Ted Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, if the purpose of the amendment of the Senator from Texas is to permit separate classrooms for different genders, you can already do that. We already have it. So there is no purpose in this. If the purpose is to set up schools which are separate and allegedly providing, as the amendment says, ``comparable,'' all you have to do is look at the court opinions and what ``comparable'' means, and it fails to meet the constitutional standard in terms of real equality. We don't have to learn in this country again that, when you have either minorities in separate facilities or women in separate facilities, it is second-level education or treatment. We can debate that at another time. That is the history. If you just want to have separate classrooms, you can already have them, and it is constitutional. There is a much more sinister and real issue of constitutionality that is raised by this. We virtually had no hearings. If you don't want to undermine the whole movement of trying to get equal treatment for women in the classrooms and education, vote in opposition to the amendment of the Senator from Texas.

Mr. KENNEDY. That is rather unusual. I will be glad to follow. Usually those who propose it make the case for it; those opposed to it speak in opposition. So I will reserve the time and wait until those who favor the issue speak in favor of it.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I understand, under the rules, we have a brief time for explanation of the amendment and in opposition. Two minutes. Are those who favor the amendment going to speak? Because I would like to speak briefly in opposition.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the issue that is before the Senate now is whether we are going to take the $1.6 billion and use it in such a way that is going to effectively help and assist the private schools-- because that is where the majority of the money is going to be invested--or whether we are prepared to invest that money to increase the total number of teachers. Again, Mr. President, the legislation that we have before us this morning will provide $1.6 billion. We have to decide whether we are going to use that money to create an IRA which will be primarily used to support private schools, or whether we will take that $1.6 billion and use to it create more teachers across this country. If we use the $1.6 billion, we will provide 100,000 new schoolteachers for the public schools across this Nation. It is estimated that we are going to need 2 million new high school teachers. This will at least provide 100,000. It seems to me that if we are interested in academic achievement and accomplishment and we support our public schools, then getting highly qualified teachers to invest in those schools is the way to go. That is what this amendment does. It takes the $1.6 billion and uses it to create 100,000 more schoolteachers rather than to use it to create additional funds to support private schools. We have a modest program in our higher education bill that will provide $200 million for 5 years, which is $40 million a year. That is bipartisan. I support it. But it is not enough. We have a major opportunity now to do something significantly for the public schools, and that is to increase the number of qualified teachers who will serve in our public schools.

Mr. KENNEDY. We cannot stand by and let this regressive tax policy pass to help private schools at the expense of public schools. Parents across the country want real solutions, not token gestures in the name of education. We should not waste $1.5 billion of public tax dollars on a do-nothing tax break program. So I hope my colleagues will join us in opposing this bill. We should do all we can to help the public schools and not abandon them. Finally, I just want to say that we will be under the close timeframe this afternoon, but I want to just add my strong support again to Senator Moseley-Braun's substitute for the Coverdell bill. It is well- designed to help communities across the country to modernize, repair, and expand their school facilities. Schools across the Nation face the serious problem of overcrowding. Antiquated facilities are suffering from physical decay and are not equipped to handle the needs of modern education. Across the country, 14 million children, in a third of the Nation's schools, are learning in substandard buildings. Half the schools have at least one unsatisfactory environmental condition. It would take over $100 billion just to repair the existing facilities. It is difficult enough to teach or learn in dilapidated classrooms but now, because of escalating enrollments, classrooms are increasingly overcrowded. The Nation will need 6,000 new schools in the next few years just to maintain the current class size given the expansion of the number of children who will be going to our schools. Democrats have made this a top priority to see that America has the best education system in the world. Providing safe and adequate school facilities is an important step towards meeting that goal. So, Mr. President, I hope that our Members will go and support the excellent amendment of the Senator from Illinois this afternoon and that it will be successful. It is far preferable to just providing a tax break for individuals who are going to use that to support the private schools.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment to increase the nation's supply of qualified teachers. Investing in teachers is an investment in our children, an investment in the future, and an investment in America. If students in communities across the country are to be prepared to compete in the global marketplace, we must attract and retain the best and the brightest teachers. We know that having a qualified teacher in the classroom is one of the most important influences on a child's academic success. Yet too many schools are already understaffed. During the next decade, rising student enrollments and massive teacher retirements mean that the nation will need to hire 2 million new teachers. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, between one-third and one- half of all elementary and secondary school teachers are 45 years old or older. The national average age of teachers is 43 years old. The average age of Massachusetts teachers is 46 years old--tying the District of Columbia for having the oldest teachers in the Nation. Boston alone expects almost half of the city's teachers to retire over the next decade. In addition, Boston already has acute teacher shortages in areas such as bilingual education and high school science. At the same time, Boston's student enrollment is growing by 900 students a year. The teacher shortage has forced school districts to hire more than 50,000 under-prepared teachers each year, and to ask certified teachers to teach outside their area of expertise. One in four new teachers does not fully meet state certification requirements. We need to do more--much more--to assure that quality teachers are available for each and every child and classroom. This amendment provides for the forgiveness of federal student loans as an incentive to college students to become teachers. We know that qualified young men and women can often make more money in private industry. Many of them, burdened with heavy undergraduate and graduate debts from student loans, refuse to even consider teaching as their career. Reducing the burden of their debt can be a significant incentive to encourage them to become teachers, and to agree to teach in areas where the need is greatest. Attracting more qualified teachers to the teaching field over the next ten years will help to address teacher shortages across the country and improve student achievement. This amendment will move us closer to that goal. The Labor Committee has recommended a similar provision as part of the Higher Education Act Amendment. But it is entirely appropriate to consider this here as part of the pending bill as well. Our goal is to recruit 100,000 additional teachers over the next 10 years, especially in high-need subjects such as math and science. We should be doing all we can to encourage good students to become good teachers. It is one of our highest priorities in education. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment to help us meet that goal.

