T. Gorton

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 505, H.R. 2412.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. I am not sure what the question is.

Mr. GORTON. It makes it tougher.

Mr. GORTON. For a brief period, yes. I do want to finish my remarks, but go ahead.

Mr. GORTON. The Senator from Massachusetts could not have asked a better question. He does remind me of the fact that he and I, with a number of other Senators in both parties, have had, over the course of last 2 or 3 years, a number of meetings in private to discuss whether or not we could reach just such an agreement. We haven't reached it yet. That is obvious from our place on the floor of the Senate at this point. As I think he knows, negotiations involving at least some Republicans and some Democrats with that goal in mind continue at the present time. I think it is the nature of our common humanity that we don't usually reach agreements on controversial issues until we are at the point of having to make final votes on these issues. I have every hope that we can. In connection with the two proposals on the floor today, however, they state our dramatically opposing philosophies. My answer to the specifics of the question asked by the Senator from Massachusetts is very simple. He, it seems to me, is examining a beetle stuck in amber, a fossil from 35 years ago, with five examples out of 17,000 school districts today that he believes did not use money properly when they could use it as they desired. But we have had 35 years of experience since then, with increased Federal controls, increased Federal mandates, increased numbers of forms to be filled out. And they have not succeeded, in title I, in reducing the disparity between underprivileged students and the common run of students who do not fall into that category. Yet we see the proposal on which we will vote later this afternoon, that side of the aisle saying the problem is not that we have too many rules, we have too few, and, where we had 100 pages of regulations, we need 200 pages of regulations. While we can all say we wish for our schools better teachers, more teachers, more computers, and a number of other items, what we see in a proposal of categorical aid is each school district needs so many more teachers, each school district needs so many more teacher training programs, each district needs so many more hours of art instruction, for example, rather than saying within these broad categories each school district ought to be able to decide the balance among each of those primary needs. We also see, obviously, that there should be some form of accountability. We believe we have the ultimate form of accountability, that in Straight A's, in that portion of this bill at least, we say the bottom line is: How well educated are your students after they finish this program? Is there an objective measurement of their educational achievement? Has that improved? That seems to me to be a policy accountability against the process accountability we have required, increasingly, in the course of the last several years.

