Date: 1999-02-03
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. as we have heard from all of our colleagues. from the President of the United States and from governors across this land. education is the top issue on the public agenda and accountability is the order of the day. Parents and taxpayers want quality schools that show results in helping students meet high academic standards. The President says that he wants us to have world class standards so that students in the United States can compete in a world economy with the students and citizens of any Nation in the world. and I think that that is important. The Federal Government over the past three decades has spent some $118 billion in funding the Title I education programs. with rather mixedand variable results. and now we are looking to invest many billions more over the next five years. In fact. we will invest something in the neighborhood of $40 billion over the next five years in Title I. a program that is designed to help in the main educationally and economically disadvantaged children. But what is it we are getting for that investment. and how can we ensure that we will in fact get a better return on that investment of $40 billion than we received on the first $118 billion that we invested? We have been told by the Republican leadership of the House and. I believe. also in the Senate that the expansion of the socalled EdFlex bill will be one of the first items of their agenda in meeting some of the educational needs of this country. Currently there are 12 States that receive broad authority to waive many of the Federal laws and regulations with respect to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. My question is. I want to know. for the granting of that waiver for the additional flexibility to let school districts use this money in their best judgment for their best purposes. what is it they are telling us they are prepared to do on behalf of Americas students.and on behalf of the families that are so terribly concerned about the education of their children? They tell us that States are being held accountable under EdFlex for their actions and that they have put in place a procedure of accountability. and yet when we look at the GAO report that has recently been issued on EdFlex. we find out that that is not necessarily the case. We find out. according to GAO. that many EdFlex States. these 12 States that have been granted this authority. have not established any goals or defined only vague objectives. One States plan. in exchange for flexibility in Federal dollars. says that they have a commitment to the identification and implementation of programs that will create an. environment in which students actualize their academic potential. For that we are handing them millions of dollars. so that they can create an environment and the implementation of programs so that students will actualize their academic potential. No suggestion of how we would measure that or whether we know that is true. Yet we find a State like Texas which has said not only will they set out specific numerical criteria that are closely tied to both schools and districts and the specific students affected by the waiver. the Governor of Texas has said what he will do and what the State legislature of Texas has agreed to do and the Department of Education. in exchange for the flexibility under EdFlex from rules and regulations of the Federal Government. that he expects that the districts that receive the waivers under this act. that they will make annual gains on the State tests so that 90 percent. 90 percent of his students will pass the State assessment in reading and math. In addition. the Governor of Texas goes even further than that. He says that the districts must make gains so that at the end of that same fiveyear period 90 percent of the African American students will pass the State exam. 90 percent of the Hispanic students. 90 percent of the white students and 90 percent of the economically disadvantaged students. For that we have granted them a waiver and access to millions of dollars of Federal moneys for education. I am asking Members of Congress and the administration. which plan would you rather invest in? Would you rather invest in a plan that gives you numerical goals and standards and achievement for our students in this country. or would you rather invest in a plan that gives you -rhetoric about some ephemeral goal that may or may not be achieved and no timetables and no standards as to how they will achieve that? If we are going to be the venture capitalists in improving education in this country with the limited Federal dollars that we have. that in this one program will provide over $40 billion. I think like any venture capitalist we ought to ask what is the return we are getting on that money. because there are a lot of uses for that $40 billion and every Member of Congress has a different priority. But we ought to be asking. what are we going to get back? The Governor of Texas has told us what we will get back is a 90 percent passage rate at the end of five years on a highquality State test that will test their ability to perform in both reading and mathematics. In the other 12 States it is something in between. A lot of it is rhetoric. a lot of it is no goals and no accountability. The President stood here in the State of the Union and said that he wanted accountability. the parents wanted accountability. and clearly Members of Congress do. When the EdFlex bill comes to the floor. we should demand that it have provisions for accountability. We ought to at least demand something as rigorous as the Governor of Texas and the State legislature were prepared to put on the line in the name of education reform.