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield myself 2 more minutes.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I urge the Senate to oppose the anti- education Republican tax bill. Improving education can and must be a top priority for Congress and the Nation, but this Republican bill flunks the test. They call it the A+ bill, but it is anti-education and deserves an F. This Republican bill and its proposed Republican amendments are bad tax policy and bad education policy, and it clearly deserves the veto that President Clinton has pledged to give it. It is the Nation's public schools that need help. So what do our Republican friends do? They propose legislation to aid private schools. That makes no sense at all. Our goal is to strengthen public schools, not abandon them. Our goal is to help all children get a good education, not just the ones with wealthy parents. It is clear that our Republican friends are no friends of public schools. They have an anti- education agenda. They want tax breaks for the wealthy who send their children to private schools. The underlying bill uses tax breaks to subsidize parents to send their children to private schools, and it is a serious mistake. It diverts scarce resources away from public schools that have the greatest need. The regressive Republican tax bill does nothing to improve public schools--it does nothing to improve public schools. It does nothing to address the serious need of public schools to build new facilities and repair the existing crumbling facilities. This afternoon, we will have the excellent amendment of the Senator from Illinois, Carol Moseley-Braun, who has really been the leader in this body and in the country in recognizing the challenges that so many of our schools are facing. They are old and crumbling, and we need to modernize them. It is a powerful amendment because the amendment says we are prepared to put resources to reconstruct our schools, but it also has a subliminal message, and that is that we want our children to go into the best facilities. If we say to the young people of this Nation that education is a priority, and day after day they go to dilapidated schools or schools that have leaky ceilings or the windows are broken or they have inadequate facilities, we are sending a message to children that they are not a priority in this country and that education is not a priority. When we ask our children to spend the time to do the hard and difficult work to master subject matters, they have to really wonder whether the message that is coming from an older generation has much merit. That is why the amendment of Senator Carol Moseley-Braun is so important and why I think all of us are very hopeful that we can attain the objectives of that amendment and see that amendment approved. I know she will have an opportunity to go into very considerable detail about the General Accounting Office study of the schools across the Nation. It estimates that $110 billion is needed to invest in our schools in order to bring them up to satisfactory condition. Her amendment is much more modest, but it is an important amendment, and it is one that deserves the support of all of us who are interested in making sure that at least the physical facilities are going to be first rate for the future generations of children. It just makes common sense. In many of our communities, particularly older communities, whether it is in urban areas or rural communities, they just don't have the wherewithal to do that. But the amendment of the Senator from Illinois, Carol Moseley-Braun, provides some help and assistance in providing interest-free loans to those communities so that they can themselves make the judgment, make the determination, but they will get some help and assistance in terms of borrowing those funds interest free. It makes a great deal of sense. I think we will have an alternative and an opportunity to say whether that amendment is really where we want to go or, on the other hand, if we want to continue with the Republican proposal that will provide just some tax benefits for a certain group of Americans who are going to use those tax benefits to benefit children attending the private schools. That is going to be a very, very important debate and one where I hope our colleagues will find compelling reasons to support that amendment. Second, Mr. President, the underlying Coverdell proposal does nothing to reduce the class size in our schools. I don't know how many more hearings we have to have in our education committee and how many other examinations of what is happening in a number of different States--in Kentucky and in many other communities across this country--to understand that when you have too many children in the class-- you may have teachers who are able to handle it and do it very well, and we take our hats off to them--but when you are talking about having classes with 30 students, 25 students, 20 students, you are talking about an enormous demand on the teacher and also inappropriate lack of attention for the students. We will also have an opportunity to vote on that later in the course of this debate. That can make a major difference in helping and assisting local communities in having reduced class sizes. That, I think, is a higher priority than, again, providing the tax benefits for