Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I believe I have the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I will first respond, to make this a debate format, to some of the points I heard raised. I also will speak to the second-degree amendment. One of the points that was made is that the focus on teacher merit is important because it leads to retention of teachers. I want to cite the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future, a report that came out in 1996 in which they spelled out the key elements for effective teacher retention: A, organize professional development around standards for teachers and students; B, provide a yearlong inservice internship; C, include mentoring and strong evaluation of teacher skills; and D, offer stable, high-quality professional development. The second-degree amendment is about implementing merit schools programs for rewarding all teachers in schools that improve student achievement for all students, including the lowest achieving students. Over and over, we have been here making sure those students who come from difficult circumstances and do not do as well are the students to whom we pay special attention. B, providing incentives and subsidies for helping teachers gain advanced degrees in academic fields in which the teachers teach; C, implementing rigorous peer review, evaluation, and recertification programs for teachers; And D, providing incentives for highly qualified teachers to teach in the neediest schools. In many ways, what is in the second-degree amendment mirrors what the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future tells us we need to do to have the very best teachers and retain those teachers as well. I speak on behalf of the second-degree amendment. I want to talk about where I strongly dissent from the amendment my colleagues from Michigan and Florida have laid out: the emphasis on reforming teacher tenure systems and the emphasis on establishing teacher compensation systems based on merit and proven performance. Then I will talk about testing teachers periodically in the academic subjects in which they teach. I will talk about each one. I am the first to admit that the tenure system does not always work the way we want it. I am the first to admit there are some teachers, unfortunately, in our schools who do not add to children but subtract. Sometimes they are tenured teachers, and that is when it gets tough. There is a reason for tenure, and the reason for tenure is to make sure teachers are free to express their ideas. Albeit, I taught at the college level, but I am a perfect example of someone who benefited from tenure. First, I had to fight to get it. That is a 20-hour speech. The point is, there is no doubt in my mind that tenure was what gave me the protection to freely express my ideas on campus. When we talk about education, we want students introduced to a variety of ideas, and we do not want teachers put in a position where they do not feel free to express their viewpoint, where they do not feel free to teach the way they believe they should teach, to teach students the way they think they should teach students because they worry about capricious, arbitrary decisions that might be made. I now will talk about compensation based upon merit and then talk about teachers being tested periodically, and to give the example of Denver, CO, I think, raises yet another question. That has to do with this path we are barreling down with all the emphasis on standardized tests. It is unbelievable. We have a trend in the country--and thank goodness people are now starting to look at it--where we are going to measure a student's academic performance on the basis of a single standardized test when all the people who have developed those tests tell us we should never use a single standardized test, and when we have not done what we should do to make sure every student has the same opportunity to do well on those tests. Let me do that parallel with teachers. Let me give an example. I can see how this could very well happen given this proposal. If, for example, how well teachers are doing is based on how well students are doing, which is, in turn, based upon standardized tests given to students at as young an age as 8, if one is teaching in a school in an inner city, if one is teaching in a school in rural America, if one is teaching in a school where these kids come to kindergarten way behind, where they come from poverty homes, where they come from pretty difficult circumstances, and they do not have the resources they need, it could be your students are not going to do as well. Do we then argue the teachers do not show merit? In addition, what kind of tests are we talking about using? The people who have done the professional work on having the very best teachers have said that in addition to having the decent salaries, in addition to putting an end to the bashing of public school teachers, in addition to making sure teachers have the resources with which to work, in addition to making sure we invest in the infrastructure of the schools, that we have the technology programs, that we have a manageable class size, in addition to all that, we want to have good peer evaluation, we want to have mentors, we want to have good programs during the summer, such as the Eisenhower program which has been eliminated in this block grant program which enables teachers of math and science to come together to compare notes and become revitalized and renewed. We want to do all of that. None of that is in this proposal. None of it is in the Republican bill, S. 2. I say to my colleagues, not only does this amendment out here on the floor reflecting S. 2 do precious little to, No. 1, attract the very best into teaching, and, No. 2, to retain the very best in teaching--by the way, we have some of the very best teachers right now in public schools. You know what, colleagues. Here is my challenge. I will tell you one of the ways we can retain good teachers is to stop bashing public school teachers. Some of the harshest critics of public school teachers on the floor of the Senate could not last 1 hour, I