Mr. GORTON. The Senator from New Hampshire joins me.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, this has been already a remarkably substantive debate, with, I think, a clear delineation of education philosophies on each side. The nature of the debate and the degree of heat that accompanies it has, I think, obscured one overwhelmingly important factor; that is, without exception, the Members on either side of the aisle have genuinely desired to improve the education system of the United States and desire a Federal participation that enhances that growth and that improvement. This, of course, is a wonderful characteristic of the debate where we are debating means and not ends. As well, I hope, before the debate has concluded next week, or whenever we complete it, there will have been a reaching across the aisle that divides the two parties on proposals that do not unite everyone on both sides but at least will unite a sufficient number of Republicans and Democrats so that the last vote we take will be a vote on final passage of an education-related bill that can take the next step toward reaching the goals in which all Members join. That is not to underestimate the differences between us. I found the statement made by the Senator from Wisconsin to be particularly eloquent, even as I disagreed with almost all of its particulars. If I may be permitted to do so, I think I characterize the difference as being a difference which relates primarily to our degree of trust and confidence in men and women for whom education is both a profession and an avocation, men and women who spend their lives as educators, as teachers, as principals, and superintendents. This debate also expresses a difference with respect to our trust and confidence in parents to seek the best possible education for their children, and in those men and women who share with Members of the Senate the willingness to suffer the slings and arrows of political campaigns often hotly contested but, in their case, running for membership on school boards across the United States, most of whom, unlike us, are not compensated or paid for the job they undertake. The real difference--and it is a difference--illustrated by the relatively narrow two amendments before the Senate at the present time, one relating to Straight A's and the Democratic alternative, is the degree of trust and confidence we have in allowing those decisions to be made by people who know the names of the children they teach. The Senator from Wisconsin has set out in detail his priorities, the clear implication being in every single case that if we don't set these requirements, the arts will be overlooked, underprivileged children will be overlooked, teacher training will be overlooked; that some amorphous blank check somehow or another will not be used for primary education purposes. I find it difficult to understand this kind of difference. After all, the men and women who are voters in the United States, who voted for us, are the same voters who vote for these elected school board members who, in turn, employ the professionals in education. Why is it they elect Senators who are sensitive to all of these needs and school board members who are not? One of the two subjects before the Senate now is Straight A's. It isn't the Straight A's that I started out with, by any stretch of the imagination, either when I introduced it under that name more than a year ago or when its precursor was voted on in this body some 3 years ago. It is, among other things, only an experiment limited to 15 of the 50 States in the United States of America. But for those 15 States, it says essentially, we trust you. We trust the education authorities in each one of these 15 States not only to use the money as wisely as we do in our categorical aid programs but more wisely. However, in spite of the use of the phrase ``blank check,'' the check by no means is blank because in order to take advantage of Straight A's, in order to be one of these 15 States, the State must set up a testing system, an achievement system that measures how well its students are doing, must propose and sign a contract that the achievement level will rise as a result of their being allowed to use this experiment and that they risk losing this additional authority and trust if they do not meet the commitments they make in that original contract.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I think the suggestion of the Senator from Massachusetts is an excellent one. As I say, I hope we will debate for the balance of the day on the amendment I have just submitted and on the Democratic alternative. I, for one, will have no objection during the course of the day if the Democratic amendment is before the body more or less contemporaneously with my own. They can be debated at the same time. Whether we will be able to finish today and vote on both of them is uncertain. I think it is the hope of the leadership we can do so. The idea that the next two amendments that are already enshrined in the unanimous consent agreement should be exchanged today so each side can see them for debate tomorrow, in my view, is an excellent idea. The subject of my amendment is one of the important and dramatic changes proposed in the bill reported by the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. It is an amendment to the Straight A's portion of that bill. I will discuss Straight A's a little bit more in detail as we go forward today, but, fundamentally, Straight A's in the form in which it is found in this bill is a 15-State experiment available to 15 of the 50 States, pursuant to which roughly a dozen of the present categorical education programs--including, most notably, title I--would be combined and consolidated without the great bulk of the rules and regulations literally amounting to hundreds of pages and the forms and bureaucracy that accompany those rules and regulations. There would, however, be one overwhelming requirement substituted for the procedural rules that accompany the present programs that are included in Straight A's. Those procedural rules have literally nothing to do with student achievement. They have to do with eligibility. They have to do with the nature in which the money coming through those programs is spent. They, of course, have as their goal student achievement. But most notably, the 35 years of title I have not been marked by any significant reduction in the difference between partially privileged student achievement and those of the underprivileged students, at which title I is aimed. This amendment is slightly more than a technical amendment, but it certainly does not change the philosophy of Straight A's. It has a more binding requirement; that the 15 States which take advantage of Straight A's actually reduce the achievement gap between high- and low- performing students by a minimum of 10 percent over the 5 years of the contract under which Straight A's is offered to those 15 States. S. 2, this bill, already includes a very considerable carrot that gives a bonus to States that close