Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Tried and tested programs, that is a fairly unique way to describe a program that has left literally hundreds of thousands of children behind. The average low-income child in this country today, in a fourth grade class, reads at two grade levels less than their peers. Only half of those kids even graduate from their high school. They have been left behind. That is the whole point. That is why parents in inner-city schools want to have the opportunity to have some options. That is why when the Children's Scholarship Fund put up some money and asked if there was anybody out there who wanted to go to a different school, you had literally thousands, actually 1.3 million children applying for those 40,000 slots which were limited to low- income kids. That is why the Milwaukee school system has found it to be so successful. That is why Florida has found it to be so successful. Because it is the low-income children--specifically, the children of parents who in many instances are single moms--who have been locked into schools that have failed year after year after year, who have no options because the schools will not improve. No matter how much money we put into the schools, they simply will not improve. That is why those parents want another opportunity. Let me read from a couple of statements made by some of these parents. We have Carol Butts, from the Milwaukee schools: When my daughter Evan finished fifth grade in the Milwaukee public school system, she could not multiply; she couldn't even write. Our family has limited income, so we didn't have too many choices. When I learned about the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, I was ecstatic. In two years there, her school work has really improved. These are specific cases. Tracy Richardson: I first looked at three public school options. Classes were unruly. A magnet public school was better, but there was a waiting list. . . . I ended up using the A+ program to choose Montessori Elementary School. It has improved my child's learning immensely. Tony Higgins: The Milwaukee program let me choose schools that I think are best for my girls. I believe both of them will have a choice to go on to college because of the voucher program. These are real people who were locked into inner-city schools who did not have the option for education that those folks who have more money have, who were seeing their kids left behind. All they wanted for their children was a decent education. So through choice programs, in Milwaukee, Ohio, and Florida, a few parents have had that opportunity. This idea that choice does not work is just a lot of hokum. It is a straw dog. A study by Kim Metcalf at Indiana University, the official evaluation of the Cleveland program in Ohio, found statistically significant gains in the test scores of students who were on vouchers. A study by Jay Greene and Paul Peterson found statistically significant math and reading score gains in the Milwaukee school voucher system. A study by a Princeton group found quite large statistically significant math gains for the Milwaukee Choice Program. Study after study has proven these programs work. The idea that the other side has promoted, which is totally elitist, which is the problem, of course--opposition to the concept of choice is elitist by definition--is that we know best for parents--these parents whose children are locked in these schools and want to get out, we know best for them. How outrageous that we stand in this Senate Chamber and do not give parents an option to allow their children to compete for the American dream. The niece of Dr. Martin Luther King had it right. This is a civil right that we are talking about. The right to have a decent education is a civil right. When we year after year after year put children in schools that fail, we deny them that civil right. This amendment is very simple. It is very small. It is very focused. Ten school districts across the country get the opportunity to participate, if they wish. Then the only parents who can participate are parents of families with $32,000 of income or less who are actually having their kids attend schools where for 3 years those schools have been defined as ``failing.'' And then, in order to protect the system more and assure fairness, we say the students who go to the private schools will be chosen by lottery. So there isn't any creaming or any attempt to skew the system. In addition, we have language in this amendment that specifically says there can be no discrimination. That has been a straw dog that has been put up on the other side that if anybody bothered to read the amendment they would have seen did not apply. Then we put in very tough evaluation standards to see whether or not the system works, to see whether or not private school choice works. So what is there to fear from the other side? What is it that they fear? I think the Senator from Pennsylvania had it right. They fear that parents may actually choose to send their kids to a private school and that that may actually produce children who are actually competitive academically and who have a shot at the American dream, and it may--and this is what is really feared--put pressure on the public school system to change. It may threaten those unions which for years have told us that mediocrity works; that if we dumb down, it is acceptable; that we can have failed schools as long as we pay a union wage. They fear this may actually disrupt the public school system. Should we not disrupt the public school system where year after year the schools have failed? Of course, we should. We should improve it. The way you improve it is to bring competition into the system, which is what this amendment does. I go back to my experience as a child when I saw that elected official, the Governor of a State in our country, standing in the doorway of a school in Arkansas, I believe, unfortunately. I know my colleague from Arkansas opposed that aggressively and is glad that it is no longer the situation there. When that Governor stood in the door of that school and the Army had to come to allow a child to go into the school, that was an imprint on my youth. That is one of those visual things one remembers. I just couldn't understand how that could happen in our country, how somebody could block a child from going to school. What is happening today is there are people standing in the school door of failed schools, of schools filled with drugs and violence, schools where they do not teach, schools where children from year to year shuffle from classroom to classroom and cannot learn and are not allowed to learn and who, therefore, cannot participate in the American dream. We have people in this Congress standing in the doorway, blocking that doorway from allowing those children to leave that school and go across the street and participate in a school where they will learn and have the opportunity to participate in the American dream. It is an irony which has to disappoint us all. Choice, portability, vouchers, to use the pejorative term, what is it all about? It is all about one thing: It is about children, giving America's children an opportunity to learn. It is especially about low- income children, locked in the inner city, whose only way out of their situation is education. When we deny them this choice, we deny them the opportunity to participate in the American dream. That is not right and it is not fair. This minor exercise, in the sense of funding and in the sense of scope, should not be viewed with such antipathy from the other side. Rather, it should be viewed as an opportunity to see whether or not the arguments they make so aggressively are valid. If they have the courage of their position, they should allow this demonstration program to go forward because they will prove that it fails. In any event, they will have spent $50 million on at least improving a few children's opportunities to learn. I can't understand why it is opposed, but I can understand this: If we do not get on the path of correcting these failing schools, and we do not get on the path of giving children in those schools options to learn in an environment which is conducive to learning, then we will lose another generation. As a nation, we can't afford that. It is my hope that this amendment will be accepted, and I look forward to the vote. Amendment No. 536, As Modified