say to Senator Schumer, in the classrooms they condemn. When I go into schools and talk to the students--and I am in a school every 2 weeks--I ask them: What do you think makes for good education? The first thing they say is: Good teachers. That is the first thing, even before, I say to Senator Murray, lower class size. Then I ask: What makes for good teachers? And then we get into this discussion about what makes for good teachers. By the way, I never hear students say the really good teachers are the teachers who engage in drill teaching, worksheet learning. They hate it. They say the good teachers are the teachers who fire their imaginations, get them to connect themselves personally to the material they are talking about--none of which is ever reflected in these standardized tests. Then, later on in the discussion--let's say there is an assembly of 600 students--I ask: How many of you are interested in going into public school teaching? I will tell you, I am lucky if it is 5 percent--maybe it is 10 percent--who say they are. This occurs at the very same time we are talking about over the next 10 years needing 2 million more people to go into education to become teachers, at the very same time we all say we care so much about education. Then I ask the students: Why not? I want to tell you, colleagues, when these young people talk about whether or not they are going to go into public school teaching, and why they do not want to go into public school teaching, I guarantee you, they never say the reason they are not going to go into public school teaching to become public school teachers is because they are not going to have these merit tests. They do not say: If there were merit tests, and we would have standardized tests to determine how we are doing to see if we are qualified to teach, then we would be really interested in becoming public school teachers. They say two things discourage them from becoming public school teachers. No. 1 is that salaries are too low. By the way, a lot of women say--they are very honest about it--there was a time when maybe they would have had to go into teaching. They don't have to any longer in terms of opportunities for them. The second thing they say--I think this needs to be said to some of our colleagues--is that they would be disrespected. I say to Senator Murray, who has probably had this discussion in Washington State, they have put more of an emphasis on being disrespected than the salary. They say there is just very little respect. Then I say to them: Wait a minute. You are the students. Are you disrespecting your teachers? They say: Well, you know, on our part, we do not give the teachers the respect they deserve. But it is a problem in the community as well. So I say to my colleagues on the other side, rather than bringing amendments to the floor of the Senate that do not speak to what it is we should do to attract the very best teachers into public school education, what we should do--some of which is in the second-degree amendment that we now present--is put an emphasis on rewarding schools for doing well with the students and providing subsidies to help teachers gain advanced degrees in academic fields--who could argue with that?--and implementing good peer review. That really matters. I say to Senator Murray, we were both teachers. Senator Murray, I think, would agree to having good evaluation and also providing incentives for highly qualified teachers to teach in the neediest schools. I thank my colleagues, Senator Kennedy and Senator Murray, for having that provision in the amendment. That makes a great deal of sense. The Abraham amendment which basically talks about maybe trying to figure out ways of ``reforming'' tenure systems, which I think means getting rid of tenure--let's be clear about what we are talking--and then talks about the teacher compensation systems based upon merit and proven performance, and then right away goes to periodic testing of teachers, is ridiculous. What kind of test are you going to use? Now we are going to have standardized tests of students all over the country. Now we are going to have a single, standardized test for teachers all over the country. It is all going to become educational deadening. It is all going to discourage really talented people from wanting to teach. It is going to lead to drill education. It is going to focus attention away from what we all should be doing to make sure kids do well in school. It does not represent a step forward. So I say to colleagues, I come here as someone who views education as the most important issue--that has been my adult life, education--to speak strongly in support of our second-degree amendment and to speak strongly in opposition to the Abraham-Mack amendment. One final time I have to say this. I want to issue a warning. Albeit, the language is ``may,'' but there is Federal money involved here. I want to, one more time, say that we are, in the name of ``reform,'' talking about standardized testing everywhere. I tell you, we should just listen to the students. I ask every Senator--Democrat and Republican alike--over the next 6 months, to try to spend a good deal of time in the schools in your States. Maybe many of you do. I am not implying the Senator from Michigan does not. I find very little interest in standardized tests as representing a real indication of reform. I find the interest is in the discussion of smaller class size, the discussion of how to get really good teachers, the discussion of really good child care, prekindergarten, and the discussion of the decaying physical infrastructure of schools. I find a lot of the discussion, frankly, about what happens to kids when they go home and what happens to kids before they go to school. I find a lot of the discussion, in the best schools, about how teachers feel free to teach. They team teach. I heard Senator Murray talk about that. It is really very exciting. I would say that is the direction in which we should go, not in this other direction. