Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I yield myself such time as I may consume. I associate myself with the Senator from Tennessee. It was an excellent statement summarizing the views I also hold. I associate myself with the statement of Senator Kennedy. We are ready to yield back our time and go to a vote if the other side is prepared. We yield back our time.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, let me summarize the problem. I appreciate the fact that the Senator from Connecticut has modified his amendment. I appreciate him doing that and taking out some of the language that is most onerous in the amendment. But the amendment still accomplishes essentially the same thing, which is creating a Federal standard requiring every State to set up comparability standards. There are a lot of States in this country and a lot of communities in this country which do not agree that comparability is appropriate; that believe the States should have flexibility from community to community to decide how they operate their school system. Local control is the essence of education. If a State decides it wants comparability, or its supreme court decides that, or the State legislature decides that, fine. That is certainly their responsibility and their right. They operate school systems. They pay for 97 percent of the school systems, and they should be able to do that. They do that. The Supreme Court did that in the area of funding. But it is not the role of the Federal Government to come in after paying 6 percent of the cost of the school system and say to States that every State has to have comparability within their State. It is a huge intrusion of the Federal role in the role of education. For that reason, it goes, as I mentioned earlier, directly in the opposite direction from what the theme of this bill is. I am not going to reiterate that because I just said it 10 or 15 minutes ago. But that is the problem of the amendment. It is incredibly intrusive, and it goes in the direct opposite direction from where this bill is going. That is why we on our side strongly oppose it and believe it is inconsistent with the agreement that was reached. We need to think about it a little bit longer before we decide how we are going to dispose of it. I appreciate the Senator from Connecticut withdrawing his request for the yeas and nays. Maybe as we move down the road, we can figure out a way to more appropriately handle this amendment. I yield the remainder of our time on this amendment. Amendment Nos. 356, 401, 434, 513 as modified, 642, 643 as modified, 363 as modified, 638 as modified, 354 as modified, 418 as modified, and 633 as modified En Bloc, to Amendment no. 358

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

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the request be modified to add 1 additional minute on our side.

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his description. This amendment goes to the heart of this bill. I don't think the impact this amendment will have on changing the focus of the President's proposals on education as negotiated between a variety of parties involved in the negotiation can be understated. There was an agreed to set of principles laid down. The basic philosophy of those principles was that we were going to look at how the child did, whether the child actually learned more, whether the low-income child was in a better competitive position relative to peers and educational success. We were going to allow flexibility of the local school systems, subject to assuring through assessment standards and accountability standards that the children were improving. That was the flow: Focus on the child, flexibility, expect academic achievement, and subject it to accountability so we knew it was working. A lot of work went into this concept. The President's ideas are aggressive and creative and they will take the Federal Government in a different direction. We will go away from command and control and go toward output. We will go away from trying to find out how many books are in a classroom, how big the classroom should be, and how many teachers are in the classroom to seeing how much a child is learning and making sure when that child learns they are learning something relative to them and that they are staying with their peers. We will give parents more authority and flexibility and capacity to participate in the education of their children and to have some say when their children are stuck in schools that are failing. These are themes that are critical to improving Federal education. This amendment goes in the exact opposite direction. I used the term ``nationalization'' yesterday. I don't think that is too strong. This is an attempt to assert a national policy essentially on all school districts in this country. That is extremely pervasive and requires a cookie-cutter approach to education and takes away local control. Therefore, the amendment essentially does fundamental harm which is irreparable to this bill, in my opinion. That is why we have such severe reservations. I yield such time remaining to the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. GREGG. No.

Mr. GREGG. I yield the Senator 30 seconds.

Mr. GREGG. Reserving my time, Mr. President, what is the time situation?

Mr. GREGG. On the Senator's time I will be happy to.