Mr. GREGG. How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for his strong and very effective statement in support of this amendment. I appreciate it. I understand Senator Kennedy is going to close on his side, and I am going to close on my side, and we will be ready to vote. My closing will be a little shorter than his closing because I have no more time.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Pennsylvania 8 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. I yield 7 minutes to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I yield to the Senator from Nevada 15 minutes, or such time as he may consume.

Mr. GREGG. I have no objection. I will amend it to include that the time used up in this discussion be applied equally to both sides.

Mr. GREGG. I have no problem with that. The time of the Senator from Minnesota will come off of the time of the Senator from Massachusetts. Both the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from Minnesota will come off of the time of the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. GREGG. There was no formal agreement, but there was an understanding that people presenting Senator Kennedy's position on this amendment would go from 12 to 12:15, and we would go from 12:15 to 12:30, and then we will be in the break for the meetings of the caucuses. Then we would be coming back. I understand the Senator from Massachusetts wanted to go into morning business; is that correct?

Mr. GREGG. Yes, I yield for a question.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I believe the understanding I had with Senator Kennedy was that Senator Kennedy and the proponents of his position would have until 12:15, and then from 12:15--it was a casual understanding--we would go back to our side. I understand there are Members on his side who wish to speak, and we have a Member on our side. It is my intention at this time to yield the 15 minutes we had reserved on our side to Senator Ensign from Nevada.

Mr. GREGG. I yield the Senator 1 minute.

