District of Columbia Appropriations Act, 2004-Resumed

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004—RESUMED

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, as a member of the DC Appropriations Subcommittee, I thank Senator DeWine and Senator Landrieu and their staffs for their hard work on this important legislation.

This is never an easy bill. I have been ranking member of this subcommittee in years gone by. It appears every Senator or Congressman, whoever in their weakest moment or wildest dreams wanted to be a mayor or a member of a city council, decides they can play the role when it comes to the DC appropriations bill. Thank goodness for Delegate ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON who has stood fast year after weary year, beating off every assault on home rule with some success and a few setbacks. But this bill is a tough one. It is always a tough one.

Members of Congress will do on this bill what they wouldn't dare do in their own districts or State. They will force on the District of Columbia things they would never even consider doing at home. They think it is easy. This is an area of America which, sadly, does not have a vote in Congress nor in the Senate. Frankly, they don't have to answer to the voters of the State. So when it comes to experimenting and doing what you would never suggest at home, it is usually the DC appropriations bill that becomes that laboratory, that political playground.

Senators DEWINE and LANDRIEU, with very few exceptions, have done their level best to make certain this year's appropriations bill did not deteriorate into that particular situation. I want to take a few minutes to underscore that there is much in this District of Columbia spending bill that merits our collective endorsement.

As has been outlined, this bill provides $545 million in Federal funds, the bulk of which will fund the District of Columbia Courts, Defender Services, and the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, CSOSA, for the District of Columbia.

Since the enactment of the District of Columbia Revitalization Act of 1997, these three entities are funded entirely by Federal appropriations. The Revitalization Act made substantial changes in the financial relationship between the Federal Government and the District of Columbia and in management of the DC government.

Under revitalization, the Federal Government's cash contributions to the District budget were substantially reduced. In exchange, financial responsibility for several governmental functions was transferred from the District's budget to the Federal Government.

This year additional resources are being provided to the DC courts to integrate the 18 different computer systems that track offender and litigant information. In addition, the bill provides an increase of $6.8 million over the President's budget request which will allow CSOSA to enhance its supervision of high-risk sex offenders, offenders with mental health problems, and domestic violence offenders.

In addition, the bill continues level funding for the DC resident tuition program, a very successful initiative Congress established in 1999 which permits DC high school graduates to attend out of State schools at in-State tuition rates.

Among other items, the bill also provides Federal funding for hospital bioterrorism preparedness; for security costs related to the presence of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia; for support of the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative; and for the Children's National Medical Center.

It is important to recognize and emphasize that about 93 percent of the funds contained in this bill—fully $7.43 billion, $6.33 billion in operating expenses plus $1.1 billion in capital outlay funds—are not Federal funds, but locally-generally revenue which must be approved by Congress before the mayor can execute his budget and begin spending these local funds.

The District of Columbia does not enjoy autonomy over the local portion of its budget but must await a congressional imprimatur. Senator SUSAN COLLINS has introduced bipartisan legislation designed to change that, which I hope we will have an opportunity to consider during this session of Congress.

Senator DEWINE and Senator LANDRIEU have collaborated on producing a thoughtful product. We owe them a debt of gratitude for tenaciously juggling municipal needs, amid Federal funding constraints.

I have been in their shoes as either chairman or ranking member of the District of Columbia Subcommittee and was honored to serve. I quickly learned from that experience that while the DC spending bill is technically the smallest of the 13 appropriations bills we consider each year, it usually is among the more contentious ones.

The issue before us is the issue of school vouchers. It is not just another debate about another DC appropriations measure.
If this is adopted, it will be the first time in the history of the United States that the Federal Government will pay for private school vouchers in grades K through 12.

This issue was brought up a few years ago when President Bush suggested sweeping reform of public education and some of his allies said: Let's put in school vouchers for private schools at the same time.