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague. I reserve my right to the floor and yield to the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I think my colleague from Ohio is going to go next. I am only going to take 5 minutes. I ask unanimous consent that I follow the Senator from Ohio.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask the Senator from Ohio, how long does he intend to speak? However long is fine with me.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask my colleague how long he may be speaking on the floor. It is fine with me however much time he uses.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleague.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will try to respond to the comments of my colleague from Ohio because I like it better when we go back and forth. He is a Senator I certainly respect. I have two points. I want to get back to Senator Murray's point. On the whole general question of the Federal role, let me say to my colleague from Ohio that it is absolutely true that much of K through 12 is at the State level, no question about it. But going back to the history of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--and I have said this three or four times--there is a reason why we have certain streams of money and targeting of programs, especially toward the most vulnerable children, because whereas the Senator from Ohio--and I have no doubt about the Senator's commitment to children, but the fact is, in too many parts of the country the verdict was very harsh at the State and local level. We decided, look, as a national community--and we reflected that--we are going to make sure we make a commitment to the poorest and most vulnerable children. I don't want to see us abandon that commitment. That is what this debate is about. On welfare, with all due respect to the President--and my colleagues quoted the President--we have reduced the rolls by half. Anybody can do that. You just tell people they are off. The question is whether or not we met the goal of the bill, which was to move families from welfare to economic self-sufficiency. Guess what. Just about every single study I know of--and maybe you know of another one--has pointed out that in the vast majority of cases these mothers barely make above minimum wage, and many families have no health care coverage. Families U.S.A. pointed out that we have 675,000 citizens who don't receive any health care coverage any longer because of the welfare reform bill. We had a study from Harvard-Berkeley that in all too many cases--they looked at a million children --because of this welfare bill, children were getting dangerous to inadequate, at best, child care. These are small children. Guess what. We have not made sure that there is good child care. We haven't made sure these families have health care coverage, and the States are sitting on $7 billion. Some States are supplanting that and using it to replace existing State programs and using that money for tax cuts. So we have some reasons to be concerned about how poor children will fare without some kind of Federal Government national commitment to them. That is my first point. My second point has to do with this amendment. I thank Senator Murray from Washington for introducing this amendment. She pointed it out--and I will say it again--that across the country this year--and we did this in a bipartisan way--1.7 million first through third graders now attend classes with an average of 18 students because we were able to provide funding for 29,000 new teachers; 519 of them are in my State of Minnesota. Now, the President's request for 2001 will bring Minnesota over $23 million more. I will say this again. I can give many examples. I will forget all the statistics. My daughter, Marcia, is a Spanish teacher. Hey, I am a Jewish father, so I think she is the greatest teacher in the country; and she is a darn good teacher from what I hear. She told me what it was like when she had 40 students. She teaches at the high school level. Every time I am in a school, which is every 2 weeks in Minnesota, I talk to the students about education. They always talk about good teachers and about respecting teachers. They think teachers are disrespected. We talked about that this morning. They also talk about smaller class sizes. I tell you, it makes all the sense in the world. Talk to people in our States. They know it. With a smaller class size, they know that a teacher can give students the individual attention they need. When you ask students: Who are the teachers you like, they say: They are not just the teachers who teach us the formal material; they are the teachers who get to know us; they are the teachers who relate to us; they are the teachers who we can come and talk to; they are the teachers who can give us special help; they are the teachers who can give us special attention; they are the teachers who know something about what we hope for in our lives. Do you want to know something? There are a lot of young people who cry out for that kind of teacher and cry out for that kind of education. Do you want to know something else? One of the best ways we can get there is through smaller class sizes. Yes, we have said through this amendment, as Democrats who represent people in our States, but I think it should be a bipartisan amendment. We believe it should be a decisive priority for the Senate to say that we are going to make a commitment--most of the funding is at the State level, but with the money we have and what we do to support school districts and to support principals and parents and teachers and students, let's make the best use of the money, and that is exactly what this amendment does. I think this is a great amendment. I think it should receive 99 to 100 votes. Before it is all over, for all I know, it will. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent, after my presentation, Senator Hutchinson follow me. We will rotate. Senator Dodd could not stay. He will be allowed to follow Senator Hutchinson.