Disaster Funding

Floor Speech

Mr. BURR. Let me add to what my good friend from Missouri talked about. That is about the Federal commitment to disaster. North Carolina happens to be one of those States that is probably the most recent. We welcome the attention of FEMA, but we also have the last disaster before. And just like he expects the promises to be fulfilled, even though we are first in line now, we expect the promises to be fulfilled to those who are already out there. Our country is great enough to do it. It is the greatest country in the world. But it means we have got to do it in a responsible way. Part of that means we need to pay for it. I hope my colleagues will join what I think will be a House effort to expedite the funding needed for disaster relief but to do it in a way that we do not charge future generations because of our fiscal irresponsibility.

I had the opportunity to participate in a colloquy earlier on reforms to K-12 education. I wish to take the few remaining minutes I have to talk a little bit more about that, because I think to some degree we hear about education and the failures of K-12.

Senator Kirk alluded to some charter schools in Chicago. I want to mention a school nobody hears about. It is called the KIPP Academy. Technically, it is a charter school. It started in Houston, TX. Then it expanded. Its second location was in New York City. Its third location was targeted to be Atlanta, but halfway between Atlanta and New York they found a little county in rural North Carolina. It is called Northampton County, and a little community there called Gaston, NC, the last place you would expect a Texas innovative charter school to say, let's put a facility here. Predominantly minority; clearly below the average income level of every county in North Carolina; challenged for economic development. They do not have the infrastructure. But KIPP looked at it and said: You know, no child should go without what we are out there to offer. Today the success rate of that school is off the chart. But it also is in every KIPP location that has opened.

When you have successes such as that, whether they are in Houston, TX, or New York City, or Gaston, NC, the responsible thing is to stop and take a breath and ask yourself: What have they figured out that either we have not in Washington or what flexibility do they have that we do not give everybody else?

When you walk into a KIPP school, it is markedly different as soon as you walk in the door. Most kids are in uniforms. The school day is longer. The teachers are partners in education, which begs me to talk a little bit about Teach for America, the program that many Members of Congress support.

Teach for America challenged the next generation of kids who want to be educators to commit a certain portion of their life in these at-risk locations. It is a program we ought to support because its standards for its teachers exceed the definition we have for ``highly qualified.'' As a matter of fact, not only do their credentials make them one of the best individuals to put into a classroom, you match that with their passion for their students to succeed, and all of a sudden you have got a formula for success regardless of the socioeconomic conditions of the child who came.

Well, I fear Teach for America is not going to get the attention of Congress that it should. Yet across this country, when you find successful, qualified teachers, they have come out of this program. The commitment to be there for 2 years or 3 years or 5 years is no longer a contract that they are waiting for the end of; they are looking for the opportunity to make this a career.

It is those teachers, those Teach for America graduates, who are finding their way to being the principals of schools, to being elected on the school board, to being involved in areas that, for once, now these Teach for America graduates are challenging traditional education to live up to what this obligation is they have got. That is to make sure that every child has the foundational education they need to compete.

It does not matter whether the example I talk about is the KIPP Academy charter model that was started in Houston or whether it is the Noble Street charter that was created in Chicago. All of these examples were not created here. They were not created in Congress or in Washington. Yet what typically we do is we try to import the solution from here.

I will be the first to tell you, a principal is much closer to your children than the Congress of the United States. They are much closer to the school. They are much closer to the school system. They have greater influence on the outcome. Where have we been influencing education? We influence it on the input side, not the output side, because we say: Here is some money. We have got some money. But you can only use it for this because we have determined this is the solution to the problem. KIPP sort of broke the mold. They said: Our mission is to educate every child. We want to see them succeed.

Let me give my colleagues an example. In Charlotte, NC, they opened a KIPP Academy, K-8, next door to a traditional K-6 school. There is no way anybody can look at it and say, this drew kids who were in a different neighborhood. No, it drew kids from exactly the same neighborhood. But if you look at the performance side by side physically, the performance of the kids in the KIPP far exceeds the performance of the kids in the traditional public school system.

(Mr. BROWN of Ohio assumed the chair.)

Mr. BURR. Why? Because KIPP officials have the flexibility to design how they educate those children. The goal at the end is the same--to meet a standard of performance, to meet an educational level that is set nationally.

To me, it only makes common sense for us to see the ones that exceed the goals we set and ask how do we import what they do into the rest of our K-12 system? Part of it is recognizing the fact that up here we don't have the solutions; we are merely a financial partner. That is one of the reasons this morning I introduced a bill. What that bill does is it takes 59 pots of money--59 separate programs that were funded last year. In one area, we call it the fund for improvement of teaching and learning, to say we can take 59 programs and combine them into two pots of money; one is teaching and learning and the second one is safe and healthy students.

In the teaching and learning area, we have consolidated about 24 funding programs into one. We have said to local educators that they can use this money however they want, if their focus is teaching and learning, and they can pull out of the other pot any moneys they need for programs that address safe and healthy students.

We went a step further and said, if one of these pots of money doesn't work for them, then we will give them 100 percent transferability from one pot to the other. So if their objective and their need is greater in teaching and learning, we will give them the ability to take the safe and healthy student money and throw it over into the teaching and learning pot so they can access more funds.

In addition, some communities across the country might need additional help in title I, at-risk students. We allow 100 percent transferability of both of those into title I. For those concerned with title I, not only do we not touch it, we make it available to receive additional funding if a school system decides to do it, not a bureaucrat in Washington, DC.

Under the fund of improving teaching and learning, States and local school districts may use funds for activities and programs that meet the purposes of the fund for the improvement of teaching and learning and their unique and individual needs. These may include evaluation systems for teachers and principals that take into account data on student academic achievement and growth as a significant factor.

That is exactly what Senator Isakson was talking about, the need for accountability. But we are trying to take a majority of the responsibility for accountability and send it to the local school systems. All we can see are numbers up here in comparison to what our goal is for people to hit. I am concerned that a community takes ownership in the performance of their school system because that community is reliant on their success for their future.

My hope is, school systems and communities around the country will see this as a tremendous opportunity to once again not only take control of local education but to be empowered to make decisions on the way they teach our kids.

It reforms teacher and principal certifications, recertifications, licensing, and tenure; alternative routes for State certification of teachers and principals, including mid-career professionals from other occupations, former military personnel, and recent college or university graduates with records of academic distinction who demonstrate the potential to become highly effective teachers and principals.

There is this whole pool of people we exclude because they didn't go through a traditional method of being classified a teacher.

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