In the Senate we took a vote on that issue. If I am not mistaken, the vote was 41 in favor of school vouchers, 58 opposed. I raise that vote because it will be of interest to see what happens now when this issue goes beyond a national program and is confined to the District of Columbia. I suspect many of those who said "we don't want school vouchers in our State" are going to say "but we will allow them to have school vouchers in the District of Columbia." That is unfortunate. It reflects an attitude toward the District of Columbia which is not complimentary. Mayor Williams is here on the floor with Delegate NORTON. I respect him very much. We agree on much more than we disagree, though we disagree on this particular issue.
He was treated with a Faustian bargain. Here was the bargain the Republicans offered to him. They said: If we give you $13 million for your public schools that you had not anticipated and $13 million for your charter schools that you had not anticipated, will you sit still for and embrace and endorse and help us pass the first federally funded voucher program for private schools in America?

The District of Columbia struggles with a lot of spending problems. There are a lot of reasons for it I will not go into. I know he must have looked at this long and hard and thought: This is something I will have to agree to. To get $26 million for public schools and charter schools, I am going to support the Republican voucher program.

That, unfortunately, was the decision he made. I say "unfortunately" because my respect for him has not diminished, but I am concerned that the decision he made for the District of Columbia is a departure from where the District of Columbia has been year after year when this appropriations bill has come up. For year after year the District of Columbia has said to
Congress, respect home rule. Let us make our own decisions. Now this year they have done 180 degrees. The Mayor has said: When it comes to our schools, which is the responsibility of DC local government, we are going to allow the Federal Government—in this case the Congress—to create a school scholarship program, vouchers for private schools.
DC could have done this on their own. They could have done it over the years. They didn't. There was a reason they didn't.
It isn't that they didn't consider the possibility of vouchers for private schools. They considered it and voted on it and overwhelmingly voted against it. The residents of the District of Columbia, in referendum, overwhelmingly opposed vouchers for private education, overwhelmingly opposed diverting public money from public schools into private schools.
That is what the people think about the concept.

It isn't confined to that concept. The Mayor's own city council opposes this, and the elected members of the school board also oppose it. But the Mayor and the president of the school board support it. They have entered into this bargain with the Republicans to go forward with a voucher program, the first federally funded diversion of public funds from public schools to private schools in the history of the United States.

It is momentous. What is particularly noteworthy is that this measure comes to us not after committee hearings, deliberation, a markup process with amendments, but comes to us, frankly, in a package in this appropriations bill which we are now changing with some drama on the floor of the Senate even as I speak.

Senator Feinstein of California came forward with an amendment. She had made it clear in the Senate Appropriations Committee that she supported the voucher plan for the District of Columbia. Many of us pointed out in that hearing some deficiencies in this plan. Understand, we were given this voucher program in the Appropriations Committee where we don't usually entertain anything of that complexity—not that it isn't done, but it is done rarely—and we were given it on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. As we considered what was proposed to us, a lot of questions were raised.

Let me cite an example of one amendment I offered in the Appropriations Committee to give an idea about the mindset that is pushing this forward. I offered an amendment which said: You cannot give vouchers to a private school—public money to a private school—unless the teachers in the private school receiving the voucher money have a college degree and the school physically complies with the life, health, and safety code of the District of Columbia.

That seems fairly reasonable for my colleagues who have voted for No Child Left Behind. Remember the President's program? The President not only required college degrees for teachers, but imposed even higher standards of excellence over the years. So to require a college degree at the private schools where we are sending public tax dollars is not a huge leap or a radical idea. It is consistent with what the overwhelming majority of the Senate said would be the minimum standard for public schools in America. To say that any private school that is supported with public taxpayer dollars has to be safe for the children—fire escapes, and alarms, the appropriate exit doors, and the like—it seems to me is just common sense. I am sorry to report to my colleagues that amendment was defeated.

Senator Feinstein and the Republicans who support this DC voucher bill opposed my amendment which would have required a college degree of teachers at the private schools and would have required that those schools comply with the life, health, and safety code of the District of Columbia. I might add something. Per capita, the District of Columbia has the largest number of charter schools, which are exceptions to the traditional public school system, of any place in the United States. And even in the DC charter schools there is a requirement that teachers at these charter schools have a college degree.

