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UNFUNDED MANDATE REFORM ACT
(Senate - January 18, 1995)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S1028-S1064] UNFUNDED MANDATE REFORM ACT Amendment No. 139 to Amendment No. 31 (Purpose: To prevent the adoption of certain national history standards) Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I send a second-degree amendment to the desk. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment. The legislative clerk read as follows: The Senator from Kansas [Mr. Dole] proposes an amendment numbered 139 to amendment No. 31. [[Page S1029]] Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is as follows: Strike all after ``SEC.'' and add the following: . NATIONAL HISTORY STANDARDS. (a) In General.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove, and the National Education Standards and Improvement Council shall not certify, any voluntary national content standards, voluntary national student performance standards, and criteria for the certification of such content and student performance standards, regarding the subject of history, that have been developed prior to February 1, 1995. (b) Prohibition.--No Federal funds shall be awarded to, or expended by, the National Center for History in the Schools, after the date of enactment of this Act, for the development of the voluntary national content standards, the voluntary national student performance standards, and the criteria for the certification of such content and student performance standards, regarding the subject of history. (c) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate that-- (1) the voluntary national content standards, the voluntary national student performance standards, and the criteria for the certification of such content and student performance standards, regarding the subject of history, that are established under title II of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act should not be based on standards developed by the National Center for History in the Schools; and (2) if the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, or any other Federal agency provides funds for the development of the standards and criteria described in paragraph (1), the recipient of such funds should have a decent respect for United States history's roots in western civilization. Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second. The yeas and nays were ordered. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate? Mr. GLENN. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll to ascertain the presence of a quorum. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I would like to address the pending amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont. Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, if one is not aware of the history of this issue over the past decade or so, this amendment might seem like one that we ought to concentrate on and seriously consider. It brings up the issue of educational standards, but it takes our attention away from the basic reasons for the development of the Goals 2000. When these goals were developed by the Governors in 1989, it came as a result of a 1983 report called ``A Nation at Risk.'' That report was released by the Secretary of Education at the time, Ted Bell, who served as Secretary of Education during the Reagan administration. It described serious deficiencies in our educational system. Those results have been verified by many studies including the somewhat recent Work Force 2000 report which pointed out very importantly and very critically that this Nation is not presently prepared to compete in the international market and will be less so in the future. Here are some of the problems that created the demand for Goals 2000. Too many of our people right now do not even graduate from high school. But much more seriously is that only half of those who presently graduate have what is considered an acceptable basic education. Even more troubling is the fact that two-thirds of that half are functionally illiterate to one degree or another. They do not have the basic skills necessary to handle an entry level job. This means that our school system turns out millions of young people each year needing remedial education before they can effectively help us compete in the world economy. The purpose of ``A Nation at Risk'' was to raise awareness that our Nation was facing a serious crisis. The standard of living had been slipping for the past decade or more and would continue to slip if we did not raise the quality of our education. In the late 1980's, the business community was concerned that educational reform was not being implemented, even after President Bush had convened the national education summit and the Nation's Governors had created the goals which, with the input of Congress, are now referred to as Goals 2000. The need for progress on this issue was important to the business community. I remember very well the first meeting I had in my office as a new Senator and as member of the Education Subcommittee with a group of this Nation's top CEO's whose firms were involved in international ventures. I expected that they might come to me and say, ``We have to do something about capital gains.'' They did not. They said that we must fully fund Head Start. If the United States did not make sure that everyone had the advantage of preschool training, early childhood education, and other compensatory programs, we would not produce the kind of high school graduates who would be able to compete internationally. Our educational failures impact the business community, especially in those areas of graduate education which are so critical to our competitive edge in high-technology fields. Right now, about 40 percent of the slots for graduate schools in critical areas of science, engineering, and mathematics go to foreign students because they are more competitive for those slots. That used to be fine, and I remember in my own State we had many foreign students who went to graduate school and ultimately worked for IBM. These days, unfortunately, foreign graduate students are not staying here. They are not returning the advantage of their skills and knowledge to our industries. They are all going home. In other words, we are sending about 40 percent of graduates from our schools, which are the best in the world, to work for our competitors. I wished to raise this specter because this is the kind of problem which national standards should address. When we passed Goals 2000, we set forth a set of voluntary national goals and standards. In addition to the original goals proposed by President Bush and the 50 Governors, we expanded upon the goal for math and science competitiveness and added such subjects as history and arts. What we are talking about today is the beginning of a process of developing standards which are necessary for our ability to compete in the international economy. I would hate to think we will begin debating subjects which are important but unrelated to the more important issue of competitiveness and thereby disparage our national and worldwide standards. Recently, members of the business community spoke about job training before the Labor Committee and said that we must enforce worldwide educational standards for our people can become qualified for the work force of the future. If people do not understand the requirements, they will continue presuming that the standards which we have been utilizing, the ones which we feel are an acceptable education, are quite all right. People fail to realize that students in Taiwan graduate 2 years ahead of our students in science and math. In addition, studies show that not only are we removed from the list of top nations in science and math achievement, but that we are at the bottom of the heap. My point is that we must concentrate on why the Goals 2000 bill was developed. It was deemed necessary to improve the standard of living of the Nation: To improve our standards and our competitiveness. While it is important for us to stay informed about recommendations for important subjects such as history, I am concerned that we will begin to forget why we are here, and that is to save the Nation. I will introduce a second-degree amendment at an appropriate time which will address the concern of my good friend, the Senator from Washington, regarding the development of certain standards at the UCLA Center for History in Schools, those standards [[Page S1030]] which have raised considerable controversy. But we must remember that those standards have not been adopted by anyone, and they are not in a form to be adopted. In fact, the panel which would approve them has not even been named yet. So we are prematurely criticizing something which is not even ready to be adopted. But more importantly, the amendment requires that anything meritorious or relevant or acceptable that is in those standards should not be used. Now, I am not sure whether that means the acceptable elements could be proposed and later approved, or not. The amendment does not say. It simply states that the standards cannot be used and that no more money can go to them. Therefore my amendment will leave in the final paragraph of the amendment of the Senator from Washington, which states the concern about how we adopt the history standards, but will remove that part which states that we should simply throw away everything that has been done in this area and prohibits the information from being used. Out of a very substantial number of examples in the history standards, only a very few have provoked great controversy. Therefore, I will speak again later, when I offer my amendment. But I just want everyone to realize that the critical goal is to have an educational system second to none which will keep the United States competitive in the next century by providing the necessary skilled work force. I will also mention the cost of doing nothing and the cost of trying to do away with these standards. Right now, over $25 billion each year are spent by our businesses on remedial education because of the failures of our school system. In addition, we have about a half a trillion dollars loss in the economy due to illiteracy, imprisonment, and the many other social ills that result from educational shortfalls. This is an extremely important issue, and I hope that we will remain focused on the primary issue of developing a more competitive nation for the future. Mr. President, I must oppose the amendment offered by my colleague from Washington. The amendment, which has not been subject to any hearings or review by the committee of jurisdiction, prohibits the National Education Goals Panel and the National Education Standards and Improvement Council from certifying any voluntary national content standards in the subject of history. As my colleagues may recall, under the Bush administration grants were awarded to independent agencies, groups, and institutions of higher education to develop worldclass standards in all the major subject areas. The history standards were developed by the UCLA Center for History in Schools with the contribution of hundreds of individual teachers, scholars and historians. The standards, which have just recently been published, have raised concern among some readers. Criticism has focused not on the standards themselves but upon the examples of activities for students in each grade level. Of the thousands of examples, not more than 25 were considered controversial. However, upon receipt of public input and criticism the Center for History in Schools is reviewing and altering its work. This, in fact is, and should be, the appropriate process and primary purpose of public commentary. But, I am not here to defend the specific content of these standards--that is best left to teachers, educators, and parents. Instead, I am concerned that this amendment has much broader implications. At issue is not so much the specific substance of these standards. Indeed, the standards have neither been endorsed by any Federal body nor, for that matter, even been finalized. Rather, the issue is whether or not we have in place a process for developing world class standards. I cannot overstate the importance of this matter. Countless reports have outlined that our country is falling behind in international test comparisons because our children have not learned the necessary skills in order to compete successfully. A recent survey of Fortune 500 companies showed that 58 percent complained of the difficulty of finding employees with basic skills. The chief executive officer of Pacific Telesis reported: Only 4 out of every 10 candidates for entry-level jobs at Pacific Telesis are able to pass our entry exam, which are based on a seventh-grade level. It is no longer enough for Vermont to compare itself to the national average. Comparing one State with another is like the local football team believing itself to be a champion of national stature because it beat the cross town rival. No, we must compare ourselves with our real competitors--the other nations of this global marketplace. To date, it appears that they are quickly outpacing us in many pivotal areas. I have had meetings upon meetings with the chairmen and CEO's of major U.S. corporations to urge me to support the development of high academic standards. Why? Because the status quo in our schools has failed. Too many of our graduates finish school without knowing the three R's, much less more rigorous content standards. For our country to remain competitive, it is essential that our schools prepare our future work force for the demands of the 21st century. Unfortunately, until we present our students with challenging content standards that goal will not be realized. Instead, estimates indicate that American businesses may have to spend up to $25 billion each year just for remedial elementary math and reading instruction for workers before they can train them to handle modern equipment. Not only does this drain critical funds from our corporations but it dramatically affects our ability to compete in the global marketplace. For the past decade the average wage has gone down. The standard of living is slipping and wealth is accumulating only at the top. Until we are able to prepare our children for the future we will have failed ourselves, the next generation and this country. The first step to success is establishing strong academic standards so that our children leave school ready for the work force or for postsecondary education. Remedial education should not be the main function of our institutions of higher education or our businesses and corporations. By preparing our students while they are in school, we will reduce the need for catchup courses so many of our graduates now have to take. We have a process in place to get our children ready for the 21st century. That process includes reforming our school and creating high benchmarks for students. That process is done through the National Council on Education Standards and Improvement. NESIC will be a 19- member council composed of professional educators, representatives of business, industry, higher education, and members of the public. The council is authorized to certify voluntary national education standards and pass their recommendations to the goals panel for final approval. The role of the council is to certify that the standards developed in each subject area are credible, rigorous and have been developed through a broad-based process. NESIC provides a mechanism for ensuring that standards remain national rather than Federal. If this duty was not being performed by such a council, the responsibility for certifying national voluntary standards would fall squarely upon the shoulders of the Secretary of Education--which would positively result in greater Federal involvement. This body is a separate entity created to oversee the certification of voluntary national standards. It has absolutely no oversight authority over States. In other words, States are not required to agree with the voluntary national standards, they are not required to accept or incorporate any portion of the national standards or even acknowledge existence of standards. Yet such a national council is essential to States and local schools to assist them in weeding out and reviewing voluntary standards. Without such an entity, each State will have to undertake that review by itself. To do that 50 times over simply does not make sense. Clearly, the recommendations of the council are not binding on States. The council's certification process is simply a Good Housekeeping seal of approval to assist States in determining which standards are rigorous and competitive. For us to step in and derail this process makes no good sense. By passing [[Page S1031]] this amendment and legislating a Federal override of NESIC's responsibility we not only jeopardize the whole independent nature of NESIC, we also jeopardize the process of creating tough academic standards. I don't think we have that luxury. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas. Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, if I may enter into this debate for a moment from a little different angle. I have enormous respect for the Senator from Vermont, who has just spoken with great dedication to the issue of education. He has devoted a great deal of time to the issue, both when he was in the other body as a Member of Congress and since he has been in the Senate and is now chairman of the Education Subcommittee of the Labor Committee. I also can understand where the Senator from Washington is coming from in his concerns about the model national history standards which have been developed with Federal funds. However, as the Senator from Vermont has pointed out, they have not been adopted or certified as national standards yet. There has been a lot of controversy about these standards as they have been proposed--controversy which, I may say, could have been anticipated. I was troubled when we first started down the path of providing Federal funding for the development of national standards. I would like to note that standards in various subject areas have been developed by professionals in the field, not by Federal employees as some may think. However, where Federal moneys are involved, there is often misunderstanding about the nature of the Government's involvement. I am sure that developing these standards was very difficult for these professionals. It is far easier to develop standards, say in the field of mathematics or science, because there is more preciseness in both of those fields. When you get to history, however, so much revolves around a teacher's interpretation of the material that they may have in front of them. So I think when you get into particular areas of study like history, that it becomes much more difficult to develop standards on which there is going to be agreement. Whether it is with the particular standards we are discussing now or a totally different set of standards, I think you would find just as many people with concerns about them. Although these are voluntary standards, as has been repeatedly emphasized whenever we have had these debates, this is a point which often gets lost. One reason I opposed the Goals 2000 legislation which was enacted last year is that it took Federal activities in this area yet another step further by including an authorization for a national council to review and endorse the national standards. There is certainly a difference between voluntary national standards and mandatory Federal standards--but this is a distinction which is generally lost when such standards are put forward, particularly when they are likely to come before a group such as the national council which is charged with reviewing them. As one who believes strongly that the strength of our education system lies in its local base and community commitment, I have not felt it wise to expand Federal involvement into areas traditionally handled by States and localities. I will support the Gorton amendment due to my concern about Federal involvement in national standards, even voluntary ones. At the same time, I believe the real issue is far broader than the current controversy over the history standards. Prohibiting a federally authorized council from certifying a particular set of voluntary standards is not the real answer. The real problem is that we have established in legislation such a group--the National Education Standards and Improvement Council, or NESIC--in the first place. In the near future, I will be introducing legislation to repeal NESIC. My legislation would get the Federal Government out of the loop in an area which I believe is best handled by States and localities. Many of our States are already developing standards that the teachers and educators in the field of history feel is important for the schools in their States. But those States do not need to have a Federal seal of approval for those standards, voluntary or not. That is why I believe we may be missing the heart of this debate. Nevertheless, I think the Senator from Washington has addressed a real concern regarding the model national history standards that have been developed with Federal funds. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I wish to speak against the Gorton amendment. I think the Gorton amendment fails to recognize the immense amount of work that has gone into trying to put this country on a road to having and pursuing higher national standards, higher standards in education throughout the country. This is work that has primarily been done by the Governors of this country. I will point out that it began in Charlottesville, when President Bush was there with our 50 Governors some 5 years ago. Today, the National Education Goals Panel is made up primarily of Governors. There are eight Governors on this panel, there are two administration representatives, and there are four representatives from Congress. But clearly the Governors are those who set up the National Education Goals Panel. They are the ones who have led the way for this country to pursue national education goals and standards. The Governors who currently serve on that are an extremely distinguished group: Governor Romer, Governor Bayh, Governor Fordice of Mississippi, Governor Hunt, Governor Engler, Governor Carlson, Governor Edgar, and Governor Whitman of New Jersey. They are a very distinguished group of Governors. The amendment of Senator Gorton, in my view, would be an insult, if we were to pass this amendment, given the current state of deliberations by the National Governors and by the National Education Goals Panel on national standards. Essentially, this amendment says the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove some proposed standards which have not even been presented for consideration before the panel as yet. It completely puts the Congress in the position of preempting the National Education Goals Panel. It further puts us in the business of preempting the National Education Standards and Improvement Council, which has not even been established. The members of that group, NESIC for short--that is the acronym that has been applied to this National Education Standards and Improvement Council--have not even been appointed. Yet, we are here being asked to adopt legislation directing this unappointed panel not to certify certain standards which have not yet been presented to them since they are not in existence. It strikes me that this is the height of arrogance on the part of Congress, to be stepping into an area where we have not had the leadership. Just to the contrary, the Governors have had the leadership. And we are saying by this amendment, if we adopt it: Do not take any action to approve standards. You, the Governors and the other members of this panel, disapprove these proposed standards that have not yet even been presented to you. And second, if and when we get a National Education Standards and Improvement Council appointed, they are also directed not to certify any standards along the lines that have been proposed. I certainly agree that there are major problems with the national standards that were proposed on history. I do not think that is the issue that is before us today. This whole business of getting standards in history is something which was started by the former administration, during the Bush administration. I recall the then Chair of the National Endowment for Humanities, Lynne Cheney, let the contract at that time to have these national standards developed. She has also, I would point out, been the main spokesperson objecting to the standards that have come back, or the proposed standards. My reaction is that clearly she is right, that there are problems with what has been proposed, and we need to change what has been proposed or, on the contrary, we need to get some [[Page S1032]] other standards adopted in the area of history before we go ahead. But we are not in a position in my opinion as a Congress to be directing the National Education Goals Panel, made up primarily of Governors in this country, directing them as to what action to take or not to take on specific standards at this point. The whole standards-setting process I believe has been a very healthy, forward looking, progressive effort in this country, and it has been bipartisan. It was bipartisan when it was started in the Bush administration with the Governors. It has remained so since then. I have the good fortune of serving on a council that was established by the Congress to look at the whole issue of whether we should have national standards. That council came up with a report which said the high standards for student attainment are critical to enhancing America's economic competitiveness, the quality of human capital, and the knowledge of skills. The knowledge and skills of labor and management helps determine a nation's ability to compete in the world marketplace. International comparisons, however, consistently have shown the academic performance of American students is below that of students in many other developed countries. The standard setting process was a reaction to our concern in this area, and it is a reaction which the Governors took the lead in because of the primary responsibility for education has always been at the State and local level, and should remain there. But we found in that council that I served on--this is a quotation from the report they came out with: In the absence of demanding content and performance standards, the United States has gravitated toward having a de facto minimal skills curriculum. That is what the Governors were trying to deal with in the standard setting process. We should not allow our concern about some specific set of proposed standards which have not even been presented to the National Education Goals Panel for approval yet but we should not allow our concern about those specific standards to deflect us from the long- term objective of having standards, and holding ourselves accountable to reaching those standards. They are voluntary standards. They ought to be voluntary standards. But still they are standards. They are standards for which we believe certain benchmarks are appropriate. And clearly I believe that the standard setting process is an extremely important part of improving the American education system. It would be a tragedy for us to step in before the first set of those standards have been presented to the National Education Goals Panel for approval and pass legislation directing how the National Education Goals Panel and the Governors who make up the majority of that group, are to dispose of standards. So I hope very much that we will defeat the Gorton amendment. I know Senator Jeffords has an alternative which I will plan to support and speak for at that time. But I hope very much that the Congress does not overreach and try through this amendment that has been presented by the Senator from Washington to usurp the authority which I think has rightfully been seen as resting with the Governors of this country. I thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. Mr. PELL addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island. Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the Senator from Washington. To my mind, this amendment is an unwarranted governmental intrusion into what is basically a private effort. It also constitutes micromanagement to a degree that is neither wise nor necessary. First, the national standards that are being developed, whether in history or any other discipline, are purely voluntary. This was made clear in the Goals 2000 legislation and reinforced in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Second, the voluntary standards do not have to be submitted to either the National Education Standards and Improvement Council or the National Goals Panel. That, too, is voluntary. If the organization that developed the standards wants to submit them, they may do so at their own volition. It is not required. Third, certification is nothing more than a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. It carries no weight in law, and imposes no requirements on States or localities. They are free to develop their own standards, and may use or not use the voluntary national standards as they wish. Fourth, the history standards in question are proposed standards. They have not been finalized. Quite to the contrary, representatives from the National History Standards Project have met with critics and have indicated their willingness to make changes in both the standards and the instructional examples that accompany the standards. Their commitment is to remove historical bias and to build a broad base of consensus in support of the proposed standards. Fifth, make no mistake about it, these proposed standards were not developed in secret or by just a few individuals. They are the product of over 2\1/2\ years of hard work. Literally hundreds of teachers, historians, social studies supervisors, and parents were part of this effort. Advice and counsel was both sought and received from more than 30 major educational, scholarly, and public interest organizations. Mr. President, I strongly believe that we should not interfere with a process that is still in play. We should not inject ourselves in a way that might impede both the important work being done in this area and the effort to develop a broad base of consensus. Accordingly, I would urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and to support instead the substitute to be offered by the Senator from Vermont. I yield the floor. Mr. LIEBERMAN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut. Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the amendment offered by the Senator from Washington [Mr. Gorton]. In fact, I ask unanimous consent at this point that I be added as an original cosponsor of the amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I support this amendment because it puts the Senate on record opposing the national standards for U.S. and world history which, while not endorsed by any Federal agency, were developed with Federal tax dollars first issued in 1991. While not a Federal mandate in that sense, they are voluntary, nonetheless, I rise to speak in opposition to them because they carry the imprimatur of the Federal Government, and have the capacity to broadly affect the course of education and the teaching and understanding of history by succeeding generations of our children, the American children. Mr. President, I should make clear, as I believe the Senator from Washington has made clear, that I support the idea of setting national voluntary standards to upgrade our education and to give us something to aim for. But I must say that the standards that were produced, the national standards for U.S. and world history that are at the core of what this amendment is about, were a terrific disappointment and may undercut some of the fundamentals, the core values, the great personalities and heroes of America and Western civilization and world history. By doing so, we put our children at risk of not being fairly and broadly educated. While the hope of those involved at the time that these standards were authorized, which goes back some years, was clearly to encourage State and local educators to raise standards in the teaching of history to elementary and secondary school students, the draft proposed is full of the kind of valueless, all-points-of-view-are-equally-valid nonsense that I thought we had left behind--and I certainly believe we should leave behind--in the teaching of our children. The history that many of us who are older learned in school obviously had its failings. It was not as inclusive as it should have been in many ways. But at least it provided core information about who we are as a nation and how our world and our Nation have progressed over time. Mr. President, we have a lot to be proud of in American history. This [[Page S1033]] great idea of America grew out of the Enlightenment and was established--now more than 200 years ago--by a courageous, principled, and patriotic group of Founders and Framers who were not casual about what they were doing. They were motivated by an idea, by a set of values, and it is part of our responsibility as this generation of adults, let alone as this generation of elected officials and national leaders, to convey that sense of our history--about which we have so much to be proud--to our children. First, in the interest of truth, because the American idea is a unique idea and has dramatically and positively affected the course of world history since the founding of this country--not just the course of world history in a macro sense, in a cosmic sense--it has positively affected, in the most dramatic way, the course of the lives of millions of Americans and millions of other people around the world who have been influenced by the American idea and by American heroes. And we ought not to let that be disparaged. We ought not to let that uniqueness, that special American purpose, be lost in a kind of ``everything is equal, let us reach out and make up for the past exclusions in our history'' set of standards. So to me this is consequential. I guess the social scientists tell us that our children should think well of themselves if we expect them to do good things; that they have to have a good self-image. They mean this in the most personal sense of how parents raise children, how society gives children an impression of themselves. I say that in a broader sense of citizenship, our country has a responsibility, honestly and accurately conveying some of the blemishes as well as the great beauty of our history, to give our children a sense of self-worth as Americans. And part of that is respecting the great leaders in America that have gone before. Mr. President, these draft standards are, alternatively, so overinclusive as to lose major events in American and world history, major participants, leaders, heroes in American and world history, in a tumble of information about everybody and everything. And then, on the other hand, they are oddly underinclusive about important events, people and concepts. Robert E. Lee, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and the Wright Brothers, just to name a few, appear nowhere in these standards. Thomas Edison, whose most memorable invention has become the very symbol of a good idea--the light bulb--is not mentioned. Albert Einstein, whose extraordinary contributions to our sense of the physical universe, let alone beyond, who changed our understanding of our existence in so many dramatic ways--not mentioned. The Wright Brothers, whose courage and boldness and inventiveness, steadfastness-- with the development of airplanes, flight--has dramatically affected the lives of each of us and of society--not even mentioned in these standards. In another way, in the world history standards, slavery is mentioned briefly in reference to Greece. The only other discussion of slavery concerns the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery, to the world's shame, existed in many cultures over many centuries, and those examples are not mentioned. The Holocaust in Nazi Germany received significant attention, as it should. But the death, persecution, and humiliation in a cultural revolution in China go by with barely a whisper. There is nothing in the cold war section of these standards, this experience that dominated the lives of most of us in this Chamber from the end of the Second World War to 1989, when the Berlin Wall collapsed. The section on the cold war does not give the reader, the student, the teacher, the sense that that conflict involved principles at all, involved ideals. It describes it, in my opinion, solely as a contest for power. There is no indication that we were fighting a battle for democracy--not just a system, a way of government, but a way of government that has a particular view of what humans are all about, and a particular view that is rooted, I think, in the idea and the principle that people have a Creator. We say it in our founding documents, ``that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights,'' not a casual accident of nature, but a conscious act by a Creator. Democracy is on the one hand, and totalitarianism is on the other, which denies all of that. The cold war is described blandly and revealingly in one sentence as ``the swordplay of the Soviet Union and the United States.'' Inadequate, to put it mildly; insulting, to put it more honestly and directly. We do not need sanitized history that only celebrates our triumphs, Mr. President. But we also do not need to give our children a warped and negative view of Western civilization, of American civilization, of the accomplishments, the extraordinary accomplishments and contributions of both. I recognize that the Federal Government is not talking about forcing these standards on anybody. These standards were always intended to be voluntary, and I recognize that the standards we are talking about are not final. They are in a draft form. But the standards, by virtue of their being developed with Federal funds, have the unavoidable imprimatur of the Federal Government. Ten thousand of these are available throughout America. It is a very official-looking text. I, for one, worry that some well-meaning official of a local school district will get hold of it and think this is what we in Washington have decided is what the teaching of American and world history ought to be all about. In fact, I have been told that text book publishers are waiting to see what happens next with these standards so they can make their own plans as to whether to adopt the draft standards wholesale. In fact, I have heard also that some school districts are close to adopting them. I think it is particularly appropriate that my colleague from Washington has chosen this bill about mandates and Federal involvement in our society for us to speak out, to make sure that no one misunderstands these standards, to hope that teachers, parents, and students will understand the ways in which some of us feel they are deficient, and that, as the business of setting such standards goes forward from here, they will be developed with a better sense of balance and fairness and pride. History is important. We learn from it. It tells us who we are, and from our sense of who we are, we help determine who we will be by our actions. The interest in these standards, in some sense, confirms the importance of history. And what I am saying, and what I believe Senator Gorton is saying, is that we should celebrate the vitality of that interest in history by starting over to develop standards that more fairly reflect the American experience, not to mention world history, and to particularly give better and fairer attention to the positive and optimistic accomplishments and nature of the American people. I thank the Chair, and I congratulate my friend from Washington for taking the initiative on this matter. I yield the floor. Mr. BINGAMAN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me just make one additional point. I heard my good friend from Connecticut and my friend from Washington. I think it is particularly ironic that this amendment is being considered on the so-called Unfunded Mandate Reform Act of 1995. This bill that is being considered before the Senate today, the bill that is proposed to be amended, says in its preface: To curb the practice of imposing unfunded Federal mandates on State and local government; to strengthen the partnership between the Federal Government and State and local and tribal governments; to end the imposition, in the absence of full consideration by Congress, of Federal mandates on State, local and tribal governments. Mr. President, we did try to defer to the States when we set up the education goals panel in the legislation, the Goals 2000 legislation, last year. We established that panel with eight Governors, four State legislators. And those 12 who represent the States would be offset by six representing the National Government, two from the administration and four Members of Congress. Now we have taken this 18-member panel, the National Education Goals Panel, set them up and given them the responsibility to review proposals that [[Page S1034]] are made for national standards. And here in Senator Gorton's amendment, we are proposing to step in before any standards have been presented to them and to legislatively prohibit them from adopting a set of as yet unproposed standards. Now this is a Federal mandate, it is a mandate by this Senate, by this Congress to that National Education Goals Panel, made up primarily of State government representatives, and telling them what they shall and shall not do. I, quite frankly, think it is insulting to the Governors, who are giving of their very valuable time to serve on this National Education Goals Panel, for us to be rushing to the Senate floor and passing legislation of this type before they have even been presented with anything in the National Education Goals Panel. I am one of the two Senators that serves on the National Education Goals Panel. I represent the Democratic side. Senator Cochran represents the Republican side. We have not had a meeting to discuss these proposed standards. In fact, the proposed standards have not even been put on the agenda to be discussed at future meetings, and yet the Senate is considering going ahead and adopting an amendment by the Senator from Washington which says, ``Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove'' these standards in whatever form they ever come to us. Mr. President, I have no disagreement with my friend from Connecticut about the substance of the proposed standards that have been developed under the funding of the National Endowment for Humanities and the contract that Lynne Cheney let when she was in that position. I agree there are some serious problems there. But let us defer to that group primarily representing States and allow them at least to do some of their work before we step in and dictate the result. Particularly, let us not dictate the result as an amendment to a bill which is designed to end the imposition of Federal mandates on State, local and tribal governments. I think it is the height of irresponsibility for us to proceed to adopt this amendment at this stage. I really do think those Governors and State legislators who are serving on that National Education Goals Panel deserve the chance to do the job which they are giving of their valuable time to do before we step in and try to overrule them and second-guess something which they well may decide not to do. I have no reason to think they are less patriotic or less concerned about a proper depiction of U.S. history than we here in the Senate are. And I think we should give them a chance to do the right thing. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington. Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, first, I should like to say with respect to my friend and colleague, the Senator from Connecticut, that it is always a pleasure to deal with him on the same side of an issue just as it is very dangerous to disagree with him and attempt to prove a case. But as I have listened to the case presented against this amendment by three of my colleagues, one of my own party and two of the other, it seems to me that they argue in an attempt to have it both ways. Each of them was a strong supporter of Federal legislation, Goals 2000, which was designed to come up with national standards for the teaching of various subjects in our schools. Each of them, as far as I can tell, approved of spending some $2 million of Federal taxpayer money to finance a private study which resulted in these national standards. But when it comes to our debating these highly controversial and I firmly believe perverse and distorted standards for world and American history, we are told we should butt out; we, the Congress of the United States, should have nothing to say about national standards for the teaching of American history. Or, in the alternative, the Senator from New Mexico says it is too early because they have not been adopted yet. Would his argument be different if this commission had in fact adopted these standards? Well, of course not. His argument would be even stronger that we should have nothing to do with this process. Far better to express the views of Members of this body, and I hope of the House of Representatives, on a matter which is of deep concern to many of our citizens before some potential final action has been taken than to wait until afterwards. But, Mr. President, this volume does not look like a rough draft. Nothing in this volume, for which we have paid $2 million, indicates that it is only tentative, it is subject to huge revisions. This is a set of standards which without regard to whether or not it is approved by a national entity has already been distributed in some 10,000 copies to educational administrators and interested people all across the United States which already has behind it the force of being a national project financed with national money. I believe it more than appropriate that this technically nongermane amendment should be added to a bill on mandates, the bill we are discussing here today. While the Goals 2000 entity, the National Education Standards and Improvement Commission, cannot enforce its judgments on the States, they will certainly be given great weight by each of these States. And that council is a Federal entity. It may well be made up of some Governors as well as some Members of this body and some legislators and the like, but it is a national body created by the Congress with a national purpose. Nothing in my amendment, in which the Senator from Connecticut has joined, tells any Governor or State educational administrator that he or she cannot accept this book today, lock, stock, and barrel, if he or she wishes to do so. It does say that a Federal entity will not certify it as worthy of consideration as a guide for the teaching of American history. In that sense, each of these people is part of a national entity created by the Congress with a Federal purpose. Not only is it appropriate for Members to instruct such a group, I believe it to be mandatory. We created the group. If it is our view that this is, in fact, a perverse document that should not be the basis for teaching American history, now is the time we should say so. Not after it has been adopted by several States. Not after it has been adopted by this national organization, but right now. Opponents cannot duck behind the proposition that somehow or another they are taking no position. By voting against this amendment, they are taking the position that it is perfectly appropriate for these standards to be presented to the States of the United States as the way in which to teach the history of the United States of America. The very individual, Lynne Cheney, then Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who came up with much of the financing for this, finds these standards to be totally outside of what she or the Endowment expected or participated. And the critics are not from some narrow group in the United States. They represent the broadest possible mainstream of American thinking. Former Assistant Secretary of Education, Chester Finn, now at the Hudson Institute, called these history standards ``anti-Western,'' and ``hostile to the main threads of American history.'' Elizabeth Fox- Genovese, professor of history of women's study at Emory University declared ``The sense of progress and accomplishment that has characterized Americans' history of their country has virtually disappeared'' from these standards. The president of the Organization of History Teachers, Earl Bell, of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, called the world history standards ``even more politically correct than U.S. history standards.'' Charles Krauthammer, writing in the Washington Post, said that these proposed standards reflect ``the new history'' and ``the larger project of the new history is to collapse the distinction between fact and opinion, between history's news and editorial pages. In the new history, there are no pages independent of ideology and power, no history that is not political.'' Herman Beltz, history professor at the University of Maryland said ``I almost despair to think what kids will come to college with. I'm going to have to teach more basic things about the Constitution [[Page S1035]] and our liberal democracy.'' Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, described the original draft of World History Standards as ``a travesty, a caricature of what these things should be--sort of cheap shot leftist view of history.'' Finally, of course, Lynne Cheney said ``the World History Standards relentlessly downgrade the West just as the American history standards diminish achievements of the United States,'' both calling into question ``not only the standard-setting effort but the Goals 2000 program under which these standards became official knowledge.'' In U.S. News & World Report, John Leo wrote: This won't do. The whole idea was to set unbiased national standards that all Americans could get behind. Along the way the project was hijacked by the politically correct. It is riddled with propaganda, and the American people would be foolish to let it anywhere near their schools. Mark my words: To vote against this amendment is to vote approval of certifying a set of books, in this case entitled ``National Standards for United States History,'' paid for by the American taxpayer, submitted to a Federal organization for its approval. I want to repeat, we do not tell any school district or any State that if it wants to treat this as a bible that it is forbidden to do so. All we do is to tell an organization we created that it is not to certify these standards. That they are unacceptable. That they denigrate the Western and the American experience, ignore the most important achievements of our history, and that if the Federal Government wants to do this job it ought to start over and do it again with people who have a decent respect for American history and for civilization. I am a Senator who, unlike my distinguished colleague who sits next to me here, the junior Senator from Kansas, who voted in favor of Goals 2000 and in favor of national standards. And like others now seriously must question my own judgment in doing so, if this is the kind of product which is going to arise out of that process. I believe very firmly that if we are to have national standards, if we are to have support not only of this Congress but of the American people for national standards in education and various subjects, we must do much better than this. Not later. Not a year from now. Not 3 years from now. This is the time to say, ``This doesn't measure up.'' It does not reflect the American experience. It is not an outline of what we should be teaching our children about the history of this country, and for that matter, the history of the world. The vote, like it or not, is on whether or not you agree or disagree with what has been produced here. Turn down this amendment, we are telling this national council ``everything is OK; approve it, and go right ahead.'' Accept the amendment and we will have a positive impact not only on the teaching of our American history but of future standards in other subjects which are still incomplete. We may yet be able to save the true goals of Goals 2000. Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, could I ask the Senator a question as to his intent in the future, if the Senator would yield? Mr. GORTON. I am happy to yield. Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask my colleague from Washington, Mr. President, if it would be his intent every time a standard is developed for consideration, that we in the Congress would pass legislation for or against that before the goals panel got a chance to consider it? Mr. GORTON. My answer to the Senator from New Mexico is that is a very good question, to which the answer is ``no.'' I sense that educational goals are likely to fall into two categories, one of which is more likely to be controversial than the other. Some of the standards in other areas--for mathematics, for example, or for the teaching of physics--will, I think, be very unlikely to be found controversial or be driven by ideology. In the case of a set of standards which come from a narrow perspective, a narrow political perspective, it is certainly possible that there will be future debates, as there ought to be. I think the future debates are more likely to be driven by public reaction to these standards than they are by the preferences of individual Members of the Senate. This Senator was made aware of the standards by the blizzard of criticism which they created almost from the day that this book was published. Now, by the fact that so many traditional historians in the United States find them so terribly objectionable, my deep hope, I say to the Senator from New Mexico, as a member of this national commission, will be that a decent respect for American traditions in the future in this and in the study of other kinds of social services on the part of those academics who generally dominate their writing such standards, will result in no action at all on the part of the Congress, because while there may be elements of controversy and particular standards, that controversy will not reach the fundamental basis of the very philosophy or ideology out of which they arise. So I hope that this is not only the first time that we take up a subject like this, but the last time. Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me just ask one additional question. The education goals panel, to which we are here giving instructions prohibiting them from taking certain action, is scheduled to meet a week from Saturday here in Washington, with Governor Bayh--I believe he is the new Chair of the education goals panel. What is the Senator intending to do by this action, by this vote, by this amendment? What is he intending to tell that group of Governors, and others who sit on that panel, about what their responsibilities are for considering standards in the future? Should they wait until we get some reading from the Congress as to whether or not there has been too much public concern? I am just concerned that we are setting a precedent which essentially makes their job irrelevant or their role irrelevant if we are going to have public debates in the Congress and pass mandatory legislation dictating how they are to proceed every time a new set of proposals comes forward. Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I say to my friend from New Mexico, there is hardly an important commission or entity or agency in the United States whose controversial decisions or operations do not create controversy or debates on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We are elected by the people. We have strong views on particular subjects. Of course, frequently, well beyond this particular council, we are going to have debates on ideas which other people, appointed by the President or appointed by us, deal with. As the Senator from New Mexico well knows, there is not the slightest doubt that we will be engaged in a debate sometime later this year on the future of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Members will attack and defend the way in which Federal money is spent by that independent organization, as it is by a myriad of other organizations. As for the meeting a week from Saturday of this particular Commission, I would be astounded if this amendment were the law by then. Certainly the speed with which we have dealt with this unfunded mandates bill so far hardly indicates that it is going to be through this body and the House of Representatives, the differences between the two settled, on the President's desk and signed by the President by a week from Saturday. So I suspect that legally, at least, that Commission will be perfectly free a week from Saturday to take whatever action it wishes. I strongly suspect that many of those who are elected to positions in their own States and are appointed members of this Commission may have reached the same conclusion that I and others have at this point, and I strongly suspect that they will give great weight to the way in which this vote comes out. But they are going to give that great weight either way. If we vote in favor of this amendment, even though it has not become law, I think that will greatly influence that council in rejecting these standards. By the same token, if we turn down this amendment, my opinion is that many members of that council will, in effect, say the Congress has approved these standards and they ought to go ahead and do so themselves. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment? [[Page S1036]] Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. Mr. GORTON. Objection. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard. The assistant legislative clerk continued the call of the roll. Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Chair. I rise to speak about where we are at this time with this bill, to make the point that I have been basically on my feet since 12 noon trying to offer a very important and timely amendment that has bipartisan support, that is about an issue of great importance to the people of this country because, indeed, it is about law and order in this country. On December 30, there was a horrible shooting in Massachusetts at a health care clinic. The following day there was a shooting in Virginia, at a health care clinic. Obviously, at that time, the U.S. Senate, this 104th Congress, had not taken its place here and we were unable to respond, as I know we would have in a timely fashion, to condemn the violence and to call on the Attorney General to take the appropriate action to ensure the safety of those innocent people at those clinics around this country. As soon as I got back here I made a number of calls to Democrats and Republicans and I put together a resolution which currently has 21 cosponsors, some of them from the Republican side of the aisle. I knew that this Senate had a lot of important business, but I also believed in my heart we would take 60 minutes or 30 minutes, or some time to go on record, speaking out as Americans--not Republicans, not Democrats--Americans speaking out against that violence. I was very hopeful when I heard the majority leader, the new majority leader, Senator Dole, speak out on national television, condemning the violence and saying that he was appalled at the violence. I said to myself, we will have bipartisan support so we can go on the record in this U.S. Senate. I know my Republican friends have a contract, a Contract With America or for America--or on America, some people call it--and they believe in that contract. Some of the things in there are good. A lot of it is awful, in my opinion. And they are on a timetable to move that through. But I have to say that, while I believe the bill before us is very important--and I say to the occupant of the chair I know how much he worked, so hard on this unfunded mandates bill. I myself come from local government. I had to deal with the most ludicrous mandates in the 1980's that you could believe. I would love to be able to get a bill before us that does not go too far, that is sensible. And I want to work toward that end. I have a number of amendments that deal with it. But I thought, as reasonable men and women, we could respond to a terrible problem we have in our country, and I was very heartened when I had bipartisan support. The Senator from Maine and I worked in a bipartisan fashion to speak to the majority leader, to speak to the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee. This goes

