We seem to have an unfortunate choice that is laid out before us if we are watching public policy makers on education; and that choice is, either bash public education or blindly support it. I am here to say that I do not think that is the choice that is put before us, and I would urge public policy makers to find a middle ground. 

Basically, support for public education makes a great deal of sense. It has educated somewhere around 90 percent of the population. I personally benefited from it, as have millions of others. It has done a wonderful job of educating our children. It is one of the better things we did in the 20th century. But just because we support it does not mean that we should do so blindly or that we should never ask for reforms or never ask for it to be held accountable or to improve or for standards to be set. 

I worry that, given that false choice between supporting and bashing public education, that we will miss out on that opportunity to reform it and set the standards that we should set. That is why I as a member of the New Democratic Coalition, a group of moderate Democrats. We are searching for that middle ground to try to find an area where, yes, we can support public education, but we can also set the standards and make the changes we need to improve it. 

It makes a great deal of sense to say that we should spend money on school construction and to reduce class sizes, and I think we should. I think it is wrong to run away from a Federal obligation to help public education. 

But it is equally wrong to continue the current Federal role in public education in the manner that we have set it up. That manner is totally bureaucratic and process oriented and not results oriented and not oriented towards encouraging local control, which could make an incredible difference in our education system. 

So, yes, the Federal Government should support public education, but we should stop driving dollars out the way we are driving them out now, which is basically in a blizzard of programs, some 300 or 400. I have actually tried to count them over the course of the last 6 months and still have not quite tracked them all down. 

They are designed totally along the lines of process. If one meets certain standards, one gets a certain amount of money. Basically, we have turned our school district personnel in this country into people who are more interested and spend more of their time, I am sorry, they are not more interested, they are forced to spend more of their time justifying their existence to the federal bureaucracy than they are spending time educating our children. 

Why do they do that? Because they have to get the money. They have to fill out a variety of grants and a variety of programs to prove that they deserve the money in the first place, and then prove that they are spending it exactly how we told them to in the second place. 

All of this takes away time from the classroom. I believe that it would make a good deal more sense to drive those dollars out far more narrowly and to drive them out based on standards and based on actual accountability and accomplishments. Instead of just driving money out based on whether or not they filled out a grant form properly, we should take a look at it and say, let us set a measurable standard for the school district. Let them set the standard. It does not have to be driven down from the national government. Then measure them against their own standard in the future and reward improvement. Reward people who are accountable and are moving forward in education instead of just those who fill out the proper grant form. 

I think this would help in two regards. One, it would give the right incentives to school district to work towards improving achievement for their students as opposed to work toward meeting some requirement that has been set by the Federal Government. 

I will give one example of that. In my home State, for a while, we drove the money out for special ed based on how many special ed students there were, period. There was no ceiling on it. So slowly but surely we saw the creeping increase in the number of special ed students in school districts, not because there were more coming in, but because the school districts knew, if they could qualify more as special ed, they would get more money. 

Did this do anything to improve the quality of education? No, but that was the incentive that we gave the school district. 

Let us give the right incentive. Let us tell them that we will drive more dollars out to the degree to which they are improving the academic achievement of their students. 

Another good idea that I have seen is one that was introduced by the gentleman from Florida (Mr. DAVIS) and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. ROEMER) on alternative certification of teachers. In addition to encouraging local control and higher standards and accountability, we also need to make sure that we have the level-best teachers out there and as many of them as we need. 

The idea of setting up alternative certification procedures so that professionals who may have worked in a variety of different fields who now want to get into teaching can without necessarily having to go through the normal certification process. 

If we have somebody who has been a professional physicist for a number of years, it does not make sense to say to them they somehow cannot teach physics. Let us take advantage of that brain power we have out there to help our students. 

But the biggest point I want to make today is one does not have to simply blindly support education. Support it, but expect results.