Mr. GREGG. Absolutely. That is the whole point. If I may reclaim my time. That is exactly what this does. It says that a State must have a comparable class size across that State, which means a State such as California, which is a huge State and which may have variations in class size depending on what communities have decided is best, both by negotiating with their teachers union and working with their students, their parents, and their teachers those States now are not going to be able to do that any longer, those communities are not going to be able to do that any longer. They are going to have to set one class size for the entire State, comparable across the State. Curriculum: For example, I cannot imagine anything more intrusive than having the States say unilaterally you have to have a comparable curriculum on all the different categories of curriculum. There may be some communities that do not believe they need a curriculum that deals with some of these core issues. Obviously, on core issues such as math, science, and English, they are going to have comparable curriculums. Hopefully, you will not. Maybe they will not. Maybe some States will let some type of American history be taught in one section and another type of American history be taught in a different section. American history should be consistent. There are other issues. What about languages? They might want to teach Japanese in San Francisco, but maybe in San Diego they want to teach Chinese or Spanish. The comparability language is so pervasive that it basically takes everything and makes oneness, which was the point of the argument of the Senator from Connecticut to begin with. I do not see how he can argue against his own position, which is he believes that in order for people to be tested and to be held to a standard, then everybody has to have equal access to the same opportunities of curriculum, class size, and structure--everything has to be essentially at the same level. That was his argument, was it not?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Connecticut raising that issue because the fact is he has taken the term ``comparability,'' which is today used in an extremely narrow application and in a very loose enforcement application--in other words, it applies simply to communities and it applies to teachers essentially and to curriculum within the teaching community--it has been extremely loosely applied to communities, and the Senator from Connecticut has taken that word and has expanded it radically to essentially the whole State. The Senator from Connecticut uses as an example, for example, the New Hampshire Supreme Court decision in this area which did exactly that. It expanded the issue of funding and equality of funding radically throughout the whole State so everybody had to do it the same way, changing the whole system of education within the State of New Hampshire. Senator Dodd is suggesting doing the same thing with the word ``comparable'' on a statewide basis and having the Federal Government come in and set what the term ``comparability'' means now in a much more precise and mandatory way. When he uses terms in his amendment such as ``comparability,'' among other things, shall include: (i) class size and qualifications of teachers (by category of assignment, such as regular education, special education, and bilingual education) and professional staff; (ii) curriculum, the range of courses offered (including the opportunity to participate in rigorous courses such as advanced placement courses), and instructional materials and instructional resources to ensure that participating children have the opportunity to achieve to the highest student performance levels under the State's challenging content and student performance standards; (iii) accessibility to technology; and (iv) the safety of school facilities. . . . That is getting pretty specific and inclusive and much different from the way comparability is used in present law. That is a fact.

Mr. GREGG. I am yielding for a question.

Mr. GREGG. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we discussed this amendment a little bit yesterday--in fact, considerably yesterday--and I presented most of my thoughts. I know some other Members on my side are going to come down and talk about it. This amendment is an incredibly pervasive amendment and will have a fundamental effect on the Federal role in education. It will, in my opinion, create an atmosphere where the Federal Government is essentially nationalizing the standards throughout the country for what education will be. The way it does this is as follows: It says that every school district in a State must be comparable, and it is up to the State to decide that comparability. But if the State doesn't decide the comparability, then the Federal Government starts to withdraw the funds. And it also sets up the standards for what must be comparable. It is a Federal standard--what must be comparable under this amendment. The standard includes class size, qualifications of teachers by category of assignments, curriculum, range of courses offered, instructional material, instructional resources. You essentially are saying the Federal Government is going to require comparability--comparability meaning that everybody does it essentially the same way--throughout the country, or at least throughout every State, within every State. Logically, the next step is to do it across the country from State to State. As I mentioned last night, why should the State of Connecticut be allowed to spend more on its children than the State of Mississippi? Should it not all be comparable? Under the logic of this amendment, that is the next step. Connecticut should send money to Mississippi. The same amount you spend per child in Connecticut should be spent on the child in Mississippi. But more importantly than that, or equally important to that, this goes to the heart of what I think is the essential of quality education which is the uniqueness and creativity of the local community to control how their children are educated. One town in a State is going to have a certain set of ideas on how education should be provided versus another town in that State. Granted, they are all going to have to get their children to a certain level of ability in the core subject matter--English, math, science--in order that the children be competitive. But how they get their children up to that level of competency is left up to the school district under our