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I have had a chance to come to the floor the last couple of days. My colleague from Arkansas has been on the floor, as well. We will go back and forth in this discussion. I support some of what my colleague, Senator Kennedy, had to say about the differences between the Democrat proposal now on the floor and the Republican proposal. The differences between our alternative proposal and the Republican bill make a huge difference. I have loved being a Senator. It is quite an honor. I don't think I will ever feel otherwise. I only mean this in the spirit of a twinkle in my eye. Honest to goodness, Washington, DC, and this Congress is the only place I have ever been where people say: Let's hear from the grass roots, the Governors are here. Governors are not what I know to be grass roots. There could be good Governors, bad Governors, average Governors, but my colleagues have a bit of tunnel vision thinking of Governors as grass roots. Grass roots is community, neighborhood, school district level. This is a tough point, but it is a point that needs to be made. There is a reason, going back over 30 years, that we as a Congress representing the Federal Government, representing the United States of America, have made it clear we don't just do block granting without some major accountability when it comes to the question of whether or not we are going to invest in poor children in America. That is why we have a migrant children program. That is why we have a program for homeless children. I think this legislation, S. 2, rather than representing a great step forward, and change, is a great leap backwards.

Mr. WELLSTONE. That will be fine.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senator from Arkansas be able to proceed right now. I will be pleased to follow the Senator from Arkansas. I think I might get done, but I will defer to my colleague, not because I think he is right but because I think he is a good Senator.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, it is amazing, I say with a twinkle in my eye. I actually agree with my colleague from Arkansas on one thing: This really is a debate about the future and the past. I just think he has it mixed up as to which bill represents which. I am looking at the people who are opposed to S. 2. I see the American Association of School Administrators, American Federation of Teachers, Antidefamation League, Council of Great Cities Schools, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, National Alliance of Black School Educators, National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Fund, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Parent Teachers Association, National School Board Association. What occurs to me--and I will try to say it differently than I said yesterday--is what we have is not bureaucratic or some top-down Government program, we have school board members; we have the PTA, parents, elementary school principals; we have high school principals; we have teachers. One can argue that all these organizations do not represent all of the principals, all of the teachers, all of the school board members, and all of the parents in the country, but, with all due respect, they represent many of them. The reason my colleagues do not have any such support from the parents, the teachers, the school board members, and the principals at the local level is because S. 2 is not connected to what it is people are asking us to do. I will again talk about what my colleague from Arkansas was talking about, which is past versus future. This is what they have for accountability. This is the sum total of the Republicans' accountability provision: The Secretary shall renew the agreement for an additional 5-year term if, at the end of the 5-year term described in subsection (a), or soon after the term is practicable, the State submits the data required under the agreement and (2) the Secretary determines on the basis of the data that the State has made substantial progress-- Whatever in the world that is. We turn back the clock 35 years. We abandon our commitment to poor children, to vulnerable children. We no longer have the specific commitment to migrant children and homeless children. Then the accountability provision is we wait for 5 years to see what has happened to these kids, and then the Secretary determines, on the basis of the data, whether or not the State has made ``substantial progress,'' which is not defined. This is hardly what I call a very rigorous accountability standard. My colleague from Arkansas talked about the Workforce Investment Act. I wrote that bill with Senator DeWine. I know something about that bill. Actually, it is a good example, but my colleague from Arkansas has made the mistake of assuming this was just a crude block grant program. That is not what we passed. It was a good compromise. Yes, we were able to go after some of the duplication and some of the bureaucracy. We also made sure there was a targeting and separate stream of funding for youth programs, for adult training programs, for dislocated worker programs, and I also think for veterans' programs. When my colleague cites the Workforce Investment Act as an example of what we should be doing, it is precisely the opposite of what the majority party has presented. I will say it one more time, and then I will move on to a couple of other points in the positive. I first have to talk about what I am against, and then I have to talk about what I am for. I am, as a Senator from the State of Minnesota, in agreement with the principals, school board members, the teachers, and the parents all across the country who oppose this legislation, S. 2, in part because it is an abandonment of the good commitment we made as a nation to our most vulnerable children. That, in and of itself, invites my opposition, and I believe it invites the opposition of most of the people in the country. Secondly, when I look at the accountability language in S. 2, with all due respect, it is inadequate at best. Frankly, there is nothing there. Now, my colleague is not on the floor now. Senator Brownback is someone I am working together with on a good bill that is going to be dealing with the trafficking of women and children for the purposes of forcing women and children into prostitution and forced labor. It is an outrage. We are