those who want to use those for private schools. This underlying proposal does nothing to provide qualified teachers in more classrooms across the Nation. We had an opportunity to address that briefly in our debate earlier today. It was turned down. I welcome the fact that we had 41 Senators who supported our proposal that said, if we are going to spend $1.6 billion in education, let us make the decision that we want to invest it in more teachers for the 4 million additional children who are going to be attending our public school system, to help meet the gap, which we recognize is 2 million teachers that we are going to need for our public schools over the next 10 years; let us at least have 100,000 new, well-qualified teachers to teach in those schools. That is a preferable way of spending $1.6 billion rather than, again, spending this as a tax break, as a new entitlement--a new entitlement program--that is going to benefit, again, those who send their children to private schools. It does nothing in this underlying amendment to help children reach high academic standards. I don't, again, know how many hours of hearings we have to have to say that children respond best when they are challenged. Most of us as human beings do. Our Nation does. It always has at a time of its greatest need. We should challenge children to raise the bar, rather than teaching down to them. We should create higher academic standards. We ought to be doing that. There is nothing in this legislation that will do anything like that for the public schools in this country. It does nothing to provide afterschool activities to keep kids off the street, away from drugs, and out of trouble. We know the value of afterschool programs. We have some 5 million children in our country who this afternoon at 2 or 2:30 will go home to empty houses. They will be told by their parents, ``Look, maybe have a little snack, and if you have to watch television, watch television on X station; try and get your homework done.'' But we know what happens in those circumstances. Too many of those children who are left alone, unsupervised, more often than not will find that the temptations of getting into trouble are increased dramatically. This is not just a diversion from education, but it also has an important impact in terms of crime in our local communities. A city that has made about as much progress as any city in this country is my city of Boston. It has gone 2 years and 4 months without a single youth homicide. And if you ask Paul Evans, who is the commissioner of the police department in Boston, MA, he will say, yes, dealing in an appropriate way with gangs, that is No. 1. No. 2, tracing various weapons that are used in gangs. But No. 3, afterschool programs. Afterschool programs keep kids out of trouble. That is very, very important. Is there anything with the $1.6 billion that is being recommended on the floor of the U.S. Senate to try to develop programs that we know are tried and tested, that will provide an incentive for children to go to various community centers, to work with volunteers? The number of young people who are volunteering is increasing every single day to help children with their homework so that when they do go home and they see their parents, who have been working hard all day, they will have quality time with their parents rather than hearing from their parents, ``Well, you ought to go upstairs and make sure you get your homework done.'' This is enormously important, and it is recognized by educators and those who are concerned about law enforcement across this country. There isn't a nickel in this program--not a nickel in this program--to try to address that particular issue. So, Mr. President, we know where these benefits are going to go. They are going to go to the individuals who are going to invest those benefits in the private schools rather than investing in our public schools. The challenge is clear. We must do all we can to improve teaching and learning for all of the students across the country. We must continue to support efforts to raise academic standards. We must test students early so we know where they need help in time to make that help effective. We must provide better training for current and new teachers so they are well-prepared to teach to higher standards. We must reduce class size to help students obtain the individual attention they need. We must provide afterschool programs to make constructive alternatives available to students. We must provide greater resources to modernize and expand the Nation's school buildings to meet the urgent needs of schools for up-to-date facilities. We cannot stand by and let regressive tax policy pass to help private schools at the expense of the public schools. In those items that I have just mentioned, every superintendent of schools, every schoolteacher, every department of education across this country would agree with those essential parts of a sound education program to help and assist the public schools in this country. Where in that list do we find ``Let's have tax breaks. Let's have the creation of a new entitlement. Let's create a new entitlement that is basically going to be used in order to support the private schools in this country''? It makes no sense.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself 10 minutes.