When I offered the amendment in committee, you should have heard the debate. I actually heard my colleagues say: Senator Durbin, you don't understand. These private schools are going to be experimental. We are going to try innovative approaches.

One Senator said that would rule out home schooling. Home schooling? Is that what DC vouchers are about? It strikes me as odd that we would want to engage in an experiment in private schools with standards far lower than what we are demanding of our public schools. I have to add, too, that Senator Feinstein's effort to correct that problem, I don't believe, has been successful.

Let me give an example. In this amendment Senator Feinstein offers, which is presently before us, there is a section on teacher quality. In describing it, she stated that all teachers in the schools receiving voucher funds must have a college degree. That is not what the amendment says. What it says is that only those teachers who teach the students on vouchers need a college degree. So this means, frankly, a school could put all of the students on vouchers in one classroom with a teacher with an associate's degree, which is a college degree. So I don't believe it was very carefully drawn. It doesn't meet the minimum standards we expect of schools in America.

Let me tell you what else is deficient in the Feinstein amendment. The amendment falls short of the requirements that we all voted and imposed on public schools in America, where we said it is not enough to have a college degree. We said in public schools we are going to require not only a bachelor's degree, but certification of ability to teach, and particularly "subject area mastery." What does that mean? If you want to stand in front of a high school class and teach chemistry, you must demonstrate that you have taken the appropriate amount of training in college to teach chemistry. Our understanding is that all of the statistics show that when the teacher in front of the classroom has not studied the subject, is merely reading a chapter ahead to stay ahead of the children, the students don't learn much. So we have said for public schools across America, this is our minimum standard—a college degree, bachelor's degree, certification, and evidence of mastery of the subject.

It means in some of my schools in Illinois that they are saying we know you have taught biology for many years and you are good at it, but you don't have the requisite number of college degree hours to meet President Bush's requirements of No Child Left Behind. You have to take biology classes in college to meet President Bush's minimum requirements for public schools.

Turn the page to this debate. In this debate, we hear from Senator Feinstein and supporters of the DC voucher program that we are not going to hold the teachers in the private schools receiving Federal tax dollars to the same standards as teachers in the public schools in the District of Columbia. Something is wrong with this picture. Either we were mistaken in imposing the standard on public education, or they are lax and deficient in not requiring the same standards of teachers in private schools in the District of Columbia where these children are going to go to school.

Some of them have said this is just an experiment, and we are just going to see what happens. I can recall when my own kids were growing up and the school year started. After a few weeks, you get to meet the teacher. Before that, you may have said to your son or daughter, how are things going? They might say: Oh, I really like this teacher, or I am not getting along with the teacher. And you thought to yourself, I am going to work with my son or daughter and talk to the teacher and try to make things right. But there is a real possibility that students in some schools, public and private, can be thrust into a situation where they not only have a bad year, they have two straight bad years—bad years with teachers who are not up to the academic levels that we should require. The experiment may fail for those students. They may be in classrooms where the teachers are not ready to teach and where, frankly, the teachers don't have the background to even consider teaching.

What happens to that student after one bad year in this experiment? Can they catch up? It is possible but more difficult.
Now give them a second bad year.

This is an experiment with the lives of students. To think that a child can have a bad experience in the fourth grade and fifth grade and then catch up in the sixth grade may be wishful thinking. Some students are struggling with challenges that I never had and that my kids, thank goodness, never faced. To put them in this experimental atmosphere where teachers are not required to have the same basic minimum qualifications as teachers in public schools is a disservice to those children and their families.

We hear about experiments taking place in other places, such as Cleveland and Milwaukee. We read about one in the Washington Post the other day, where a convicted rapist, a fellow, started Alex's Academics of Excellence. He received $2.8 million from the State of Wisconsin. It turned out that the students were not getting the kind of education they deserved there. They said it was very difficult for anybody to say no to someone who opened a school and said they were going to abide by all of the requirements of the law. That experiment failed, but it didn't just fail for those who wrote the law, it failed for those kids and their families.

Why would we say, if there is going to be a DC voucher program, that the teachers in private schools wouldn't at least meet the standards we require of teachers in public schools? Sadly, the Feinstein amendment doesn't do that. That may have been her intent, but I am afraid she didn't quite reach it in terms of satisfying that need.

