Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I concur, and I intend to press for adoption of these provisions.

Mr. GREGG. Yes, that is correct because in the interest of time, we re unable to change the bill prior to conference.

Mr. GREGG. I will actively support this provision.

Mr. GREGG. I agree with my colleague from Utah that additional specificity with respect to the language on animal trials would be desirable, particularly with respect to clarifying that the FDA has the authority to promptly promulgate a final rule in this area. I also believe that the Secretary of Health and Human Services should have clear authority to prioritize the distribution of scarce countermeasures under certain circumstances. Finally, I believe there is great value in considering the inclusion in a final bill of intermediate enforcement authority with respect to the unlawful shipment, transport, possession, or other use of biological agents or toxins.

Mr. GREGG. I agree that the conference committee should address each of the issues that you have raised. I will actively work to ensure that these provisions are included.

Mr. GREGG. I concur, and I intend to press for adoption of these provisions.

Mr. GREGG. Yes, that is correct because in the interest of time, we are unable to change the bill prior to conference.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I agree that new technologies of the type described by the Republican Leader may indeed prove useful to local responders. I encourage the Office of Justice Programs to consider such systems and work to include such systems in its standard equipment list for domestic terrorism response if such systems prove effective.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I reserve our time.

Mr. GREGG. How much time is remaining for the Senator from Minnesota?

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his kind comments, and especially for his assistance in making this bill a reality. Could the Chair advise us as to the time remaining?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield 7 minutes to the Senator from Tennessee who has played a very considerable role in this legislation, especially in the flexibility accounts, but he had input throughout the legislation and has done an exceptional job in making this a better bill.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, at this time I yield 8 minutes to the Senator from Alabama who, as a member of the committee, played a significant role. This is such a complex bill. It required a lot of different people thinking about different parts of it. It has so many moving parts, it really is not the handiwork of one individual. It truly was the handiwork of a large number of Senators participating from both sides of the aisle. The Senator from Alabama played a major role in a variety of areas, especially in the discipline area and the safe and drug free schools. I very much appreciate the work he did.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I now yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Arkansas, who has been a key player on this bill in a variety of different areas. He worked very hard on the flexibility issues, the bilingual issues, the merit pay issues, and teacher tenure. All sorts of different parts of this bill have been impacted by his influence. He has been great to work with.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I also thank Senator Kennedy for getting a good target formula in this bill. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Maine whose fingerprints are all over this bill--especially in the area of Rural-Flex and Ed-Flex, which she basically designed, and the reading programs. She has put a significant amount of time and effort into this bill, and it paid off royally.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after Senator Dayton, Senator Bond be recognized for 3 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I guess we are going to have more discussion on these points. I think it is appropriate at this time to briefly respond to the Senator from Minnesota relative to his representations on especially IDEA funding. There is a history to this funding which I think has to be reviewed. During the Clinton administration, not once in the first 7 years of that administration was there an increase sent to the Congress for special education funding--not once--of any significance at all. However, a group of us on our side of the aisle said that was not right. We decided to significantly increase the IDEA funding beginning about 5 years ago. We were successful in accomplishing that. Over the last 5 years, we have increased IDEA funding, special education funding, by 173 percent. That is the single largest percentage increase that any significant policy account has received over the last 5 years. The new President, President Bush, also understood, because he was a Governor who was sensitive to this issue, that IDEA was not properly funded. He sent up in his budget the single largest increase in IDEA funding ever proposed by an administration. At the end of this appropriating process which will occur this year, hopefully before Christmas, IDEA funding will have gone from approximately 6 percent when we began this process in 1995 and 1996, up to approximately 20 percent of the cost of IDEA, not the 40 percent which is our goal, but the obvious path which is being pursued is towards full funding. I do not believe the Senator from Minnesota voted against any of the budgets offered by President Clinton which had zero increases in special education funding. I do