years. Many on the other side of the aisle resisted such approaches for many years. In fact, they wanted to abolish the Department of Education. So I applaud my colleagues on the Republican side for the progress they have made in moving toward a common recognition that this is a national priority that must be beyond politics and partisanship. The accountability that is in the bill that is proposed would ask that we test our children every year from third to eighth grade. That is designed to ensure that they are meeting high standards. But here is where the rubber really hits the road. If all we do is order more tests, if we do not combine those tests with the resources that are needed to help the children who have been left behind, then we will have, at best, a hollow victory and I believe, worse than that, we will have committed educational fraud on our children, our teachers, and our country. The Bush plan orders more testing while providing only half the funds needed to design and implement these tests. What would this mean to the State of New York, for example? It would mean that of the $16 million that is estimated to have to be spent to comply with these new Federal requirements, our State would only get $8 million. So we would have to find 8 million more dollars, take it out of something else--from hard- pressed school districts, from teacher pay, from whatever other important objective we are already trying to meet. We should not be passing on an unfunded mandate to our States. If it is a national priority, if it is a priority for this administration to order these tests, then the Federal Government ought to pay for these tests and make sure that, as the Senator from Massachusetts pointed out, they are good tests; they are quality tests; they are not just make-work kinds of tests. Passing tough new accountability standards without the resources to help our schools and students is similar to handing out thermometers in the midst of an epidemic. The thermometers certainly can tell us that there are a lot of sick people, but they do absolutely nothing to help people get better. Unfortunately, the administration's proposal has plenty of thermometers but precious little medicine to help our schools improve. The administration has not even yet committed to providing the Federal funds necessary to marry accountability with student achievement. We already know that despite the rhetoric, this is not an increase of more than 11 percent; it is only 5.9 percent because the administration tried to count money that had been appropriated last year. We are glad to have that money, but let's have honest accounting about how much more money is going in. A 5.9-percent increase barely keeps up with inflation and population increases. What also does it mean on the school level? Let's focus and ask ourselves: If we pass this accountability measure, and everybody goes home, pats themselves on the back, there is a big press conference, and a big signing ceremony, what have we really done to help the districts such as the ones I worry about in the State of New York? In New York City, for example, we are facing a severe teacher shortage. The city will need to hire approximately 40,000--that is right, 40,000--teachers over the next 4 years. In addition, the district is under a court order to place those certified teachers it hires in the lowest performing schools. That makes sense because right now we have uncertified teachers, ill equipped to teach, teaching the children who need the best teachers. So the idea, which is a good idea, is let's put the certified teachers in the schools where the children need them the most. But what has happened? Last week we learned from the chancellor of the New York City schools that the certified teachers turned down the jobs in the hard-to-teach schools. Why? Because those are the schools that are already overcrowded; those are the schools that are crumbling; those are the schools that hardly have a book in the library; those are the schools without the computers connected by the cables they need to be able to be functional, let alone to be accessible to the Internet. We cannot in good conscience demand that school districts hire certified teachers without providing the resources to help these hard- pressed districts recruit and retain these teachers. And we have to do more to make these schools attractive to certified teachers. Answer me, why you would go into a very difficult school to teach children who are under lots of stress at home and in their neighborhoods if the school is not well equipped to give you the resources you need to try to do a good job with those children? I will be working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to introduce a bipartisan teacher recruitment amendment. We all know if we do not place the recruitment of our teachers at the top of our national agenda we will have school districts that are barely able to open their doors in the next couple of years. We will be asking people literally to come off the streets and start teaching because we will not have the teachers we need. I meet people all the time who want to be teachers, but they will not, they cannot, and they should not work under the conditions under which many of our teachers are asked to function. I am also concerned about the proposal the President includes called Straight A's. This is a demonstration project that would give 7 States and 25 school districts the chance to block grant Federal dollars. People are often talking about how important it is to give authority back to the States, and I agree with that in most instances. But we know from years of education research that block granting funds--which means taking the Federal dollars and sending them to the State capitol--means that those dollars do not get to the students and the schools that need them the most in the amount that they should. They get siphoned off in the bureaucracy of the State capitol. They get sent to other places that do not need them but, for political purposes, have the influence to get them. We should be targeting those hard-earned Federal dollars to those school districts and those students who are so far behind. Right now in New York we know, because of a court decision, that the children in New York City do not get their fair share of education funding. So we should do everything possible to get the dollars to the students who need them the most in the schools where the teachers have a chance to try to help them. We also know from research that smaller class sizes make a huge difference, and the Class Size Reduction Initiative has worked wonders. We now have teachers in New York who are federally funded who are helping to lower class size. We have already seen positive results from the school achievement scores. We also know that construction funding to help schools repair their buildings and modernize them and even construct the buildings they need is very necessary. These two important programs, class size reduction and school construction, are eliminated for all purposes in the Bush administration proposal. I say this is a mistake, and I ask the administration, with all respect, to please reconsider this decision. The administration says that reducing class size with Federal dollars and helping to construct and repair