Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I am delighted that the Senator is yielding, but in accordance with the rules, I believe I must formulate my response in the form of a question.

Mr. GREGG. I will simply ask the Senator from Delaware a question. Is it not appropriate when a Senator uses a Senator's name and inaccurately characterizes a Senator's position, that Senator have an opportunity to respond?

Mr. GREGG. I appreciate that. Unfortunately, the Senator from California did not appear to be inclined to participate in that yielding.

Mr. GREGG. I simply note that I believe it is the proper decorum of the Senate when a Senator's name is used, and especially when a Senator's position is misrepresented, for a Senator to yield.

Mr. GREGG. I thought the Senator from Delaware had 15 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. I ask the Chair the situation relative to the time.

Mr. GREGG. Since my name has been addressed two times, inaccurately, I think it would be appropriate to yield.

Mr. GREGG. I take it the Senator is not yielding?

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield, since the Senator used my name?

Mr. GREGG. I understand the Senator from Delaware wishes to speak. I will not go much further, but only to say, for what it is worth, relative to this education bill, it appears to me we have wandered into an extremely difficult situation. This amendment is, in my humble opinion, a significant blow to the underlying purposes of the bill which have been worked through involving a lot of compromise and a lot of effort. Obviously, we are not going to vote on it tonight. I am hopeful it will be reconsidered before any time we even consider voting on it. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I believe I reserved the floor.

Mr. GREGG. I have no objection.

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object, did the Democratic assistant leader decide he didn't want to do the Reed amendment?

Mr. GREGG. Yes.

Mr. GREGG. I respond by saying that you are breaking new ground. The application of the word is the manner in which you break new ground. ``Comparable'' applied in one manner means one thing, but applied to another manner means something else. If you are applying ``comparable'' to a school system within a city, that is one thing. When you say ``comparable'' within an entire State, it is entirely different. Furthermore, if you are, specifically within the terms of comparable, defining what comparable means by saying class size, qualification of teachers, curriculum, range of courses offered, you are essentially setting up the standards in a very top-down, directive manner of what is going to happen in the school systems across the State. You are saying that they essentially all have to be the same. Now, if we are talking about opportunity, what the underlying bill does is create opportunity. That is the whole concept of this bill. This bill is dedicated to giving all the children in America--but especially the low-income child--the opportunity to succeed. We have now been through 25 or 35 years of an experiment in helping title I kids, and it has failed. One-hundred twenty-six billion dollars has been spent, and the average title I child is reading at two grade levels behind his or her peers. We know it hasn't worked. So the President has said let's try a different approach, an approach focused on the child, giving that child an opportunity to learn. That is exactly what this bill does. It says to the school systems: All right, we are going to give you flexibility, but in exchange we are going to expect success and we expect academic success equal to or better than what a child who doesn't come from a low-income family obtains. If you don't obtain that success, then there are sanctions. And there are accountability standards that are very aggressive to assure that we do obtain that success. This bill supplies opportunity. I think to imply that it does anything else is to mischaracterize the bill. What this proposal does is essentially nationalize the system. It essentially says, from here on out, the Federal Government is going to be put in a position of saying that if every school district in a State isn't doing everything in a comparable way--I won't use it exactly, and you are right; they are not the same words--with class size, qualification of teachers, curriculum, range of courses offered, then we, the Federal Government, are going to stop sending you money and probably we have set up a lawsuit for you, the students, and the parents in those States. You have to ask yourself, why is ``comparable'' better? What is better is to say we are going to give children a better chance to succeed, and we are going to find out if they are succeeding academically. That is what the bill does. Why is ``comparable'' better? Is it comparable to have the same number of Spanish teachers in Nashua, NH, and in Berlin, NH? Maybe Berlin doesn't need second language teachers and Nashua, NH, does. Is it better to have a comparable number of technical teachers in the area of some local industry, where the kids are being trained to be able to participate in one part of the State or another part of the State, when maybe their industries are not the same? Comparability doesn't lead to quality. What it leads to is mediocrity. So I just say to my colleague from Connecticut that I understand the desire to produce quality education. I think the way you get there is by focusing child by child, not by taking a broad brush and applying it to the entire universe of education and saying the Federal Government is going to tell you how to do it.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I didn't yield for a statement. I yielded for a question.