working together. But my colleague and other colleagues have said S. 2 is patterned after the welfare bill. He said: It has been a brilliant success, with the mothers working. And they are happy. People are working and happy. For 2 years I have been trying to get a policy evaluation of what in fact is happening with the welfare bill. We do not know. We know this. We have reduced the rolls by 50 percent. We know this. We have barely reduced the poverty. We know this. The vast majority of these mothers who are working have jobs barely above the minimum wage. We know this. Mr. President, 670,000 more American citizens, many of them women and children, no longer have any medical coverage. We know this. There has been a dramatic decline in food stamp participation. We know this. The child care situation is dangerous. Many of these 2- year-olds and 3-year-olds, with their single parent working, are at home with someone who really should not be taking care of them or there are inadequate or downright dangerous child care situations. We know all that. Can someone please give me the evidence for this being a great success? We also know the Governors in the States are sitting on top of $7 billion of TANF money, while the child care needs of these children-- poor children--are not being met. I have colleagues out here who are telling me that on the basis of what we don't know--and then on the basis of what we do know, which is that it has been really quite brutal what has been happening--we should use the TANF experience as the basis for moving toward this crude block grant approach. It does not make a lot of sense. As a matter of fact, some of our Governors have actually used the TANF money with a little bit of a budget gimmickry for tax cuts. Some of the States are being called on the carpet. Would it surprise anybody here that not all this money is going to poor women and poor children? That is the point, colleagues. Please do not bring that piece of legislation out here and say it is a brilliant success and that people are working and happy when there is no empirical evidence to support that at all. So my first point is, it is a great leap backwards. My second point is, the accountability provision of the Republican plan is pathetic. My third point is, when we talk about block granting and patterning it after the welfare bill, the TANF experience, there is not a shred of evidence to support that. Whatever evidence we have would make us very weary of doing so, especially if we are concerned about how poor and vulnerable children might fare. My fourth point is, the Workforce Investment Act is a great example of a bipartisan approach. I was proud to write that bill with Senator DeWine. Why didn't we get an elementary and secondary education piece of legislation out here which was bipartisan? We would not have to have any of this debate. Certainly, with the Workforce Investment Act, we did not abandon the idea that when it comes to certain groups of citizens, we make a commitment, and we do not just go straight to a block grant with no standards, no accountability, and no national priorities. What will work is our alternative. My colleague from Arkansas took off after the Senator from Massachusetts--in a civil way; it is just a good debate--and said: Clearly, the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, is for the status quo because he says we should focus on what works. Honest to goodness, this is getting pretty nutty. That is what we should do. If we know that good teachers make for good education, we had better, I say to Senator Kennedy, focus on what works. If we know that smaller class sizes make a real difference, we had better focus on what works. If we know that investing in crumbling schools makes a difference in terms of building the morale of our children, we had better invest in what works. If we know that programs such as the Eisenhower program for math and science, and other professional development programs, lead to good teachers and good teaching, then we had better be investing our resources in this area. Are my colleagues suggesting that actually we should invest in what we don't know? Are they saying our priorities should reflect what we don't know? Are they saying that because we have an alternative out here which focuses on teacher quality, professional development, a teacher corps to get more teachers in low-income school districts and low-income schools, class size reduction--I am sorry, I forgot parental involvement and investing in dilapidated schools, with some school construction money--all of which are priorities that the people in our States ask us to please focus on, all of which are programs that have a proven record and work, all of which is the direction in which our constituents tell us they want us to go, all of which is about good education for children in our country--that we represent the status quo? If so, I want to be called the ``Status Quo Senator.'' But I will tell you something. If this is just a cute semantics debate, I would rather be on the side of programs that work, I would rather be on the side of good policy, good public policy, than on the side of turning the clock back 35, 40 years to some crude block grant program where all of a sudden we abandon some key national commitments to the most vulnerable citizens and where we are, frankly, unwilling to make the investment in the very decisive priorities and programs that work and really make a positive difference in children's lives. That, to me, colleagues, is what this debate is all about. Because my colleague from Wisconsin is out here, I will just take a couple more minutes. On the parental involvement, I have worked on this. We have been doing some preliminary discussion. One of the things I have worked on is ways in which we can creatively use some of the nongovernmental organizations, community groups that have credibility with parents, to get them more involved. I am excited about that. As long as we talk about welfare, I promise my colleagues, if this bill is out here for a while, I will have this policy evaluation. I am telling you--I say this to Senator