STRAIGHT TALK: LEADERSHIP IN STATE AND COMMUNITY EDUCATION REFORMS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND

THE WORKFORCE

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

 

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, JANUARY 27, 1999

 

Serial No. 106-1

 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Education

and the Workforce


 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE WILLIAM F. GOODLING, CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE

*

STATEMENT OF GEORGE VOINOVICH, A UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF OHIO *

STATEMENT OF TOM RIDGE, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA *

Appendix A – Opening statement of Chairman Goodling *

Appendix B – Opening statement of Congressman Kildee *

Appendix C – Written statement of Senator Voinovich *

Appendix D – Written statement of Governor Ridge *

Appendix E – Written statement of Congressman Wu *

Appendix F – Written statement of Congressman Clay *

Table of Indexes *

 

 

STRAIGHT TALK: LEADERSHIP IN STATE

 

AND COMMUNITY EDUCATION REFORMS

 

 

 

Wednesday, January 27, 1999

 

House of Representatives,

 

Committee on Education and the Workforce,

 

Washington, D.C.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9 a.m., in Room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. William F. Goodling [chairman of the committee] presiding.

Present: Representatives Goodling, Ballenger, Barrett, Boehner, Hoekstra, McKeon, Castle, Talent, Greenwood, Upton, Hilleary, Ehlers, Salmon, Tancredo, Fletcher, Miller, Kildee, Martinez, Roemer, Scott, Hinojosa and Holt.

Staff Present: Kevin Talley, Staff Director; Bob Sweet, Professional Staff Member; Vic Klatt, Education Policy Coordinator; Mark Rodgers, Workforce Policy Coordinator; Jo-Marie St. Martin, General Counsel; Sally Lovejoy, Senior Education Policy Advisor; Christie Wolfe, Professional Staff Member; Kent Talbert, Professional Staff Member; Rich Stombres, Professional Staff Member; Mary Clagett, Professional Staff Member; Krisann Pearce, Professional Staff Member; Cindy Herrle, Professional Staff Member; D'Arcy Philps, Professional Staff Member; Jennifer Oschal, Staff Assistant; Patrick Lyden, Legislative Assistant; Gail Weiss, Minority Staff Director; Mark Zuckerman, Minority General Counsel; Cedric R. Hendricks, Minority Deputy Counsel; June Harris, Minority Education Coordinator; Cheryl Johnson, Minority Counsel/Education and Oversight; Alex Nock, Minority Legislative Associate/Education; Marie-Cecilia Phillips, Minority Legislative Associate/Education; and Roxana Folescu, Minority Staff Assistant/Education.

 

OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE WILLIAM F. GOODLING, CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE

Chairman Goodling. I think we will do the opening statements while we are awaiting the Senator. I want to thank Governor Ridge and Senator Voinovich for taking time from their busy schedules to talk to us about education reform.

This is the first hearing for our committee in the 106th Congress. Tomorrow we will hear about some promising reforms being implemented in the State of Arizona and the city of Chicago. Early next month we will be meeting with Secretary Riley to hear more details about the education proposals the President outlined in the State of the Union Address.

Today I hope we can focus on the big picture in education reform. There is no question that all of us, Republican and Democrat alike, at all levels of government, are interested in the same results in educating our children. We all agree that our children should be able to read with comprehension, write with clarity, have a mastery of mathematics, understand the history of our constitutional Republic, and have access to the world through information that is now available on the Internet.

We all agree that parents are the first and most important teachers; that academic standards should be raised; that schools should be held accountable for results; and that scarce Federal, State, or local resources should be used effectively to give a quality education to all children, whatever their status or ability.

As we discuss the best ways to accomplish these objectives, we need to listen to each other, to be willing to look objectively and critically at Federal programs that have been around for years, and make changes where they are warranted.

I think we all should be reminded that since more than 92 percent of the funds for educating our children come from State and local governments, policy decisions should be made there, too. Policy decisions on school discipline, ending social promotion, building or repairing schools, or testing teachers most assuredly are carried out at the local level. We must be sure that we don't create new Federal mandates to prove we are involved.

I agree entirely with what the President said on March 21, 1996, before the National Governors' Association. He said, "We cannot ask the American people to spend more on education until we do a better job with the money we have now." That was just about 3 years ago, and I, as Mr. Kildee will attest, had one opportunity to stand up at the State of the Union Address, and unfortunately I was the only one standing, applauding loudly and saying amen, and that was when the President said we must finance programs and stop financing programs that don't work. When I looked across the aisle, I tried to get Dale to stand up, but I couldn't move him.

 

Mr. Kildee. I had my eye on Vice-President Gore. He wasn't standing.

 

Chairman Goodling. The challenge we have today is to find ways to achieve these worthy goals.

See Appendix A for opening statement of Chairman Goodling.

 

 

 

Chairman Goodling. I am going to stop at this point with my opening statement since the Senator has arrived. How do you want to do this? You want to give a portion of yours like I just did?

 

Mr. Kildee. I hope this year in our efforts to reauthorize the Elementary/Secondary Education Act we can do as well as we did last year in considering the Higher Education Act. Mr. McKeon and myself, this committee under your leadership, passed a truly bipartisan bill with input from both sides of the aisle and from the administration. I hope we can replicate a similar procedure this year as we did on the higher education bill last year.

I will submit my entire opening statement for the record, Mr. Chairman.

See Appendix B for opening statement of Mr. Kildee.

 

 

 

Chairman Goodling. Well, I can respond by saying if it is going to be meaningful, it will have to be that way, so I would hope it would that be that way.

 

Mr. Kildee. We are in agreement at the beginning, Mr. Chairman.

 

Chairman Goodling. As you know, I gave a litany at the last meeting we had here, five, six seven things that we did in a bipartisan fashion. I always remind everyone, however, bipartisan doesn't mean we do it one way or the other way. We do it together.

 

Mr. Kildee. Mr. McKeon and I showed you how to do that last year.

 

Chairman Goodling. I am going to recognize Mr. Boehner at this time to introduce the former Governor and now Senator from Ohio, who has to leave, so we are going to have him give his testimony and then ask him questions. Governor Ridge has agreed that he will wait until the Senator is finished.

Congressman Boehner.

 

Mr. Boehner. Ladies and gentlemen, my colleagues, it is my pleasure this morning to introduce our former Governor from the great State of Ohio and now our United States Senator, George Voinovich. George started his career in the Ohio House of Representatives, as did I, and went back to Cleveland and served in several capacities in county government before being elected mayor of Cleveland, where he had a 10-year exemplary record of improving Cleveland beyond the dreams and hopes of almost everyone.

But George Voinovich, during his term, 8 years as Governor of Ohio, spent the majority of his time trying to improve education. It is certainly a pleasure to have him join us now here in Washington, albeit on the other side of the Capitol, but I am sure that he is glad to be with us this morning talking about something near and dear to his heart rather than where he is probably going to end up rather soon.

So with that, let me welcome Senator Voinovich, and I want to say that we are glad that you are with us.

 

STATEMENT OF GEORGE VOINOVICH, A UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF OHIO

 

Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Congressman Boehner. I appreciate the introduction, and Chairman Goodling and members of the committee, I appreciate this opportunity to share with you some of the reforms that we implemented as Governor of the State of Ohio and to share just a few thoughts about the challenges before us in terms of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

It is a pleasure to be here with Tom Ridge, who is a former colleague of yours. Tom has done a great job in the State of Pennsylvania as its Governor, which was indicated by the great victory that he had, his reelection victory. I know he is doing a good job because Pennsylvania is competing a lot more aggressively than they did before.

Improvement of education is a top priority for parents, teachers, and employers across the country. I think it has to be our number one priority as a Nation. States have moved forward in recent years with significant reforms in elementary and secondary education to address these concerns.

In my own State, we sought to remake the State education system into a results-oriented system with greater local flexibility. We started out back in 1981 with a program called Education for Results, and the report that laid out what we were going to do was called Breaking the Barriers, the barriers that stood in the way of an outstanding education system. And it is interesting that the study and that report was done by the private sector, the private sector that was chaired by John Pepper, the chairman of Procter & Gamble, and John Owen at the time was chairman of Goodrich.

State support for early education has grown tremendously in our State, and if I leave no other message with you today, my message is that we have to do a much better job in early childhood education. Education is lifelong learning, and I am very proud to say that Ohio today is a leader in the Head Start program. Every eligible child whose parent wants them to be in Head Start is in that program or a preschool program.

I think too often when we think of education, we think of K through 12, and we forget that the most important years in terms of a child's developing those education skills that they need. The receptivity takes place in those early years, and our researchers have made it very clear that what you do from conception, straight through those first 3 years, has more to do with how they are going to do later on in life than perhaps anything else we can do.

During my tenure as Governor, we initiated unprecedented support for our State teachers. We have facilitated professional development through urban leadership academies in our six largest urban areas, peer review and mentoring, and financially supporting teachers that are pursuing a certification by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards.

Some of the money in the Federal level goes for the National Board of Professional Teachers. It is a little bit of money, but I can tell that you that this program is starting to go throughout the United States of America. It is a public-private partnership that is kind of the academy of surgeons where outstanding teachers can apply, be tested, and then become more certified.

In our State we think so much of that certification that we pay our teachers an additional $3,000 for 10 years during that certified period because of the fact that they have reached that standard. The Federal Government, except for a few bucks in supporting that organization, has nothing to do with the standards that are set. It is the teachers that are doing it and the professionals. It is just terrific, and we lead the country with the second largest number of teachers that are nationally board-certified.