bill. The local school district has the flexibility. And then the ancillary aspects of the school system are left up to the school districts--ancillary being integral in the sense of foreign languages, for example, computer science teaching, sports programs, community outreach programs. But under this amendment, that would no longer be the case. There would have to be comparability. Every town and community within the State would have to do it the same way in all these different areas of discipline. So in one part of the State you might have a community that believes, because of the ethnic makeup of the city or the community, they need special reading instruction in one language --say, Spanish or Greek-- because they have a large community of immigrants, of people who have immigrated to our country, and in another part of the State they may not have that issue but they may have an issue of wanting to get their children up to speed in the area of the industry which dominates that region--say, forestry. For example, they might want to have a special program in how to do proper silviculture. You could not do that anymore. You could not have those different approaches to education within the school system. They would all have to be comparable under this amendment. It makes absolutely no sense that we as the Federal Government should set that sort of standard on the States and on the local communities. Then there are a couple of very specific issues where this amendment clearly creates a huge threat. The first is charter schools. This amendment essentially eliminates the capacity to have charter schools because charter schools, by definition, differ. That is why charter schools are created. They are different. That is what you have with a charter school. You get together a group of parents, teachers, and kids and say: We are going to teach differently than local schools. We are going to do it with public money. We are talking about public charter schools here. But we are going to do it differently. Those schools would be wiped out because you could not be different. You would have to be comparable. And the magnet schools would be wiped out, schools that are designed specifically to educate in special subject matters such as science. You have these famous science high schools across this country. I think they have one in New York City called Stuyvesant. They have one in North Carolina which has been hugely successful. And they have one right here in the Washington region called Thomas Jefferson. Magnet schools would be wiped out because they are different. You are not allowed to be different under the amendment. That is the theme of this amendment. If you do not have sameness, you do not have fairness. I have to say I do not believe that is true at all. I think you get fairness by producing results. You get fairness by producing results, not by controlling the input but by controlling the output. If a child goes through the system and learns effectively, then you have fairness. If a child does not go through the system and learn effectively, then you do not have fairness. What this underlying bill does and what the President proposes is to require that children learn effectively, not require that all children be taught exactly the same way, because one does not necessarily learn that way. There are a lot of school systems that feel that way. Then we have another major issue which is called the collective bargaining system. In one part of a State, for example, they might have an agreement with their local teachers union that says: We are going to have 20 kids in a classroom, but we are going to pay our teachers a lot more because we think our teachers are able to handle 20 kids and are good teachers. In another part of the State, they might have 15 kids in the classroom and pay their teachers less, or they might work on a different day schedule, might work on a different structure of their day, or might work on a different responsibility from area to area within a State as to what teachers do. They may have a program where teachers are required to, under their contract, be involved in extracurricular activities, and in other parts of the State that might not be the case. There are different retirement standards from community to community. Some communities may want their teachers to retire at an earlier age, and some communities may not. It all depends on the collective bargaining agreement. Collective bargaining agreements would be inconsistent with this amendment. In fact, it would be a Catch-22 for a State that does not collectively bargain its teachers statewide. I do not know too many States that do collectively bargain their teachers statewide. Most States bargain community by community, not State by State. So this becomes a totally--I do not know if it becomes unenforceable; maybe it overrides the collective bargaining agreement. I do not know how the sponsor of the amendment intends to handle that very significant problem, but it is a big problem because comparability clearly cannot work if there is a collective bargaining agreement in one part of the State which presents one significantly different approach than another part of the State. They then cannot be comparable and consistent with the collective bargaining agreement. This amendment is first, obviously, a philosophical anathema to my view of how to educate in this country, which is we should maintain and promote local control; we should not undermine local control by requiring everybody to do everything the same. That is the key problem with the amendment, but it also has huge technical implications for the creativity of local communities in the area of charter schools, magnet schools, different curricular activity that might be appropriate to one region over another region or different fiscal activity, structure. For example, I suspect a school in southern California does not need the same heating system as a school in northern California, and yet under this amendment they have to have the same heating system. They would have to actually have the same heating system because they would have to have the same resources, the same buildings. That is the way it is written. It says it has to be comparable. It says the physical facilities have to be comparable. Institutional resources have to be comparable.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, at this time I reserve my time because last night I was so eloquent, I am just at a loss for words today.

