Date: 2003-07-24
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. I yield myself 51/2 minutes. Mr. Chairman. I rise in strong opposition to the underlying bill. While we spent a great deal of time in No Child Left Behind to provide for improved 6tudent achievement. increased standards and accountability to ask more of State schools and students. this legislation does exactly the opposite. It decreases the standards and decreases the accountability. and it weakens our commitment to quality and it asks less of the States. We should not be experimenting with this program. I appreciate that the gentleman says that 91 percent of these programs were out of compliance. but what he does not tell us is that in that same audit 85 percent of the programs were found to be of high quality. Why were they of high quality? Because of the Head Start standards. the Head Start performance standards and the quality standards. These are the performance and quality standards that Congress after Congress and President after President have worked to continuously improve so that Head Start now is the premier preK program for impoverished children in this Nation. There is no State that has a program comparable to Head Start for these children. When my colleague on the other side suggests that these children do not do as well as their peers. he i denying all of the evidence. These children are doing better than their peers. They are not doing as well as middleclass white children in the suburbs. but he does not know of any program that will have these children do as well in the year or two as middleclass white children in the suburbs. but among their peers. among the children in same community who do not get to participate. these children do much better and they accelerate by the end of kindergarten. Head Start works and it performs. and it performs well for these children. But this legislation takes another approach. While the first part of this legislation makes many improvements that we agree with and we support in this bill. the second provision provides for a block grant. It was a wholesale block grant of the entire program that politically was unsustainable. It became an eightState block program. and over the last few days apparently some people got promises to vote for this bill and they would not block grant their State. There is a commitment to block grants. But what do they do with these block grants? In the block grants they circumvent the standards of performance and quality and education standards and health services and comprehensive services because if they have a block grant. they do not have to meet those standards. It says so in the bill. They will say in their Dea Colleagues. it has to meet or exceed Head Start standards. but in the law. it says it must generally meet or exceed. "Generally" is a very important word here because they do not have to comply with the standards. The same is true in accountability. and yet we do this. We weaken these standards. We create this loophole of the block grant. and we do it without any evidence to suggest that that is the answer. The concern is about accountability. the concern is about performance. and we put the children into a system for which there really is no accountability or performance. Nothing requires a showing that the system that will be created is better than the current Head Start system. that the program running currently in the State is better than the Head Start system. and yet. we are talking about creating a system where almost as much as 40 percent of the children could be put in that system. That is really not fair to these children because Head Start is their best hope. Head Start is our premier early education program in this country. and that is why it must be protected. And "protected" is the right word because this legislation with the block grant is an allout assault on Head Start as we know it. on Head Start as it performs and Head Start as it delivers for these children and these families and their educational opportunity. Can it be improved? Of course it can be improved. and what every President and every Congress on a bipartisan basis. Republican and Democratic administrations. year after year. time after time. they have continuously improved this program. I have been on this committee for 29 years. and we have continuously approved this program every 3 to 5 years. That is why it is the premier program. That is why it gets the results it does. Now what happens here? For the first time. we essentially see a partisan assault on that bipartisan coalition that has led to that continuous improvement of this program. that has led to these comprehensive services for these children. 0. 2045 And these services are terribly important. Terribly important. Health screening. vision. dental care. What will you get under their block grant? You will get a referral to a service. You may not get the service. You may get to stand in line. You may get put on a waiting list. but you do not necessarily get the service for mental health screening and general health screening and nutrition and health education. all of which we know in terms of child development of these impoverished children is terribly important. But. finally. let me say this. There is something else going on in this bill that is the first in 35 years. When they capped the expenditures in the outyears. when they changed such sums as necessary. under which every President and every Congress has expanded the participation in the Head Start program. there is not enough money for inflation. So in the third year. we find that some 5.000 to 10.000 children at a minimum are going to have to stop attending Head Start because of the capped authorization. 1 appreciate all of the money we have put in Head Start under President Clintons leadership. under this Congress. the Republican leadership. that we have done over the last 8 years. but that comes to a grinding halt in this legislation. That is why this bill should be rejected. and later we will hope that the substitute will be accepted by the Congress. and then we can continue the process of continuing to improve Americas premier education program for preK impoverished children. Mr. Chairman. I reserve the balance of my time.