We have also pursued innovation and parental choice. The Cleveland Scholarship Program gives 3,000 low-income students in Cleveland the opportunity to attend the school of their choice. It is the most significant experiment in choice in the United States of America, and I am hoping that our Supreme Court this year holds it constitutional so that we can continue that pilot project to really see if parental choice really makes a difference in terms of our education system.

As a country we ought to be encouraging all kinds of alternatives to the current system to see if they work, just as a good business would look at and do research work to see is this working, is it making a difference?

In addition to that, as I am sure you are doing in Pennsylvania, we are moving forward aggressively with charter schools that are part of the public school system, but are empowered to have their own management organizations.

In addition, we have provided a major innovation. In a lot of the States we are wiring, in fact, we’ve almost completed wiring every single classroom for voice, video and data. We brought computers into the 14,000 classrooms in our low-wealth districts. We brought computers into every school from K through 4, one computer for each five students, and a very aggressive programming in teaching our teachers how to use those computers and utilize them in the classroom.

While public education is principally the responsibility of State and local government, the Federal Government has a role to play in supporting families and State and local reforms. However, the Federal Government must not create new mandates on States and local education agencies. Instead of empowering States, localities, and parents, the education agenda that the President presented I think sends a clear message that the administration would like to change dramatically the role of the Federal Government in primary and secondary education.

I applaud Secretary Riley, I applaud the President, and I say this in all due respect, that a lot of the programs that are being presented by the President are programs that are outstanding for Governors of the States, but they are not, I believe, the proper role of the Federal Government. Education is a State and local responsibility, and you provide about 6 percent of the dollars. And when you think about your role and enlarging, it is almost like one of my colleagues said, it is like the tail wagging the dog. And I think it is important that in the deliberations on all of these things, that the role of the Federal Government be decided. I think that is a role in everything we do, what is the role of the Federal Government? What is the role of State and local government? Who should pay for the programs? Who should administer the programs, and how can we partner together to really make a difference for our mutual customer?

Each of the President's proposals presents States either with a new mandate or preempts current State practice or law. I know the Nation's Governors are concerned about consequences for States and communities that fail to adopt new federally mandated policies on social promotion, teacher competency, school takeovers, report cards or discipline problems. We understand the Department will withhold funds provided to States and local school districts through the elementary and secondary education.

A majority of this money, as you know, is allocated to Title I students, our Nation's most disadvantaged. This seems to be a high price for these students to pay if they happen to live in a State or community that believes in local control of schools. In addition, if current programs are not cut, we cannot afford the President's proposed initiatives without breaking the budget caps or using a budget surplus.

That is another thing you need to consider. With all these new programs, we made a commitment in terms of the budget agreement. We set budget caps. The issue is, are those dollars that we are going to spend going to break those budget caps? Are they going to break the budget agreement? Where is the money going to come from?

I would just like to say that many of the President's goals are already being addressed by States that are leading the way in reforming our education system. Recent reforms have increased accountability and established higher classroom standards. For example, in Ohio, we now have in place the Fourth Grade Guarantee. No child can go on to the fourth grade unless they can read at a fourth-grade level. We are implementing a more stringent set of academic requirements students must meet to earn a high school diploma. You can't graduate in Ohio unless you pass a proficiency test. We test the kids in the fourth, sixth, ninth, and twelfth grade, send out report cards on each of the districts, and rate them. We have four levels, and we rate buildings within the school system, so that if your school has four elementary schools four blocks down the way, you can find out whether or not your child is doing as good as children that are in that other school.

The President wants to commit billions of dollars to school construction. We are already addressing construction needs in Ohio and have committed over a billion and a half dollars to repair or rebuild schools. Committing new Federal dollars to construction rewards the States that have not taken action. I think about this maybe from a selfish point of view. My taxpayers are already paying for the most aggressive rebuilding program that we have ever undertaken in the State of Ohio. Now you are saying, well, we are going to take your Federal tax dollars and start paying for school construction all over the country. I think that there is a better use of those dollars.

The Federal Government is not the national board of education, and "one size fits all" does not apply throughout the United States of America. "One size fits all" doesn't apply in the State of Ohio. "One size fits all" doesn't even apply in some of our school districts because of the diversity of the people that reside in those school districts.

Instead, given increasing demand for academic achievement, accountability, safe schools, and quality teaching, we must review existing Federal commitments to education to see how they can be improved to support those goals before creating new Federal initiatives.

I would like to suggest to you that you pass Ed-Flex. I have been working on that in the Senate. Ed-Flex, 12 States have it. All of the States should have it. And basically what it does is it gives us an opportunity to take some of the Federal money that is coming down_for example, the Eisenhower professional development grant, 80 percent of it is supposed to be used for math and science. Under Ed-Flex a local school district can ask the State superintendent, hey, we are okay in math and science, we have a need for computer training for our teachers, and they can get a waiver and allow them to use part of that money for computer training.

I would also like to point out for some of you that are interested in the block grant concept, and I am sure the Governor of Pennsylvania will tell you, block grants without having State involvement are not going to work. Congress should sit down with the Governors and the education people and see how it works. The one thing I will say to you is that welfare reform would never have passed without President Clinton issuing waiver after waiver after waiver to State governments and giving States the opportunity to show what they could do if they had the flexibility. And when welfare reform came up, a lot of the critics said, well, if those Governors get the program, they are going to throw those people out on the street. And we have demonstrated that if we had the flexibility, we could make a difference in the lives of the people who are in that program.

And I believe that the same kind of thing can happen in education. You think about what has happened in the welfare system today where you have empowered the people closest to the problem to make a difference in the lives of people. And everybody likes to talk about having the lowest welfare rolls in the history of, the 30-year low in Ohio, but the most important thing is that we have made a difference in the lives of the people on that system. We have given them a new vision because we have empowered the people close to them to make a difference in their lives. We have looked at them as being in the image and likeness of God, and we have stopped treating them like aggregates and numbers, and that is what the old system was doing.

I think the same concept could happen in the education system. I believe in quality, you know. Empower the people closest to the problem, give them the tools to really make a difference in the lives of people, and don't say, this is the way it has got to be. This is the way it has got to be. They know more about it than I do or you do. They really do.

The last thing I will suggest is this, and maybe this is a crazy idea, but this committee last year did a study, and you came back and said that there were some 760 education programs in Ohio, 50 something agencies all over the lot. The Senate Budget Committee had GAO do a report for them and I think they said they had 560 programs in the State government, 31 Federal agencies, and 89 of them really had something to do about education.

Wouldn't it be wonderful, wouldn't it be logical if maybe we stepped back and said, we are about to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Why don't we really see what we are doing as a country in education. Let's look at it. We just passed the training bill that you worked on, a lot of negotiations. It took 4 years to get it done, Education Training Act. I can't remember what it was called, but it was an effort to try and coordinate. But you have the Department of Labor, and you have the Department of Health and Human Services doing all the early childhood education. You have programs all over the place. Wouldn't it be nice to sit down and look at what we are doing as a country in the area of education. Identify the programs; look at those that are really making a difference, get rid of the ones that aren't; put the money in the programs that are working, and then work with State governments as partners to come up with a system where we can maximize our dollars to make a difference in the lives of our children.

I think too often, and I will conclude on this, that all of us, whether Republicans or Democrats should take national polls, see what is popular, and then introduce legislation because it is popular with the people and it sounds good, you know, the flavor of the month is not the way to pursue a major program in this country and education of great priority.

I think we have this wonderful opportunity today to sit back and look at what we are doing, try and figure out what works, try and sit down with the people that are closest to the problem and figure out what is the proper role for the Federal Government to play so that we can maximize our resources to really make a difference to improve the education system in this country and prepare our children to compete in this next century, and I think every one of you know this. How well we do with this challenge is going to be the real thing that is going to make the difference on whether our country can compete. Children are this country's future, and we have got to figure out how we can do a better job for them.

 

Chairman Goodling. Thank you, Senator.

See Appendix C for written statement of Senator Voinovich.

 

 

Chairman Goodling. I would point out that the Secretary told me that there will be an increase in the President's budget for Even Start. We also, thanks to Congressman Miller and others, were able to get 60 percent of any new money in Head Start to go for quality. So we agree with you that we have a lot to do as far as early childhood education is concerned.

I would ask you one question. I know you have to go. One of the things that I found all over the country is that people will say, my school district is outstanding, it is the neighbor's school district. Do you run into that problem as Governor trying to bring about any kind of reform, because I hear that all the time.

Senator Voinovich. Well, it is a lot less today. People are very smug about their own school districts, but in 1991 we started ninth grade high school proficiency tests. People started to see that their kids weren't passing a ninth grade test in the ninth grade, and with the report cards, they are starting to see that their school districts are not doing what they ought to be doing. So there is a lot less of that today in Ohio because of the accountability factor.

I think one of the other things that the committee should look at is that a lot of States do not have good education management systems. My first superintendent of public education was Ted Sanders, who is Assistant Secretary of Education under Lamar Alexander, and we discovered right off the bat that the information system in terms of testing, in terms of dropout rate and some of these other things wasn't in place. And I think that that is an area where we really need to see if we can't encourage States to do a better job and maybe help facilitate that. I think that is very important.

 

Chairman Goodling. Mr. Kildee.

 

Mr. Kildee. I know the Senator has other responsibilities today. I just want to thank you for what you are doing. My mother was born in Ohio. I come from Michigan. Michigan always has a great rivalry with Ohio on many levels.

I do commend you for what you have done for education in Ohio. I know you look forward to your career here in Washington to help the States all over the country achieve high education results, and I thank you for your testimony. Thank you.

 

Chairman Goodling. This is Bob's first opportunity to be sitting up here, and he didn't take them down the order in which anybody came, so I guess I will just have to look down the aisle.