Mr. GREGG. I will note--and the Senator is familiar with this--just to make it clear, the Federal Government already mandates that children take a test in three grades. This just adds three more grades.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for 15 minutes in response to the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, am I subject to morning business?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his very generous comments relative to my role in the Senate. I reciprocate. I admire the Senator from Connecticut immensely. I enjoy him as a colleague, especially his sense of humor and his ability to fashion thoughtful policy with which I sometimes agree and sometimes disagree. It is nice to have him as a colleague and especially to claim him as a fellow New Englander. He raises an issue that is one of the major debates revolving around the issue of education, both here at the Federal level and at the State level, as he pointed out in citing the New Hampshire Supreme Court decision in the Claremont case which has had a significant impact on New Hampshire's approach to education. I have always believed that decision was wrongly decided, but whether it was wrongly decided or not, it was still the Supreme Court of New Hampshire and, therefore, it is the law of the land in New Hampshire. It was decided based on the New Hampshire Constitution, not on the Federal Constitution. And as such, it is unique to New Hampshire, although there are other States that take the same decision. This concept that every part within a State must be equal in their approach to education is something that the New Hampshire Supreme Court has found to be true, or at least to be the law of New Hampshire. But it is not necessarily the law everywhere. Furthermore, the logic of that, if you were to carry it to its natural extreme, would be that everywhere in the Nation must be the same. If you carry that to its logical conclusion, it would be that in New Hampshire, if town A has a higher property tax base than town B, therefore some of town A's money must go to town B to support town B, thus reducing the money for town A but increasing the money for town B in order to reach equality of funds, which is essentially what the Claremont decision held in its practical application, unless you find new sources of revenue, which is what our State is trying to do right now. Then if you take that to its next logical step, which the Senator from Connecticut appears to be promoting as a concept, this idea of comparability, then why just New Hampshire? Logically wouldn't the next step be that New Hampshire's funding should be the same as Connecticut, or Connecticut's funding should be the same as Mississippi, that all State districts, all States, all communities across the country should have exactly the same funding or at least comparable funding in their school systems in order to be equal, in order to get quality education, in order to leave nobody behind, in order to have equality of opportunity as has been defined in the law? I don't think anybody is suggesting that, but that is the logical extension of the logic behind this amendment. Why stop it at the State level? Why stop at the community level? Why go community to community, or county to county? Why wouldn't you step it up to State to State and end up with Connecticut sending money, I presume, to Mississippi, for example, or to Louisiana so that Louisiana standards would come up in the amount of funding, and Connecticut's would go down in the amount of funding? It doesn't make any sense. Why? Because it doesn't necessarily improve education. Why doesn't it improve education? Because there has been study after study after study--some of the best ones have been done out of the University of Rochester where they have actually studied studies, 300 or so--which have concluded that education is not a formula where more dollars equal better results. In fact, there are a lot of instances where more dollars simply have not equaled better results. And you don't have to look too far from where we are holding this debate to find that case. Here in the city of Washington, regrettably, more dollars are spent per pupil than any place in the United States, or for that matter than at any place in all these other industrialized countries that are always listed as being better than the United States in education. More dollars per student are spent right here in Washington. Yet the quality of the education, the student achievement levels here in Washington are some of the lowest achievement levels of any urban area in the country. So it is not an issue of more dollars produces better education. It has been shown, after innumerable studies--and I have to also say just through common sense, just looking at the situation--that what produces better education is a lot of different factors: Parental involvement, parents who care about education; teachers who have flexibility in their classrooms to teach the way they think best; good teachers; principals who have flexibility to run their schools the way they think is important; superintendents who have the flexibility to run the school systems; community involvement, with businesses in the community that adopt a school and make it better by committing their employees and their employees' commitments to time and tutorial activity, with support groups such as Big Brothers and Big Sisters supporting people after school so the kids, when not in school, can learn things to help them get through the day when they are in school. The formula is complex. It is not just more dollars equals better education. So when you set up standards that say everybody has to be paid the