Mr. GREGG. I will yield when I finish. I will be happy to discuss this further. Magnet schools is the concept where you take a school that is a high- quality school and you draw kids into it who have special interests-- math, science. Bedford-Stuyvestant in New York is a magnet school. There is one in Virginia in Arlington called Thomas Jefferson. And then, of course, there is the one in North Carolina that started the whole system. I am wondering if under this amendment you can have magnet schools anymore, especially a magnet school that was a low-income, funded school because it would not be comparable. It would be too good. If you had a magnet school like they have in Houston, where it is, I think, 85 percent low-income kids, but it is excelling at an extraordinary level, that might not be able to function under this bill, or maybe it could, but the State would not meet the comparability standards here. Comparability may sound like a benign word, but its practical implication is that we at the Federal level are demanding that we control the manner in which States develop their school systems--in a very precise way and in a way which creates a control system that is from the top down and that is focused on minutia, not on results. The whole theme of the President's proposal, which was worked out and negotiated and passed out of committee 22-0, was that we would give flexibility to local school districts, flexibility to States to design programs that would address the needs of low-income kids specifically. And in exchange for that flexibility and the additional resources, we would expect results. This amendment goes in the exact opposite direction. This says that in exchange for a small amount of money, you, the States and local school districts, are going to have to do everything the same, have everything be comparable. Comparability doesn't really have that much relevance to quality, as we have seen over the years. So I find this amendment to be probably one of the most intrusive amendments I have seen come forward on this bill. If it passes, it would have the practical effect, in my humble opinion, of fundamentally damaging this bill and changing the entire course of its purpose. I am happy to yield to the Senator from Connecticut for what I know will be a thoughtful question.