not believe he did. But he comes here today and says that because special education funding was not included in this bill which deals with title I funding we should vote against title I funding. I find that inherently inconsistent, first because we are on a path towards full funding of special education, but second, by voting against a bill which significantly increases funding for title I, which is the low-income children of this country and who represent a primary responsibility of the Federal Government, which we have assumed as a Federal Government, we are undercutting the capacity of those children to have a chance to compete effectively in the school systems. These are two different issues, special education and title I. Yes, there is overlap on children, no question about it, but the policy issues involved in the two are significantly different. So a decision was made since we are going to reauthorize special education next year that we should take on the policy issues of special education and the funding issues of special education as a package, as a unit, and do it next year, in the context of the fact we are increasing special education this year by over $1 billion. It is not as if we are saying we are not going to do anything in the special education accounts for dollars; we are actually increasing it by $1 billion this year. The money is being put on the table, but the policy that needs to be addressed in the special education accounts are as important as the dollars that need to be addressed. For example, the issue of discipline needs to be addressed. The disparity in discipline between special education kids and kids who are not in special education is a big problem in school systems. The issue of bureaucracy needs to be addressed. It is extremely expensive to school districts to meet the bureaucratic requirements of IDEA. The issue of attorney's fees needs to be addressed. We have created a cottage industry for attorneys dealing with special education. We need to address that. There are significant policy concerns which should be addressed at the same time we address the issue of how we set up the funding stream. I have one other point on the mandatory funding stream. This in some ways is a smokescreen because, as I pointed out, there is a dramatic expansion in funding occurring in special education. The question is, Is that money going to come out of the discretionary accounts or is it going to come out of the mandatory accounts, and that is an inside-the-beltway baseball game, but it is a big game because if we move it all over to the mandatory accounts, basically we free up $7 billion in the discretionary accounts. That is $7 billion the Appropriations Committee, on which I have the honor to serve, has available to spend on anything they want to spend it on. It does not have to spend it on education. It frees up that money. A lot of this exercise in mandatory accounts is an exercise to free up $7 billion of discretionary spending. I do think the argument that because the IDEA language was not included in this bill, therefore, I am going to vote against the title I reform language is inconsistent with the fact pattern because we know we are going to reauthorize special education next year, we know we will visit the issue of mandatory spending next year, and, at the same time, we know we are significantly increasing special education funding this year through the discretionary accounts; we have done it over the last 6 years. I find that argument to be one that does not have much in the way of legs, as far as I am concerned, as a reason to oppose this bill. There may be other issues in this bill, and the Senator from Minnesota raised the issue of testing. That is a legitimate issue in this bill. We are significantly changing the role of the Federal Government relative to testing in the States. That is a legitimate issue. I know the Senator from Minnesota feels strongly about that issue and has very credible arguments, in my opinion, but the IDEA is another issue. I now yield to the Senator from Idaho 3 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I will reserve that. The Senator has clearly rejected my offer.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I don't understand the Senator's accusation against Republicans on that issue. The time agreement on this bill was reached between the majority party and the minority party. It was not unilaterally agreed to by the minority party. It was put forward by the leadership on both sides. Do not accuse the Republican side of the aisle of being the people who are trying to limit this. You have an opportunity to speak. You got 15 minutes. The Senator from Massachusetts has been kind enough to offer you more. I will offer you 5 more minutes of my time if you want more.