that gap by 25 percent during the course of the agreement. That is a new, novel, and vital part of Straight A's. However, in order to see to it that the States which take advantage of Straight A's actually reduce that gap, a more modest but still significant reduction is simply required as a condition of continuing to be eligible for Straight A's. Second, there has been some criticism that elements in this bill could be construed to be vouchers. That is not the case, in my view. It was not the intention of the draftsman of Straight A's or of the bill as a whole, but a portion of the amendment that is before the Senate now creates exactly the situation that exists under present law, where the use of Federal funds for vouchers is not explicitly provided for or disallowed but is essentially dependent upon the interpretation of current law by the Department of Education. A third change in this amendment requires that districts and States that use Straight A's provide an assurance that Federal funds will be used to certain disadvantaged districts and schools. I do not think that differs from Straight A's, as it was originally drafted, but it makes that requirement more explicit. Finally, it sets up a list of eligible programs in Straight A's and in another part of this bill, performance partnership agreements, as being identical, as matching. They were meant to match. There were a couple of technical differences in the bill as reported. This corrects that disparity. But the purpose of the amendment, in addition to those minor changes, is to focus the attention of this body on that portion of S. 2 that deals with Straight A's. I have spoken on a number of occasions on that subject. I would like to do so now once again. I should like to say, to reuse an analogy I used in my remarks last night, we are, as is the case with every group that proposes a dramatic change, threatened with all kinds of disastrous consequences if somehow or another we change the status quo. That is not a property exclusively belonging to members of one party or to the other. But it does seem to me that what we are proposing in S. 2 taken as a whole, with Straight A's as a major portion, is the most significant redirection of Federal education policy since the advent of title I itself some 35 years ago. Every addition to Federal education policy since then, with the modest exception of Ed-Flex, has increased the control and the influence of the Department of Education here in Washington, DC, over the education policies of 17,000 school districts in the 50 States across the United States. Every frustration at a lack of success--and there have been many such lacks and many such frustrations--has been marked by a Federal statute that increases the control and the authority the Federal Government has imposed over education policy. If 100 pages of rules is not working as we desired it, maybe 200 pages of rules would work better. At least unconsciously, if not consciously, that has been the direction in which the Congress and many Presidents have led Federal education policy over the course of the last 35 years, to the point at which we have a huge disparity between the modest 7 percent or 8 percent of the money spent on public education in this country that is appropriated by Congress and the blizzard of rules and regulations governing the spending of that 7 percent or 8 percent, a set of rules which has a huge impact on the way the other 93 percent that is supplied by States and local communities themselves is spent. This is an attempt to reverse that direction, to show far more trust in parents, who obviously are concerned about their children's education, and trust in the men and women who dedicate their careers to that education--their principals, their teachers, their school superintendents, and those civic-minded citizens who expose themselves to the same kind of assaults in the political world as we do as Senators. But in 99 percent of all cases as they run for membership on school boards, they do so without compensation and close to home. We believe firmly that these people, the people who, by and large, know our children's names and our grandchildren's names, are better suited to make many of the decisions about the quality of education and the direction of education those children receive than is the Congress of the United States or are the bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of Education. That is the goal of Straight A's, to restore some of that authority on an experimental basis to States and to school districts in 15 of the States of the United States. As I said earlier, it is regarded by a number of Members of this body with absolute horror that we should think of doing so. We are given a series of nightmares about what might happen if we allow parents and these professional educators to make decisions they have continuously been deprived of the authority to make over the years. The analogy to which I referred was welfare reform. The Presiding Officer can remember that debate only a few years ago. We were told if we took this tremendous step in a very different direction, a different direction after 50 years or more of a welfare system that was also more and more encrusted with rules and regulations and assumptions about what people would do under certain circumstances, we would devastate the social fabric of the United States. After a debate that encompassed several years, with a number of vetoes, we did in fact dramatically reform our welfare system, and we have had a dramatic success in doing so, with only a few bitter enemies critical of the direction of that welfare reform. I know of no other issue during my time in this body comparable to that change and to that debate until we got to this debate. We are now at the point at which we found ourselves, maybe 1 year into the debate on welfare reform, here with education reform. Our view is that if more decisions are made closer to our students' lives by people who know those students, the quality of their education will improve and we will have a greater opportunity to help the great mass of students in the United States, our young people, with the complicated challenges of the 21st century. However we do not leave it at that. We do not simply say: We think you can do a better job, so here is the money. Go out and do it. We tell the 15 States that will be privileged to exercise the Straight A's option: You have to perform. We are not going to give you a whole bunch of rules and regulations about how you fill out forms and how you assure that money is spent on a narrow category of programs; we are simply going to tell you that you have to do better. You are going to have to come up with a way of measuring achievement in your State--as most States have, at this point. You are going to have to tell the U.S. Department of Education that if you are allowed into Straight A's, in the 5-year period of your contract the achievement of your students will improve by a specific amount that you outline in this contract. And if you fail, you are going to