 

Mr. Ballenger.

 

Mr. Ballenger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Governor or Senator, however you want to put this thing, I am just curious in your certification thing, I was chairman of the appropriations committee for education in North Carolina before I came up here, and we were looking at certification and tenure, and we had a dog fight. We couldn't get it past the NEA or NCEA in North Carolina. How did you go about getting around that particular roadblock?

Senator Voinovich. In terms of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards?

 

Mr. Ballenger. In the National Association of Education, teachers.

Senator Voinovich. I would be very frank with you. First of all, I would like to compliment your Governor. We are number two in the country in the number of national board-certified teachers. Of course, your Governor is chairman of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards.

But our organization supported our teachers participating in applying for certification with the national board. They look upon it as a way of improving professionalism of the teacher and giving recognition to teachers that are doing an outstanding job. I think they recognize that too often outstanding teachers are not recognized, and after a while they get demoralized, so they have supported that.

They have also supported experiments in peer review improving teachers. The way the system works is that the teacher says, I need help, or a colleague says, you need help, or the school system says, you need help, and then they have got a system in place where they start to help them, and if they can't be helped, they ask them to leave.

But it is a partnership, and I think that it is helpful. Too often we think of people as being not supportive, but it is amazing to me when you sit down with teacher organizations and really let them know that you are not adversary, you have a symbiotic relationship, and say, can't we figure out how we can get this done?

When I started out, I must tell you I had some problems because I thought it was us and you and that kind of thing. I finally woke up one day and said, you know, George, you are not going to get anything done around here unless you sit down and work with these people, and they are good people. They want to help. How can we sit down and figure out something that is going to work? And I think we have made some great progress.

One other thing I would like to point out, and that is this: I think one of the real problems today in this country, and it is something the Governors ought to be spending a lot more time on. You have Governors and you have State superintendents of education. In too many States the Governors don't even talk to the State superintendent of education. So you are trying to figure out where you ought to put this. And as chairman of the National Governors' Association, I came up with an idea that the organization signed off. It is called Performance Partnership, and it basically said that any Governor that gets together with a State superintendent and comes up with a plan on how they can better utilize Federal dollars, in other words, give us the flexibility and we will utilize them, that we will reward you, and somehow we ought to try and see if we can't get these individuals together.

As I say, in some States it just works beautifully. Other States, they are off in different directions, and it isn't helping things. So anything you can do to kind of say, hey, you want a block grant, you want to have this, well, then you guys have to get together, come up with a plan that is going to really get the job done.

 

Mr. Ballenger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

 

Chairman Goodling. I have a list now. Mr. Martinez, I believe, was next.

 

Mr. Martinez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator, I was very interested in what you had to say. I think you hit a lot of important notes in that statement that you made, particularly where you talk about only 6 percent of each education dollar coming from the Federal government.

You talk about local control and the locals knowing best. I agree with that. And without preempting or mandating, as you suggested in your talk, and using the word you used, encourage, how do we get the mentality up here to understand that unless we provide 96 percent of the money, we can't really tell the locals without preempting or mandating how to reform their systems? The reform has to come from there. The only thing we can do is encourage. So understanding that when you talk about throwing the programs out that don't work and keeping the ones that do, we are only talking about Federal programs, right, because that is what we are providing the money for, isn't it?

Senator Voinovich. What I am talking about, the multiplicity of programs, they all have_there has got to be something in terms of the research because the House committee last year came up with 760. The GAO came up with 560. But they are all allegedly programs that deal with education, the Department of Agriculture. They are all over the place.

 

Mr. Martinez. That is what I am getting at. Those are Federal programs we are talking about.

Senator Voinovich. That is right.

 

Mr. Martinez. But that is not going to really say to a local governing body how to spend their dollars, as you stated, in a way that it makes a difference for those kids. Now, that is where the link has to come from us to them and anything we do. Even if we throw out all those programs that aren't working on the Federal level and then shift those dollars from those programs to the programs that we know are working, all of the programs of the Federal Government that amount to 6 percent of the money that is going to the local level is a pittance of what it takes to really make those programs a success.

If you look at any program now, it is admirable that in Ohio you serve all of the children that are eligible for Head Start, but throughout the country there is 60 percent of eligible children that are not being served. And I doubt that if we shift all of the money from all the programs that we determine are wasted to even that one program that we are going to be able to fulfill that 60 percent.

Senator Voinovich. Let's take Head Start. Started out 26, 27 years ago as an experiment, okay, and it is still now an experiment, right. But we are committing more and more money to it, getting more. I think if you talk to a lot of Governors, they would put a lot more money. I went from $18 million to almost $200 million into the Head Start program.

We worked with the Head Start association, the State, and a lot of Governors, I think, would put more money into programs like this, but some of them, quite frankly, resent the mandates that are connected with it. And again, sit down with Governors and say, you know, we would like to see more States putting money into Head Start, and you ought to be doing that. I thought, and probably some Governors may not like it, I have said that if you want Head Start money, you have got to show us some type of maintenance of effort of what are you doing, but do it in such a way where they are having to say about the program rather than having to comply with something that is being mandated out of the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

Mr. Martinez. I agree with you. Thank you.

 

Chairman Goodling. We are going to move as quickly as we can because I know you have to leave.

Congressman Kucinich, you wanted to welcome your former Governor.

 

Mr. Kucinich. Actually, I want to welcome George Voinovich for many reasons because we are very proud of him. He is our former mayor of Cleveland (a job which I had the honor of also serving in), our former Governor, and now a U.S. Senator. And it is good that he is here to address this committee because he has had diverse experience in government, which I think is going to lend itself to very positive service in the United States Senate. We certainly appreciate your coming here this morning, Mr. Senator.

Senator Voinovich. Thank you.

 

Chairman Goodling. Is there anyone that has a burning question on either side?

 

Mr. Miller.

 

Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and, Governor, thank you very much for your testimony, and I agree with much of what you said.

I want to go back to something that the President said in the State of the Union, and when I came here a number of years ago, 24, it was probably more in vogue than it is today, and that is a question of whether or not the Federal Government should be able to withhold money if States' districts aren't doing their job.

One of the things when we tussled on welfare reform in theory, one of the things that we did, and it remains to be seen, because I think you have to let welfare reform play out a little bit, but I noticed in my State they just got a report that California is doing a miserable job with two-parent welfare families and getting them to work. They have really missed the mark rather widely.

But there is a series of mileposts that you have to match as a Governor. There is how many people are in the work force, how quickly have you moved people, what is the definition of work, numbers of hours that they have to work. There is accountability in that program, and we will see how that goes over time as the economy changes and all that. Right now it is going pretty damn well, but there is accountability there for the use of those Federal resources.

You have got to design the program. Other Governors have got to design their programs. They are different in Pennsylvania than they are in California.

In this system, we have put a lot of money, and we can always say, well, it is 1 out of $7, or it is only 2, 3 cents out of every dollar in education, whatever it is. But you know what? These local jurisdictions have done a pretty miserable job on their own, and I don't think it is Federal mandates that allow the school buildings to deteriorate to the extent that they have, and I don't think it is Federal mandates that have ended up with the reading scores the way they are or the number of children that are dropping out. I mean, if it is just 2 cents more that brings us to Valhalla, I think that is a mischaracterization of the system.

I think we have a system here_I will just talk about my own State. We have a huge number of absolutely terribly qualified people teaching in schools. Now, we rush to_you know, we rushed to reduce class sizes in the State, and we had to find people to fill those slots, but the suggestion is, you know, but for Federal mandates, every child would be above average, but for Federal mandates every child would be reading at their grade level just isn't the case because the fact of the matter is last time we came around in the ESEA, you can virtually use Title I money almost any way you want to use it, and nobody is auditing you anyway, so, I mean, what the hell are we talking about?

This isn't like a cop on the beat worrying about how you do it. The fact of the matter is we gave you Goals 2000 money, and we are supposed to improve the training and the improvement of teachers and what have you, and in some cases it is worse now than when we started Goals 2000. And I think somehow we have to come to grips with this issue that we as all of us here sitting, if you will, on the board of directors for the use of the taxpayer dollars_somehow we have got to make sure we get a bang for the buck.

When we did higher ed, some of that is in the new higher ed act. We took things that Governor Ridge is doing in Pennsylvania and tried to apply them to teachers' colleges and accountability there. And I think it is too easy to suggest that we just_if we just block granted or we just get rid of Federal mandates, that therefore we are putting it into a functional system. You know and I know in Ohio and California and Pennsylvania, we have got some massively dysfunctional systems, and it is not about whether or not Federal dollars are going to correct that. It is about whether or not local people have the courage to make decisions about these issues the President raised in the State of the Union.

Most of the things he talked about, in California, are already a matter of State law, and I expect much of it in Ohio. And I just like to hear you_I mean, we have got somehow_this is not_you know, it is not a lot of educational dollars, but it is a lot of dollars if you are talking to a taxpayer, and I don't think we can look them in the eye and say we are getting the best bang for the buck, and somehow we are continuing to pour it into what in many instances is an incredibly dysfunctional system.

Senator Voinovich. Well, I think you should go back to the welfare model. We debated about what those standards should be, didn't we, and we finally came up with some national standards, and then within the States we had some flexibility in terms of either reaching those or going above them.

I think it is good to set some standards. Okay. These are things that you ought to do. If you are going to be using these dollars, we want to see the results of them. But I would say to you if you look at the Goals 2000, that started out a lot of Governors were unhappy with. We are really using Goals 2000 money creatively in our State to really help our urban school districts particularly, and it has been very, very helpful.