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I again thank Senator Kennedy and all the members of our staffs. I went over that in some length, and I specifically thanked our staff yesterday. I want to renew my thanks for their efforts. It has been extraordinary. I also thank other members of the committee who worked with me from both sides of the aisle, and also the White House for its assistance. I think it is important to note as we go into the final moments of this debate that we would not have gotten to this point unless we had the President, who understood how to lead on an issue of national importance. The fact is that President Bush understands almost in a visceral sense--it totally absorbs him and his wife--that children are being left behind because our educational system is not working, and that we need fundamental reform of that system in order to try to improve it. He came into office and was willing to lay out a very clear path for us as a Congress and as a Government to follow in trying to assist in the Federal role in elementary and secondary education. Because he was willing to lay out that path, we were able to pass a bill which takes major strides down the road to try to improve education in this country. We all understand this is neither the end nor the beginning of the issue. We all understand that the Federal role in education is the tail of the dog. We also understand, however, that the Federal role in education is not working, that we had 35 years of effort, that we had spent $130 billion, and that we still have low-income children falling further and further behind and that something has to be done to try to address that. He has readjusted the whole approach. He has set up a program which is, No. 1, child-centered rather than bureaucracy-centered; that empowers parents and gives parents, especially of low-income children, an opportunity to do something when their children are locked into failing schools, gives them choices; gives the local communities much more flexibility over the dollars they are going to get from the Federal Government. But in exchange for that flexibility, we are going to expect academic achievement, and we are going to have accountability standards that show us whether or not the academic achievement is being obtained. In the end, what we are doing with this bill essentially is creating opportunities for local school districts, States, and especially parents to take advantage of using their Federal dollars in a more effective way to educate the low-income child, and hopefully have that child be competitive with his or her peers. In the end, we also understand that it will be the responsibility of the parents, of the schoolteacher, of the principal, and of the school system that is locally based to make the tough decisions and do the work that is necessary to produce the results and have the children compete. At least that is the Federal role. We are now setting up a framework which will greatly assist parents, schools, and teachers in accomplishing that goal of making the low-income child competitive in America so they can participate in the American dream. I especially want to thank the chairman of the committee for his efforts and for his courtesy during the markup of this bill.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Kathy McGarvey, a fellow in my Labor Committee office, be granted the privilege of the floor for the debate and vote on the ESEA conference report.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum. Mr. President, I withhold that.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, first, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his kind comments in his opening statement, with which I agree in part and disagree in part, but that is what makes this an exercise that is so worthwhile. Let me pick up where Senator Kennedy has left off, which is thanking those people who have done an extraordinary job with this exceptional piece of legislation, which will have a very significant, if not dramatic, impact on our Nation's future in education. There were a lot of people who played a huge role in making this a success, but I think no one within the Senate obviously played a bigger or more significant role than Senator Kennedy. He was willing to step forward and work with the President in order to accomplish completion of this bill. When the President ran for office, he outlined a very clear and, I thought, compelling agenda on the issue of education. He was willing to step onto this rather controversial field and take very specific stances and try to drive a policy that would dramatically improve education for American children. This was his No. 1 domestic priority when he ran for President. He could not have been successful in accomplishing this if he had not had the bipartisan support he received in the Senate and in the House. Here in the Senate it was led by Senator Kennedy, and he deserves tremendous praise for that. The Senator has, for over 30 years, had a wide swathe in the Senate and has a voice that gets listened to. He used his strengths to move this bill aggressively and effectively. He was assisted by exceptional staff, and that may be the key to all of us here. I thank Danica Petroshius for her great work, and the other members of the Kennedy team. I hadn't realized how many he had until I listened to the names. Maybe that is why we felt overwhelmed at times. I also, obviously, want to thank Congressman Boehner, whose leadership within the conference was critical. He was adroit in his ability to keep all the parties at the table negotiating. It was a difficult task because of the different views brought to the table. He deserves great credit. I thank Sally Lovejoy, his staff director. I also consider George Miller to be a bit of a legend--mostly on the basketball court, but as a legislator also. It was a pleasure to have a chance to get reacquainted with Congressman Miller, whose opinions are always expressed with great passion and tremendous effectiveness, and to work with him in developing this bill. His fingerprints are significant in this area. I thank Charles Barone of his staff, who was another player of significant importance in this exercise. The support we got from the Department of Education was exceptional, also, as mentioned by Senator Kennedy. Secretary Paige interjected himself at key points in the process. He was extraordinarily constructive, and