same, everybody has to have the same amount of money and you are going to produce better education, that simply doesn't fly. But that is a big argument that we have in this Senate and which is occurring across the country, and also certainly in New Hampshire. But I think it is one of those red herrings; that if you put more money in the system and bring everybody up to the same money level, you will get better education. That is not true at all. It has been proven time and again. Unfortunately, one example is right here in Washington, DC. There is no particular reason to pick on Washington, but Washington is a regrettable example of that. So the practical argument, first, is that it doesn't hold water because its logical extension is that every State across the country should have the same funding. Maybe that is the goal in the end. Maybe we are seeing the early steps of an attempt to actually evolve a national system where everybody gets the same amount of money and is targeted the same. But I don't think too many people would follow that course of logic. That would be the practical logic of this amendment carried to its full extreme. Secondly, the underpinning purpose of the amendment, which is to equalize dollars within a State because that produces better education, also doesn't hold a lot of water because nothing proves that is the case. In fact, just the opposite happens when you use a system that says everybody has to do everything the same. When you put everybody in a cookie-cutter system of education, you end up with mediocrity; you end up with school systems that, rather than producing quality, end up producing to the lowest common denominator and they fail. They fail the kids. That is what we have seen in our school systems recently. One of the prior speakers on the other side of the aisle attempted to define my value systems for me. He said my values are to support a system that supports dilapidated schools--or something to that effect-- because a community with a dilapidated school doesn't have enough money to support that school and a rich community can have a good school. That is not my value system. I am sorry it was characterized that way by the Senator from Delaware. My value system on education is that no child is left behind; that the low-income child doesn't get a second- rate education in our system because they go to a second-rate school or they go to a school that failed year in and year out. What we have done in this country is to have spent $126 billion on education directed at low-income children and we have not improved their performance at all in 35 years. In fact, the children continue to fail in our system. The average low-income child in the fourth grade today reads at two grade levels less than his or her peers in the same school and across this country. The simple fact is that we have failed those children. We continue to fail those children because we use this system which believes that a command-and-control system from Washington can actually improve the educational system in local communities. That is not true at all. We need the creativity and imagination and commitment and involvement of the local community leadership--the parents, teachers, principals, and the support systems to focus on making their schools better and do it in a unique way that makes them special. Every community across the country is going to probably have some original way of doing this. There will be consistencies in text or maybe curriculum in some schools and maybe teaching styles, but each school will be as different as the teachers who are in the schools, the individuals who deal with these kids. So to try to impose on them a cookie-cutter system that says everybody has to be comparable--they have to do it all the same way or else they don't get their Federal dollars--is to fundamentally undermine the engine that will give these kids opportunities, which is the creativity, originality, and the enthusiasm of the local community, the teacher, the parents, and the principals. This bill that we have been debating today understands that fact. President Bush has proposed a bill that basically says four things: One is that we are going to focus on the child and stop focusing on the school system, on the bureaucracy, and on a cookie-cutter comparable standard. We are going to focus on every individual child, especially the low-income child who has been left behind. That is where the dollars are going to flow. Two, we are going to give the teachers, the community, the local school system flexibility in how they deal with that child and improve that child's capability. In exchange for that flexibility, we are going to require academic achievement by the low-income child. We are not going to let that child be left behind any longer. Three, we are going to have accountability standards to show that that academic achievement has been accomplished. It is at this point where we put the testing in place, where the President suggested testing in six grades instead of three, as is presently required, to which the Senator from Connecticut feels he has the logic to pursue a comparable standard. He says, if everybody is going to have to be tested--and this was the argument by the Senator from Delaware--then the systems that will bring the child up to a standard of ability to meet the test also have to be comparable. If everybody is going to be put to one test, then everybody should have comparable support facilities necessary to reach the ability to compete on that test. The problem is you are essentially saying there can be no creativity in the local school systems, and instead of giving local school systems flexibility in exchange for academic