lose that ability, that authority to spend the money as you see fit for your priorities, for your children, for your States and in your communities. That is the ultimate in accountability. When we deal only with process accountability--how well do you abide by the rules, how well do you fill out the forms--we do nothing in particular for our children and for their education. We hope the results will be good, but there is no measurement of the actual quality of their education as reflected in the way in which they deal with standardized tests in each one of these States. We have an accountability, not to process but to performance. I want to repeat that. Our accountability is not to process but to performance. In order to succeed, in order to continue in the Straight A's Program, you are going to have to show that you are providing a higher quality of education to the students in the school systems in your State. As I introduced this bill more than a year ago, it was not limited to 15 States, either in the House or in the Senate. I suppose it is a commentary on the dramatic nature of the change, that it has been reduced to a significant demonstration program in this bill. The House of Representatives allows it in 10 States. We, in this bill, allow it in 15 States. I would much prefer every State have that option, but only 15 are going to be able to do so. At the same time, I want to point out a very important fact, not just about Straight A's but about all of the innovative directions in this bill. The Performance Partnership Act, the Teachers' Empowerment Act, other provisions of the bill--none of them is mandatory; they are all elective. It is important for everyone in this body to recognize--it is important for all the people to recognize--that we are not requiring these changes. Any State in the United States of America that believes the present system of categorical aid programs and the present system that has 127 at-risk and delinquent youth programs in 15 Federal agencies and Departments, 86 teacher training programs in 9 Federal agencies and Departments, and more than 90 early childhood programs in 11 Federal agencies and Departments, not to mention the programs that are included in Straight A's, any State that wishes to continue under that system is free to do so--any State. If they like the present system, if they are accustomed to the present system, they can continue to perform under it. If this bill passes and becomes law, in a relatively short period of time in our history, 5 years at the maximum, we will know which system works best. We will know whether or not allowing our educators a far greater degree of freedom to set their own priorities is, in fact, the way to do it. We will be able to measure objectively, by the forms of accountability they are required to follow in order to get into Straight A's, whether or not it works. I may go beyond that proposition to say, of course, Straight A's is not the only element in this bill that allows our local educators in our States to make more of the decisions that affect their children. There is a Performance Partnership Act in this bill that is a modification of Straight A's, supported by the National Governors' Association, an association through which many of the dramatic reforms in education over the last few years that are allowed by the Federal Government have, in fact, taken place. That Performance Partnership Act does not have all of the flexibility Straight A's has, but it has a significant portion of it. All States under this bill will be allowed to take that more modest step toward making their own decisions than is available in Straight A's, which is only to 15 States. Again, no State will be required to do so. What does that mean? That means there are at least three paths States can follow in this connection: 15 States can take Straight A's, a number of other States can take the Performance Partnership Act, and a number of other States--and I am sure there will be some--will decide not to choose either of those alternatives. Again, not only will our students learn more, we will learn more about the best way or perhaps more than one successful way toward our goal, a goal we all share, and that is a better education for our children. The same thing is true for the Teacher Empowerment Act. The same thing is true with title I flexibility that is included in this bill. These are elective with the States and sometimes with the school districts themselves. How is it we can be so certain that the present system is so good that we do not want anyone to use a different system? Have we been so overwhelmingly successful that we do not need to have this debate at all; that all we need to do is just reratify for another 5 years what we have been doing for the last 5 years? I do not think anyone believes that; everyone believes we can do better. But can't we at the very least allow people to do better in a different direction rather than simply saying, we have a whole bunch of programs now; all we need is more rules for the existing programs and a few new ones, added on to the dozens and hundreds we have at the present time that affect the education of our children from prekindergarten to and through the 12th grade? Straight A's gives us the ability in some of the States to determine the accuracy of the statement that our parents, our teachers, our principals, our superintendents, and our school board members care deeply about the education of the kids admitted to their charge or in their families; that they are smart enough to make fundamental decisions about the course of that education; that we want an alternate way of reducing the gap between underprivileged children and those in more successful schools; that we have not been overwhelmingly successful--at all successful--in reducing that gap in the last 35 years, and that perhaps another way is better and at the very least we ought to compare it with the current way in which we do business. We will hear during the course of this debate: No, we just need to do more of the same; if we can just do more of the same; it is just that we have not done enough of what we have been doing in the past; and no, we cannot allow some States to go off in a different direction from others; no, we cannot repose that degree of confidence in the people in our school districts all across the country; we dare not do it; this threatens to have this adverse consequence or that adverse consequence or a third adverse consequence. I only ask my colleagues to reflect on the fact that this debate will be, for all practical purposes, identical to that debate over welfare reform of a few years ago, and if we had taken counsel of our fears then, this country would be far worse off than it is today, when instead of taking counsel of our fears, we took counsel of our hopes and worked rationally toward those goals. The attitudes that gave us welfare reform ought to give us this bill, including Straight A's, during the course of this debate and provide a better future for children all across the United States.