Mr. GREGG. This amendment which is brought forward by the Senator from Connecticut, although benign in its phraseology, is pervasive in its effect. In fact, I am not sure there is another amendment that is pending before this bill--although the Senator from Connecticut has one which is pretty pervasive in its effect--but I am not sure there is another one that would have a larger impact, a more substantive impact, a more dramatic impact on the educational system of our country than this amendment right here. The unintended consequences of it are, I am sure, overwhelming. I am not going to even try to anticipate them. I just read the amendment a little while ago, so I am not totally up to speed on the unintended consequences. I can tell you what the obvious intended consequences are of what amounts to essentially a nationalization of the educational systems of this country. Education has always been a local and State responsibility. But when the Federal Government takes the role of saying that the local and State governments shall have comparable educational systems, and will become the enforcer of those comparable educational systems across the Nation, it is no longer the function of the local and State governments, it is the function of the Federal Government. The Federal Government has taken that power. Comparability, as it is defined in this bill, would mean that every community in every State in the country would have to comply equally and be the same as every other community on all sorts of issues. I cannot even anticipate all the issues--but all sorts of issues: The number of kids in the classroom would have to be exactly the same or comparable, the number of teachers would have to be exactly the same or comparable, the types of teachers would have to be exactly the same or comparable, the computer equipment in the school would have to be exactly the same or comparable, the size of the classroom would have to be exactly the same or comparable, the size of the library would have to be exactly the same or comparable, size of the parking lot, size of the playing fields, schoolday, use of the schoolday, courses offered, whether Latin is offered, whether English is offered in advanced cases, whether advanced calculus is offered, whether Spanish is offered, whether Japanese is offered, free time within the schoolday, whether students had clubs that were the same, whether all the schools had a climbing club, whether all the schools had a social outreach club, whether all the schools had an African-American society, whether all the schools had a historical society. Comparability under this language means that essentially the Federal Government would suddenly become the arbiter of how every school in this country would operate in every piece of detail within that school system. This is the single most pervasive amendment I have ever seen at the Federal level in the area of education. Some might argue the President's suggestion that every student in America should be tested is a pretty pervasive step. What the President said was that those tests would be decided at the local level. They would be designed by the State. Each State could have its own testing system, its own regime, and set its own standards. That is still pretty pervasive, I have to admit. But this goes a radical step beyond that. This essentially says that the Secretary of Education shall be informed by the States that every school in every system in every part of that State has a comparable capability in every function. The impact of this is just really quite staggering. I have to wonder, for example, what it means to organized labor agreements. What happens if a labor union in one community in the State has negotiated for a different workweek for its teachers than the labor union in another part of the State or for a different ratio for its teachers or for a different certification of capability for its teachers. Are all those labor agreements suddenly out the window? It appears that way. It appears that either they are out the window, or the Federal support coming into the State is out the window because they aren't comparable and there is clearly not a comparable event there. It is pretty hard to make them comparable unless you are going to supersede collective bargaining as a concept in our society. It is one thing for us, with 6 percent of the Federal budget of education at the local and State level, to expect them to deal effectively with low-income kids by requiring that those low-income kids not be left behind, which is what we have done in this bill as it is structured today, and to set up an output system where essentially we say we are going to leave it to you, the local school systems, to decide how you educate your children, but we are going to expect that low-income kids especially achieve and that they achieve at a level that is comparable with their peers and, if they happen to adopt the Straight A's Program under this, they actually achieve at a level that is better than their peers. It is entirely something else for us to say because we are putting 6 percent of the funds in here, we are suddenly going to require that every community in every State be comparable. And if they are not comparable, they will not get the Federal support. That is a huge step towards the nationalization of our educational system. It is pretty specifically outlined in the amendment. We need to read this because it is so overwhelming. Let's begin here: In General.--A State that receives funds under this part shall provide services in schools receiving funds under this part that, taken as a whole, are at least comparable to services in schools that are not receiving funds under this part. A State shall meet the requirements of subparagraph (A) on a school-by-school basis. That means every school, every school in the State must be the same as every other school in the State as defined by the schools that are not title I schools. A State shall be considered to have met the requirements of paragraph (1) if such State has filed with the Secretary a written assurance that the State has established and implemented policies to ensure comparability among schools in-- (i) class size and qualifications of teachers (by category of assignment, such as regular education, special education, and bilingual education) and professional staff, through programs such as incentives for voluntary transfer and recruitment; (ii) curriculum, the range of courses offered. . . How expansive is this? This is just the most incredibly expansive intrusion into the actual operation of the local school system that you could possibly conceive of. We are demanding at the Federal level, because we decided to put 6 percent of the money into the local school system, that every local school shall have a comparable curriculum, a comparable staffing structure, a comparable qualification structure for its teachers. There are a lot of schools in this country that don't need comparable situations that deliver pretty good education and are not the same as their neighbor. And, in fact, that is what choice is all about, public charter schools. You create a charter school because you don't think that the school down the street, which is doing the public school work--and they are both public schools, by the way; I am not talking private schools here--but you create a public charter school because you think the public school down the street is not doing such a good job. Under this amendment, I honestly think we can't have a charter school program anymore. Charter schools is probably the most creative and imaginative activity that is occurring in the public school system today. Across this country, parents and teachers are getting together to start charter schools because they see them as an opportunity to break out from the straitjacket of specific requirements that they get from their State school districts as to how to run their schools and create schools that teach, which is the option and the obligation, of course, of the school systems, and to teach well. Across this Nation, you can go to city after city, especially urban areas, where the charter school is the one that is delivering the quality education to kids who before were getting very little in the way of education. I honestly think under this amendment, charter schools would essentially be wiped out. Either that or everybody has to be a charter school, but you can't have everybody being a charter school because charter schools by definition are different. That is the whole concept behind charter schools. Then there is something called a magnet school. It was started in North Carolina. The magnet education school is in the area of math/ science. It was such a huge success that a lot of States have used it.

Mr. GREGG. I do not believe we can.

Mr. GREGG. All right. We are not doing this amendment; just the Reed amendment and the Voinovich amendment and the Bingaman amendment.

Mr. GREGG. We might also vote on the Reed amendment at the same time.

Mr. GREGG. Surely.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I am a great admirer of the Senator from Connecticut. I enjoy working with him and always appreciate his creativity.

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object, have we seen the modification?