achievement, you are saying we are going to require academic achievement and we are also going to require that we have a bureaucracy that tells you exactly what to do--at least in this amendment--right down to curriculum, range of courses, instructional material, instructional resources--I mean, everything from the time you walk into that classroom is going to have to be comparable with everybody else in the system. This is a country that takes great pride in individuality, not in being uniform. That individuality is what produces our creativity and strength, whether it is in education or in the marketplace or whether it is in higher learning. Yet this amendment asserts that we should have everything comparable. If you are not comparable, you don't get any Federal money, which says that the Federal Government is coming in and we are going to take the State standard, whatever it is, and force it on every community in that State if they want to get Federal money. You can call that anything you want, but to me that is a nationalization of the system. You are essentially saying local school systems will be required to do a whole set of activities, from classroom size, to qualifications of teachers, professional staffing, curriculum, range of courses, instructional material--right down the list. They are going to be required to meet a set of standards which the State may initially set but which the Federal Government enforces. The Federal Government is enforcing this because it is demanding it be met or else the Federal funding doesn't come through--or a portion of it does not come through. So it is a huge expansion of the role of the Federal Government in deciding exactly what is going to happen at the local school districts. I don't think any of the debate on the other side of the aisle denies that fact. I think it confirms that fact because basically what the other side of the aisle has been debating--not the whole other side of the aisle but those presenting this amendment and defending it--is, yes, that is right, we have to require that every local community does everything comparable with the other communities in the State to assure equality of opportunity, as they define it. It is the wrong approach. The President's approach is you get equality of opportunity by assuring the school has the resources but letting the school, the parents, the teachers, and the faculty make the decision as to how the child is educated, and then you test whether or not the child has achieved the goals set out. If the child has not achieved those goals, then we start putting sanctions on the school systems and start giving the parents some opportunities to give their child additional help through supplemental services in this bill or the States with Straight A's. The issue of achievement is not done by some arbitrary input system; it is done by actually figuring out in what children are succeeding. As a result, we hopefully change this system which has produced 36 years of failure generation after generation of children who have not had a fair break. I find it ironic that the Senator from Delaware tried to characterize my values as being for failed schools, dilapidated schools, schools where kids were not learning, when what we propose in this bill is an attempt to reverse what is a clear, undeniable, factual, confirmable point, which is that generation after generation of low-income kids have been left behind. Even today, after spending $26 billion, the average low-income child in this country simply is not getting an education that is competitive with their peers in the school system. While we are on it, let me mention a couple points we put into this bill to give that child a little more opportunity because they have not been talked about much and should be talked about because this bill has interesting and creative initiatives. There was a package pulled together, negotiated, and agreed to by both sides. It took a long time to do that. It was done under the leadership of Senator Lott and Senator Daschle. Many of us met for many months to work it out. I mentioned we had four goals: Child centered, flexibility, academic achievement, and accountability. We set up a structure to accomplish the goals. A couple things we did I think are creative. We took all the teacher money and merged it and said to the school districts: You pick how you want to improve your teachers. You can hire more teachers; you can improve their educational ability; you can improve their technical support or simply pay the good teachers more. It is your choice. You decide how you do it. We are not going to tell you. That is a big change because it is giving local districts flexibility over those teacher dollars. We also said to the small districts in the small school areas, the rural districts, we are going to give you all this money that comes from the Federal Government that comes with these categories, and there are literally hundreds of them. There is a category for arts in some specific area or for language in some specific area. Most of these little school districts in States such as New Hampshire and Maine--this was an idea of Senator Collins--or even in upstate New York or, I suspect, parts of California, cannot access these categorical programs. Why? Because they simply do not have the staff, plus they do not have enough students to draw down enough money to make it worth their time. We suggested we merge that. We have something called rural ed flex where all this money will flow into these school systems without the strings attached where they can actually get a bang for the dollar, using it effectively. We also set up something called Straight A's, which is an attempt