There is another point that concerns me, too, and that is testing. If this is to be legitimate and honest, you would have to take the students who are in private schools and test them with exactly the same tests students in public schools take. Then you could at least compare progress. These students may be somewhat self-selected because they decided to go to a private school. At the end of the day, you ought to be able to compare test scores, in fairness, to not only the private schools but to the public schools.

Listen to what the Feinstein amendment says. It says: Student assessments are not a requirement imposed on the school; rather, it is placed on the fund recipient—a very unusual allocation of responsibility—the fund recipient that administers the voucher payout. I don't understand why the schools don't have this requirement.

The amendment goes on to say that the tests for voucher students must be the "same as" school year 2003-2004. In a way that seems to answer my challenge that the same tests be administered in the private schools as in the public schools. But read it more closely. If these are the same tests as required in school years 2003 and 2004, consider that this is proposed as a 5-year program. So what this means is that all of the students in all grades would have to be tested as required by No Child Left Behind for public schools. Why? Because the requirements for testing in No Child Left Behind take effect and change each year.

So what Senator Feinstein set up as a standard is a testing for this year only, instead of just saying pointblank the students in these schools will be tested with the same frequency and the same tests as No Child Left Behind, she has instead said only one year's testing standards, 2003-2004.

For example, by 2007, there will be a science assessment required under No Child Left Behind. So public schools across America will be taking tests indicating competency in science. Under the Feinstein amendment, they do not have to worry about that. They are only held to the standard of 2003-2004.

There is no duty in this law, as we read it, to report the findings of those tests publicly, even to the parents, only to the Secretary of Education. Why not? Where I live, the State of Illinois—the State of Ohio and other States—school test scores are reported publicly so the parents know, taxpayers know, whether the schools are performing. The Feinstein amendment does not require this.

Now here is another thing I find curious. The Feinstein amendment requires the comparison made for those students tested must include testing not just students still in public schools and students who are now in private schools being funded with public funds, under vouchers, but also a third class, those students who applied for vouchers and were rejected. So we have a third category of students who are going to be a control group for testing.

I do not quite understand this, but I do think the concept is at least challengeable, because there is no doubt in my mind that the private schools are not going to rush to accept students who are going to be problem students and challenging students.
So there will be the rejected students having been controlled out into a cherry-picked group being tested separately.
It is possible these students are likely to test worse. The private schools did not want to take them in because they are going to be held accountable for some 2003-2004 tests. Why the Senator has decided to include this, I do not know.
So when we look at this bill overall and consider the elements in it, I am afraid Senator Feinstein's attempt to correct the problems does not quite solve the problem. We still have some major deficiencies in this bill.

What bothers me, too, I read in the paper this morning that the Mayor has said he wants new authority over education in the public schools of the District of Columbia. At the risk of stepping on the toes of some of my friends, I think the Mayor is on the right path. The reason I say it is this: Many of the people who are supporting voucher programs have given up on public education, for a variety of reasons. For some political reasons, they believe the teachers' unions support Democrats and they are going to go after public education and they are going to fight the teachers' unions. Others have said, just look at the results. Some of the public schools are not very good. Therefore, there should be an alternative.

If one takes an honest approach to this, the first obligation of elected officials in this country is to the system of education which built America and the system of education which serves more than 90 percent of America's school children, and that is the public school system.

I say to the Mayor of Washington, who has joined us today, and all those who are following the debate, do not give up on public education. Things are happening that are positive in the District of Columbia. Frankly, I think they have been ignored and played down and there has been a disservice by some of the rhetoric we have heard about DC public schools.

There are good things happening: Charter schools and transformational schools, big changes that are moving in the right direction. I ask the Mayor, before he gives up on the public school system and says we have to have vouchers, that there is no other way but to take public tax funds and send them to private schools, before he gives up on public education, come to Chicago. Come and look at what has happened there. In our Chicago public school system, we have 95 percent minority students and 85 percent students under the poverty level. Yet in a rather brief period of time we have seen dramatic increases in test scores because the mayor of the city of Chicago assumed a personal responsibility for the public school system, brought in some of the most talented people he could find, challenged the parents, the teachers, the principals, and the students to do a better job and got the results to show for it.