Jeffords from Vermont--we have to have some honest policy evaluation of what, in fact, is happening because pretty soon we are going to be pushing everybody off the cliff. By the year 2002 there isn't going to be any of this welfare assistance to any families. Let's know what is going on. I will have an amendment that deals with counselors--if it is not 100,000, then 50,000 more counselors--in the country. I tell you that we can do a much better job. The ratio is about 1 counselor per 1,000 students. That does not work. We can do a much better job of having an infrastructure of good counselors in our country that can make a real difference for kids, especially kids who are at risk, especially kids who are struggling with mental health problems. It is terribly important. I will have an amendment that provides some support services for kids who witness violence in their homes. If my wife Sheila were out here on the floor, she would say: Paul, repeat the statistic again that every 13 seconds a woman is battered in her home. Home should be a safe place. These children see it. They come to school. They have not slept through the night. They are depressed. They act out. They are really struggling. I say to some of the pages, you can imagine what it would be like. I pray it never happens to you. We need to get some support services to those students. I have several amendments that deal with the dicey and tricky question about whether or not we are just going to have standardized tests that hold kids back, as young as age 8, or whether or not we are going to: A, make sure these children have the same opportunities to succeed and pass these tests; B, to take into account learning disabilities or limited English proficiency before we start flunking 8- year-olds in the country; and, C, whether or not we are going to take into account the fact that everybody who works in this field says it is an abuse to rely just on one single standardized test. Then finally, also, I am going to have an amendment that deals with urban education, Ed-plus, which is the counterpart to the rural education initiative, all of which I am for. But we want to make sure-- this is what the Democratic alternative includes in it--this recognizes the challenge facing urban schools and enables the urban schools to build on some of these programs with more resources. We need to do that. Mr. President, I conclude with what I think, frankly, is the strongest part of my presentation. This is the accountability provision of S. 2. Wait 5 years and then the Secretary determines, on the basis of the data, that the State has made substantial progress. Substantial progress is not even defined. We do a lot better. Mr. President, the cargo in those yellow school buses is much more precious than all the gold in Fort Knox. We can do better. We can do much better for our children, and our alternative does better for our children. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank all of the Senators who spoke for Mike and his family. There are other Senators who will be speaking who could not work into this timeframe. It is quite amazing to have so many people come down. Mike, I want you to know that the Parliamentarian, staff, Republican, Democrat, everybody here has a look on their face, an expression of love and support for you and your family. I finish this way, Mike. It has not been our friendship--the relationship is not like I hired somebody to be my assistant; it is more like I hired somebody who has been my teacher. Maybe that is why we are joined at the hip. Sometimes when I come to the floor, probably I make mistakes, maybe get too intense, feel too strongly. I will ask Mike, how have I done? He will be willing to give me quite a bit of constructive criticism. But sometimes I will be down on the floor with other Senators and I will go back to the office and I will go to Mike and look for approval. I will say: Mike, how did I do? And he will say: That was just right. Mike, I hope you think this was just right. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me thank the leadership of both parties for allowing the Senate to talk to a very dear friend, Mike Epstein. I want you to know, Mike, and your family, that a lot of our staff are back here as well with me. I think this is a little unusual, that the Senate stops its business and focuses on an individual in this way. But I think there are some things that many of us want to say to Mike. I want to start out this way. When I mentioned in the past couple of days to Senators, but also support staff everywhere here, that my friend Mike was struggling with cancer, I just could never have anticipated the reaction. Mike, I want you to know I can think of at least four or five times where someone said to me: Mike? He's an institution. I know Mike's priorities, so let me be clear about the people who talk about Mike as an institution. And, Mike, I know you; this was real. This was real. Some of the people who said Mike is an institution were support staff. People said to me: Mike just treats everybody so well. He is such a nice, good person. He is great, just because of the way he treats people. Mike, that is the best compliment of all. Then Senators said to me: Paul, Mike Epstein is an institution in the Senate. Some may have been thinking about history. Some in the Senate-- I do not think that many because we have had a lot of new Senators--know of Mike's role with the Church committee and the important investigative research he has done. There are others who are familiar, Mike, with the kind of work you have done with Senator Kennedy. Mike did some of the most important investigative research on HIV infection and AIDS early on when other people in the country did not even want to focus on this. Then other Senators said to me: Paul, we are going to come to the floor and talk to Mike today because we have worked with him on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he was chief counsel to the committee. Then way down on the list of priorities--because I am talking to you, Mike, about great work that you do--has been the work that Mike and I have done