Jim Jeffords

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. We are waiting right now for the first amendment which is in order, so I cannot yield this time.

Mr. JEFFORDS. All right, the Senator will have that time, and I do yield to the Senator an additional 5 minutes.

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

Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield to the Senator from Maine 20 minutes.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I will keep control of time, but I am pleased to do as my colleague wishes, and I yield 5 minutes to Senator Reed.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield to the Senator from Minnesota.

Mr. JEFFORDS. We are allowing time for that purpose. We understand the Senator's concerns, and they will be accommodated. I yield to the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I will.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I thank the Senator. I agree with him. I yield to the Senator from Maine.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maine for a wonderful effort in making sure this bill will succeed. I commend her on it. I yield myself such time as I may consume for purposes of supporting the amendment. At a time when we are sending tourists into space, cloning animals, and integrating computers into every facet of our lives, reading continues to be one of the most important skills we learn in our lifetime. In fact, in this information age, reading has never been more important. There are two programs in this legislation that have not received as much attention as some of the other provisions. Yet, these programs may be the most important parts of the bill. Because--while reading is the gateway skill to further learning, academic achievement, and success in the world--millions of school-age children are not learning to read well enough. Over the past two days, several Members have talked about how too many of our children are not reading well. I have some charts that display just how serious the problem is, and what an emergency it is for our county. Chart 1 gives an overall view. It is so discouraging, I want to take a few moments to let everyone absorb the contents of it. What we are looking at here is the reading results for fourth graders from the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress. This is a nationally representative study carried out by the Department of Education. The results from the assessment are divided into four categories: Below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced. The proficient level is the performance expected of students at this grade level. That is where every child in America should be. As you can see from the bar on the far left, 68 percent of all students are reading below proficiency in the fourth grade--68 percent are below proficiency in the fourth grade. A little less than 40 percent have not attained the basic level. That means 40 percent are really seriously failing, which means they have not mastered even the rudimentary skills of reading. This is inexcusable. I will point out some other deficiencies in our educational system. We are the only Nation of the industrialized world that does not provide education paid for by the public sector for 3- and 4-year-olds. I point that out because that percentage of 40 percent is about the percentage of those who get no help in the 3- and 4-year level. That is our country. No other industrialized nation has that kind of a record. As you look down the different bars on the chart, you can see that this overall performance actually masks the performance of the subgroups identified in the report. For example, only 12 percent of black students in the fourth grade are reading at the proficient level. Now I want to point out the deficiency of our Head Start Program. We will be holding hearings on that later this year. The Head Start Program is designed to give custodial care and help and nurturing to young children. There is little or no effective educational part of that program. Therefore, we have to examine what we can do and note that the only program we have that really is in the area of help really does not provide the kind of educational help that is necessary. Also, nearly 60 percent of Hispanic children are reading below the basic level. Let us now turn to chart 2. If we look at the next chart, we can see that poverty, which cuts across all the groups on the previous chart, predicts a great deal of the low performance. Again, we have the same problem here with respect to percentages, and we find that our Nation, unlike any other industrialized nation, does not provide help to the young children, the preschoolers. ``Eligibility for free and reduced lunch'' is based on the income of a student's parents. As you can see, children living in families near or below the poverty line are much more likely to be reading at the basic or below-basic level. Overall, these numbers have not changed over the past decade. They have not changed over the past decade. That means in the last 10 years we have seen no improvement. I serve on the Goals panel, and I have been there since it was initiated in 1990. We have not seen any significant change in the levels of education since that time, when we created the Goals panel to see whether we were improving. One of the most noticeable changes in the data over time has been a decline in the scores for the lowest performing 10 percent. This means that those students who are furthest behind have been losing ground. That is totally inexcusable for this Nation. What is so alarming about these statistics is that by the fourth grade, students are expected to have learned how to read well. Increasingly, they must read in order to learn about academic matter. The emphasis on teaching reading declines, and the opportunities to make up lost ground often disappear. There is clearly a relationship between the low reading scores for these groups of students, their low academic achievement in later grades, and the high rate of dropping out of school. I can point to another study done by the Glenn Commission and also the stories we have with respect to improving in math. Even though our children, somehow, are average with respect to industrialized nations in the fourth grade in math, from that point, they slip down until they are last in the world by the time they graduate from high school. That is one of the most serious problems from which our Nation suffers. Again, it gets back to the basics of reading as well as, of course, understanding math. Of course, it should be no surprise that these students, when they leave school, become adults with low levels of literacy. For example, in 1993 the National Adult Literacy Survey found that 20 percent of all adults--or more than 40 million Americans--scored at the lowest level of literacy on the assessment. Finally, to bring this full circle, a recent report from the Department of Education, ``The Kindergarten Year,'' found that the children of parents with less high school education arrived at kindergarten with far fewer language and literacy skills than their peers who had better educated parents. In fact, when these children left kindergarten, they scored lower on these skills than when their higher performing peers entered kindergarten. This is the current situation: Some young children fall behind their peers before they even enter school; schools improve most students' reading skills, but they do not close the gap; these students are much more likely to fail in school and, even worse, to drop out later on; children of parents who themselves had difficulty learning to read, and who did poorly in school, are more likely to have reading difficulties. So you can see what we have is a cycle of low literacy in this country. Now you can see why I think the Reading First Program and its companion, Early Learning First, which gets down to the 3- and 4-year- olds, preschool-age children, are perhaps the most important parts of this legislation that we will be passing. I should add that the Even Start Family Literacy Program is also being reauthorized by S. 1. It is another important piece of our national literacy effort. That is working with both the parents and the children at the same time to make sure the family becomes literate together. I commend the President for his leadership in proposing these reading programs and asking for funds to make them a reality. He provided similar leadership on this issue as Governor of Texas, with good results in Texas. I praise the President for bringing that experience to this body so that all of the country may share from it. I also want to mention our First Lady, Laura Bush, who I know is also very interested. I have been with her at times when she has demonstrated that. She is deeply involved in the reading issue. She provided leadership on reading and literacy as the first lady of Texas and has taken special interest in the development of language and literacy skills in preschool-age children, as reflected in the Early Reading First initiative. I believe very strongly that the only way we can close the gap between better performing and lower performing children in our own country and between American students and those in other industrialized nations is to: Provide more opportunities for learning in the preschool years; second, improve instruction in our schools and give adults an opportunity to improve their own literacy skills. I hope my colleagues will support these important programs--Reading First, Early Reading First, and Even Start Programs--in the overall legislation we are considering today. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I have no objection.