You are right with Title I. A lot of schools are doing a lot more with Title I money than they did before when they could only use it, as you know, for the specific. We now have now Title I schools where kids today are able to go where working poor kids are able to be in the classroom with kids whose parents are on welfare. And I think if you go out and look to see what is being done, a lot of good things are happening.

I think part of the problem is that some of that information, best practices and what is working, there ought to be a greater effort to share that information. I think that you are a partner, 6 percent of the action. How do you partner up with the others to figure out how we can get people at the table, the private sector included.

For example, we are talking about national teaching standards. The Governors with the private sector have created an organization called Achieve, and basically that organization is setting world-class standards for schools, but it is a public-private partnership. So what is happening? Ohio is taking our tests and having Achieve evaluate them to make sure they are world-class so we are not fooling ourselves in regard to our children.

 

Mr. Miller. If I just might, it is not about the Federal Government becoming a national school board, but if you were to put together a syndicated loan, and you were looking for the last $10 million out of $200 million, and that bank said, we are going to demand certain levels of transparency here, we are going to demand certain levels of accountability if you want the last 10 million, you can say, we will go somewhere else. You can say, well, we will abide by the rules because we need that $10 million.

Everybody says this is not very much money, but none of it is mandatory. It is very interesting nobody ever turns it down. It is a partnership understanding our situation. It is not about dominating the partnership, but at some point if you want this money, which is, you know, $118 billion over the life of this program, it is real money, we ought to have some agreement about what is going to be accountable because there are some really good things going on.

Just one second, Mr. Chairman.

There are some really good things going on, but there are some really bad things that are going on right under the nose of the Governors, superintendent of schools, and schoolteachers and school boards on a local level that are being done with Federal money, and I question whether we should allow it to continue.

 

Chairman Goodling. The Senator has to leave, so you are the last word.

 

Mr. Miller. He doesn't want to go over there. You know what they are doing over there?

 

Chairman Goodling. Former Governor. Welcome to the Senate.

 

Mr. Castle. I didn't know if he was referring to Governor Voinovich or referring to me when he said that.

Senator Voinovich, I will just ask two questions. You answer them as you will.

You mentioned two things that caught my attention. One is Ed-Flex, or education flexibility. I understand that all 50 Governors are_I don't know if Governor Ridge can confirm that_are in support of education flexibility. I don't remember all 50 Governors being in support of anything before. Even welfare reform is 49 to 1.

One of my goals, frankly, on this committee is to move education flexibility as soon as we can. Ohio is one of the 12 States which has it now. Ohio has done a good job with it. I would like to hear your comments about that and about doing it sooner rather than later.

I will ask the other question just so you will have it here. We can speed things along. You stated that block grants without State involvement will not work, and I am very interested in developing that a little bit if you could, too.

Senator Voinovich. Okay. Prior to your coming in, I mentioned how important it was to get Ed-Flex passed because you will give all of the States the opportunity of the 12 States that have it to do some creative things with those dollars, and just as we have, I think, utilized those Federal dollars more effectively because we have Ed-Flex, I think the other States are going to have the same opportunity.

I pointed out, for example, to Senator Gorton, who has a block grant proposal in the Senate, I said to him, if you are interested in block grants, what you should do is at least give the States some opportunity like the President did with all the welfare waivers. I pointed out we wouldn't have had welfare reform, in my opinion, had not President Clinton given out just a large number of waivers.

Governors had those waivers. They did something creative with it, and when we talk about changing from an entitlement to a block grant, we were able to show that with flexibility, we can really make a difference for our welfare recipients.

So I think that it is a precursor to block grant, but the problem up here is this business about, you know, we are going to put every dollar in the classroom. We are going to zap out the role of the States in terms of education, and that is primarily our responsibility.

I think that I would just sit down with the educators, the Governors, and figure out that some of these dollars should go directly into the school districts, and some of them shouldn't. We do take some of the money out of those programs for administrative programs, but if we didn't have those dollars, some of the programs that are really working and making a difference, particularly for our urban education systems, particularly for urban education, would disappear.

Now, again, you could argue, well, if they disappear, is the State going to put the money in? You know something? I think we probably would, because I think that some of the States are taking off. Some people say that skimming money is really making a big difference, I think, in many of our districts in our State. Dollars to the classroom sounds good, but it is dollars to the classroom. In some instances great; in other instances those programs should continue to remain on the State level where they are being utilized to benefit all of the children in the State.

 

Mr. Castle. So, in other words, just wrapping what you said in education flexibility, if we grant you, all the States, education flexibility, it gives you the ability to use waivers to determine how to use Federal money as you wish to use it in the States, and in your view, would you agree maybe we should do this as soon as possible?

Senator Voinovich. I think it should. I mean, I don't know how long you are going to be spending on the reauthorization of Education and Secondary Education. That could be 2 years_I don't know.

 

Mr. Castle. We don't know either.

Senator Voinovich. But the fact is this is at least something we can get going out there, and in 6 months, a year, year and a half you will start to see what are these people doing with this money. If they are doing a good job with it as some of the States are doing, then you might say, well_some that are opposed to block grants, well, we will give them a limited block grant and see how that works out. As said Congressman Miller, set some standards in terms of what we expect them to do. If we give them flexibility to use this money, then we expect you to meet certain standards.

 

Chairman Goodling. Thank you very much.

 

Mr. Castle. Thank you.

 

Chairman Goodling. Thank you very much, Senator. I know that you were supposed to leave at 9:20. Hopefully your pay will not be docked for being late.

Senator Voinovich. I am learning the rules.

 

Chairman Goodling. We thank you very much for coming.

Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much.

 

Chairman Goodling. I am not going to take a lot of time introducing Pennsylvania's Governor. His reelection numbers speak for themselves. He has been a very, very effective leader in the State of Pennsylvania. We like to think that if we are not first now, we are certainly moving in that direction pretty rapidly.

And, Governor, if you will go with your testimony, then all of the other people will have an opportunity to participate in the questions.

 

STATEMENT OF TOM RIDGE, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

 

Governor Ridge. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is indeed a pleasure to be back with you and be back with so many of my colleagues.

I must tell you a little story. As a creature of habit, as I began to enter this room to prepare for the testimony, having been here for 12 years, I went in the Minority door, not that I wasn't welcome, because when tables reverse, I was. But I have to say to my Republican colleagues, it was nice walking into the Majority staff room. I had to leave Congress for it to happen, but it was nice.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to share with you some of the initiatives and some of the success we have achieved in improving our children's education in Pennsylvania.

Let me say how pleased and honored I am to be in the company of so many of my former colleagues. For 12 years I had the distinct pleasure of working closely with you on both sides of the aisle to improve America's competitive position, to improve its educational system as everyone seeks to do their job to make their constituency, their communities, and thereby all America a better place to live and to work.

When we talk about our global competitiveness in this fast-paced, knowledge-based economy, we can't help but talk about our children and about the kind of education they will need to excel in the new economy and the kind of education we will need to provide so that America can excel in the international economy. We must equip them not only with knowledge and skills that the 21st century demands, but with a passion for learning. It is a different kind of educational system that we have to set up because in the new millennium, education to give us skilled and innovative workers and entrepreneurs will be critical to the economic success of this country. Lifelong learning will become an absolute necessity.

I would like to just share Pennsylvania's educational structure with you briefly just so I can give you a profile of the system within which we work. Then as I talk about some of the innovations, you can see that I do think that they have applications nationwide, and I might add a lot of our colleagues, a lot of my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, are doing the same thing. But let me tell you a little bit about Pennsylvania's profile.

Nearly 2 million of our kids go to public schools. We have 501 school districts. School boards are elected on a partisan ballot in each of those school districts. You run as Republicans and Democrats. Sometimes, like anything else, you get nominated or supported by both parties.

We have over 3,100 schools. We have a tremendous amount of local involvement. We are trying to encourage more and more community leaders, religious leaders, business leaders, so what we are trying to do is engage the entire community in the process of changing how we think and act about education, but indeed because it is the community's responsibility.

I have said this before, whether your child is going to a good school with high standards and good teachers, that is great, but you better be worried about the children who are going to a school where the standards aren't as high, and the teachers aren't as great, and the building isn't secure, because one day your children and that child, their lives are going to intersect because they will be that future community, and when those lives intersect, we want it to be a positive engagement. So it is a collective responsibility even if your children or your school district is doing well, as a broader community we better be worried about all our kids having access to a quality education.

Over the last 4 years, we in Pennsylvania have set out a very deliberate course with a comprehensive strategy to ignite the kind of passion for learning in our young people. We want to give all our children the opportunity for a quality education. First, our children, their education and our public schools continue to be the number one investment priority of the tax dollars, hard-earned tax dollars of Pennsylvania's taxpayers. Pennsylvanians spend on those schools over $14 billion a year on public education, nearly $6 billion a year in State tax dollars alone. In this year's budget, which I will announce in greater detail in about a week, we will increase just funds available to public schools by nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.

I have said this to everyone involved in the educational system within that structure. Number one, you don't exist for yourselves. You exist to educate kids. So the bottom line of all our discussions is whether or not this reform initiative improves our ability to provide a quality education, improves access, because the children are the bottom line.

The other thing we have tried to suggest, even though we have continued to give more and more money, is that the color of innovation isn't always green. When you are spending $14 billion a year on education, and you know through Congressman Miller's point that there are some school districts and schools that aren't doing very well, and even though you see a pretty high per capita, per student assessment and tax dollars going, you have got to understand maybe you have got enough money, maybe you ought to rethink how you are delivering those services, and that is always a very controversial thing to do, but it is something very important, I think, for this whole country to engage in.