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

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I join in expressing my sadness over the death of our former colleague, Senator Terry Sanford, and I commend the Senator from North Carolina for his eloquent statement. Senator Sanford was an extraordinary leader of many talents. He was an outstanding Member of this body, an outstanding educator, and an outstanding Governor of North Carolina. Many of us had the privilege of serving with him in the Senate and of knowing him personally. We admired his great ability, his unusual eloquence, and his abiding commitment to the people of North Carolina and the nation. In a sense, I inherited Terry Sanford from President Kennedy. He was one of the first Southern leaders to endorse my brother for President in the 1960 campaign. My brother had visited North Carolina as a Senator, and had been very impressed by Terry Sanford. I know the very high regard that my brother had for him as a voice of the New South, as a champion of education, and as a leader who understood the importance of bringing people together. In July 1960, at a critical moment leading up to the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, Terry Sanford endorsed my brother and then seconded my brother's nomination for President. It made an enormous difference. In a very real sense, Governor Sanford helped to lay the foundation for my brother's New Frontier. Later, after serving with great distinction as Governor, Terry Sanford became a President himself--of Duke University, where he served for 16 years, and won world-wide renown as one of the pre-eminent educators of the century. He won election to the United States Senate in 1986. All of us on both sides of the aisle held him in great respect--and in great affection as well. In so many ways, Terry Sanford was a Senator's Senator. He was fair-minded and warm-hearted, and he knew the issues well. Above all, he impressed us with the power of his commitment, the eloquence of his words, the remarkable moral authority of his leadership, and his dedication to excellence in all aspects of public service. We admired him for his statesmanship, and we loved him for his friendship. We will miss him very much. He was truly a profile in courage for our time. I ask unanimous consent that an article from the New York Times of April 19 on Senator Sanford may be printed in the Record.

Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the amendment, which hopefully we will have more of an opportunity to debate later this week, deals with meeting the demand for qualified teachers in this country. We are seeing an expansion of the number of students in our elementary- secondary education. This amendment would provide for an increase of 100,000 schoolteachers a year for the next 10 years. It would effectively meet half of the Nation's requirements to do so. There are very compelling reasons to support this amendment if we are going to be serious about ensuring the adequacy of the academic achievement and accomplishment for those students who are attending our public schools. We have devised a way of doing this through a loan forgiveness program that is taking the concept, for example, of the National Health Service Corps--which is a resounding success. Doctors serve in underserved areas and see a diminution of their debt with the years of service in the Health Service Corps. Given the need that we have for teachers to serve in our schools, this would provide an incentive for those who have indebtedness and would like to work as schoolteachers but are unable to do so because they are required to go to other jobs that may have more financial reward although they would prefer to work in the schools. This provides the means for them to do so. I plan to speak of that at greater length tomorrow or the next day and will take the opportunity to do so at that time, when the leadership works out the scheduling of the particular amendments. Mr. President, given the shortage of time, I just want to come back to some rather fundamental and basic issues that are involved in this debate. When all is said and done and when all the explanations are made, I think it is appropriate that we find out who are going to be the winners and who are going to be the losers. It is always interesting to listen to our colleagues explain what they hope might be achieved by the amendment, and then also examine what, in fact, will be achieved by this amendment and who will benefit from this particular amendment. As we had seen during our earlier debate and discussion on the Coverdell amendment, there are some very important winners and important losers. But the fact remains that, according to the Joint Tax Committee--which is neither a Republican committee nor a Democratic committee, but serves to provide technical information on the impact of a tax proposal to the membership, that the bill gives the benefit to those going to the private schools. At the present time, nationwide, 93 percent of American families send their children to the public schools, 7 percent to the private schools. We certainly know the important role private schools have in our society. But with scarce resources we have to ask the question whether we want to use scarce resources to add to the private schools or to the public schools. I do not believe we should abandon the public school system in this country. I think we have a responsibility to the public schools. If we have scarce resources, we ought to find ways of targeting scarce resources in ways that can be academically important and enhance the ability of our children to make progress in the public schools. So, with the analysis that was done by the Joint Tax Committee, they indicated where the money would go. Mr. President, 48 percent of the tax benefit would go to families that send their children to the public schools and 52 percent would go to families that send them to the private schools. Then, if you see that only 7 percent of Americans go to private schools, you see that a majority of the benefit of this proposal will go to a relatively small number of families who are sending their children to the private schools. That is not what the Senator from Massachusetts is saying; that is what the Joint Tax Committee tells us. We have a certain amount of resources that will be collected through the tax system. When they are collected, they will be disposed of--at least according to the Joint Tax Committee estimate--in this way. There are better ways to spend public tax dollars. An after-school program, could benefit the 5 million children who left school just about a half-hour ago, and will go home without any supervision. Maybe we should have the kinds of programs that we have seen that are effective, which provide some opportunity for those children to go to after-school programs, where they are able to work with their homework and get that homework done so when they finally go back home to their parents, one or two of whom may be working, that they can have quality time with their parents rather than having the parents telling them you better go upstairs and get your homework done. This is really a basic, fundamental issue, whether we have sufficient funds that are available to the Congress where we want to try to provide this kind of benefit to a relatively small group of parents. I do not think that we do. I have heard a lot from our colleagues on the other side talking about entitlements. There was a great debate about entitlements here on the floor of the U.S. Senate over the last 3 or 4 years. This basically is a new entitlement. This is a new entitlement by our Republican friends. We heard the criticisms of so many entitlements over the past. Now we have the creation of a new entitlement. Once this is passed and goes into the Internal Revenue Code, it will be out there available to anyone who would be able to develop this kind of an IRA. That effectively is an entitlement. But it is an entitlement that is going to benefit a relatively small group of families who are going to be using those resources primarily in the private schools. There may be those who feel that is the way we ought to go. But I think you will find here on our side, on the Democratic side, a range of different proposals that say we will not abandon our public schools in this country. We think they need modernization, they need some help and assistance in the construction program. We are very creative. An important, significant amendment will be offered by the Senator from Illinois, Carol Moseley-Braun. There will be programs that will say we ought to have smaller class sizes. That has been demonstrated to improve academics for children. That amendment will be offered by Senator Murray. We ought to support public schools. The benefit of those programs go to all of those parents whose children are going to the public schools. That is a very important, basic difference. It is targeted programs that can really make a difference in enhancing academic achievement and accomplishment. We will have an opportunity, as well, to debate concepts such as that proposed by the Senator from the State of Washington, Senator Gorton, that block grants education programs, undermining targeting of scarce resources, and undermining accountability. We will have a chance to debate those.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I understand that the amendment of the Senator from Ohio is pending. Am I correct?

Mr. KENNEDY. As I also understand, having been recognized, I can also speak on the bill itself. Am I correct?

Mr. KENNEDY. As I understand, I can temporarily set aside the pending amendment.

Mr. KENNEDY. I ask unanimous consent to temporarily set it aside.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask that the time be divided equally.

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

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask that the amendment that is pending be temporarily set aside.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I understand it, now there is 15 minutes for the proponents of the amendment; is that correct?

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield myself 10 minutes. I ask unanimous consent Connie Garner, a legislative fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges during debate on the Coverdell tax bill.

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield myself 1 more minute. We will have a chance as well to debate whether we will uphold the civil right of children with disabilities. That is going to be a very important debate. But I hope, as we are starting off on this Monday, and as we are going through this debate over the period of the next 4 or 5 days, to understand what is really the issue. With the amount of funds that are going to be made available under this program, which is effectively a new entitlement program, $1.6 billion, are we going to say we should use that in such a way that it is going to benefit a small number of families who are going to primarily use these funds for private schools? Or are we going to say, with scarce resources, we ought to use that money in order to benefit the large number of children who are going to the public school systems and we ought to use that in an effective and creative way, to make sure that children who are going to our public school systems are going to get a good education in safe, modern schools? Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.