he has been a shepherd of this exercise. His people: Becky Campoverde, Christy Wolfe, Sandra Cook, Paul Riddle, Kay Rigling, Tom Corwin, and Jack Kristy also played significant roles in getting us on the right track. CRS was a tremendous help to us and the people at legislative counsel who drafted this bill. Obviously, I cannot discuss this bill without talking about some of the other players in the Senate who were involved. Senator Kennedy mentioned some of the people on his side of the aisle. On our side of the aisle, we had a working team within our committee that was very strong and committed many hours on different issues. Almost everybody had a role to play. I especially thank Senator Frist for his role with respect to Straight A's and flexibility, and his staff person, Andrea Becker. Senator Tim Hutchinson was critical in a number of areas--bilingual reform being one critical area--and Holly Kuzmich of his staff played a major role. Senator Enzi played a role everywhere. Amanda Farris of his staff was helpful especially on technology issues. Susan Collins of Maine, a real force for quality education in the Senate, and her staff person, Jordan Cross, was very important to the positive completion of this effort. Senator Kennedy did mention Sandy Kress and Margaret Lamontange at the White House. We had staff who did an exceptional job--especially Sandy Kress and Margaret Lamontange--back and forth bridging the difference. We had one staff person who went from my staff to the White House at a critical point, stayed at the White House for a critical period, then came back to my staff at a critical point, and then had a baby. She did all this while doing a great job helping to produce this bill. That was Townsend McNitt who played a very significant role in the success of this bill, along with my other staff: Stephanie Monroe, Becky Liston, Kathy McGarvey, and, of course, Denzel McGuire, who was the right arm in this exercise, as far as I am concerned, and did an exceptional job and is to be credited for much of what was done right in this bill. The bill itself, as has been mentioned, is fairly complex legislation with a lot of moving parts, and therefore, it did take a long time to complete. As we move through this debate over the next few days, I hope to go into more specifics. The themes of this bill are essential to understanding the outcome of this bill. The reason we were successful is we all basically had the same fundamental goal. All the major players who came to the table to try to develop this legislation understood, No. 1, that the laws which we placed on the books 35 years ago to help low-income kids were very well-intentioned, but they had not worked. We have spent $130 billion over that period of time, and yet we see that our low-income children are falling behind and have stayed behind their peers at almost every grade level. In fact, the average child who comes from a low-income family and is in the fourth grade reads two grade levels below his or her peers. This has not changed over that 35 years. There has been no significant improvement as we have tried to address the issue in a variety of reauthorization efforts. There was a genuine desire--and it cut across party lines, cut across philosophical views, cut across geographic areas--and commitment to do something about giving the low-income child a better shot at education because we all understand that the American dream and the capacity to pursue the American dream is dependent upon education. The engine of the American dream is the public school system. Regrettably, for the low-income child, that public school system is not firing on all cylinders. We know that, and we are going to try to fix it, or at least put in place laws which will help us fix it. Equally important as the fact the low-income child was being left behind, the failure to educate generation after generation of low- income children, especially children from minority backgrounds, was dividing our country. We were balkanizing ourselves based on education and the failure of certain segments of our population, certain large cultural segments of our population, to be economically successful or socially successful, and who were finding themselves isolated within our culture. That is not constructive to a nation. We have seen nations balkanize. We cannot afford that in the United States. John Adams was absolutely right; the key to avoiding that is having an educated public. He saw it when he founded our Nation, and we need to see it today as we move forward as a nation. As we become larger and larger and more diverse, we must transcend our diversity in a positive way through educating people and making sure everyone has an equal shot at the American opportunity through quality education. The goal to obtain quality education for low-income kids cuts across all the different groups participating in this bill. That is why we were able to overcome our differences as we moved through some very complex and critical parts of the debate. There has been some discussion--and I alluded to not agreeing with my colleague on some of his opening statement--there has been some discussion on the issue of IDEA. This is another area that needs significant attention. But the bill we are dealing with today deals with the low-income child and the title I program, which is the most significant Federal program in the area of elementary and secondary school education. IDEA and special education is a separate issue and should be dealt with as a separate issue because the IDEA issues are equally complex, maybe narrower, maybe not as