together. Mike, I know you will not like me saying this, but I am going to say it anyway because it is true. I believe from the bottom of my heart that everything I have been able to do as a Senator that has been good for Minnesota and the country is because, Mike, you have been there right by my side, 1 inch away from me. A lot of the people in the Senate know that. As a matter of fact, I say to my colleagues on the floor, I will never forget one time when I finally learned at least a little bit of the rules and I was able to come to the floor and fight very hard a number of years ago for some assistance for victims of a tornado that hit Chandler, MN, and other small communities. Mike was there as my tutor, as my teacher, teaching me, as you do, Mike. It worked out well, but afterwards, Alan Simpson, a former Senator from Wyoming, came up to me and said: Paul? I said: Yes? He said: You see those fellows on the other side of the aisle?-- pointing to the Republicans, and I think Nancy Kassebaum was there as well. I said: Yes. He said: They have been looking at you. I said: Yes. Mike was a ways behind me about where Tinker is sitting right now. He said: He has been right next to you the whole time. It doesn't look good. It looks like you can't do it yourself. It looks like he is doing it for you. Paul, the trick is this: You want to have Mike far enough away from you so that it looks like you are doing it yourself but close enough to you in case they throw a whizzer on you, he can be 1 inch away from your side. That has basically been my methodology as a Senator. I had Mike far enough away so it looked like I was doing it on my own, but Mike was close enough so that always when I needed the advice, I got it. Mike Epstein, I speak on the floor today in the Senate, and others are coming out to speak, because you are an institution and I want to make sure you and your family hear these words loudly and clearly.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Nevada.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, my colleague from Wisconsin sent a wonderful letter that was read to Mike and he loved it. I thank him for that.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for 10 seconds?

Mr. WELLSTONE. A number of Republicans have spoken, four or five in a row. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Harkin follow the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Grams, and that I be allowed to follow him.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank Senator Harkin for his statement. I am going to build on a couple points he has made. I ask unanimous consent that Senator John Kerry--in the order that has already been established--follow Senator Gorton. I believe Senator Gorton is last on the list, and Senator Kerry wants to be included in that list of speakers.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I have a sequence of thoughts I want to put forward, and I will not do this, hopefully, in a haphazard way. I say to Senator Harkin, since he talked about appropriations, I want to talk about my State of Minnesota and the need for investment in some of these crumbling schools. He is right on the mark. I hear about that all the time. I also want to talk about a wonderful book by Mike Rose called ``Possible Lives'' based upon his experience in classrooms and all the goodness he sees. I agree with the very first point Senator Harkin made today about what is going on makes sense. But on the appropriations, the Senator from Iowa is right on the mark. Every breed of politician likes to have their picture taken with children. Everybody is for education. Everybody is for the children. Everybody is for the young. They are the future. But it has become symbolic politics. Frankly, I hear a lot of concern about children and education, but the question is whether or not we will dig into our pockets and make some investment. The Senator from Iowa is right on the mark. When I listen to some of my colleagues, I hear them talk about a couple different points. First, I hear them say this piece of legislation represents a step forward and Senator Ted Kennedy somehow represents the past. I thought we were going to have a bipartisan bill, but this piece of legislation before us represents a great step backward. This is not about a step forward; this is a great step backward. This legislation turns the clock back several decades and basically says no longer do we, as a nation, say we have a commitment to making sure vulnerable children--namely, homeless children; namely, migrant children--will, in fact, get a good education, or that we at least enunciate that as a national goal. We retreat from that in this legislation. With all due respect, there is a reason that we, as the Senate and House of Representatives--the Congress--said we are going to make sure there are some standards, we are going to make sure we live up to this commitment, and that is because, prior to targeting this money with some clear guidance, these children, the most vulnerable children, were left behind. Second, my understanding is the National Governors' Association has said, when it comes to title I, they want to keep it targeted. This particular piece of legislation is so extreme that it even gets away from the targeting of title I money. Third, to go to Senator Harkin's point about appropriations, when I hear my colleagues on the other side talk about how we want change, we want to close the learning gap, we want to make sure poor children do as well, that children of color do as well, this piece of legislation is the agent of change, and we are for change, change, change, the question I ask is: If that is the case, then--I said this the other day--why don't we get serious about being a player in prekindergarten? With all due respect, most of K-12 is at the State level. As a matter of fact, if we are going to say--Senator Harkin made this point--that education is not doing well and they are going to present this indictment of teachers and our educational system, remember that about 93, 94 percent of the investment is at the State level. With all due respect to some colleagues