Date: 1999-03-10
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. this was a program that was designed to focus on the educational problems of poor children. of educationally disadvantaged children. and we continue to get back scores about how average children are doing in school districts and in States. What have we found out? The poor children. the educationally disadvantaged children. continue to slide back. Apparently only in Maryland. only in North Carolina and in Texas will we know how all of the children are doing. This whole program is predicated that we are not going to go the old route of attracting certain children. pulling children out of classrooms. going through all the stuff we have gone through in the last decade but we are going to make a decision that all children can learn. When the Texas Superintendent of Education came before our committee. she said one of the things that having these targets. of having this kind of data that we call for in our amendment. what this has allowed them to do is to redeploy the resources based upon where the problem is. because under the flexibility side of this bill. they are able to do that. They can go after those schools where there is a problem. they can go after those students who are not reading to grade level. That is the advantage of this legislation as authored by the gentleman from Delaware and the gentleman from Indiana . It provides the flexibility to do that. We do not touch that flexibility. We deal with the side of accountability. I think we have an obligation to parents. to students. to taxpayers to ask these tough questions. and I think we have got to get back the answers in a form that we can hold people accountable. This is sort of just old hardheaded accountability. Now. we do not have a whole lot of accountability in the political system and in our budget systems and all the rest of it. but apparently the Nation has told us that that is what they want. Parents want to know how their children are doing. but in many school districtsand even the EdFlex school districts in the pilot program. they have no data. They are not able to report how these children are doing. I think it is time. as I said. to fish or cut bait. We are going to invest $50 billion in this program later this year. We ought to be able to get back the answers about how it is doing. As the Superintendent of Maryland wrote to us. the underlying bill simply does not contain provisions to ensure the States receiving the EdFlex waivers are held publicly accountable for student achievement. Interestingly enough. the States that in many ways are doing the best. North Carolina testifed that this is the way the questions ought to be asked and this is the way the data ought to be received. Texas that is living under this system said yes. they agreed with this amendment. The State of Maryland that is getting accolades under this program said yes. this is the way the data ought to be received. There is a lot of talk about how somehow this is going to delay it. Does anybody believe that this legislation and all the rest of it is going to be ready for the next school year? We told people at the end of 5 years after $2 billion. we wanted a system of testing and of assessments and many of the States are there. But we cannot any longer fudge with the timetables.