many, but certainly equally as complex and intensely felt as the title I issues--in fact, more intensely felt in many instances. To merge the two and try to solve both of those issues at the same time would have been a mistake. We have put off the IDEA funding issue and the other major questions dealing with IDEA such as overidentification, especially of minority groups, issues involving discipline, issues involving excessive attorneys fees, issues involving excessive bureaucracy being forced on the school systems, issues involving whether or not a special education child has a right to move out of a public school and into a private school and the payment for those activities. All those programmatic issues which are very intricate and very difficult to address should be brought up in the context of a full IDEA reform and reauthorization which will occur next year. As part of that, we should address the mandatory issue, which I am perfectly willing to do. In fact, I believe we have made huge steps forward in the area of funding IDEA. In fact, over the last 5 years, because it was made a No. 1 priority of a group of Members on this side of the aisle when we were controlling the Senate, we have increased funding for IDEA by 173 percent. That is the most significant increase in funding that any element of the Federal Government has gotten, including NIH, which we made a commitment to double over this same period. IDEA funding has gone up dramatically. We are still not at the full funding level, which is 40 percent of the cost of IDEA, but we went from the 6-percent level, which is what it was when other Senators and I began the initiative to get to full funding, to almost 20 percent funding of IDEA. President Bush has continued that commitment. In fact, he sent up the single largest increase ever proposed by a President in the IDEA accounts this year. Over $1 billion will be put into the IDEA accounts, we presume, once the Labor and HHS appropriations bill is completed as a result and in part of the President's commitment. The commitment to funding IDEA is there, it is aggressive, and it is a stronger commitment than any other element of the Federal Government. As a result, I think people who are concerned about special education funding cannot say they are being left behind. Not only are they not being left behind, they are out in front of the crowd when it comes to funding. The question is how much further will they be out in the front of the crowd and how do we handle the mandatory issue versus discretionary accounts, which is more of an issue of inside baseball with appropriators and how they deal with that issue than it is whether IDEA is going to be funded. There are a lot of attempts in this bill to significantly change the focus of how we proceed relative to low-income children. If we want to generalize about them, we can say there are four different areas. The first is we are going to take the programs which presently exist and try to make them more child--say, try to take them away from being bureaucracy centered and school centered to being more focused on how that child is doing and whether that child is succeeding and whether that child is keeping up with his or her peers. Secondly, we are going to empower parents to assist their children when they have a child who is in a failing school and who is being left behind and is from a low-income background. We have given them a whole panoply of new tools to do that, including much more information, as was pointed out by the Senator from Massachusetts, and a lot of tools that allow them to take action which affects their child's education, something parents cannot do today. In most instances when talking to parents of a low-income child, it is not parents but parent. They usually come from single-parent families. That is unfortunate, but that single parent is usually struggling to make ends meet and really does need to have some options available to her--usually it is a ``her''--when she is trying to address the education failures of the school her child attends. So that is the second part. First, child center; second, empowering parents. Third, we give more flexibility to local school districts and to States. I believe very strongly--and I think everybody at the table ended up with this approach--that the local school district should have the ability to move their dollars around to accomplish this goal of better education for low-income kids. In exchange for that flexibility, we are expecting the fourth item, which is accountability, and specifically accountability that reflects there has been academic achievement. Academic achievement is the end result we seek. We are going to say to the local school districts they can have these dollars and they can have them with very few strings attached both in the area of their teacher accounts and in the area--if they decide to be a Straight A's school district, in the area of their school accounts. When they get these dollars, we are going to expect results, results that are defined by the school district. This is very important to remember. We do not say there will be a national standard to which they teach. In fact, we say just the opposite: There shall be no national curriculum. We say to the local school districts they decide how much their children in the fourth grade should know; for example, how much math they should know and how proficient they should be in English, and when they make that decision, then it is that standard which they set which we expect them to meet for their children. We have a process of tests which basically requires them