on the floor, when I hear some of the bashing, either explicit or implicit, of education and teachers, I say to myself that some of the harshest critics of public education could not last 1 hour in the classrooms they condemn. If we are serious about this, then why don't we make a real investment in pre-K? It is pathetic what is in this budget when it comes to investing in children before kindergarten. The learning gap is wide by kindergarten, and then those children fall further behind. We could make such a difference. We could decentralize it and get it down to the community level, and we could make a real difference. But no, that is not in this bill or any piece of legislation from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Senator Hutchinson, a friend--we disagree, but we like each other-- talked about how the bill, S. 2, provides title I money for all the children in the country. I do not get that. I do not know how it can. Right now, we have an appropriation that provides funding for--what, I ask Senator Harkin--about 30 percent of the children that will be available? Fifty percent? I do not see in the budget proposal or in any appropriations bills that are coming from the Republican majority a dramatic or significant increase in that investment at all. If my colleagues want to present a critique of what is going on, let me just give you some figures from my friend Jonathan Kozol who just sent me the Chancellor's 60-day report on New York City Public Schools. It is pretty interesting. In New York City, they are able to spend per year, per pupil, on average, $8,171. Fishers Island is $24,000, rounding this up; Great Neck, $17,000; White Plains, $16,000; Roslyn, $16,000; and other communities, $20,000, $21,000.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Per student, two times and three times the amount. Here is another interesting figure. This is median teacher salaries. In the Democratic proposal--I will be honest about it, I cannot help it. I do not think the administration's proposal is great. I do not think we should be talking about their proposal when it comes to early childhood development. I would like to see much more in education. But I think with what we have heard on the floor, I say to Senator Harkin, is that the investment in rebuilding our crumbling schools, the focus on lowering class size, the focus on having good teachers and making sure we put money into professional development basically is eliminated. I hear some of my colleagues--I think the Senator from Alabama-- talking about how poor we are performing in mathematics. The Eisenhower program, a great professional development program--teachers in Minnesota love this program--is eliminated. This is pretty interesting. For New York City and in surrounding counties: The median teacher salary in New York City is $47,345; the median teacher salary in Nassau County is $66,000; in County, it is $67,000; in Westchester, it is $68,400. Jonathan Kozol can send me these figures because he wrote the book ``Savage Inequalities.'' But with all due respect to my colleagues, if you are concerned about the learning gap, if you are concerned about the tremendous disparity in opportunities of students in our country-- and all too often students are able to do well or not do well because of income or race--then we would want to make sure we live up to the opportunity-to-learn standard, where every child has an opportunity to learn and do well. If that was the case, we would be talking about the whole problem of financing, which is based so much on the wealth of the school district; we would be talking about incentives for the best students, and incentives for executives and people in other areas of life who are in their 50s who want to go into teaching, all of whom can go into teaching; we would be talking about a massive investment, the equivalent of a national defense act, when it comes to child care; we would be talking about afterschool programs; we would be talking about investing in the crumbling infrastructure of our schools. I do not see it in this piece of legislation. I said it yesterday, and I will say it one more time: I do not see it in the Ed-Flex bill. I said it last time, and I will say it again, that when I am in Minnesota and I am in cafes and I am talking to people, nobody has ever come running up to me saying: I need Ed-Flex. They do not even know what it is. But they sure talk about the holes in the ceilings or the inadequate wiring or the schools that do not have heating. They talk about how terrible it is that kids go into those schools. It tells those kids that we do not care about them. They sure talk about all these other issues. I will conclude in a moment, but this is for the sake of further debate.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my colleague, we have had some important litigation that I know he is familiar with, some really important Supreme Court decisions in the past on this question. The challenge is this. The 14th amendment talks about equal protection under the law. I think many of us believe that when the education a child receives is so dependent upon the wealth or lack of wealth of the community he or she lives in, that that isn't equal protection under the law because a good education is so important to be able to do well and to fully participate in the economic and political life of our country. So the answer is, it is extremely unfortunate that we rely so much on the property tax system. If my colleagues want to present a critique of public education, they ought to look back to the States. I say to my colleague from Iowa, I love being a Senator. I do not mean this in a bashing way. But Washington, DC and the Senate is the only place I have ever been where when people talk about grassroots, they say: Let's hear from the Governors. They say: The grassroots is here. The Governors' Association has just issued a statement. Boy, I tell you, I don't hear that in Minnesota or in any other State I have been in. People tend to view the grassroots as a little bit more down to the neighborhood, the community level.

Mr. WELLSTONE. That is right.