Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I am ready to yield back our time if Senator Bingaman is ready to yield back his time. Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, is the Bingaman amendment in order? What is the regular order?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on the next two votes, if there are two votes, the time for each vote be 10 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. Relevant.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, is debate appropriate?

Mr. GREGG. In consultation----

Mr. GREGG. If we are going to propound unanimous-consent requests, I propound a unanimous consent request as follows: That we proceed to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as reported out of the HELP Committee, at such time as the leader shall determine is appropriate, in consultation with the Democratic leader; that both sides be allowed to offer, I will make it seven amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; that the amendments shall be relevant, and that there shall be a vote on final passage.

Mr. GREGG. That is correct.

Mr. GREGG. Correct.

Mr. GREGG. On the motion to waive the point of order.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be laid aside.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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

Mr. GREGG. I move to table the motion to waive.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote in relation to this motion occur at 5 p.m. and that there be 4 minutes equally divided for explanation prior to the vote.

Mr. GREGG. I raise a point of order against the pending Wellstone amendment No. 3631 in that it violates the Budget Act.

Mr. GREGG. I was asking if he was agreeing that would be an acceptable approach.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, did I understand the Senator from Minnesota to say he would be willing, if I were to propound a unanimous consent request that we go to the ESEA bill with 5 amendments on both sides, that the amendments be relevant, and we have final passage--the Senator would agree to that?

Mr. GREGG. That is very generous of the Senator from Minnesota. I appreciate it.

Mr. GREGG. How much time is remaining?

Mr. GREGG. I wonder if the Senator believes campaign finance and gun issues, which are not relevant to schools, are issues which we should have been debating on the ESEA bill or should we hold them for another agenda?