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UNFUNDED MANDATE REFORM ACT
(Senate - January 18, 1995)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S1028-S1064] UNFUNDED MANDATE REFORM ACT Amendment No. 139 to Amendment No. 31 (Purpose: To prevent the adoption of certain national history standards) Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I send a second-degree amendment to the desk. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment. The legislative clerk read as follows: The Senator from Kansas [Mr. Dole] proposes an amendment numbered 139 to amendment No. 31. [[Page S1029]] Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is as follows: Strike all after ``SEC.'' and add the following: . NATIONAL HISTORY STANDARDS. (a) In General.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove, and the National Education Standards and Improvement Council shall not certify, any voluntary national content standards, voluntary national student performance standards, and criteria for the certification of such content and student performance standards, regarding the subject of history, that have been developed prior to February 1, 1995. (b) Prohibition.--No Federal funds shall be awarded to, or expended by, the National Center for History in the Schools, after the date of enactment of this Act, for the development of the voluntary national content standards, the voluntary national student performance standards, and the criteria for the certification of such content and student performance standards, regarding the subject of history. (c) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate that-- (1) the voluntary national content standards, the voluntary national student performance standards, and the criteria for the certification of such content and student performance standards, regarding the subject of history, that are established under title II of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act should not be based on standards developed by the National Center for History in the Schools; and (2) if the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, or any other Federal agency provides funds for the development of the standards and criteria described in paragraph (1), the recipient of such funds should have a decent respect for United States history's roots in western civilization. Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second. The yeas and nays were ordered. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate? Mr. GLENN. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll to ascertain the presence of a quorum. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I would like to address the pending amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont. Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, if one is not aware of the history of this issue over the past decade or so, this amendment might seem like one that we ought to concentrate on and seriously consider. It brings up the issue of educational standards, but it takes our attention away from the basic reasons for the development of the Goals 2000. When these goals were developed by the Governors in 1989, it came as a result of a 1983 report called ``A Nation at Risk.'' That report was released by the Secretary of Education at the time, Ted Bell, who served as Secretary of Education during the Reagan administration. It described serious deficiencies in our educational system. Those results have been verified by many studies including the somewhat recent Work Force 2000 report which pointed out very importantly and very critically that this Nation is not presently prepared to compete in the international market and will be less so in the future. Here are some of the problems that created the demand for Goals 2000. Too many of our people right now do not even graduate from high school. But much more seriously is that only half of those who presently graduate have what is considered an acceptable basic education. Even more troubling is the fact that two-thirds of that half are functionally illiterate to one degree or another. They do not have the basic skills necessary to handle an entry level job. This means that our school system turns out millions of young people each year needing remedial education before they can effectively help us compete in the world economy. The purpose of ``A Nation at Risk'' was to raise awareness that our Nation was facing a serious crisis. The standard of living had been slipping for the past decade or more and would continue to slip if we did not raise the quality of our education. In the late 1980's, the business community was concerned that educational reform was not being implemented, even after President Bush had convened the national education summit and the Nation's Governors had created the goals which, with the input of Congress, are now referred to as Goals 2000. The need for progress on this issue was important to the business community. I remember very well the first meeting I had in my office as a new Senator and as member of the Education Subcommittee with a group of this Nation's top CEO's whose firms were involved in international ventures. I expected that they might come to me and say, ``We have to do something about capital gains.'' They did not. They said that we must fully fund Head Start. If the United States did not make sure that everyone had the advantage of preschool training, early childhood education, and other compensatory programs, we would not produce the kind of high school graduates who would be able to compete internationally. Our educational failures impact the business community, especially in those areas of graduate education which are so critical to our competitive edge in high-technology fields. Right now, about 40 percent of the slots for graduate schools in critical areas of science, engineering, and mathematics go to foreign students because they are more competitive for those slots. That used to be fine, and I remember in my own State we had many foreign students who went to graduate school and ultimately worked for IBM. These days, unfortunately, foreign graduate students are not staying here. They are not returning the advantage of their skills and knowledge to our industries. They are all going home. In other words, we are sending about 40 percent of graduates from our schools, which are the best in the world, to work for our competitors. I wished to raise this specter because this is the kind of problem which national standards should address. When we passed Goals 2000, we set forth a set of voluntary national goals and standards. In addition to the original goals proposed by President Bush and the 50 Governors, we expanded upon the goal for math and science competitiveness and added such subjects as history and arts. What we are talking about today is the beginning of a process of developing standards which are necessary for our ability to compete in the international economy. I would hate to think we will begin debating subjects which are important but unrelated to the more important issue of competitiveness and thereby disparage our national and worldwide standards. Recently, members of the business community spoke about job training before the Labor Committee and said that we must enforce worldwide educational standards for our people can become qualified for the work force of the future. If people do not understand the requirements, they will continue presuming that the standards which we have been utilizing, the ones which we feel are an acceptable education, are quite all right. People fail to realize that students in Taiwan graduate 2 years ahead of our students in science and math. In addition, studies show that not only are we removed from the list of top nations in science and math achievement, but that we are at the bottom of the heap. My point is that we must concentrate on why the Goals 2000 bill was developed. It was deemed necessary to improve the standard of living of the Nation: To improve our standards and our competitiveness. While it is important for us to stay informed about recommendations for important subjects such as history, I am concerned that we will begin to forget why we are here, and that is to save the Nation. I will introduce a second-degree amendment at an appropriate time which will address the concern of my good friend, the Senator from Washington, regarding the development of certain standards at the UCLA Center for History in Schools, those standards [[Page S1030]] which have raised considerable controversy. But we must remember that those standards have not been adopted by anyone, and they are not in a form to be adopted. In fact, the panel which would approve them has not even been named yet. So we are prematurely criticizing something which is not even ready to be adopted. But more importantly, the amendment requires that anything meritorious or relevant or acceptable that is in those standards should not be used. Now, I am not sure whether that means the acceptable elements could be proposed and later approved, or not. The amendment does not say. It simply states that the standards cannot be used and that no more money can go to them. Therefore my amendment will leave in the final paragraph of the amendment of the Senator from Washington, which states the concern about how we adopt the history standards, but will remove that part which states that we should simply throw away everything that has been done in this area and prohibits the information from being used. Out of a very substantial number of examples in the history standards, only a very few have provoked great controversy. Therefore, I will speak again later, when I offer my amendment. But I just want everyone to realize that the critical goal is to have an educational system second to none which will keep the United States competitive in the next century by providing the necessary skilled work force. I will also mention the cost of doing nothing and the cost of trying to do away with these standards. Right now, over $25 billion each year are spent by our businesses on remedial education because of the failures of our school system. In addition, we have about a half a trillion dollars loss in the economy due to illiteracy, imprisonment, and the many other social ills that result from educational shortfalls. This is an extremely important issue, and I hope that we will remain focused on the primary issue of developing a more competitive nation for the future. Mr. President, I must oppose the amendment offered by my colleague from Washington. The amendment, which has not been subject to any hearings or review by the committee of jurisdiction, prohibits the National Education Goals Panel and the National Education Standards and Improvement Council from certifying any voluntary national content standards in the subject of history. As my colleagues may recall, under the Bush administration grants were awarded to independent agencies, groups, and institutions of higher education to develop worldclass standards in all the major subject areas. The history standards were developed by the UCLA Center for History in Schools with the contribution of hundreds of individual teachers, scholars and historians. The standards, which have just recently been published, have raised concern among some readers. Criticism has focused not on the standards themselves but upon the examples of activities for students in each grade level. Of the thousands of examples, not more than 25 were considered controversial. However, upon receipt of public input and criticism the Center for History in Schools is reviewing and altering its work. This, in fact is, and should be, the appropriate process and primary purpose of public commentary. But, I am not here to defend the specific content of these standards--that is best left to teachers, educators, and parents. Instead, I am concerned that this amendment has much broader implications. At issue is not so much the specific substance of these standards. Indeed, the standards have neither been endorsed by any Federal body nor, for that matter, even been finalized. Rather, the issue is whether or not we have in place a process for developing world class standards. I cannot overstate the importance of this matter. Countless reports have outlined that our country is falling behind in international test comparisons because our children have not learned the necessary skills in order to compete successfully. A recent survey of Fortune 500 companies showed that 58 percent complained of the difficulty of finding employees with basic skills. The chief executive officer of Pacific Telesis reported: Only 4 out of every 10 candidates for entry-level jobs at Pacific Telesis are able to pass our entry exam, which are based on a seventh-grade level. It is no longer enough for Vermont to compare itself to the national average. Comparing one State with another is like the local football team believing itself to be a champion of national stature because it beat the cross town rival. No, we must compare ourselves with our real competitors--the other nations of this global marketplace. To date, it appears that they are quickly outpacing us in many pivotal areas. I have had meetings upon meetings with the chairmen and CEO's of major U.S. corporations to urge me to support the development of high academic standards. Why? Because the status quo in our schools has failed. Too many of our graduates finish school without knowing the three R's, much less more rigorous content standards. For our country to remain competitive, it is essential that our schools prepare our future work force for the demands of the 21st century. Unfortunately, until we present our students with challenging content standards that goal will not be realized. Instead, estimates indicate that American businesses may have to spend up to $25 billion each year just for remedial elementary math and reading instruction for workers before they can train them to handle modern equipment. Not only does this drain critical funds from our corporations but it dramatically affects our ability to compete in the global marketplace. For the past decade the average wage has gone down. The standard of living is slipping and wealth is accumulating only at the top. Until we are able to prepare our children for the future we will have failed ourselves, the next