Mr. GORTON. I say to the Senator, given the fact that in 35 years of title I we have not reduced it at all, a requirement to reduce it by 10 percent in 5 years is rather substantial.

Mr. GORTON. I thank the Senator.

Mr. GORTON. I believe under the previous order it is now in order for me to offer an amendment.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I am going to ask for a rollcall vote on my amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GORTON. There are Members on our side who wish to speak to that amendment, I hope, with the consent of the manager of the bill because we are debating education as a whole. We would be happy to allow the Senator from Massachusetts to propose the Democratic alternative now, and we can debate them jointly for the balance of the time in the time available. Any time the Senator from Massachusetts wishes to introduce an amendment, there will be no objection on this side to allowing that.

Mr. GORTON. It affects only the Straight A's title of this bill at this point.

Mr. GORTON. I yield.

Mr. GORTON. Yes. I said I believe it did already, but this makes it more explicit. It simply keeps the present rules with respect to vouchers in effect.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, that is not what I say. I do not believe it allowed it previously, but in any event, I think we have satisfied that criticism with respect to those who made it with respect to Straight A's. I do not think it allowed vouchers before. It clearly does not now.

Mr. GORTON. That question would be more properly directed to the Senator from New Hampshire who, I may say, I think disagrees with the Senator from Massachusetts as to his interpretation of the provisions of the Senator from New Hampshire. This provision, the 10 percent, applies to the Straight A's provision of the bill which, in turn, allows 15 States to have that degree of flexibility. It is very easy to talk about accountability from the point of view of punishing States and school districts by taking money away from them so that will increase, somehow or another, their performance. Part of our bill, in my view, is that the States who succeed will get a bonus, which is not included in the Democratic bill or in any previous education bill.

Mr. GORTON. The penalties will be the same as they are in the original form of the bill; that is to say, if a State does not meet the commitments it made in getting into this 15-State Straight A's Program, it runs the risk, at the discretion of the Department of Education, of losing the ability to continue in that program. It would revert to the present system of categorical aid programs and the accountability provisions contained therein. What this does is add another mandatory requirement to what the State undertakes, a 10-percent reduction in this differential. So it makes it somewhat tougher for the State to be entitled to continue in Straight A's after its initial 5-year period.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, we are now launched into that portion of this vital debate on education when amendments will be proposed, debated, and voted upon. Under the order, there will be first a Republican amendment; second, an amendment for a Democratic alternative; the third, another Republican amendment; and fourth, the Murray amendment that was just outlined by the Senator from Vermont. I hope, and I think the leadership hopes, we will vote on the first two amendments before the end of business today, but that certainly is not guaranteed. At the present time, there is no time agreement.

Mr. GORTON. The amendment we have proposed essentially restates current law, where the use of Federal funds for vouchers is neither expressly provided for nor disallowed but intended upon the interpretation of current law by the Department of Education.

Mr. GORTON. I send an amendment to the desk for immediate consideration.

Mr. GORTON. The language is designed to require that there be a reduction of 10 percent over the 5-year period between the highest and the lowest performing students described in an earlier part of the act, which is basically title I.

Mr. GORTON. I repeat the first half of my answer to the Senator from Massachusetts. I believe there are efforts--I hope he is a part of those efforts; I can assure him this Senator is--to reach just such an agreement in which each side would accommodate to some of the highest priorities of the other side, whether they are substantive or procedural with respect to accountability. But I think the reason the differences are so great as against what they were 5 years ago, or 10 years ago, is that, if I may say so, on this side of the aisle there is a greater recognition that we are on a dead-end street, that 35 years of the kind of programs with increasing rules and regulations that have led us to this point simply have not worked. There is a greater disposition over here to say, at least in some States we ought to allow people to do something radically different from what they have before them. The Senator from Massachusetts is 100-percent correct. Some States are far ahead of others, even with the degree to which their hands are tied by present Federal regulations. My profound fear is, if we allow even more differentiation, the next time we come to renew this act, we will have a far better understanding of what works in the real world and what does not work in the real world. What I wanted to say, not only in connection with Straight A's but in connection with title I portability, in connection with the Teachers' Empowerment Act, in connection with the Performance Partnership Act that comes to us from the Governors, that is a part of this bill, and of course in connection with Straight A's, none of these experiments, or these changes of direction, is mandated on any State of the 50 States in the United States of America. Any State education authority, any State legislature that does believe it is making more progress or will make more progress with essentially the present system--tweaked a little bit--is completely free to do so. Only 15 States can take Straight A's. I think at present only 10 States can take title I portability, plus a few other school districts.