Teacher and Principal Quality

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair.

I rise to speak both in favor of the underlying proposal offered by the Senator from Georgia and the Senator from New Jersey, which I am pleased to be a cosponsor of, but also to speak on behalf of an amendment that has been introduced by the Senator from Louisiana, Ms. LANDRIEU, on behalf of herself, Senator BAYH, and myself.

Let me say briefly, on the underlying proposal, it is a modest but important proposal which encourages parents and enables parents through the tax benefits provided to set aside some money for their children´s future, and to use it for a variety of educational purposes that have been well outlined here. This proposal, as has been said over and over again, is no different than existing legislation for use at the college level. I support it enthusiastically and think it is a step forward. It will be of particular help to struggling middle-class families who want the best for their children´s education and often find it hard to pay the way. This will help them just a little bit.

Second, speaking about the amendment offered by Senator LANDRIEU and Senator BAYH and myself, as I have followed the debate on the Coverdell-Torricelli proposal, I have been troubled, again, to see the Senate divided largely along partisan lines. The lines are familiar, the arguments have been heard before, but they do not get us anywhere, and they particularly do not respond to the message that I get clearly when I go home and speak to people in Connecticut and that I guess my colleagues here get when they go to their respective States. It is that there is nothing that matters more to the people of America today than to improve our system of education, particularly public education, but all education, private, faith-based as well.

If we respond to that clear plea, that priority of our constituents, with partisanship and posturing that produces nothing but a continuation of the status quo, then shame on us. So in hopes of reaching a realistic consensus in the weeks ahead, this debate in some ways has been a warm-up. But it is an important one that has substance attached to it for the broader debate on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The amendment Senator LANDRIEU has put forward is a piece of a broader proposal that she and I and Senator BAYH, Senator LINCOLN, and others are developing as a total reform of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It is building on good news in a number of our States which are moving in the direction, not of a fixation with rules and regulations or bureaucracies but concentrating instead on results: How can we improve the educational performance of our children?

In the States that are succeeding, they are doing three things. First, they are infusing new resources into their public education systems. We are going to have to invest more. Second, they are giving local districts more flexibility in how they meet those higher standards as they determine the needs of their children and local school systems. Third, they are demanding new measures and mechanisms of accountability to increase the chance that these investments will yield the intended return, which is higher academic achievement by all of our students. Those are the goals of the bill that Senators LANDRIEU, BAYH, LINCOLN, I and several others are drafting.

It calls for revamping the framework of our Federal education programs and engaging the States in a new performance-based partnership, where we would significantly increase Federal funding to help our schools meet these new expectations, to target these new dollars to the communities and children who are disadvantaged, who need them most, and to provide State and local officials with broad latitude in allocating these resources to meet their specific priorities. We then hold the States responsible for showing progress in meeting those goals, to reward those who do and, yes, to punish those who do not better educate our children.

In this approach, we believe and hope, are the seeds of a bipartisan solution. It brings together what is best on both sides of the favored educational reform. For those who call for more resources and more targeting to poor urban and rural districts, we are proposing increasing our investment in ESEA by $25 billion over the next 5 years, 80 percent of which would be put into title I.

For those who call for more flexibility of local control, we propose consolidating the mass of Federal categorical grant programs, a kind of Washington-knows-best attitude, into five performance-based partnership grants, all of which are tied to the overarching goal of raising our children´s academic achievement. And for everyone, the parent in particular, who is concerned about the bottom line-and the bottom line here is how well are my children being educated-we propose making accountability our new education linchpin by rewarding States that exceed their own performance goals and punishing those who routinely fail to show such progress.

We plan to introduce this bill next week and hope to have it considered on the floor during the ESEA debate. In the meantime, I appeal to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to take a hard look at that proposal and the ideas behind it.

I recognize nothing we do at the Federal level can, by itself, solve the problems of education in our country. But we can create incentives for change and innovation. We can identify the way and build the will to get there, which is our goal, as is, may I say, the goal of the underlying bill before the Senate today.

I support the Landrieu amendment. I am proud also to state my support for the Coverdell-Torricelli bill.

I yield the floor.