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent the time under the quorum call be evenly divided.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding. I commend him for his statement. As we all know, there is nothing more crucial in this bill than to make sure we have the resources available to help the schools and communities meet the demands that will be placed upon them by the required standards. At present, those resources are not there. I correct the Senator's statement on one matter. We do not fund 40 percent of the cost of the disabled child. We fund it at 40 percent of the cost of the average child. That means we are really far from fully funding the cost of a child with disabilities. Keep that in mind. What we are asking for is 40 percent of the average child, but that is billions of dollars in shortfall. If one examines this bill and examines the problems in this Nation, what I am concerned about--from the perspective of the President--is if we do not have the resources that are necessary to bring about the changes in our schools to have these young people meet the standards which are going to be required of them, then this bill is not going to reach its fulfillment. I urge all Members to recognize that if they want to help the President's goals that are set forth in this bill, they are going to need the resources. Fully funding IDEA will be a big step forward. Forty percent of the cost of an average child is far less than the cost of a disabled child. This is what is draining the money out of our school systems. This is what is putting pressure on property taxes in this Nation, to the point that, as in my State and all across this country, more and more votes are going against additional resources for the schools because we do not fund that 40 percent that we promised. If we do fund it, then many of the young people who presently will not be helped educationally or because of disabilities will be helped. The President's goal will not be reached if we do not provide the necessary funds. I strongly support the Harkin-Hagel amendment. I want to make sure everybody understands that if we do not do this, this bill is going to have a very difficult time reaching the goals which the President desires.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I rise today to join Senator Kennedy in congratulating Senators Hagel and Harkin on their amendment with respect to IDEA. This amendment will guarantee America's 16,000 school districts a long overdue increase in special education funding. The amendment proposes to fully fund part B of the IDEA over the next 6 years. One of my first legislative tasks, when I was a freshman Congressman in 1975, was to work on the first federal legislation to guarantee a free and appropriate public education for children with disabilities. Public Law 94-142, later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, was passed in response to numerous court decisions involving lawsuits against a majority of the states, and growing concerns about the unconstitutional treatment of children with disabilities. In passing this legislation, it was Congress' intent to define a state's obligation to students with disabilities residing in the State. In crafting Public Law 94-142, Congress looked at the national average per pupil expenditure and estimated that it would cost approximately twice as much to educate children with disabilities as it would to educate other children. At that time, 26 years ago, Congress pledged to assist states and localities in meeting the needs of students with disabilities by providing federal funding to cover 40 percent of the average student cost. Although numerous studies conducted since 1975 have verified that it costs at least twice as much to educate children with disabilities, Congress has never provided more than 14.9 percent of the average per pupil expenditure. If we were funding 40 percent of the costs educating students as promised in 1975, we would have appropriated $17 billion for Part B of IDEA for fiscal year 2001. The $6.3 billion that we did appropriate for fiscal year 2001 falls far short of that commitment. While I commend Congress for increasing the appropriation for Part B of IDEA over the years since 1996, it frustrates me to no end that we still fall so far short of meeting our 26 year old commitment to fund out 40% of the costs. However, this amendment will have a far greater impact than simply helping students with disabilities. With the Federal Government's failure to live up to its obligation under IDEA, State and local governments have been forced to incur almost all of the additional costs associated with educating children with disabilities and putting undue stress on such things as property taxes. Money that might have been directed to additional training for teachers, to hiring new teachers, to increasing salaries to retain high quality teachers, or to repairing schools, has instead gone to meeting part of the Federal Government's obligation under IDEA. This amendment provides increased flexibility to states and localities by modifying the provisions that were included in the 1997 reauthorization of IDEA which permit a local education agency to treat up to 20 percent of the increase in the appropriation over the preceding fiscal year's appropriation as local funds. Currently, a State or locality must maintain their share of the annual special education spending levels regardless of the amount of the Federal contribution. Our amendment would give local education agencies the flexibility to use local funds in an amount up to 55 percent of the increased funding over the fiscal year 2001 appropriation for other local needs. In passing this amendment, we will be increasing our Federal commitment to meeting the needs of students with disabilities, and we will be giving local communities the flexibility to use local tax dollars that are currently meeting the Federal Government obligation for special education, for other local purposes and to reduce the stress on property taxes. While I think the reforms proposed in the BEST Act are critical to overall reform in our education system, I feel it is unfair for us to demand more of state and local educators when we have failed so badly in meeting our obligation to assist in funding special education. Without question, we need to dramatically improve the education we provide to all of our children. Some of this will come through the increased accountability and flexibility we provide in the BEST Act. Forty percent of our 4th grade students are not proficient in reading. Our 12th grade students come in near the bottom of international exams in mathematics and science. The crisis we face in math and science was recently underscored by the work of the Glenn Commission. Many of its recommendations, which were also supported by President Bush, have been incorporated in the BEST Act. But training and retaining high quality math and science teachers requires money, especially when schools are competing in a tight market for their skills. Turning our schools around will not be easy, and it cannot be done on the cheap. This amendment to fully fund IDEA should help us achieve the reform we all seek. We owe our children nothing less. Increasing special education funding is a top priority for many disability groups, for teachers, for school boards throughout the country, for local education agencies, for governors, and for children with disabilities and their families. I have a petition from every school board in my State. Vermont schools have made it clear to me again and again that their number one priority is to fully fund IDEA. These petitions serve as a sobering reminder of my responsibility to the children, and families, and the schools in my State. I have no doubt that each and every one of us has heard similar messages from your state education agencies, local education agencies, and school boards, and from the families of children with disabilities. This amendment is a win-win for everyone. Children with disabilities will get the services they need. There will be more money in local school districts to hire personnel and to train or retrain personnel to work with children with disabilities. Schools will be able to provide more support to general education teachers who have children with disabilities in their classrooms. More money will be freed up for other purposes such as general education reform initiatives chosen by local communities. School boards will no longer feel as though they are pitting the needs of one group of students against another. Finally, with predictable, substantial increases in IDEA funds and expanded flexibility, school districts will be better able to undertake thoughtful planning. Over the last few months, I have heard references to the need to fully fund special education almost every day that Congress has been in session. Our country is currently enjoying thoughts of a projected 5.7- trillion-dollar budget surplus over the next ten years. We are discussing over a trillion dollar tax cut. The presence of this large surplus and the possibility of providing substantial tax cuts provides Congress with the unprecedented opportunity to fulfill the commitment that Congress made 26 years ago in passing P.L. 94-142. If not now, when? The time for rhetoric is passed. The time to act is now. I'm glad the Senate has agreed to fully fund IDEA and make good on the promise we made over 26 years ago. I thank my colleagues for their support of this amendment.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield the Senator 10 minutes.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the Collins amendment.