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from Tennessee. I yield to the Senator from Alabama 5 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator for his excellent statement and yield to the Senator from Tennessee 5 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, this amendment has popularly been referred to as the choice amendment or the portability amendment. It is an amendment which is crucial to the issue of how we are going to approach education as we proceed as a nation. It is crucial for a lot of different reasons, but primarily it deals with a group of people in our country who have been left behind in our educational system. It doesn't deal with the wealthy. It doesn't deal with those of moderate income. It really deals with low-income people, most of them in urban schools, who find the school systems their children are put into are failing and that their children are being left behind. The American dream, which is the essence of what makes our country such a vibrant nation, is tied to the ability to be an educated individual. You cannot participate in the American dream unless you are well educated, unless you can compete and participate in our society, and that requires a quality education. So when you go through a school which does not teach, which is filled with violence or filled with drugs, when you know every day a child who goes to that school is falling further and further behind his or her peers in other schools because that school is not able to teach that child, then that child cannot participate in the American dream--you are denying that child the opportunity to participate in the American dream. There are many attempts in this bill to correct the problem. There are many initiatives in this bill to try to make failing schools work better. Regrettably, they are not going to all work. There will continue to be schools that fail. Today, in our system of education, literally thousands of schools across this country are defined as failing schools, and that means that thousands, tens of thousands, potentially millions of children, unfortunately, are in schools that are not educating them adequately. So one option that should be given to the parents of those children is to allow them, after their children have been in a failing school for a period of time and the school has not improved even though attempts have been made to improve it--to allow those children, and the parents of those children, to have other options, to go to schools where they will be able to learn, where they will be able to succeed, and where they will, therefore, be able to take advantage of the American dream. This bill, hopefully, will include an expansion of what is known as public school choice. But there are a lot of communities in this country, regrettably, that have no public schools that are not failing to which kids can move. Therefore, the option of going to some other type of school, a private school, should be available to them. In our society, if you have a fairly decent income, you can leave the public school system and go to a private school. A lot of people who have the income to accomplish it choose that option. The former President of the United States, for example, chose that option. But if you are a single mother, especially a single mother in an urban area, trying to raise your children on a low income, you do not have that option; you are stuck in that failing school. Your children are sentenced to that school even though the school is unable to accomplish what it is supposed to do, which is to teach your children. This amendment is not going to fully address the issue. I wish it would, but it is not. This amendment is going to set up a demonstration program, and a very limited demonstration program, the purpose of which is to see if private school choice using Federal dollars can alleviate the problem to some degree, can allow some children today, who are not in schools that are teaching them, to go to schools that will teach them; to allow some children to have a chance at the American dream who do not have it today. Private school choice is used in a lot of public systems. Remember, when you are talking private school choice, it sounds as if you are saying the public schools are left out of the process. In the public system, they use private school choices. Today, in the public system, the elected officials are responsible. They make the decision that children in the school system should have a choice between a public and private system. It is used in a lot of different communities. It is used in Milwaukee. It is used in Cleveland. It is used in Florida. It is used to some degree in Arizona. The difficulty, of course, behind this is that these States and these communities have come to the conclusion that they will improve their public school system by allowing some of the children in their public school systems to have the option of going to a private school if the public school isn't working well. This demonstration program is an attempt to follow the leadership that has been shown already by a lot of other public school districts across this country who have chosen to put in place a private school option as part of their public school education system, as I said, in a very limited proposal. In fact, I intend to modify it to make it even more limited as we go down the road. But, essentially, under the present structure, it will only be voluntary, and it will only apply to families who make less than $32,000 a year. This is not going to be a high-income option. It will only apply to families who make less than $32,000 a year and whose children are in school systems where the school has failed for 3 years. That means by definition that child, if he or she is in the third grade, is already probably 3 years behind their peers in the school system that is working correctly. It will also be limited as to the number of groups that can participate to three States in ten school districts. It is a very small demonstration program. It will be limited to $50 million, funds which come from outside the title I program. It cannot be argued that the dollars to fund this demonstration program are in any way undermining the dollars available to the public school system. This will be a new pool of money available to fund the child who moves on to a private system because the school system isn't working correctly. It will also have as a component that special consideration must be given for applications of students coming from the highest number of low-income families. It will really focus on those families who need it the most, who, in my opinion, happen to be in primary instances single moms trying to raise their kids mostly in inner-city schools. Since the purpose of this amendment is a demonstration grant and a small one at that, it will have an extremely aggressive evaluation procedure so that we can find out whether or not private school choice under a public school system works. Parents in our urban schools have been waiting for this type of reform for a long time. There has been a lot of rhetoric about it. About every 2 years, the superintendent of the District of Columbia school system changes. While the system of the superintendent changes, the school systems regrettably don't. We continue to see failure. Today we have 9,000 schools across this country which are identified as failures--9,000 schools. Some have been identified as failures for 4 years, for 6 years, and for 8 years. It is not unheard of, for example, for an entire public school district to be identified as failing. That is the case, for example, in Kansas City. Clearly the parents there have no option. They cannot go from one public school to another public school because all of the public schools in the districts have failed. As a result of this failure, we have seen especially a debilitating impact on minority kids. We know, for example, that today two out of every three African-American students and Hispanic students in fourth grade can barely read. Seventy percent of the children in high-poverty schools score below even the most basic levels of reading, and half the students from urban school districts fail to graduate on time if they graduate at all. We need to give the parents of these children an additional option. There is, I believe, great interest in this. You don't have to believe me. You don't have to take this as just a vague statement because there have been exercises in this area that have shown this, especially from low-income families. The Children's Scholarship Fund, which was founded by Ted Forstmann and John Walton, created a private foundation to provide scholarships to low-income children who wanted the opportunity to go out of the public school system into a private school system. They received 1.25 million applications from poor families across the country. Unfortunately, they could only give out 40,000 scholarships. But in New York City, 29 percent of the poor families of school-age children applied. In the District of Columbia, 33 percent of families of poor children applied. In Baltimore, 44 percent of poor families with school-aged children applied. Joseph Califano, in commenting on this, said: These parents sent a powerful message. They want out of schools that cannot protect their children's safety, let alone teach them. This tidal wave of applications from parents desperate to give their children an opportunity to receive a quality education must serve as a wake-up call . . . By quarantining poor-- That is probably the best way to describe it because that is what we do in our society-- mostly minority children in schools affluent families would never tolerate, we do not preserve the institution of public education. We dishonor its guiding ideals. Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King, in commenting on this, said: . . . some children receive a better education than others due to their parents' abilities to pay for benefits that are often missing in public schools. This inequity is a violation of the civil right of the parents and children who are so afflicted by lack of income and by the mismanagement endemic to so many of the country's public school systems. Some would say if you take this option, you are going to undermine the public system because you are going to take kids out of the public system and put them into a private system. Of course, we really do not know what will happen because we have never tried it at the Federal level. But we do have examples of what has happened in public school systems in other communities that have tried to put in their State and local dollars. We know, for example, that in places such as Charlotte and Milwaukee the public school systems have been perceived, at least by the local community, as improving significantly as a result of a private school choice. A study, in fact, which was done by Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby, found the Milwaukee private school choice program pushed the city's public elementary schools to improve. Quoting from the leadership in the Milwaukee public school system, Kenneth Johnson, vice president of the Milwaukee public school board of directors and an AFL-CIO member, said: Private school choice is one of the best things that ever happened to my city's public schools. . . . When choice came about, the Milwaukee Public School System had to rethink education. It's now a matter of seeing parents as customers. Milwaukee public school superintendent Spence Korte said: Between choice and the general decline of live births, we're all feeling the pinch to make sure that people understand what our programs offer and, certainly that we're competitive. In other words, the school systems are improving as a result of choice. John Gardiner, an at-large member of the Milwaukee public school board of directors and a member of the NAACP and the ACLU, stated the following about the effects of choice on public schools in Milwaukee: My involvement in the MPS--as a member of the school board, as a parent and as an active and concerned citizen--has persuaded me that MPS's internal reforms require the sustained challenge and competition of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. The program puts effective pressure on MPS to expand, accelerate and improve reforms long deliberated and too-long postponed. The simple fact is, we have seen in Milwaukee, which has tried public school/private school choice options aggressively, a significant improvement in the school system and a significant improvement in the quality of the education of the students, which is the basic goal. In Florida the same situation can be cited. Florida has a statewide choice program where they rate the schools; and if you are in a school that is rated D or F, you have the opportunity to choose a private school option. The Urban League of Miami found that the Florida voucher plan instilled in public schools a sense of urgency and zeal for reform not seen in the past, when a school's failure was rewarded only with more money that reinforced failure. It is fairly obvious, I believe, first through just looking at the situation and in reviewing it, and from intuition, that if you create competition you usually improve a product. The reason somebody chooses McDonald's over Burger King is because they think the product is better at one or the other. Regrettably, our public school systems have not ever had the competition necessary to improve the product. The purpose of choice, of course, is not to undermine the public school system; it is just the opposite. It is to create an incentive for reform in the public school system which improves those systems. That is exactly what has been seen to happen in those areas of our country where choice has been given a reasonable opportunity to be tested, specifically in Milwaukee and Florida. What about student achievement, which, of course, is the bottom line? The goal is to take these kids who have been locked in a failing school, who are reading at two or three grade levels behind their peers, who are not graduating, who, therefore, cannot participate in the American dream, and give them an opportunity. Every major evaluation of school choice effectiveness has found significant academic gains for the students participating in those programs. Test scores in Milwaukee, Dayton, and Charlotte have all been reviewed by scholars from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Georgetown, and the University of Texas. In all those communities it has been determined that the kids who have been able to participate in the private school option have had their test scores go up. These, in all instances, have been kids from low-income families, urban poor in most instances, who before they had this option were left out of the American dream. We have spent $120 billion in the last 35 years on title I, directed at trying to help low-income kids. The result of those expenditures has been that low-income kids are reading two grade levels below their peers and are graduating from high school at half the rate of their peers. There has been absolutely no academic improvement in those kids over this 35-year period. In the last 10 years, when we spent the most amount of money, the academic improvement also has not increased at all. There has been $120 billion spent to try to help kids who have come from low-income families, and we have left them behind. It is a disgrace. We have locked these children in schools where they cannot learn because there is violence, because there are drugs, and because the school system simply will not respond to the needs of those children. What I am suggesting in this amendment is a small step--a two-tenths of 1 percent step compared to what we spend in the rest of title I in this bill--to be applied to a demonstration--$50 million--to see if we can determine whether or not the option of giving children a private school choice is going to improve their academic achievement. It is hardly a big expense in the context of what we have done, but if you look at it in the context of what the results have been in communities such as Milwaukee and Dayton and Charlotte and the State of Florida, the returns may be overwhelming. This could be the best investment we make in this entire bill in terms of giving kids an opportunity to learn and participate in the American dream. Are parents satisfied with this option? If you look at the States and the communities that have used this approach, parents are extraordinarily satisfied. In Charlotte, nearly twice as many choice parents gave their children's school an A rating as did those parents whose kids went to public schools. In Milwaukee, 72 percent of the parents with kids going to private schools gave their kids' school an A rating as compared to 16 percent for the public schools. So the impact is significant. The parents see it and, most importantly, the children see it in their better chance to participate in America. One of those images that stands out from when I was a kid watching TV--and I do not even remember the Governor's full name; I guess it was Faubus, from Arkansas--I remember the National Guard going up to the school. I must have been in the first grade or so or maybe I was in the third grade. The National Guard went up to the school door, and this elected official, who was the Governor of the State, was standing in the school door saying he was not going to let this child, who seemed to be a little bit older than me, about the age of my brother--I think it was a girl--in the school. I could not understand it. Of course, we learned this was wrong. And we changed our Nation because of it. Today what we have are people standing in that school door not letting kids out, locking them in those schools which are not teaching them. And why? Why are they doing that? Because the bureaucracy and the labor unions fear the option of giving parents a choice. It is that simple. This is not about education. This is about the power of political groups to influence the process. When you have lost generation after generation of kids to schools that are failing, when you have 9,000 schools in this country that are designated as failing, and those schools have failed for 4 and 5 and 6 and 8 years, and you know that every child who goes through that school is not going to have a chance to participate in the American dream, Miss King is right, a civil right is being denied--absolutely being denied to those children--simply because they do not have the wherewithal to get out of that school and get a decent education. In this bill we attempt to improve those schools that have failed. We make a huge commitment in that area. But we know we are not going to be successful everywhere. We know that. We know that in some urban areas the schools simply are not going to cut it, and the kids who go to those schools are going to be left behind. We have an obligation, I believe, to at least find out whether or not there isn't a better way, to first give that child an option to get a decent education and, second, to put real pressure on that public school system to improve. We have seen it work in Milwaukee. We have seen it work in Charlotte. We have seen it work in Florida. And for a small amount of $50 million, we can see whether it can work here with the Federal Government, targeted solely on the child who comes from a low-income family and who is stuck in a school that has failed for 3 consistent years. I can't see how this amendment can be opposed, other than on the grounds that it affronts the power politics of Washington, DC, which are structured around bureaucracies and labor unions that will at all costs defend their turf, even if that cost involves a child's education. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Arkansas such time as he may consume.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GREGG. I ask that the clerk report my amendment.