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield on that point?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, the Senator from Minnesota has made a couple of points to which I think I need to respond. First, the reason the authorization bill is not on the floor is because Senators from the other side decided to put a political agenda on that bill. The unanimous consents which were requested by the majority leader to limit the number of amendments to that bill and make them education amendments and thus complete that bill were rejected by the other side. Second, yes, we strongly supported increasing funding for title I, if it was reauthorized under a bill which was student centered. The problem with the present law is it is not student centered. It is bureaucracy centered. I am not surprised the other side of the aisle is defending the bureaucracy-centered bill. It was their idea in the first place. Our position is we should look for academic achievement. We should not leave these children behind. The Senator says these are poor children. Yes, they are poor children. Regretably, they are poor children caught in the cycle of poverty for generation after generation because their educational system has failed them for generation after generation, even though we spent $120 billion on title I. Child after child has come out of the system unable to compete with their peers because their academic achievement has been so low. What we suggest is a proposal which is child centered, which is flexible, which is targeted on academic achievement, and which has accountability standards which will work so these children are not left behind. The Senator on the other side of the aisle makes the argument these children are being left behind not only because they are educationally underfunded but because they have all sorts of other concerns. Yes, there is no question about that. But when we look at school systems that work, because they demand achievement from the children they are serving, the same children, then we know success in this area is possible. We can look at our Catholic school systems in which the same population is served. Yet they accomplish good things with those students' academic achievement. The statement there has been a great increase in academic achievement among low-income kids is simply not accurate. What has happened is the academic achievement of low-income kids has finally gotten back to the level it was in 1992. From the period 1992 to 1998, the gap in academic achievement between African American and white students actually grew. The same was the case for Hispanic students and white students; it actually grew in a number of the most critical States that have a large population of African American and Spanish students. The simple fact is, we have not been serving these kids effectively. We do not have a program that serves these kids effectively. The Senator from Minnesota is right on one count. It is not $10 billion he is proposing this year, but over a 5-year budget it would add up to approximately $10 billion. I stand corrected. I join the Senator from Minnesota. If he is willing to put forward a program that is child centered, dedicated to academic achievement, giving the local schools accountability and flexibility, then we should talk about dramatic increases in funding because we would get something for the dollars that would be effectively used. But to simply put more money in here on top of money that has been already increased outside the budget priorities which we have already set--and remember there are other major budget priorities in this bill that have been paid for, such as special needs, special ed kids--it is just not appropriate. That is why I oppose this amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, let me make a couple of points on title I generally. Title I is one of those programs which was conceived as an excellent idea and which has accomplished many things. Unfortunately, it hasn't accomplished one of its most critical goals. When title I was originally created, the purpose was to get low- income children into the educational system in schools which would have the capacity to teach them and the ability to teach them at a level that was equal with their peers. The concern was that many low-income children weren't getting fair treatment in the school system. That was a good idea. Unfortunately, the way it has worked out over the last 35 years, it has not proven to be such a great success. In the last 35 years, we have spent $120 billion on title I, attempting to educate and give a better chance in life to low-income kids. The problem, however, is that we have accomplished very little. Most low-income kids today are not getting any better education than they were getting 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Their academic achievement levels are actually stagnant or they have dropped. We have seen that instead of improving the academic capability of these children, we continue to send these children through school systems that essentially end up passing them through the system and not giving them the skills they need to compete in America, to take part in the American dream. The statistics are fairly staggering. I think I have some of them here. Just off the top of my head--I believe I recall most of them-- over 7,000 schools that have title I kids in them have been identified as failing--not by the Federal Government but by the school systems themselves, generally. We know that in our schools where we have children who are under title I, low-income kids, those children are learning at at least two grade levels less than their peers--in the area of math, for example. We know that children in the third and fourth grades who are low-income are consistently at least a grade or two grades behind their peers. We know that low-income fourth graders are simply not able to compete with other fourth graders who are not low-income. We know that in our high schools we are seeing the child who has been a low-income child, who is qualified for title I dollars, who has gone through the system--it turns out that their skills are right at the bottom of their classes in many cases and as a matter of average. The achievement gap really has been dramatic. Yet we have spent all this money to try to improve their achievement. So we as Republicans, in the markup of the title I bill this year, the ESEA bill, attempted to try to address the problem. We put forward a whole series of ideas, the purpose of which was to improve the academic achievement of the low-income child. Instead of warehousing these children and moving them through the system, we would actually expect and demand that for these Federal dollars we received results. One of the suggestions we made was called Straight A's, where we said to the local school districts: Your results on low-income kids hasn't been that good; maybe it is because the programs are too categorical. We will let you merge them and put them into a flexible program. But if you take the money under this scenario, you have to prove there has been academic achievement by low-income kids; that the gap between low- income kids and kids who are not low-income is closing--not by reducing the abilities of the higher income kids or the average children in the school system but by actually improving the capability of the low- income child. Another suggestion we made was called portability, where we said that the low-income child in a failing school should not have to stay in that school; They should be able to move to another public school system, and the dollars that are allocated for the purpose of trying to help that child out should follow the child to the different school. That is called portability. The reason we suggested that is that the present title I program is structured so the money goes to the administrators and the schools; it doesn't go to the kids. In fact, in cities such as Philadelphia, if you aren't in a school where 70 percent of the kids are low income, you get no dollars from title I. So maybe if you have a low-income child attending a school where, say, 50 percent of the kids are low income, that school will get no title I money. That is true in a lot of different cities across this country. In fact, there is a threshold of 35 percent, I think, where, if you are in a school with only 35 percent low-income kids, that school absolutely gets no money. Other cities have adjusted that. In Philadelphia, as I said, it is up to 70 percent. The practical effect, under the law as presently structured, is that a lot of the dollars that should be going to children are not going to them. A lot of the low-income kids who should be getting assistance dollars for tutorial help or special needs help are not getting them; those dollars don't flow to that child. So we end up with a system where the dollars flow to the school and the administrators but not to the children. We suggested that we actually have the dollars go with the child, and if the child goes from school to school--or if they decide to do so and their parents want to get involved and make that decision--let the dollars that are supposed to support the child also go from school to school. We have put forward a whole lot of ideas. Those are only some of them. We also have something called ``choice'' for public schools, where parents will be able to move their children from school to school. We have the Teacher Empowerment Act, which affects the title I kids, which comes out of the ESEA bill, to try to improve teacher capability. We have a whole set of ideas to make title I work better. That is the bottom line. What the Senator from Minnesota has suggested is that in a program that has already spent $120 billion over 30 years and has produced negative results in the area of academic achievement for children, it should today arbitrarily get an additional $10 billion. In this bill, we already increase that funding significantly. But this $10 billion should be on top of what is already in title I. Unfortunately, what would happen is the same thing that has happened to the $120 billion. It would end up being spent and going to bureaucracy and going into school systems. It would not necessarily end up giving children a better education--especially low-income children-- because we have already proven fairly definitively that the present system isn't doing that. So rather than breaking the budget by adding $10 billion which is not offset--and it is subject to a budget point of order, by the way--what we should do is reform title I and reform the ESEA bill. We tried to do that. We brought the bill to the floor, and, unfortunately, a number of Senators wanted to put extraneous matter on it, and, as a result, it got all balled up and wasn't able to be moved. But the point here is that until we get fundamental reform of title I and until we get fundamental reform under the new ESEA authorization, putting another $10 billion into this system is not going to help. Therefore, I oppose this, first, on the budgetary grounds that it is not offset and therefore is a $10 billion increase that has no way to be paid for; second, on the grounds that it probably won't accomplish what the sponsor would like to accomplish, which is to improve the achievement of low-income kids. Until we require that low-income kids' academic achievement goes up for the dollars we are spending on them and put in place systems that are going to give the local school districts the capacity of accomplishing that and to give them the flexibility of Straight A's, or portability, or the parents the chance to participate through public school choice, there is really no point in making this type of huge increase in funding in this program--especially on top of the fact that this committee has already significantly increased funding for this program in this bill. Mr. President, I reserve my time.