My colleagues do not have to give up on public education. They do not have to say there is no alternative but to let kids escape public education and go to private schools. There is a lot more that can be done. It takes some hard-nosed, tough-minded leadership, but I think the Mayor may be on the right path in what he said this morning. He is willing to accept more of this responsibility personally and maybe that is what is necessary.

The Chicago experience tells me it has been a good experience. When the mayor had the power and the responsibility, good things happened. Come with me to the city of Chicago and take a drive through many tough parts of that great part of town. Homes will be found where people in the lower and middle income are struggling to keep it together and then, like a mirage or an oasis, one will see the public school where over the last several years the Chicago public school system has dedicated dramatic amounts of money to renovate these schools and bring them back to a source of pride in the community.

No graffiti will be seen on the walls of the school. Flowers will be seen planted outside and the people in this neighborhood point to that public school with pride, because the mayor was proud of those schools and because the people in the neighborhood are, too.

If that mayor or any mayor had said these public schools are a failure, we are walking away from them, then frankly it would have created a negative environment. We need a positive environment for education. Moving to this voucher plan, without adequate hearing, without the consideration of the options that are available to us, frankly is a move in the wrong direction.

I also say to my colleagues that as I read through this bill, they must, I hope, acknowledge the fact there are several things that could happen they do not anticipate. For example, there is no prohibition in this bill that the 1,000 to 2,0000 vouchers that are created, whatever number they turn out to be, will all be given to children who are already in private schools. There is no prohibition against that. Though they start with a premise and a goal of moving kids from lower performing public schools to higher performing private schools, in fact the testing is not there for comparison.

Second, there is no requirement that the family of the student receiving the voucher actually bring the student from a public school to a private school. This could end up diverting a substantial amount of money to students, and their families, already enrolled in private schools. Like it or not, the bill is inartfully drawn, and having been so poorly drawn, that could be the outcome. So they will not be proving much of a case there, will they, if students are already in the private schools?

I can go on for some time about the experiments with vouchers in private schools. I want to close, because I see Senator Kennedy is in the Chamber and I imagine he would like to make a comment on this bill. If he does, he is certainly welcome to.

I will close my comments on the Feinstein amendment by urging my colleagues to oppose it. Senator Feinstein has identified the problem. She has not identified solutions, not good solutions, not solutions that are worthy of the first-ever program in the history of the United States to divert funds from public schools to private schools under a voucher program.

From my point of view, private schools in many communities add a lot to education. I am not an enemy of private education. I am a product of Catholic education. My wife and I both attended Catholic schools, as did our children. But we understood our responsibility. Our responsibility was first to pay our public property taxes, to support public education, and then if we chose, for religious reasons or whatever reasons, to send our children to a Catholic school, we accepted the financial responsibility of paying tuition. It was a sacrifice for many families. I think they add a lot.

I think we should take care here. We are creating a new system in the District of Columbia, and there are few protections and safeguards, if any, to stop the possibility that at some point after we have passed this bill that some group will decide to open up a private school and draw in hundreds of thousands of dollars of public taxpayer funds and the teachers in those schools may not have college degrees, only associate degrees, the testing in those schools may not match what is going on in the public schools, and the schools will be allowed to discriminate against students for such things as disabilities where they will not allow any children in who have any kind of learning disability or any physical or mental disability, which would be allowed, incidentally, under this proposal.

Is that what we want to see happen? Is that what should be the first test case of this experiment in the voucher program? I think not. I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. I urge them to think long and hard that if they voted against vouchers for their States, why is it now we are making an exception because the case in point involves the District of Columbia?

These students and their families deserve the same respect as the students and families in all of our States, and I urge my colleagues to keep that in mind as we consider this important legislation.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. I thank my friend and colleague from California.

I have no doubt that she offered this amendment—I say through the Chair—to address some of the concerns raised in the committee.