Taxpayers and parents want to know what kind of value they are getting for their tax dollars. That is why we have undertaken a broad range of reforms that demand greater accountability, personal responsibility, and performance, performance-based educational system. We have established rigorous academic standards in grades 3, 5, 8, and 11. Reading, writing, and math and soon science will follow. These standards will help ensure that our students get the basic skills they need to succeed, and again, we brought the community into the development of the standards. Paul O'Neil, chairman of ALCOA, led the business sector and was the chairman of this, but 40 percent of the people involved in the public hearings and then the drafting of the standards were teachers. You cannot exclude one group or any group. You all have to be involved.

Let me show you something that is kind of interesting. We decided since accountability is so important, that these standards in reading and math and in English, we are going to put them in a poster-size form. We will give them to parents that want them. You can put them on your refrigerator door. Those are the mass standards, an overview grades 3, 5, 8 and 11.

If we are going to hold teachers accountable, students accountable, school districts accountable, we all ought to know what we are teaching, and I might add, ladies and gentlemen, I am probably pretty happy these weren't the high school mass standards when I went through school. They are tough, they are rigorous, but they are measurable in basic education.

We need to understand it is not just the standards that we put out, but how we assess them, and so we have also begun the process of changing our State assessment programs so that they align with the new standards because we want to turn the whole system into a performance-based operation.

You should know that in addition to these new standards, we believe that we had to help the teachers get up to speed with the new educational standards as well, so we prepared a CD-ROM. It has gone out, 50,000 of them, to the teachers and school districts alike with the notion that, yes, we have got to raise standards, we are going to change the assessment situation, we have got to bring everybody into the process.

We have invested over the past 3 years over $130 million in our Link to Learn program, which gives our kids the latest technologies in their classrooms. Link to Learn was recognized by the Progress and Freedom Foundation here in Washington as a national best practice for its effective use of computer technologies to improve learning. It was more than just computers in the classroom. It was tying classrooms together, school districts together, and using the public education system as we experimented with the development of 12 local area networks to see how we can take that school and take that technology and give our students and teachers access to other things going on within the communities.

In Pennsylvania parents and taxpayers can see just how well their public schools are doing; again, the idea toward performance-based standards, performance-based assessment. Comprehensive school profiles on more than 3,100 public schools are available on a CD-ROM and over the Internet. Every year we have got a Pennsylvania system of school assessment. We have school profiles, and you can pick it up on the Internet, or you can get your own CD-ROM. On these profiles the parents can take a look with just a mouse click and get information about teachers, class size, how many computers, the condition of the library, number of books, the attendance records of teachers, the attendance records of students, and that is for 3,100 plus classrooms in Pennsylvania.

Again, if the goal is performance, you have to set objective criteria, measure it, and tell the rest of the world what is going on, and we are trying to do that in Pennsylvania. I might add while I am very proud that these are initiatives that Pennsylvania is undertaking with a lot of bipartisan support, I think this kind of thing is going on around the country in many of your respective States as well.

Just as we raise the bar for Pennsylvania's students, our Teachers for the 21st Century initiative will assure the best and brightest are teaching in Pennsylvania's classrooms. We hope and believe this ambitious effort will make Pennsylvania a national leader in educational excellence. The initiative will require future teachers in Pennsylvania to take the same content area requirements as their peers who major in the liberal arts disciplines. That means a future math teacher in Pennsylvania_this may come as a shock, but you ought to take a look at your own school systems_a future math teacher in Pennsylvania will have to major in math before they can teach math. We think it is a good idea to have teachers certified in content-rich subjects that they will be teaching.

We will also require them to keep a 3.0 grade point average, not just in math, but all across their courses, course levels, to be eligible to teach, and we have raised the certification test standards in order for them to get a teaching certificate.

To ensure that teachers in our classrooms presently are the best they can be, we have proposed, and it is under discussion, a great deal of professional enhancement, additional training. We would like to require 270 hours of continuing professional development every 5 years. Teaching methods change, and, frankly, the materials change, and we think it is a good idea that we are going to help these teachers to get back into these classrooms, take some of these courses in order to continue to upgrade their skills.

As our children progress through education, our goal as parents is to hope to see from one grade level to the next a maturation, a maturing and increased ability. Likewise I think we can never suggest to ourselves that once somebody graduates with a teaching certificate, that is all they need to learn about teaching anywhere, because the standards and the methods and the textbooks and everything else is changing. Schoolteachers have to be, and I might add have been, very responsive to the notion of continuing professional development.

Like I said before, we did send out 50,000 classroom resource kits designed by teachers for their fellow teachers to help our kids and them meet the new academic standards. Like never before we offer professional development to teachers to enrich their schools. We launched the first ever Governor's Academy for Urban Education and the Governor's Institute for Educators, two programs that provide state-of-the-art training for teachers.

As members of this committee, you can see we set very high expectations for our children, teachers, and schools, but we also reward them when we see results. Again, if it is going to be a performance-based system, to improve performance, we like to award performance. We started something a couple years ago called performance incentive grants. We challenge individual schools, teachers and students to compete against themselves to improve on their own performance. Clearly we felt that it would be an unfair competition if_for a lot of reasons school districts vary in terms of the dollars used, dollars committed to education, the quality of teachers and the like, so there are variations. We have 3,100 schools in 501 school districts. There are variations on teaching models, number of certified teachers, et cetera. We say we just want you to compete against yourself.

So you can be eligible for a performance grant if your test scores go up or your attendance goes up. Again, it has proven to be a very successful program. Last year nearly 1,000 schools that made the greatest gains in either academic achievement and attendance earned more than $13 million in performance grants. And we're going to ratchet that up another 25 percent in the budget, again performance-based system.

These dollars go directly to the schools for them to decide how to invest. If you achieve, we reward your performance and you can decide how you're going to use these dollars, hopefully to continue to improve and to achieve.

Empowering parents to play a stronger role in their children's education is another key element of our reforms. I believe that parents, and I think all of us agree, not government, know what's best for their children. That's why we created charter public schools, so committed parents, teachers and community leaders can design customized public schools that are accountable to the communities they serve.

It's really an exciting concept. I don't know if you've had a chance to visit any of the charter schools that may be developed in your states or talked to the teachers or talked to the community leaders, but we've got 31 up and running, and we've got a line out the door with 40 or 50 applications just this year, and we expect more in future years.

Today nearly 6,000 Pennsylvania students attend 31 charter schools. It's very exciting, with the help of school planning grants, scores more on the drawing board. And I might add, we normally have applications, more applications for teachers in charter schools than we need. So the whole notion, again, teachers_a lot of teachers out there that_there's an old standard, rather rigid and I think anachronistic form of education, and teachers like being involved in something where they design the school, design the curriculum, make decisions, along with parents and community leaders.

And I think you're a tremendous support, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and this committee, because I believe in last year's budget you saw to it that there were additional dollars for charter schools. And I think that's a great investment, and I commend and thank you for it. Even as we expand quality educational choices in our pubic school system, ultimately parents and not governments should decide, and that's why I support empowering parents to select the school, public private or parochial, that is best for their children.

We haven't seen the success with regard to choice as some of my other colleagues have. But I personally don't believe that education reform will ever be complete without some form of school choice, at the very least, which is targeted to low- and moderate-income citizens who have no choice, because of certain income levels.

We've accomplished a great deal to improve the quality of education in Pennsylvania, but we also know there's much more to be done. So I'm here today speaking as one governor. Rarely I go out on a limb to speak for any of the other 49. But I truly believe, ladies and gentlemen, that we are very interested in developing with you the same kind of partnership that evolved over a period of years on welfare reform.

We seek a partnership with this Congress and the Federal Government to help Pennsylvania, as well as the other 49 states, in this effort. To start, we think it is unanimous. Congressman Castle, we hope you will pass Ed-Flex's, and I think all of us would hope it would be passed by spring.

It would give us just one more opportunity to prepare for the following school year, if you've got it to us by spring, and I think if you talked to the Republican and Democratic governors who have had the opportunity, there have been 12 of them, they will tell you, yes, there have been some problems, but there's always some growing problems. But I think if you take a look at the latest assessment that Ed-Flex has given, parents, teachers, states, with consultation and accountability with the Federal Government, some tremendous opportunities that would not have been available but for Ed-Flex.

Governors working with their state agencies and local partners are on the forefront of efforts to integrate Federal, state, local and private resources. Ed-Flex is just one more tool in the arsenal that will make it easier and quicker to launch state and local reform initiatives. It will enhance our ability to make Federal programs an integral part of our reform efforts rather than an obstacle. And I say, having spent 12 years here and understanding, conceptually I would like to see everything consolidated with maximum flexibility. But I spent 12 years in Washington, and I understand fully that there are constituencies, legitimate constituencies, not only in my state but the other 49 states, that are concerned with maximum consolidation and maximum flexibility. The only thing I would say to you is that we as governors, and I'm speaking for myself, would like to work our way through some of those issues with you, because we all share the same goals it seems to me.

But to Congressman Miller's point of view, and I say this again respectfully, do you regulate from Washington as if all schools and all school districts are dysfunctional, because they're not? Or do you somehow, because if your money is going into a system like that, you want the accountability. And I would tell you, I don't know any governor that wants to have block grant Title I money. That's a very prescriptive program. We might even want to talk to you about how you can even toughen the accountability, because maybe we're not real crazy about how some of those dollars are being spent either, because it's strictly a pass-through.

But I think we're looking for a partnership with you, because I think at the end of the day, ours and these Federal Government, state government, the local school board officials, we all pretty much want the same thing. And what is the mix? I think that takes our being engaged with you at the front end of the deliberative process, that this committee has given me the opportunity to involve myself, and I think other governors on a personal basis would be willing to work with you as well.