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Chair. Amendment No. 536

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I associate myself with the comments of the Senator from Massachusetts. There has been a significant amount of debate so I will not carry it on. I reinforce the fact that the President has suggested we extend the testing passed in 1994 to three additional grades. The testing in 1994 required the curriculum be aligned and that the tests be fairly pervasive. At the same time, when those tests were put in place, there was no funding at all to support them. This President has suggested that is not correct. He has put in place $3 billion of new funding for the purposes of underwriting the costs of these tests. In addition, he has suggested the most significant increase of title I funding for the actual problematic side than any President in the history of this country. He has suggested increases that represent more than 50 percent of an increase in title I funding. So the commitment is significant in the area of dollars. Senator Kennedy hit the nail on the head. If this amendment passes, essentially we are stepping backward on the issue of assessment. And we are stepping backward, therefore, on the issue of finding out whether or not low-income kids are getting fair treatment in our school systems. That is what this is about. Will we have in place a procedure for determining whether or not our low-income children are getting fair treatment? The only way to do that is through a testing regime in the form outlined in this bill. If we abandon that testing regime, for all intents and purposes, we are going back to the present status quo which has produced 35 years of failure. We know it is not working. It is time to make the changes proposed in this bill. Regrettably, the Wellstone amendment takes us backward, rather than forward, in that effort. I yield back the remainder of our time on our side.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that after the Senator from Washington speaks, the Senator from Texas be recognized to offer her amendment, that we set aside Senator Wellstone's amendment, that she offer her amendment and be on her amendment for up to 15 minutes. Then we will return to Senator Wellstone's amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator from Minnesota allow us, Mr. President, after the Senator from Washington speaks, to set aside his amendment so the Senator from Texas could offer her amendment? And then after offering her amendment we could go back to the Wellstone amendment?

Mr. GREGG. I yield such time as he may consume to the Senator from Arkansas.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I also believe Senator Hutchison has an amendment.