to give a few States the opportunity to show some creativity with low- income kids. We say we are going to take the formula programs, merge them and you, the State, can take those dollars and spend them however you want, but at the end of the year you have to prove that your low- income children, who are today, remember, not achieving at all--in fact, they are achieving at two grade levels less than most kids-- actually achieve a standard that exceeds other kids in their class. This is an attempt to give a real incentive to States and communities which are willing to be creative to do something about improving the lifestyle and the educational ability of their low-income kids. Another area we addressed was if a child is in a school that has failed--remember, the States designate whether a school has failed; the Federal Government does not. If the school fails 1 year, we go into the school system under this bill and give it a lot of resources and try to turn it around. If it fails 2 years, we go into the system, start to replace people--under the bill, we give authority to the school system to do that--and put in more resources. If after 3 years a child is in a school that fails--and by failing, that is defined by the State but essentially it is going to mean that school is not educating the children up to the standards to which the other schools in the community are educating their kids--if a child is in that school for 3 years, if you are a parent, you are pulling your hair out because for 3 years in a row you know your child has fallen behind because they are in a school that does not work. It has been designated as not working by the State or by the community. What is your option under present law? Nothing. You have to stay in that school unless you happen to be wealthy enough to go to a private school. It is especially a problem for inner-city moms, single mothers raising kids in the inner city, where their kids are going to schools that are filled with drugs and violence, and they have more fear of their life than they have opportunity to learn. Those kids are trapped. Under this bill, we propose something called supplemental services where, after 3 years in a failing school, a parent is going to have some authority of their own. They are going to be able to take a portion of the money which goes to title I and some other programs and take their child and get services outside the school system. They still have to stay in the public school, but they are going to get services out of the public school system to get their children up to speed academically. They can go to Sylvan Learning Center, or the Catholic school across the street has a tutorial program in math, they can do that. It will be the parent's discretion to get decent support services. That is going to be a good change for a lot of parents. It is going to be an opportunity for a lot of parents. There is a lot of good in this bill directed at trying to give low- income kids a better break and a better chance. But the surest and fastest way to undermine the purposes of this bill is to subject it to the cookie-cutter event and to what I think would be a nationalization of that, of requiring comparability from school district to school district to be asserted as a precondition of whether or not you get Federal funds or a portion of Federal funds. Obviously, I think this amendment represents a very significant undermining of the President's proposal and the agreement we reached through literally hours of intense and very constructive negotiation. Madam President, I thank you for your courtesy. I especially thank the staff for their courtesy. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. That is close.

Mr. GREGG. The Senator from California on two different occasions misrepresented my position on this floor. My position is that the term ``comparable'' exists in the law. In fact, I referred to that when I spoke with the Senator, when we exchanged discussion with the Senator from Connecticut. I pointed out, however, in the terms it is used in the law as it presently exists, it is a much more confined word than the manner in which it is being applied in the amendment of the Senator from Connecticut. Under the proposal of the Senator from Connecticut, he has taken the term ``comparable'' and expanded it in a manner which essentially amounts to the Federal Government taking over the ability of school systems across this country to be independent, to act in an independent way and to create a curriculum, class size ratio, and the operation of the regular day for the student in a manner that is independent and maintains local control. That is the issue here, whether or not we are controlling from the top or whether we are controlling at the end. What the President has proposed is to bring all American students who are under title I up to a level of proficiency that is equal to or better than that of their peers, and to assure the accomplishment of that, to allow the local school districts the flexibility to accomplish that. But in the end, to expect that to be obtained by having the local student subject to a testing regime which shows the student has accomplished those goals. That is the purpose of the President's proposal. The opposite is being accomplished, if this amendment is agreed to, which is basically to have the Federal Government come in and control the input of the school day, school curriculum and the classes. I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Delaware for allowing me to respond.

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to the floor afterward.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from Delaware to yield 2 minutes.