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Congressional Testimony
June 14, 2000, Wednesday
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 1974 words
HEADLINE:
TESTIMONY June 14, 2000 TIM HUTCHINSON HOUSE BUDGET EDUCATION
OVERHAUL HURDLES
BODY:
Statement of Senator Tim
Hutchinson for House Budget Committee Hearing "Smothering Education Reform: How
Washington Stifles Innovation" June 141, 2000 Mr. Chairman, members of the
Committee, I am pleased to be here today to discuss the issue of education
reform and the appropriate federal role in encouraging that reform and
innovation. As a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Committee, I have been working on this issue for the past year and a half as we
attempt to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA). The federal government currently funds systems, not
students. Instead of requiring real results in student learning from our
schools, the federal government gives them funding and then just asks that they
spend it in the required way. In doing so, we are mandating enormous amounts of
paperwork and applications to abide by this so-called "accountability." In
Florida it takes six times as many employees to administer a federal education
dollar as a state dollar. Florida has 297 state employees administering $1
billion in federal funds, and 374 employees overseeing $7 billion in state
funds. Unfortunately, Florida is not an exception, but the rule. As I have
traveled around my home state of Arkansas visiting schools, I have heard many
stories about the numerous hoops that schools must jump through in order to
receive federal funding. This is of particular interest to me, since Arkansas
has a large number of small, rural school districts that do not have the time or
resources to fill out paperwork to comply with federal rules and regulations.
Today I would like to talk about several examples from my state of ways that
schools are affected by the laws that we pass in Congress. I recently visited an
elementary school in North Little Rock and talked to a classroom of fourth
graders about American government. For 45 minutes we did a give-and-take. They
asked me questions, and I asked them questions. This was a very smart group of
kids, and I was inspired by their understanding. The key to this inspirational
classroom was not any federal program, but their remarkable teacher. The more
schools I visit, the more I am convinced that the key to a good education is
good principals and good teachers who are excited about their job and convey
that to their students. After I talked to this fourth-grade class, the principal
of the school half- jokingly introduced me to one whom he described as "his
boss." He said, "Meet my boss, the Title I coordinator for our schools." While
this comment was meant to be funny, it reveals a truth about the federal
influence in our schools. The federal government provides only seven percent of
education funding in this country, yet in a school in North Little Rock,
Arkansas, the Title I coordinator wields as much influence as the principal. I
also visited another school in Arkansas just recently where the principal had
identified a specific need in her school that she wanted to address. She wanted
to implement a concept known as point-in-time remediation to help underachieving
students before they fall irreversibly behind. To do this, she wanted to hire a
teacher who would spend each day working in different classrooms to assist
struggling students before they are forced to attend summer school. In her
desire to do what was best for her children, she applied for a federal grant.
The Title I coordinator rewrote her grant as a request to hire a teacher to
reduce class size under the federal class-size reduction program, and this grant
was approved. To get her grant approved, she had to commit to using this new
teacher for a purpose that the federal government had determined- -reducing
class size. However, the school did not have a class size problem. Instead of
being able to flexibly use federal dollars to address the needs of her school,
she had to apply for a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all grant. The principal had
to make a choice: either she fudges and cheats on the application, or she cheats
her children from getting the additional help they need at the time they need
it. This is just another example of the Washington-knows-best style of governing
that has been occurring in recent years. Washington did not provide innovation
in this school; the innovation came from the principal. Instead of allowing her
to address the needs of her school, the federal rules and regulations
constrained what she was legally able to do with the federal dollars. Instead of
having accountability to help every child learn, the federal government only
requires funding to be spent in the correct way. One last dramatic example of
the accountability that we have under current law was my visit to the school in
Holly Grove, Arkansas, in the Mississippi Delta region. This school houses Head
Start through the 12th grade all in one building. The Delta region is the
poorest area of Arkansas, and the poorest area of the United States. There is a
large minority population, and the school building is about fifty years old. The
area has a low property tax base, so any additional money that the school gets
is sorely needed. As I toured this school, I could not help but notice the
run-down conditions. It is just as bad as any school in the inner-city that I
have ever seen or heard about. The ceilings are 12 feet high, so it is hard to
heat. The lighting is poor. The ceilings are collapsing, and you can see water
stains in these pictures. The outside of the school looks just as bad. Paint is
peeling, windows are broken. Then, I stumbled upon an interesting site. As I
walked by one of the rooms of the school, I noticed that it was full of
state-of- the-art exercise equipment. New treadmills, stairmasters, and nautilus
equipment filled the room. After seeing the disparity between the condition of
the building and this room filled with new exercise equipment, I asked the
principal where he got the money to buy this equipment. He answered that he
received a federal grant for $239,000, and that he was only using this money for
the allowable uses under the grant -- health and nutrition programs. School
renovation, however, is not an allowable use under the grant he received, so
instead of addressing the most pressing need that his school had, he was forced
to address a need identified at the federal level. This is not to say that the
exercise equipment was not needed. However, there were other more pressing needs
that could not be addressed. Instead of solving this problem by creating a new
federal program, with new regulations and new paperwork required, the federal
government should be promoting innovation at the local level, with few federal
strings other than the most important requirement that we could have--increases
in student achievement. Principals and teachers should not be hindered from
addressing pressing needs in their schools because of rules and regulations from
the federal government. Instead, federal funding should be used to foster the
exciting innovations that are already occur-ring in schools all across this
country. Mr. Chairman, again I want to thank you for this opportunity to share
my thoughts with the Committee regarding the education of our kids. If our local
officials are capable of thinking outside the box, then there is no reason
Congress and the President cannot do the same.
LOAD-DATE: June 22, 2000, Thursday