to test these kids to see if they are meeting that standard and then tell their parents if they are meeting that standard. One of the most important parts about this testing proposal is the scores are disaggregated. No more burying the child who maybe does not make it in a group of people who do not make it covered by a group of people who do make it. These are disaggregated numbers so we will know if a low income child from a school system is not making it. We will know if a child from a certain minority group is not making it. That is important. That is new information, a new approach. In addition, we adjust and change a large number of programs which really were not working all that well. For example, bilingual education, the second largest account under title I under the ESEA. Yet we know what happened to bilingual education. It got off track. Instead of kids learning English, we ended up isolating kids, took them on a train track that took them to their language and left them there, put them in schools and classrooms where they basically were being taught in their language and they were not being allowed to learn English essentially, or they were not being asked to learn English. That is wrong, and it is not fair. They cannot compete in the American society, in the American culture, unless they speak English. We are an English-speaking culture. It is great that people come to this country from all around the world and they speak other languages. That is one of the great strengths of our great melting pot. But the consistent thing is, amongst our culture, we speak English as a society. So retaining one's language, yes, that is essential, but they come through as a result of their ethnic cultural background, and they need to learn English. Our school system should not isolate kids and not allow them to learn English. So we change the bilingual program so now the stress in bilingual education is going to be teaching kids to learn English so that they can compete in our world, compete in America, and have a shot at the American opportunity. There are a lot of other major initiatives in this bill that I want to go into as we move down the road, but my time is about up. I want to spend some time, for example, discussing--I will highlight it now--some of the new tools we give parents, especially what are known as supplemental services, because I do think this is a breakthrough approach. What we are basically going to say to a parent if their child is in a failing school and that school has failed 3 years--by the way, on the effective date of this bill there will be 3,000 schools which will, unfortunately, fall into that category, and therefore this program will be available immediately to those poor parents. We are going to say to that parent they can take their low-income child to afterschool programs, or maybe to a school structured so it is during school hours and they will get tutorial support. Those afterschool programs are not all public school driven. They can be. They can be private school driven. They can be at a parochial school. They could be at a private enterprise that does tutorial activities or they could be in the structure of the public school system if the public school system decides to set up a tutorial activity. We are essentially going to say to that parent, we will give them the money they need to cover, in most instances, all the costs of that tutorial activity. Depending on what town they are from, what city they are from, the costs will be on a sliding scale, but it will be a significant amount of dollars, somewhere between $500 and $1,000, which can buy a lot of tutorial support. So that is a big incentive. First, it is a big plus with a parent, whose child has maybe fallen behind in math or fallen behind in English, to take their child and get tutorial support. It is an equally big incentive for the school systems to get their house in order--very important. There is another program I also want to spend some time talking about, but I suspect the Senator who is in the chair is going to spend some time talking about it, and that is the charter school system which was authored by the Senator in the chair. We dramatically expanded it. That, again, is another new tool we are going to be giving parents as an option in order to help their kids who are in a failing school. The Senator from Delaware deserves great credit for having authored that proposal. In addition, I hope we have more time to talk about public school choice, which is another really exciting tool we are putting in place. Public school choice already exists but not with the emphasis we are putting in this bill and not with the transportation costs. In other words, a lot of parents in an inner city, for example, cannot send their kids to another public school, even if the school is failing and they know another public school is across town that is not because they simply cannot get them there. This bill allows the costs of moving that child from the school that has failed to the school that is not failing to be paid for as part of the effort. So, in addition, there are protections for school prayer, for the Boy Scouts of America, for military recruiters, protections relative to discipline records, a whole series of initiatives that are very important in maintaining the integrity of our school system. I will go into those hopefully in more depth as we move on through this debate, but at this point I understand we are going to sort of go back and forth. I understand the Senator from Massachusetts has speakers until about 2:30 and then we have speakers from 2:30 to 3.