Let me say that the Nation's governors look forward to working with you in this Congress on the upcoming reauthorization of the elementary and secondary education act. As you authorize, as the authorization is discussed and debated, I urge that we keep the role of the Federal Government in public education foremost in our minds.

Education policies and initiatives historically have been the domain of the States and their local school districts not the Federal Government. That's not to say that we are not grateful for the dollars that we receive, and it's not to say that we don't not believe that many of the objectives and the goals of those dollars are not objectives and goals that we share.

And to your point, again, Congressman Miller, special education is a good example. I think we there will be constituencies back home, appropriately so, will want, and I have to thank this committee again, you've added quite a bit more money last year in special ed, and I thank you for that. And those wonderful people and they're dealing with unique, very unique and difficult situations in education, and they don't have too much choice. You've got to drive down that money, because it's there.

I mean that is the problem, that is as much a political imperative as well as anything else. But when you draw down 10 or 12 percent of the money that sets requirements and mandates for the expenditure of the other 88 or 90 percent, it does put a burden on how you spend that money on special ed.

So all I'm saying is that there just needs to be some proportionality or rationale. The Federal Government wants to help students and school districts with these special needs. The state governments want to do it. Local school districts want to do it. But when so many of your regulations are tied to the smaller sum of money, which may be appropriate in some school districts or in some schools, but not in all, it does create a challenge that I think governors would like to work with you to cut through and to meet.

States set educational priorities. States set standards for students and teachers. Technology programs for the classroom, charter schools, but Federal education dollars can and should be used to leverage state initiatives and reforms. So I'm here today to encourage you to empower the States. I believe our children are best served to enable governors and state legislators, elected, working with school boards in Pennsylvania that are elected, they're working with parents and teachers and concerned citizens at the grass roots level to help direct your Federal resources where they are needed and most appropriate for that school or that school system.

I would encourage you to establish a framework that enables the States to tailor educational policies to meet their unique and individual needs, while furthering your legitimate national educational objectives. I think you will find that you will have a very receptive audience among the governors who seek to partner with you in that regard.

Look to your states as your partners, as we design together hopefully ways to address our mutual concerns. Each state has a different tradition and sometimes constitutional restrictions on what they can or cannot do. Additionally, states differ, sometimes with respect to their priorities at the moment. We should all be concerned with the Federal nature of the initiatives since education has traditionally been the preserve of State and local governments, but we should not be so concerned that we ignore the reality that the Federal Government wants to be a partner, wants to contribute dollars, we just need a better way to get them distributed among the States.

Please unleash the creativity of the States, hold us accountable and give us an opportunity to partner with you. And I think probably as we look to the next century, one of the most important partnerships that we could develop in terms of layers and levels of government, and in terms of the political parties is a partnership, a strong partnership, around kids. We must be united as a country around the notion that at the end of the day the system exists for children. The intention is there, there are good intentions are all over the place. That's clear to me.

But we still need to do a better job of holding each other accountable and understanding that one size doesn't fit all. I finally go back to my situation in Pennsylvania. The President has announced some very interesting initiatives and as a governor today, and him being a former governor, I appreciate. Some school districts need help to build. Some school districts need more teachers. Some districts would have some technology as a priority. Some districts would have standards and teachers as a priority. And at the end of the day, if we're to avoid the federalization of public education, we have to be most sensitive to those local priorities.

I would just respectfully suggest, in trying to develop a partnership with states and the governors, that one of the things we might keep in mind as you go about looking at future programs for the Federal Government to just give a range of options, make a range of options available for the States or the school districts to pick and choose based upon their priorities.

I know the governors would certainly like to work with you. And having been here and appreciating your point of view, you're responsible for where the Federal dollars go. So there's a notion of accountability that I respect. As governor, I'm responsible where state dollars go. There's a notion of accountability. School board members are responsible for where local dollars goes. There's a measure of accountability.

I think we can work out the accountability factors as long as we keep focusing on our mutual goals, and I thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before you.

See Appendix D for written statement of Governor Ridge.

 

 

Chairman Goodling. Thank you, Governor.

 

Mr. McKeon.

 

Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, Governor. It's good to you see again.

Governor Ridge. Good to you see you again.

 

Mr. McKeon. Good to have you back. You have a unique perspective having served here and now having served as governor, so you understand how we're grappling with some of these problems. But you have a unique experience; it looks like you're doing very well there in your state.

Governor Ridge. I don't mean to interrupt you, but we've got Governor Sundquist and Governor Rowland, we have some of your former colleagues, and what we've tried to impress upon the Nation's governors, and we think is very important, is that there's a process in Washington. There are ways that the committees, subcommittees and committees work. There's a legislative process. And for us to add any legitimacy to our professed interest in being partners, we have to be involved in the process at the front end, not just outside the door at the conference committee asking you to insert this in at the last minute, because we know how difficult it is for you. And I think that the governors are prepared to involve themselves that way.

 

Mr. McKeon. Thank you. I just have a couple of questions on teacher training. The teachers that are trained in your states_in your state_

Governor Ridge. Yes.

 

Mr. McKeon. _are most of the teachers serving now? Do you have an idea how many of them are trained in your state at your universities versus how many are imported?

Governor Ridge. Yes. Well, no, we export teachers. We've made some modest improvements in our tenure law, but we have strong teacher tenure in Pennsylvania. And we would graduate probably 8- to 9,000 young men and women a year with teaching certificates, and there are probably only about 3,000 jobs available in Pennsylvania. So we export wonderfully talented and highly motivated Pennsylvanians to your school districts.

 

Mr. McKeon. So most of your teachers are trained within their state_

Governor Ridge. Yes.

 

Mr. McKeon. _they're serving? So the things that you're talking about doing, their continuing professional development, requiring a math major to teach math, you can control those things_

Governor Ridge. Yes.

 

Mr. McKeon. _better probably than states that are importing teachers per se?

Governor Ridge. Right.

 

Mr. McKeon. What do you see as the role of the Federal Government in improving the quality of teachers and teaching?

Governor Ridge. I think most of the States with which I'm familiar are in_had either raised or are in the process of raising standards, raising the bar for teachers to get a teaching certificate and are demanding more and more professional and continuing education. I think that's a goal we all share, and to the extent that the Federal Government wanted to target dollars and make that an option for states, I think it's a very appropriate one. And, you know, if we were to apply for X number of dollars from a program, this ought to be an eligible expenditure for Federal dollars. I think that would probably be the best thing to do.

You might want to do what Achieve is trying to do through the National Governors' Association and what they may have been doing internally within the Department of Education, is take a look at changes in the certification requirements and maybe reach some kind of consensus, you know, set a goal, set a standard.

Again, I would be fearful of mandating that the States have to meet it, but I think if you_in this competitive environment, my God, the one thing that I've learned in my four years as governor, we do compete all the time. I take a look at what George, former Governor Voinovich is doing with the economic development, what they did with welfare, what they did with education and everything else. And so as we continue to ratchet up the bar, I think that affects all 50 states and I think making those Federal dollars available to support those kinds of programs would be well received by all.

 

Mr. McKeon. So standards, not mandate a standard, just make a recommendation?

Governor Ridge. Right.

 

Mr. McKeon. You said a math teacher will also have to be a math major.

Governor Ridge. Correct. You will have to have as many credit hours in math as if you were simply just going to major in math for whatever reason.

 

Mr. McKeon. In addition to the teaching classes?

Governor Ridge. Right.

 

Mr. McKeon. That would be interesting to see if you're able to get enough math teachers and enough Latin teachers and enough Spanish teachers. When you have a major in that subject, that will be interesting to see.

Governor Ridge. I had a chance to talk about elevated academic requirements with quite a few young men and women in high school who want to make teaching their life's work. I mean you have to have a certain passion for a special kind of service to be a teacher. And these young people have it, and I found that they were excited about it. Because by raising their standards, they felt they were going to elevate their profession, and at the end of the day, as we elevate standards, I suspect that down the road they will be able to demand better compensation because they are better prepared to teach.

 

Chairman Goodling. Mr. Scott.

 

Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

 

Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Governor, I notice you said that there are 6,000 students in your charter schools.

Governor Ridge. Right.

 

Mr. Scott. And there are 31 schools, that works out to be about 200 each; is that about right?

Governor Ridge. Correct.

 

Mr. Scott. Are these parts of other schools or are these separate schools?

Governor Ridge. You are eligible in Pennsylvania to do either, but we create those options. More often than not, they have gone into a different building to set up a different, a separate institution.

 

Mr. Scott. You mentioned the rigorous standards you have for the third, fifth, eighth and eleventh grades. What happens if students do not pass the standards? Do you have additional resources to try to bring them up or do they just fail?

Governor Ridge. We have begun the process of working on remediation, again, trying to support school districts in that effort. And we're starting this year with a supplemental program to be targeted toward the third grade with regard to reading. We call it Read to Succeed. I mean that's the most essential, the most fundamental educational school.

 

Mr. Scott. If someone doesn't pass the third grade_

Governor Ridge. If you're talking about that they have to pass a test to get on to the next grade, that's not what we do. There's not that requirement within Pennsylvania. Those are decisions we leave to our local school boards.

 

Mr. Scott. If they don't pass the third grade test though, are there additional resources to make sure they don't stay behind?

Governor Ridge. Well, I believe there are.

 

Mr. Scott. It's something different to have a test.

Governor Ridge. You may have some difference of opinion, depending on where you are in the structure. But when you have a state that gets pretty high marks on the per capita expenditure per student, I mean I believe there are resources within each school district and we do have and have begun some additional programs for remediation directly from the state to the school districts.