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

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk.

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

Mr. JEFFORDS. I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. JEFFORDS. That is right. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, my amendment will establish the Federal Government as a full partner in the assessments that are required under this bill. Earlier today, the Senate went on record, after 26 years, to fulfill its responsibility under IDEA. My amendment will ensure we do the same on testing, only we do it today, not 26 years later. If we want the States to undertake these extensive testing requirements, we should be willing to pay for them. Each Senator I have spoken to supports the thrust of this amendment--that we avoid creating yet another unfunded mandate, especially at a time when we are asking more and more of our schools. Good tests are not cheap. They must be aligned with the State's standard. They should measure higher order thinking, and they should constantly be improved. This bill will not just require testing in reading and math but will also require standards in history and science and an assessment later on in science. My amendment calls for close to $400 million in spending each and every year to help pay for the cost of developing and implementing assessments. If the money is not forthcoming, the State's obligation will be suspended until Congress meets its obligation. The exact cost of testing cannot be known. I can tell my colleagues with confidence that this amendment will cover the great majority of those costs. I urge my colleagues to give me their support. I yield the floor to the Senator from Maine.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I know of no other Senator who desires to participate in the discussion. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield the floor.

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I yield myself 1 minute. This is the Jeffords test trigger amendment. Under the bill, grades 3 through 8 will have to be tested by each State. The Federal Government is supposed to fund the cost of those tests. The amendment merely says if there is no money, there is no test, at least for that year. This is to prevent the States from being placed in a position of having no money and having to administer very expensive tests.