I ask my friend from California to turn to page 2 of her amendment and consider paragraph B on page 2. I will read it. It says:

Use the same assessment every school year used for school year 2003-2004 by the District of Columbia public schools to assess the achievement of DC public school students.

I will ask the question, and then I will sit down.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Fair enough.

Mr. DURBIN. Currently, the DC Public School System, like many public school systems, is in transition under the No Child Left Behind Act and the 2005 requirement that students be tested every year. Currently, their public school students are only tested every other year.

By establishing as a standard for the next 5 years for the District of Columbia voucher program using the 2003-2004 assessments, the Senator is saying they will only be tested every other year, while students in public schools by the year 2005 have to be tested every year.

If the Senator had said here that you will comply with the No Child Left Behind Act testing requirement, it would have been easy. But instead, you picked one particular year, and I don't think you reach the standard which you have described to our colleagues.

Is that true or not?

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. What you have just stated and what I have been told is that in order to have a fair test evaluation and compare apples to apples, the same test has to be used, which in the District is the Stanford 9, for the 5-year period. So that is the test now being given. If the District changes—I think it is called a criterion-based test—and I gather the District is considering changing them, this control group would still have to take the Stanford 9 to see if they have progressed.

Now I am told if somebody says, I am happy to change it, I am told you cannot get a fair test if we change it.

Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator will yield the floor, I would like to ask this question.

Does the Senator understand that by the year 2005 under No Child Left Behind, every public school in America, including the District of Columbia, will have to test every grade every year; but in the current school year, schools are moving toward that goal. In the District of Columbia they are only testing every other year.

It is not a question of changing the test. I am asking the Senator from California, does she understand if we stick to the 2003-2004 standard, she will only be testing every other grade while every public school in the District of Columbia and across the Nation will be moving to every grade, every year by 2005? Her bill, her standards, will not be following that same assessment.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. As I understand it, the Stanford 9 is a nationally norm-referenced test. It can certainly be given every year, and I believe the Mayor will agree to that.

If your question is, Are you saying the students will be tested every other year instead of every year, what I am saying is we can use it every year. If you are saying we want the test to change in the middle of the test period, I am being told that will mess up any fair evaluation.

Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield?

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Yes.

Mr. DURBIN. I am not suggesting changing the test. The same test should be administered in a private school as
administered in a public school.

I am suggesting to the Senator, as she has written this amendment, the 2003-2004 testing in the D.C. public schools, her standard for 5 years only tests every other grade. By 2005 every grade will be tested. It is not the substantive test that is the issue. It is a question of whether every grade will be tested every year.

The reason I raise this, and I hope the Senator agrees, should have been worked out in the education committee after hearings and markup in the amendment process. We are doing it on the fly, on the floor, creating the first private school voucher program in America and discussing as we go.

That is my concern.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I appreciate the Senator's concern.

If the Senator from Ohio agrees, I am very happy to have my amendment modified to provide that the voucher recipients and the students in the control group be given the same test that all District public schools students are given.

With respect to this being done in the education committee, I probably agree, except it would probably get bogged down one way. The reason it is in the appropriations bill is because the Mayor has come to us and asked us for the additional money. The additional money is what brought this on. Once the additional money was in the bill, then the terms of the money came to bear and the bill had to be written.

It is not easy. There are powerful forces against it. People do not want to try it. I do. I hope a majority want to try it. We have tried to do the best we can.

Even more importantly, what has been developed here is a relationship between the city and Members of this Senate with this Mayor. I happen to respect this Mayor. I am a taxpaying citizen of this District. I have been so for 10 years. I used to go down the street where there was a pothole so big somebody plugged it up with a mattress. I am very pleased to say, Mr. Mayor, that pothole is gone now. The District is in much better shape. People are coming back to the District. He wants this.

The question was also raised, it is easy to do it here. I am not in my own jurisdiction. I tried to point out, the mayor of
Oakland came to me in my own jurisdiction to do something that was a new model; I agreed to it. I am going to look at new models and try to support them where I can, also support teachers, also support Title I, and also support public education.