But that has historically been an option. We don't control the curriculum, and we do encourage the school boards and districts to use these assessments. It has only been in the recent past two years where the assessments have really been public knowledge.

 

Mr. Scott. That's the overall school?

Governor Ridge. Correct.

 

Mr. Scott. Okay. But for the individual student that fails, it seems to me that we shouldn't just notice that he failed but to do something about it, particularly in the third grade, as you've indicated. That's a real marker right there. If they're not up to snuff by the third grade, they're going to be a problem.

Governor Ridge. Very good point. And what we're doing within the school districts_and again, and I will say this, we average in Pennsylvania, we are much higher than the national average per capita. I believe the money is there for the school districts. What we're doing, however, when we change the standards, we've changed the assessment tests. Historically, the assessment test told a student in Pennsylvania how you rank, this is how you compared with all the other students. It did not indicate to you the strengths or weaknesses that you had in the academic discipline.

We're changing the standards. So they not only get a percentile ranking, but we can go back to the school district, you can go back to the teacher and say they're strong in this area in math but in this area in math they're weak. So we're changing the assessment, making the assessment tool not only a comparative measure, but also a barometer of specific learning.

And hoping_and again just in the process of doing this, and I suspect in future years as this evolves there will be more resources, State and local, going into taking that assessment tool, identifying where that child is weak, particularly in the third and fifth grade, and trying to bolster them up.

 

Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

 

Chairman Goodling. Mr. Greenwood?

 

Mr. Greenwood. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me welcome my friend and my governor.

Let me just offer a comment. If you ever wonder whether the new standards that your school board, state school board has enacted, with your encouragement, are working, let me tell you that for Laurie and Katie Greenwood, they both recently brought home with their homework the sheets with the new state standards that they have to have their recent research papers tested against. And as a parent who likes to work with his children, it was a joy to have those standards and have them work through the kind of research that they had to do and the way that they had to write. And when Katie came back from school, having her paper graded, and she had_she said my teacher said that I had voice when I wrote. And that's a really high standard to achieve. It meant a lot to her, and it's working.

Let me ask you a very pointed question. At a hearing like this, there's a lot of comity on both sides of the aisle, we don't do a lot of sword fighting, but we will soon. And_

Governor Ridge. I'm here to dull the blades.

 

Mr. Greenwood. And what we will be sword fighting about is to what extent we're willing to adopt some of the initiatives that the President laid out in his State of the Union address and, specifically, whether or not we're prepared to spend new Federal dollars for school construction.

What I heard you say is that some school districts, and I know this in our State of Pennsylvania, need money for construction, but some don't. Some need money to hire more teachers, better teachers, some need it for technology. And it has been my opinion, and I think it's the chairman's opinion, if we put more dollars into education, we ought to put them into existing mandates rather than creating new mandates, and particularly in special education because every school district in my Congressional district, I think every school district in Pennsylvania, is finding that the fastest growing part of their school budget is the special education.

Governor Ridge. That's right.

 

Mr. Greenwood. And I would ask you to answer the question. If we had X number of new dollars for education, would you rather that we put those dollars into special education and thus free up that number of dollars in every district in the country to use for their priorities, including construction, if that's what they need, or would you rather us fund robustly a school construction program?

Governor Ridge. Well, I believe clearly, clearly, my preference would be to take care of the special education needs. I was talking to a legislator the other day whose passion for education is unmatched, Senator Rhoades, you remember you served with him, and special education dollars in Pennsylvania may be about 12 percent of the budget, but they drive like 50 or 60 percent of the spending.

And I think your statutory goal that you set some time ago was to provide about 40 percent. And I would respectfully suggest before you commence any new spending programs, in a well-intentioned effort to help out schools, kids and the like, that you more completely fund some of the other very appropriate and well-intentioned efforts to help out school kids, because you kind of end up marginalizing the impact of those initial dollars and you end up putting more burdens on the local and the state governments.

I think school construction, there are probably some school districts in Pennsylvania that would, I mean our state does help with school construction. But at the end of the day, you know, I think, since you talk about having finite resources, you ought to devote them where they have the most immediate and profound impact. I think school districts across the country are running into more and more challenges with special education needs, and I think that would be the most appropriate expenditure. If that doesn't work, for somehow in this clash of ideas that there's still some sentiment for keeping the special program for either more schools or more teachers, then at least I would like you to see it be lumped together and give the States the option.

I mean candidly under the proposal for the new teachers, we get 2 new teachers per school district under the formulas we calculated. It's nice to say you're in favor of 100,000 new school teachers, whatever the amount might be, but I'm just here to tell you today that I think it's unlikely that 2 new school teachers per district is going to have a dramatic impact on the quality of education in 3,100 schools. But if those dollars were directed more specifically to special ed, I think it would have a more significant impact.

Again, those are the choices you have to wrestle with. But it would be my recommendation that before you embark on a new path with a few dollars, let's take care of the original programs that are equally as_right now even more important because we've accepted the money. We've got to deal with the mandates.

 

Chairman Goodling. Mr. Holt?

 

Mr. Holt. Governor, first of all, as someone who has taught teachers in your good state, I'm pleased, and someone who insisted on content mastery, I'm pleased that you're requiring your teachers to have content mastery. I think that's important, not just in my own area of science and math, but throughout the curriculum.

But what I would like to ask you about is charter schools. The number of charter schools, as you report, are growing rapidly in Pennsylvania, as in many states. In fact, as I understand, you've gone from 6 schools last year to almost 3 dozen this year, and you have dozens lining up to start next year. That's a pretty fast growth rate, and the results of this experiment certainly are not in.

Governor Ridge. Correct.

 

Mr. Holt. How will you decide how fast to grow?

Governor Ridge. Well, the decision to create a charter school is strictly local, and we will try to accommodate the request of as many parents and teachers and school districts as possible. I mean I don't want to put any artificial limit on it. There's certain minimum requirements that we need to see.

But ultimately I would like to see the notion of charter school districts be embraced, but right now we're just working on charter schools. So there's no real limit. And we have people within our Department of Education design whose sole responsibility is working with local communities and charter schools. They don't do anything else, except get them up and running, from the day they get the planning grant to working with their school boards and the like. So we're trying to move it as aggressively as possible.

 

Mr. Holt. Thank you, Governor.

Governor Ridge. You're welcome.

 

Chairman Goodling. How tightly are you tied to 10:30?

Governor Ridge. If there are any more, a couple more.

 

Chairman Goodling. I know Mr. Hinojosa has been there for a long time. But let me go next on our list, which is Mr. Deal. Mr. Deal is not here. After that was Mr. Fletcher, and after that is Mr. Tancredo. No questions?

 

Mr. Tancredo. No.

 

Chairman Goodling. After that was Mr. Salmon. After that was Mr. Ehlers. I saw your hand.

 

Mr. Ehlers. I know, you were very artful at ignoring it, but the persistence paid off.

Governor, it's good to have you back.

Governor Ridge. Nice to go back.

 

Mr. Ehlers. A couple of questions.

I notice throughout you were talking about all the partnerships you developed and all the groups that work together. I didn't notice very much mention of the legislature. Were they active participants, passive participants, supportive and nonsupportive?

Governor Ridge. I would say, by and large, that we've had bipartisan support for just about every one of the initiatives that I've talked about; charter schools, academic standards. As a matter of fact, on the standards committee, Republican or Democratic members from the Education Committee, you know, we crossed swords, we certainly will if we ever get around to that broader school choice. Not public to public, but outside public school, then that will be a battle.

But all of these other reforms, I would say we've had a great deal of support from the legislature. Surprisingly, you know, some of the school boards weren't real excited about charter schools. That institutional infrastructure sometimes forgets the purpose for which they exist. But we've been able to overcome that, and we're seeing more and more applications now. But by and large I think up and down the line people have been pretty supportive.

 

Mr. Ehlers. What about the teachers union there, did you have difficulty getting these ideas through there or was it a matter that they knew change was coming regardless and, therefore, they were willing to work with you on change?

Governor Ridge. Well, I know on the whole matter of choice we know exactly where the teachers are coming from. But that will be a legislative and political brouhaha, like it has been in every other state. But sometimes I have to separate all of the teachers that are my friends, and I talk to them from some of the standpoints of their leadership. Because I've got charter school applicants, teacher applicants that exceeds the number of positions available. Although, again, we had 40 percent of the men and women who worked on standards were teachers. By and large, the teaching profession has embraced the notion of accountability and higher standards for their profession, particularly the younger teachers.

It's always a mix, but I believe teachers, as Senator Voinovich, Former Governor Voinovich pointed out, teachers have to be a part of the mix. I mean, next to parents teachers are the adults that our kids see most, and so you want to do whatever you can to pull them into the mix. And you cannot fashion, I think, long-term strategy to improve the quality of education without being sensitive to the needs of teachers and, particularly in some of the urban settings, some of the unique problems they have.

So, sure, we will have our political battles and we will engage each other within the legislature on some issues. But by and large I think most of the teachers in Pennsylvania have been very supportive of these changes. Some weren't real excited about new standards for teachers, but we're overcoming that because those are the new standards. And so whether they're excited or not, that's the new rules of the game. Those have been changed.

 

Mr. Ehlers. Well, I'm pleased to hear that, because when I was on the Michigan Senate, I worked on precisely some of these issues, that was 10 years ago. And although I could get some teachers' support, I had adamant opposition from the teachers union. And almost everything I proposed and finally got to was heavily watered down.

Thank you very much.