schools are not Federal responsibilities. I know they are not totally Federal responsibilities, but I do not think in today's world they are also solely local responsibilities. The districts that need the help the most are not the districts like the one I live in where, with very high property taxes from affluent people, the children have everything they could possibly dream of. But in so many districts, suburban taxpayers cannot pay another penny to fix their schools and do what is necessary to have up- to-date labs. In many rural districts they do not have the tax base to do that, and in many urban districts they don't have the dollars because they don't get their fair allocation from the State, and they cannot tax themselves to be able to meet the needs of children for whom English is not their first language, who come to school with undiagnosed mental illnesses, who live in a system of deprivation and violence and who cannot perform at the same level as the children in my district. Let's have a shared responsibility. That was the whole idea behind the Class Size Reduction Initiative and School Construction Initiative. If education is to be a national priority, let's invest in what we know works--and we know reducing class size and providing good facilities actually works--to make for better education. I hope we will continue in the spirit that we began in the education committee as we marked up this bill, in the negotiations that are currently ongoing with the administration. But I am very concerned that this particular proposal falls way short of what we need to be doing. It falls short for a very simple reason. The administration would rather invest in a large, fiscally irresponsible tax cut than in the education of our children and particularly those who are most needy in rural and urban districts. I hope this will be reconsidered because this failure to properly fund education, to me, is disappointing at a time when we have surpluses, when we do not have to squander these surpluses on large tax cuts that will go disproportionately to the already wealthy whose children already attend schools that have all the computers, all the bells and whistles, all the extra help they could possibly have. Let's, instead, take a moment and step back. I hear a lot about the greatest generation. My parents were part of the greatest generation, the World War II generation. I think they probably have to take a second seat to the greatest generation being the Founders of our Country. But there is no argument that those who survived the Depression, won World War II, and set the stage for winning the cold war, were among the greatest if they were not the greatest generation our country has ever seen. We have been living off the investments and sacrifices of our parents and our grandparents for more than 50 years. My father, who is a rock- ribbed Republican, voted for higher school taxes because he knew the education of his children depended upon good schools. We invested in the Interstate Highway System. We set a goal to send a man to the Moon. We had big dreams, and we worked to fulfill those dreams. Today, at the beginning of this new century, it is up to us to make the decisions, the hard decisions to invest in our children's education. And shame on us if we do not make the right decisions. We can pass a bill that is filled with testing and sounds good but 10 years from now we will still have children in overcrowded classrooms and crumbling buildings who are being deprived of certified, qualified teachers, and we will wonder what went wrong. Let's instead be sensible about the best practices that we know work. We have research. We have practical experience. We know what needs to be done. The issue is, do we have the political will to make those decisions? I support working hand in hand with the administration in a bipartisan way, with the parents and teachers and community leaders of our country, to make education a real national priority. But I cannot-- I could not--support a bill that is a hollow, empty promise. Let's do both. Let's increase accountability so we get better results by making sure we have the resources to hold our children and our teachers accountable. If we do that, then we will be setting the stage to leave no child behind. If we do any less, then I think we have missed a historic opportunity.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I am pleased to join today with my colleagues, Senators Smith of Oregon, Collins, Snowe, Sarbanes and Bayh to provide additional funding that will help meet our Nation's critical wastewater infrastructure needs. Specifically, this amendment provides an additional $800 million in fiscal year 2002 for grants for wastewater infrastructure projects, including $50 million for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and $750 million to fully fund the new grant program authorized under the Wet Weather Water Quality Act of 2000. These new grants will help municipalities address one of our largest remaining water quality challenges, combined and sanitary sewer overflows. Sewer overflows remain the leading cause of beach closures across the country, putting public health at risk and robbing communities of millions of tourism dollars annually. This is a real problem in New York where so many cities, big and small, are confronted with pipe and equipment failures or have undersized systems that can't meet the increased demands of their growing populations. according to EPA's most recent estimates, there is a 20-year need of $139 billion for wastewater infrastructure nationwide. And this doesn't even account for the funding needed to adequately address the sanitary sewer overflows problems facing our communities. This amendment is an important first step towards meeting our country's enormous water infrastructure needs. This amendment will ensure that our beaches are safer for swimming. And it will lead to significant improvements in the quality of the Nation's rivers, lakes, bays and estuaries.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, when Americans turn on their taps, they expect the water that comes out to be clean and safe. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. I rise today to ask my colleagues to join me in expressing our support for the new health and science-based standard for arsenic in drinking water. The stronger standard can protect millions of Americans from a known carcinogen. A 1999 National Academy of Sciences report concluded that chronic ingestion of arsenic causes bladder, lung, and skin cancer. The Administration's proposal to withdraw this new standard puts the public health at risk. The science is clear. The National Academy of Sciences has concluded that the current standard, which has not been revised in nearly 60 years, does not meet EPA's goal of public-health protection and has urged that it be revised as quickly as possible. The new, more protective arsenic standard of 10 parts per billion would put our national drinking water standard for arsenic in line with drinking water standards set at the state level, as well as international standards. The World Health Organization has established a guideline for arsenic in drinking water of 10 parts per billion, indicating that the value would be even lower if it were based on health concerns alone, without consideration for the technological and financial capabilities of certain countries. Withdrawing this important new drinking water standard for arsenic also creates uncertainty for communities across the country that will ultimately need to construct or upgrade water treatment facilities to meet the new standard. These communities need and deserve as much time as is possible to come into compliance with the new standard. This bill that I am introducing today expresses the Sense of the Senate that to provide maximum protection for public health and a maximum amount of time for communities to accommodate a new drinking water standard for arsenic, the new standard for arsenic in drinking water should be set no later than the statutory deadline of June 22, 2001. Rather than rolling back science-based, public health standards for our nation's drinking water, we should be rolling up our sleeves and investing in our water infrastructure so that America's families can rest assured that their drinking water is clean and safe.