Governor Ridge. You're welcome. I don't want to suggest to you they have been at the forefront of all of these. Some of them we've had to bring them along, but many have been partners and that did not translate into any political partnership directed toward yours truly during the last election, but that's not important. The important thing is they have in some of these initiatives been helpful.

 

Chairman Goodling. Becky is packing up. But Mr. Hinojosa, can you be very quick with your question? And I would ask the members if you would stay, please, for a few minutes after the governor leaves.

 

Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Governor, for being here. I can't help but notice that you have very strong support for Education Flex programs that are being discussed now, and so I would ask you to talk a little bit about how you envision the difference between the charter schools compared to magnet schools. In my State of Texas, where I served on the local school board and the Texas state board of education and the boards of community colleges, I have a very good, clear understanding about magnet schools versus our public schools, simply because we don't have to have as many extracurricular activities such as football, basketball and other types of activities like that in our magnet schools. And by the way, the magnet schools that I know in South Texas are fairing very well on the TAAS scores as compared to the public schools.

So tell me a little bit about how you envision this flex, Education Flex program being supported by governors and allowing our public schools to have maybe not all these extracurricular activities and thus increase the amount of funding per child in public schools?

Governor Ridge. As you know, there are several advantages to charter schools. One of which is that, the school is actually designed by parents, teachers and the communities. Secondly, in Pennsylvania, not all teachers have to be certified from the state. They have the opportunity so you have a slightly different mix of teachers. And you can do that because the same rules of tenure don't necessarily apply.

And there's also some regulatory relief as well. And I see Ed-Flex, depending on the kind of flexibility that might be forthcoming, as an opportunity to use some of your dollars as incentive grants, performance grants. Using them to perhaps encourage reluctant communities who still have a mindset against charter schools, to at least try one pilot within your school district, because we feel pretty confident that it would work.

I think there's no specific purpose, there's no one goal that can be achieved with greater flexibility. I think we can achieve a lot of mutual goals. I believe Parris Glendening in Maryland used, and Maryland is known as an Ed-Flex state. He used some of that money in some school districts to reduce class size, teacher-pupil size, because he used it as an incentive to get the schools to think differently about class size.

So you really give governors a range of options, I think, to promote some mutually endorsed goals with Ed-Flex, and charter schools would be just one of the beneficiaries of such an approach.

 

Mr. Hinojosa. Last question is that on school finance equity, there's a review of state education by Education Week and it gives Pennsylvania a grade of C-minus for the equity of spending per student among school districts in the state. Do you think that that's a fair grade?

Governor Ridge. Well, the equity has been challenged several times over the past few years in our state in our court system, and the courts have rejected that notion. And we have a responsibility to provide thorough and efficient education, we do. Our basic subsidy, our basic formula is driven, not just by student population, but it takes in other economic factors, demographic factors, the school districts' ability to generate revenue.

So I think we have passed constitutional and other legal hurdles that have been challenged in our state court system, because our funding formula takes these other factors into consideration before they distribute dollars.

 

Chairman Goodling. I can respond to that also by saying that the basic formula in Pennsylvania I think is one of the finest. I think where they sometimes get challenged are on some of the other, like special ed and some of those. But the basic formula, as long as I can remember, is about as fair, I think, as it can be.

Governor Ridge. We show you a range, we have some school districts that get $400 a student, we have some school districts that get over $3,000 dollars a student. So that shows you we are sensitive to some of the local factors.

Sorry, Mr. Chairman.

 

Chairman Goodling. Mr. Roemer.

 

Mr. Roemer. I want to join in the chorus of welcoming our former colleague, Governor Ridge, to our committee. But I also want to thank him for his message here today. If I heard it correctly, it was one of saying, when we sharpen our swords to do partisan stabbing and fighting of one another, you are here to encourage us to dull the blades and possibly put the swords away and to try to work in a bipartisan way to improve our schools, to improve the quality access of our schools, to every single child, to try new ideas, such as charter schools, to improve on the flexibility that we give to our school districts.

And I hope part of your message is to try not to put us in partisan fights where we're trying to pick between do we help our special needs school students or do we construct or fix or modify a school building that is falling down on our children, or in this magnificent capitol city where we couldn't open our schools in this city for three weeks because the schools were unsafe. The schools were hazards to the children. I'm hopeful that we don't confront those kinds of choices for our Nation's children.

I hope that we can work together in a bipartisan way, and I applaud you for coming here to encourage us to do that kind of bipartisan work. I want to encourage Mr. Castle who I joined to introduce the Education Flexibility bill last year. I hope that we can pass that in a bipartisan way this year.

I wanted to ask you one or two specific questions, Governor; one, you mentioned the need for new teachers. New qualified teachers.

Governor Ridge. Right.

 

Mr. Roemer. We have too many teachers certified in phys ed teaching physics. We have too many teachers certified in English teaching Spanish. We are trying to encourage a bill introduced last year, which was signed by the President, alternative route certifications for teachers coming in at second career and third career levels.

Could you comment on how alternative route certifications programs help us recruit teachers, particularly in high need areas, inner city areas and minority areas?

Governor Ridge. I believe you must give, and we've done that in Pennsylvania with our charter schools. We still have a challenge to do it with the rest of the schools. But you have so many qualified professionals out there, men and women who have, for whatever reason, decided to change careers and would like to teach. And while I think certification is important and you need a minimal level of competency that you want demonstrated, if we would give to local school districts the option to hire and then review performance after a year, I think we would go a long way in improving the quality of public education.

I truly believe that. Ever since we started talking about it, I've received letters, people have stopped me on the streets. I talked to an individual who has a Ph.D. in English who taught for a while in college, but he's not certified to teach in high school. I don't know, I think we've been blessed with tremendous challenges and universities in this country. And you may be a graduate student working on your Ph.D. at one of the finest universities or colleges in the community; and if you were called upon to go teach an honors course you couldn't because you weren't certified. You've got engineers and biologists and chemists and physicists, if it's going to be a community endeavor to improve education, working in your plants and facilities in the neighborhood, but you can't bring them in. At least give them an opportunity to teach chemistry or physics, and I think we ought to just rethink the notion that school districts shouldn't have some autonomy to bring in some of these professionals who may not be certified and give them an opportunity to teach. And clearly, since there are no rules of engagement, if they don't turn out after the first semester, they're gone. If they prove not to have a good methodology, don't relate to kids, they're gone. There is no tenure holding them there. You can come and see if they do well in the classroom; if they're not, then they move on.

So I would encourage anything. I would love to see if that's your interest, it would be part of the Ed-Flex or part of a block grant.

 

Chairman Goodling. Mr. Miller, Becky is in terrible pain back there.

 

Mr. Miller. I would like to ask one quick question to the governor, and that is Tom, Mr. Hinojosa touched upon the question of equity_

Governor Ridge. Yes.

 

Mr. Miller. I read that in Philadelphia there's about a $2,000 difference between per pupil expenditure there as opposed to the suburban areas.

Governor Ridge. Right.

 

Mr. Miller. You know, Title I has the ability to close these gaps significantly. But I think, you know, both in the Congress and in the States somebody has got to sort of make the tough decisions about how much we spread this across the landscape and it loses effectiveness.

We know that in California or Pennsylvania, a big part of our educational trauma is in districts where they cannot generate the revenue to present the kind of educational program that's good for the kids, whether it's attracting good teachers or modern textbooks or computers, what have you, and I would just like you to think about this.

But I think it's very important that we come back to the question of should this be concentrated money where the part of the educational deficit in this country is located, and that's not to suggest that it all goes to urban districts, but we have over the years tinkered and moved this out wider and wider to the extent to where the money has little or no impact on some districts, and it could have a huge impact on some of the districts where all of us have a great deal of trouble justifying the kids continuing in that situation.

 

Chairman Goodling. Governor, you don't have to respond to that, because the young lady behind you is really_

Governor Ridge. But I would like to quickly. One, I think that's a discussion worth having, and I would like to engage you on that understanding. But I think the same approach applies toward the special ed funding before you start doing new programs. So you know in Philadelphia, because we're sensitive to those needs, they get more money per capita than 80 percent of the other school districts from the state. And there's always been a challenge for urban communities to devote local resources to public education, and of the 24 urban areas in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia ranks 24th or last in terms of percentage tax revenue that they gave to their educational system.

So we continue to work with the mayor and the school board and others. And I would be interested in following up on that conversation with you about maybe targeting even more specifically to Title I. I don't know if that's something you're considering. But obviously Philadelphia gets the bulk of the Title I money in Pennsylvania.

 

Chairman Goodling. Thank you very much, Governor, for coming.

Governor Ridge. Thanks, all.

 

Chairman Goodling. I wanted to just say, because what we had hoped to do is have only one panel each time, so that we really have a lot more time. I didn't know there were going to be restrictions on the time of the people who were testifying. We expected to have a third and we're unable to have the third person here.

Hopefully those who are coming tomorrow will have all morning to spend with us. And so we will have someone from Chicago to tell us about what they are doing in the Chicago schools. We have someone from Arizona to tell us what they're doing there. And, hopefully, we will be able to move quickly and everybody will have an opportunity to participate.

For the new members, we take you according to when you come in, so that you can, if you want to be on the aisle, you know for the State of Union so the press sees you back home, you go early. So the same is true here, and we will try to start very promptly at 9:00 tomorrow.

Thank you very much.

 

Mr. Kildee. Mr. Chairman, I have a statement from Mr. Wu and Mr. Clay to put in the record.

 

Chairman Goodling. Without objection, so ordered.

See Appendix E for written statement of Congressman Wu.

See Appendix F for written statement of Congressman Clay.

 

Chairman Goodling. Thank you again. The committee is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 10:51 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]