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I rise today to ask my colleagues to join me in ensuring that we maintain a steady stream of funding for the crown jewels of our health care system, out Nation's teaching hospitals. I deeply appreciate Senator Reed's leadership on this issue and I am proud to join him and other colleagues as an original cosponsor of this important legislation. Teaching hospitals play a vital role in our Nation's health care system, both in treatment and research, helping to make our system one of the finest in the world. New York City, for example, leads the world in the number and quality of academic health centers, teaching hospitals, and related medical institutions. I have long supported academic health center and teaching hospitals, because their work is so essential to our communities. We rely on them to train physicians and nurses, care for the sickest of the sick and the poorest of the poor, and engage in research and clinical trials. Thanks to the research, for example, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, cancer patients will suffer less while receiving chemotherapy because of a drug that was developed there. And a drug that allows balloon angiplasty to save lives was developed at SUNY Stony Brook. As my predecessor and friend, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who I am so honored to be following in the footsteps of, put it so well a few years ago, ``We are in the midst of a great era of discovery in the medical science. It is certainly not a time to close medical schools. This great era of medical discovery is occurring right here in the United States, not in Europe like past ages in scientific discovery. And it is centered in New York City.'' But our Nation's teaching hospitals are at risk. Cuts to Medicare have lowered reimbursements for teaching hospitals and another reduction, which I will work with my colleagues to prevent, is scheduled to take place next year. Teaching hospitals have higher costs not only because of the training functions they perform, but also because they treat patients who require some of the most costly procedures and require longer hospital stays. In addition, the use of advanced technology and presence of experts in various fields also add to teaching hospitals' expenses. All of us, who rely on the expertise of our doctors, and have access to new technologies, as well as the state-of-the-art services academic medical centers and teaching hospitals offer, benefit from the creation of a trust fund to ensure a steady stream of funds dedicated for these purposes. Some states, including mine, have sought to address these funding needs themselves. However, as Senator Moynihan also pointed out, New York State's GME fund was created as a temporary solution until a Federal fund could be created. I urge my colleagues in joining me with their support for this critical investment in our teaching hospitals so that they can continue to lead the world in training highly-qualified medical professionals, and generating the state-of-the-art research and treatment that enables our Nation's health care system to flourish.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I rise to thank the chairman and ranking member of the Budget Committee for accepting an amendment that I believe is so important to safeguard the food supplies in our country and thereby safeguard our children from the growing threat of contamination. Presently we enjoy one of the most safe food supplies in the world, but we are clearly not immune to the threats we read about every day in our newspapers. I saw a recent headline in the New York Times that the public does have reason to be alarmed. The Times reported that there are only 400 inspectors to investigate problems at the 57,000 plants in our country. Because of this lack of resources, the FDA inspects food manufacturers only once every 8 years. The American people deserve better than that. So this important measure will strengthen our food safety infrastructure by increasing the number of FDA inspectors so high-risk sites can be inspected annually and would also step up research and surveillance to identify the sources of contamination and track the incidence of foodborne illnesses to help us better meet emerging threats from abroad. Finally, it would protect against cuts in funding for the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Agriculture food safety initiatives and ensure sufficient funds in the cases of threats from food safety emergencies. I am very pleased the administration changed its announced policy yesterday about testing the ground meat in our Nation's schools. I thank them for that reversal because clearly there is nothing more important than providing our children with safe food, and particularly in our schools. I am very pleased that in a bipartisan way we have adopted this amendment which I think will go a long way towards easing the concerns and fears of so many parents in ensuring a safe food supply for generations to come.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator Thomas' resolution, which calls for the immediate release of the crew members of the EP-3E that was forced to make an emergency landing at the Lingshui, Hainan airbase on April 1st. Securing the safe return of the crew and their aircraft is a top priority for our country and this resolution makes that clear. And I know that I speak for my constituents when I say that I am deeply concerned about the safety of the twenty-four U.S. crew members who are being held in China. My thoughts and prayers are with all of them and their family members, including the family of Kenneth Richter, a Navy cryptographer and native of Staten Island, New York. We are fortunate to have brave men and women like Kenneth Richter serve our country. It is a reminder of how the courage and hard work of those in our armed forces help to keep America free and secure. All Americans stand as one behind the President as our nation presses for the immediate release of our people and our aircraft. There is absolutely no justification for their detention for one minute, let alone so many days.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, will the distinguished Senator from New Mexico yield?