generation and this country. The first step to success is establishing strong academic standards so that our children leave school ready for the work force or for postsecondary education. Remedial education should not be the main function of our institutions of higher education or our businesses and corporations. By preparing our students while they are in school, we will reduce the need for catchup courses so many of our graduates now have to take. We have a process in place to get our children ready for the 21st century. That process includes reforming our school and creating high benchmarks for students. That process is done through the National Council on Education Standards and Improvement. NESIC will be a 19- member council composed of professional educators, representatives of business, industry, higher education, and members of the public. The council is authorized to certify voluntary national education standards and pass their recommendations to the goals panel for final approval. The role of the council is to certify that the standards developed in each subject area are credible, rigorous and have been developed through a broad-based process. NESIC provides a mechanism for ensuring that standards remain national rather than Federal. If this duty was not being performed by such a council, the responsibility for certifying national voluntary standards would fall squarely upon the shoulders of the Secretary of Education--which would positively result in greater Federal involvement. This body is a separate entity created to oversee the certification of voluntary national standards. It has absolutely no oversight authority over States. In other words, States are not required to agree with the voluntary national standards, they are not required to accept or incorporate any portion of the national standards or even acknowledge existence of standards. Yet such a national council is essential to States and local schools to assist them in weeding out and reviewing voluntary standards. Without such an entity, each State will have to undertake that review by itself. To do that 50 times over simply does not make sense. Clearly, the recommendations of the council are not binding on States. The council's certification process is simply a Good Housekeeping seal of approval to assist States in determining which standards are rigorous and competitive. For us to step in and derail this process makes no good sense. By passing [[Page S1031]] this amendment and legislating a Federal override of NESIC's responsibility we not only jeopardize the whole independent nature of NESIC, we also jeopardize the process of creating tough academic standards. I don't think we have that luxury. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas. Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, if I may enter into this debate for a moment from a little different angle. I have enormous respect for the Senator from Vermont, who has just spoken with great dedication to the issue of education. He has devoted a great deal of time to the issue, both when he was in the other body as a Member of Congress and since he has been in the Senate and is now chairman of the Education Subcommittee of the Labor Committee. I also can understand where the Senator from Washington is coming from in his concerns about the model national history standards which have been developed with Federal funds. However, as the Senator from Vermont has pointed out, they have not been adopted or certified as national standards yet. There has been a lot of controversy about these standards as they have been proposed--controversy which, I may say, could have been anticipated. I was troubled when we first started down the path of providing Federal funding for the development of national standards. I would like to note that standards in various subject areas have been developed by professionals in the field, not by Federal employees as some may think. However, where Federal moneys are involved, there is often misunderstanding about the nature of the Government's involvement. I am sure that developing these standards was very difficult for these professionals. It is far easier to develop standards, say in the field of mathematics or science, because there is more preciseness in both of those fields. When you get to history, however, so much revolves around a teacher's interpretation of the material that they may have in front of them. So I think when you get into particular areas of study like history, that it becomes much more difficult to develop standards on which there is going to be agreement. Whether it is with the particular standards we are discussing now or a totally different set of standards, I think you would find just as many people with concerns about them. Although these are voluntary standards, as has been repeatedly emphasized whenever we have had these debates, this is a point which often gets lost. One reason I opposed the Goals 2000 legislation which was enacted last year is that it took Federal activities in this area yet another step further by including an authorization for a national council to review and endorse the national standards. There is certainly a difference between voluntary national standards and mandatory Federal standards--but this is a distinction which is generally lost when such standards are put forward, particularly when they are likely to come before a group such as the national council which is charged with reviewing them. As one who believes strongly that the strength of our education system lies in its local base and community commitment, I have not felt it wise to expand Federal involvement into areas traditionally handled by States and localities. I will support the Gorton amendment due to my concern about Federal involvement in national standards, even voluntary ones. At the same time, I believe the real issue is far broader than the current controversy over the history standards. Prohibiting a federally authorized council from certifying a particular set of voluntary standards is not the real answer. The real problem is that we have established in legislation such a group--the National Education Standards and Improvement Council, or NESIC--in the first place. In the near future, I will be introducing legislation to repeal NESIC. My legislation would get the Federal Government out of the loop in an area which I believe is best handled by States and localities. Many of our States are already developing standards that the teachers and educators in the field of history feel is important for the schools in their States. But those States do not need to have a Federal seal of approval for those standards, voluntary or not. That is why I believe we may be missing the heart of this debate. Nevertheless, I think the Senator from Washington has addressed a real concern regarding the model national history standards that have been developed with Federal funds. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I wish to speak against the Gorton amendment. I think the Gorton amendment fails to recognize the immense amount of work that has gone into trying to put this country on a road to having and pursuing higher national standards, higher standards in education throughout the country. This is work that has primarily been done by the Governors of this country. I will point out that it began in Charlottesville, when President Bush was there with our 50 Governors some 5 years ago. Today, the National Education Goals Panel is made up primarily of Governors. There are eight Governors on this panel, there are two administration representatives, and there are four representatives from Congress. But clearly the Governors are those who set up the National Education Goals Panel. They are the ones who have led the way for this country to pursue national education goals and standards. The Governors who currently serve on that are an extremely distinguished group: Governor Romer, Governor Bayh, Governor Fordice of Mississippi, Governor Hunt, Governor Engler, Governor Carlson, Governor Edgar, and Governor Whitman of New Jersey. They are a very distinguished group of Governors. The amendment of Senator Gorton, in my view, would be an insult, if we were to pass this amendment, given the current state of deliberations by the National Governors and by the National Education Goals Panel on national standards. Essentially, this amendment says the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove some proposed standards which have not even been presented for consideration before the panel as yet. It completely puts the Congress in the position of preempting the National Education Goals Panel. It further puts us in the business of preempting the National Education Standards and Improvement Council, which has not even been established. The members of that group, NESIC for short--that is the acronym that has been applied to this National Education Standards and Improvement Council--have not even been appointed. Yet, we are here being asked to adopt legislation directing this unappointed panel not to certify certain standards which have not yet been presented to them since they are not in existence. It strikes me that this is the height of arrogance on the part of Congress, to be stepping into an area where we have not had the leadership. Just to the contrary, the Governors have had the leadership. And we are saying by this amendment, if we adopt it: Do not take any action to approve standards. You, the Governors and the other members of this panel, disapprove these proposed standards that have not yet even been presented to you. And second, if and when we get a National Education Standards and Improvement Council appointed, they are also directed not to certify any standards along the lines that have been proposed. I certainly agree that there are major problems with the national standards that were proposed on history. I do not think that is the issue that is before us today. This whole business of getting standards in history is something which was started by the former administration, during the Bush administration. I recall the then Chair of the National Endowment for Humanities, Lynne Cheney, let the contract at that time to have these national standards developed. She has also, I would point out, been the main spokesperson objecting to the standards that have come back, or the proposed standards. My reaction is that clearly she is right, that there are problems with what has been proposed, and we need to change what has been proposed or, on the contrary, we need to get some [[Page S1032]] other standards adopted in the area of history before we go ahead. But we are not in a position in my opinion as a Congress to be directing the National Education Goals Panel, made up primarily of Governors in this country, directing them as to what action to take or not to take on specific standards at this point. The whole standards-setting process I believe has been a very healthy, forward looking, progressive effort in this country, and it has been bipartisan. It was bipartisan when it was started in the Bush administration with the Governors. It has remained so since then. I have the good fortune of serving on a council that was established by the Congress to look at the whole issue of whether we should have national standards. That council came up with a report which said the high standards for student attainment are critical to enhancing America's economic competitiveness, the quality of human capital, and the knowledge of skills. The knowledge and skills of labor and management helps determine a nation's ability to compete in the world marketplace. International comparisons, however, consistently have shown the academic performance of American students is below that of students in many other developed countries. The standard setting process was a reaction to our concern in this area, and it is a reaction which the Governors took the lead in because of the primary responsibility for education has always been at the State and local level, and should remain there. But we found in that council that I served on--this is a quotation from the report they came out with: In the absence of demanding content and performance standards, the United States has gravitated toward having a de facto minimal skills curriculum. That is what the Governors were trying to deal with in the standard setting process. We should not allow our concern about some specific set of proposed standards which have not even been presented to the National Education Goals Panel for approval yet but we should not allow our concern about those specific standards to deflect us from the long- term objective of having standards, and holding ourselves accountable to reaching those standards. They are voluntary standards. They ought to be voluntary standards. But still they are standards. They are standards for which we believe certain benchmarks are appropriate. And clearly I believe that the standard setting process is an extremely important part of improving the American education system. It would be a tragedy for us to step in before the first set of those standards have been presented to the National Education Goals Panel for approval and pass legislation directing how the National Education Goals Panel and the Governors who make up the majority of that group, are to dispose of standards. So I hope very much that we will defeat the Gorton amendment. I know Senator Jeffords has an alternative which I will plan to support and speak for at that time. But I hope very much that the Congress does not overreach and try through this amendment that has been presented by the Senator from Washington to usurp the authority which I think has rightfully been seen as resting with the Governors of this country. I thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. Mr. PELL addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island. Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the Senator from Washington. To my mind, this amendment is an unwarranted governmental intrusion into what is basically a private effort. It also constitutes micromanagement to a degree that is neither wise nor necessary. First, the national standards that are being developed, whether in history or any other discipline, are purely voluntary. This was made clear in the Goals 2000 legislation and reinforced in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Second, the voluntary standards do not have to be submitted to either the National Education Standards and Improvement Council or the National Goals Panel. That, too, is voluntary. If the organization that developed the standards wants to submit them, they may do so at their own volition. It is not required. Third, certification is nothing more than a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. It carries no weight in law, and imposes no requirements on States or localities. They are free to develop their own standards, and may use or not use the voluntary national standards as they wish. Fourth, the history standards in question are proposed standards. They have not been finalized. Quite to the contrary, representatives from the National History Standards Project have met with critics and have indicated their willingness to make changes in both the standards and the instructional examples that accompany the standards. Their commitment is to remove historical bias and to build a broad base of consensus in support of the proposed standards. Fifth, make no mistake about it, these proposed standards were not developed in secret or by just a few individuals. They are the product of over 2\1/2\ years of hard work. Literally hundreds of teachers, historians, social studies supervisors, and parents were part of this effort. Advice and counsel was both sought and received from more than 30 major educational, scholarly, and public interest organizations. Mr. President, I strongly believe that we should not interfere with a process that is still in play. We should not inject ourselves in a way that might impede both the important work being done in this area and the effort to develop a broad base of consensus. Accordingly, I would urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and to support instead the substitute to be offered by the Senator from Vermont. I yield the floor. Mr. LIEBERMAN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut. Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the amendment offered by the Senator from Washington [Mr. Gorton]. In fact, I ask unanimous consent at this point that I be added as an original cosponsor of the amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I support this amendment because it puts the Senate on record opposing the national standards for U.S. and world history which, while not endorsed by any Federal agency, were developed with Federal tax dollars first issued in 1991. While not a Federal mandate in that sense, they are voluntary, nonetheless, I rise to speak in opposition to them because they carry the imprimatur of the Federal Government, and have the capacity to broadly affect the course of education and the teaching and understanding of history by succeeding generations of our children, the American children. Mr. President, I should make clear, as I believe the Senator from Washington has made clear, that I support the idea of setting national voluntary standards to upgrade our education and to give us something to aim for. But I must say that the standards that were produced, the national standards for U.S. and world history that are at the core of what this amendment is about, were a terrific disappointment and may undercut some of the fundamentals, the core values, the great personalities and heroes of America and Western civilization and world history. By doing so, we put our children at risk of not being fairly and broadly educated. While the hope of those involved at the time that these standards were authorized, which goes back some years, was clearly to encourage State and local educators to raise standards in the teaching of history to elementary and secondary school students, the draft proposed is full of the kind of valueless, all-points-of-view-are-equally-valid nonsense that I thought we had left behind--and I certainly believe we should leave behind--in the teaching of our children. The history that many of us who are older learned in school obviously had its failings. It was not as inclusive as it should have been in many ways. But at least it provided core information about who we are as a nation and how our world and our Nation have progressed over time. Mr. President, we have a lot to be proud of in American history. This [[Page S1033]] great idea of America grew out of the Enlightenment and was established--now more than 200 years ago--by a courageous, principled, and patriotic group of Founders and Framers who were not casual about what they were doing. They were motivated by an idea, by a set of values, and it is part of our responsibility as this generation of adults, let alone as this generation of elected officials and national leaders, to convey that sense of our history--about which we have so much to be proud--to our children. First, in the interest of truth, because the American idea is a unique idea and has dramatically and positively affected the course of world history since the founding of this country--not just the course of world history in a macro sense, in a cosmic sense--it has positively affected, in the most dramatic way, the course of the lives of millions of Americans and millions of other people around the world who have been influenced by the American idea and by American heroes. And we ought not to let that be disparaged. We ought not to let that uniqueness, that special American purpose, be lost in a kind of ``everything is equal, let us reach out and make up for the past exclusions in our history'' set of standards. So to me this is consequential. I guess the social scientists tell us that our children should think well of themselves if we expect them to do good things; that they have to have a good self-image. They mean this in the most personal sense of how parents raise children, how society gives children an impression of themselves. I say that in a broader sense of citizenship, our country has a responsibility, honestly and accurately conveying some of the blemishes as well as the great beauty of our history, to give our children a sense of self-worth as Americans. And part of that is respecting the great leaders in America that have gone before. Mr. President, these draft standards are, alternatively, so overinclusive as to lose major events in American and world history, major participants, leaders, heroes in American and world history, in a tumble of information about everybody and everything. And then, on the other hand, they are oddly underinclusive about important events, people and concepts. Robert E. Lee, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and the Wright Brothers, just to name a few, appear nowhere in these standards. Thomas Edison, whose most memorable invention has become the very symbol of a good idea--the light bulb--is not mentioned. Albert Einstein, whose extraordinary contributions to our sense of the physical universe, let alone beyond, who changed our understanding of our existence in so many dramatic ways--not mentioned. The Wright Brothers, whose courage and boldness and inventiveness, steadfastness-- with the development of airplanes, flight--has dramatically affected the lives of each of us and of society--not even mentioned in these standards. In another way, in the world history standards, slavery is mentioned briefly in reference to Greece. The only other discussion of slavery concerns the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery, to the world's shame, existed in many cultures over many centuries, and those examples are not mentioned. The Holocaust in Nazi Germany received significant attention, as it should. But the death, persecution, and humiliation in a cultural revolution in China go by with barely a whisper. There is nothing in the cold war section of these standards, this experience that dominated the lives of most of us in this Chamber from the end of the Second World War to 1989, when the Berlin Wall collapsed. The section on the cold war does not give the reader, the student, the teacher, the sense that that conflict involved principles at all, involved ideals. It describes it, in my opinion, solely as a contest for power. There is no indication that we were fighting a battle for democracy--not just a system, a way of government, but a way of government that has a particular view of what humans are all about, and a particular view that is rooted, I think, in the idea and the principle that people have a Creator. We say it in our founding documents, ``that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights,'' not a casual accident of nature, but a conscious act by a Creator. Democracy is on the one hand, and totalitarianism is on the other, which denies all of that. The cold war is described blandly and revealingly in one sentence as ``the swordplay of the Soviet Union and the United States.'' Inadequate, to put it mildly; insulting, to put it more honestly and directly. We do not need sanitized history that only celebrates our triumphs, Mr. President. But we also do not need to give our children a warped and negative view of Western civilization, of American civilization, of the accomplishments, the extraordinary accomplishments and contributions of both. I recognize that the Federal Government is not talking about forcing these standards on anybody. These standards were always intended to be voluntary, and I recognize that the standards we are talking about are not final. They are in a draft form. But the standards, by virtue of their being developed with Federal funds, have the unavoidable imprimatur of the Federal Government. Ten thousand of these are available throughout America. It is a very official-looking text. I, for one, worry that some well-meaning official of a local school district will get hold of it and think this is what we in Washington have decided is what the teaching of American and world history ought to be all about. In fact, I have been told that text book publishers are waiting to see what happens next with these standards so they can make their own plans as to whether to adopt the draft standards wholesale. In fact, I have heard also that some school districts are close to adopting them. I think it is particularly appropriate that my colleague from Washington has chosen this bill about mandates and Federal involvement in our society for us to speak out, to make sure that no one misunderstands these standards, to hope that teachers, parents, and students will understand the ways in which some of us feel they are deficient, and that, as the business of setting such standards goes forward from here, they will be developed with a better sense of balance and fairness and pride. History is important. We learn from it. It tells us who we are, and from our sense of who we are, we help determine who we will be by our actions. The interest in these standards, in some sense, confirms the importance of history. And what I am saying, and what I believe Senator Gorton is saying, is that we should celebrate the vitality of that interest in history by starting over to develop standards that more fairly reflect the American experience, not to mention world history, and to particularly give better and fairer attention to the positive and optimistic accomplishments and nature of the American people. I thank the Chair, and I congratulate my friend from Washington for taking the initiative on this matter. I yield the floor. Mr. BINGAMAN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me just make one additional point. I heard my good friend from Connecticut and my friend from Washington. I think it is particularly ironic that this amendment is being considered on the so-called Unfunded Mandate Reform Act of 1995. This bill that is being considered before the Senate today, the bill that is proposed to be amended, says in its preface: To curb the practice of imposing unfunded Federal mandates on State and local government; to strengthen the partnership between the Federal Government and State and local and tribal governments; to end the imposition, in the absence of full consideration by Congress, of Federal mandates on State, local and tribal governments. Mr. President, we did try to defer to the States when we set up the education goals panel in the legislation, the Goals 2000 legislation, last year. We established that panel with eight Governors, four State legislators. And those 12 who represent the States would be offset by six representing the National Government, two from the administration and four Members of Congress. Now we have taken this 18-member panel, the National Education Goals Panel, set them up and given them the responsibility to review proposals that [[Page S1034]] are made for national standards. And here in Senator Gorton's amendment, we are proposing to step in before any standards have been presented to them and to legislatively prohibit them from adopting a set of as yet unproposed standards. Now this is a Federal mandate, it is a mandate by this Senate, by this Congress to that National Education Goals Panel, made up primarily of State government representatives, and telling them what they shall and shall not do. I, quite frankly, think it is insulting to the Governors, who are giving of their very valuable time to serve on this National Education Goals Panel, for us to be rushing to the Senate floor and passing legislation of this type before they have even been presented with anything in the National Education Goals Panel. I am one of the two Senators that serves on the National Education Goals Panel. I represent the Democratic side. Senator Cochran represents the Republican side. We have not had a meeting to discuss these proposed standards. In fact, the proposed standards have not even been put on the agenda to be discussed at future meetings, and yet the Senate is considering going ahead and adopting an amendment by the Senator from Washington which says, ``Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove'' these standards in whatever form they ever come to us. Mr. President, I have no disagreement with my friend from Connecticut about the substance of the proposed standards that have been developed under the funding of the National Endowment for Humanities and the contract that Lynne Cheney let when she was in that position. I agree there are some serious problems there. But let us defer to that group primarily representing States and allow them at least to do some of their work before we step in and dictate the result. Particularly, let us not dictate the result as an amendment to a bill which is designed to end the imposition of Federal mandates on State, local and tribal governments. I think it is the height of irresponsibility for us to proceed to adopt this amendment at this stage. I really do think those Governors and State legislators who are serving on that National Education Goals Panel deserve the chance to do the job which they are giving of their valuable time to do before we step in and try to overrule them and second-guess something which they well may decide not to do. I have no reason to think they are less patriotic or less concerned about a proper depiction of U.S. history than we here in the Senate are. And I think we should give them a chance to do the right thing. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington. Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, first, I should like to say with respect to my friend and colleague, the Senator from Connecticut, that it is always a pleasure to deal with him on the same side of an issue just as it is very dangerous to disagree with him and attempt to prove a case. But as I have listened to the case presented against this amendment by three of my colleagues, one of my own party and two of the other, it seems to me that they argue in an attempt to have it both ways. Each of them was a strong supporter of Federal legislation, Goals 2000, which was designed to come up with national standards for the teaching of various subjects in our schools. Each of them, as far as I can tell, approved of spending some $2 million of Federal taxpayer money to finance a private study which resulted in these national standards. But when it comes to our debating these highly controversial and I firmly believe perverse and distorted standards for world and American history, we are told we should butt out; we, the Congress of the United States, should have nothing to say about national standards for the teaching of American history. Or, in the alternative, the Senator from New Mexico says it is too early because they have not been adopted yet. Would his argument be different if this commission had in fact adopted these standards? Well, of course not. His argument would be even stronger that we should have nothing to do with this process. Far better to express the views of Members of this body, and I hope of the House of Representatives, on a matter which is of deep concern to many of our citizens before some potential final action has been taken than to wait until afterwards. But, Mr. President, this volume does not look like a rough draft. Nothing in this volume, for which we have paid $2 million, indicates that it is only tentative, it is subject to huge revisions. This is a set of standards which without regard to whether or not it is approved by a national entity has already been distributed in some 10,000 copies to educational administrators and interested people all across the United States which already has behind it the force of being a national project financed with national money. I believe it more than appropriate that this technically nongermane amendment should be added to a bill on mandates, the bill we are discussing here today. While the Goals 2000 entity, the National Education Standards and Improvement Commission, cannot enforce its judgments on the States, they will certainly be given great weight by each of these States. And that council is a Federal entity. It may well be made up of some Governors as well as some Members of this body and some legislators and the like, but it is a national body created by the Congress with a national purpose. Nothing in my amendment, in which the Senator from Connecticut has joined, tells any Governor or State educational administrator that he or she cannot accept this book today, lock, stock, and barrel, if he or she wishes to do so. It does say that a Federal entity will not certify it as worthy of consideration as a guide for the teaching of American history. In that sense, each of these people is part of a national entity created by the Congress with a Federal purpose. Not only is it appropriate for Members to instruct such a group, I believe it to be mandatory. We created the group. If it is our view that this is, in fact, a perverse document that should not be the basis for teaching American history, now is the time we should say so. Not after it has been adopted by several States. Not after it has been adopted by this national organization, but right now. Opponents cannot duck behind the proposition that somehow or another they are taking no position. By voting against this amendment, they are taking the position that it is perfectly appropriate for these standards to be presented to the States of the United States as the way in which to teach the history of the United States of America. The very individual, Lynne Cheney, then Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who came up with much of the financing for this, finds these standards to be totally outside of what she or the Endowment expected or participated. And the critics are not from some narrow group in the United States. They represent the broadest possible mainstream of American thinking. Former Assistant Secretary of Education, Chester Finn, now at the Hudson Institute, called these history standards ``anti-Western,'' and ``hostile to the main threads of American history.'' Elizabeth Fox- Genovese, professor of history of women's study at Emory University declared ``The sense of progress and accomplishment that has characterized Americans' history of their country has virtually disappeared'' from these standards. The president of the Organization of History Teachers, Earl Bell, of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, called the world history standards ``even more politically correct than U.S. history standards.'' Charles Krauthammer, writing in the Washington Post, said that these proposed standards reflect ``the new history'' and ``the larger project of the new history is to collapse the distinction between fact and opinion, between history's news and editorial pages. In the new history, there are no pages independent of ideology and power, no history that is not political.'' Herman Beltz, history professor at the University of Maryland said ``I almost despair to think what kids will come to college with. I'm going to have to teach more basic things about the Constitution [[Page S1035]] and our liberal democracy.'' Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, described the original draft of World History Standards as ``a travesty, a caricature of what these things should be--sort of cheap shot leftist view of history.'' Finally, of course, Lynne Cheney said ``the World History Standards relentlessly downgrade the West just as the American history standards diminish achievements of the United States,'' both calling into question ``not only the standard-setting effort but the Goals 2000 program under which these standards became official knowledge.'' In U.S. News & World Report, John Leo wrote: This won't do. The whole idea was to set unbiased national standards that all Americans could get behind. Along the way the project was hijacked by the politically correct. It is riddled with propaganda, and the American people would be foolish to let it anywhere near their schools. Mark my words: To vote against this amendment is to vote approval of certifying a set of books, in this case entitled ``National Standards for United States History,'' paid for by the American taxpayer, submitted to a Federal organization for its approval. I want to repeat, we do not tell any school district or any State that if it wants to treat this as a bible that it is forbidden to do so. All we do is to tell an organization we created that it is not to certify these standards. That they are unacceptable. That they denigrate the Western and the American experience, ignore the most important achievements of our history, and that if the Federal Government wants to do this job it ought to start over and do it again with people who have a decent respect for American history and for civilization. I am a Senator who, unlike my distinguished colleague who sits next to me here, the junior Senator from Kansas, who voted in favor of Goals 2000 and in favor of national standards. And like others now seriously must question my own judgment in doing so, if this is the kind of product which is going to arise out of that process. I believe very firmly that if we are to have national standards, if we are to have support not only of this Congress but of the American people for national standards in education and various subjects, we must do much better than this. Not later. Not a year from now. Not 3 years from now. This is the time to say, ``This doesn't measure up.'' It does not reflect the American experience. It is not an outline of what we should be teaching our children about the history of this country, and for that matter, the history of the world. The vote, like it or not, is on whether or not you agree or disagree with what has been produced here. Turn down this amendment, we are telling this national council ``everything is OK; approve it, and go right ahead.'' Accept the amendment and we will have a positive impact not only on the teaching of our American history but of future standards in other subjects which are still incomplete. We may yet be able to save the true goals of Goals 2000. Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, could I ask the Senator a question as to his intent in the future, if the Senator would yield? Mr. GORTON. I am happy to yield. Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask my colleague from Washington, Mr. President, if it would be his intent every time a standard is developed for consideration, that we in the Congress would pass legislation for or against that before the goals panel got a chance to consider it? Mr. GORTON. My answer to the Senator from New Mexico is that is a very good question, to which the answer is ``no.'' I sense that educational goals are likely to fall into two categories, one of which is more likely to be controversial than the other. Some of the standards in other areas--for mathematics, for example, or for the teaching of physics--will, I think, be very unlikely to be found controversial or be driven by ideology. In the case of a set of standards which come from a narrow perspective, a narrow political perspective, it is certainly possible that there will be future debates, as there ought to be. I think the future debates are more likely to be driven by public reaction to these standards than they are by the preferences of individual Members of the Senate. This Senator was made aware of the standards by the blizzard of criticism which they created almost from the day that this book was published. Now, by the fact that so many traditional historians in the United States find them so terribly objectionable, my deep hope, I say to the Senator from New Mexico, as a member of this national commission, will be that a decent respect for American traditions in the future in this and in the study of other kinds of social services on the part of those academics who generally dominate their writing such standards, will result in no action at all on the part of the Congress, because while there may be elements of controversy and particular standards, that controversy will not reach the fundamental basis of the very philosophy or ideology out of which they arise. So I hope that this is not only the first time that we take up a subject like this, but the last time. Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me just ask one additional question. The education goals panel, to which we are here giving instructions prohibiting them from taking certain action, is scheduled to meet a week from Saturday here in Washington, with Governor Bayh--I believe he is the new Chair of the education goals panel. What is the Senator intending to do by this action, by this vote, by this amendment? What is he intending to tell that group of Governors, and others who sit on that panel, about what their responsibilities are for considering standards in the future? Should they wait until we get some reading from the Congress as to whether or not there has been too much public concern? I am just concerned that we are setting a precedent which essentially makes their job irrelevant or their role irrelevant if we are going to have public debates in the Congress and pass mandatory legislation dictating how they are to proceed every time a new set of proposals comes forward. Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I say to my friend from New Mexico, there is hardly an important commission or entity or agency in the United States whose controversial decisions or operations do not create controversy or debates on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We are elected by the people. We have strong views on particular subjects. Of course, frequently, well beyond this particular council, we are going to have debates on ideas which other people, appointed by the President or appointed by us, deal with. As the Senator from New Mexico well knows, there is not the slightest doubt that we will be engaged in a debate sometime later this year on the future of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Members will attack and defend the way in which Federal money is spent by that independent organization, as it is by a myriad of other organizations. As for the meeting a week from Saturday of this particular Commission, I would be astounded if this amendment were the law by then. Certainly the speed with which we have dealt with this unfunded mandates bill so far hardly indicates that it is going to be through this body and the House of Representatives, the differences between the two settled, on the President's desk and signed by the President by a week from Saturday. So I suspect that legally, at least, that Commission will be perfectly free a week from Saturday to take whatever action it wishes. I strongly suspect that many of those who are elected to positions in their own States and are appointed members of this Commission may have reached the same conclusion that I and others have at this point, and I strongly suspect that they will give great weight to the way in which this vote comes out. But they are going to give that great weight either way. If we vote in favor of this amendment, even though it has not become law, I think that will greatly influence that council in rejecting these standards. By the same token, if we turn down this amendment, my opinion is that many members of that council will, in effect, say the Congress has approved these standards and they ought to go ahead and do so themselves. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment? [[Page S1036]] Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. Mr. GORTON. Objection. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard. The assistant legislative clerk continued the call of the roll. Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Chair. I rise to speak about where we are at this time with this bill, to make the point that I have been basically on my feet since 12 noon trying to offer a very important and timely amendment that has bipartisan support, that is about an issue of great importance to the people of this country because, indeed, it is about law and order in this country. On December 30, there was a horrible shooting in Massachusetts at a health care clinic. The following day there was a shooting in Virginia, at a health care clinic. Obviously, at that time, the U.S. Senate, this 104th Congress, had not taken its place here and we were unable to respond, as I know we would have in a timely fashion, to condemn the violence and to call on the Attorney General to take the appropriate action to ensure the safety of those innocent people at those clinics around this country. As soon as I got back here I made a number of calls to Democrats and Republicans and I put together a resolution which currently has 21 cosponsors, some of them from the Republican side of the aisle. I knew that this Senate had a lot of important business, but I also believed in my heart we would take 60 minutes or 30 minutes, or some time to go on record, speaking out as Americans--not Republicans, not Democrats--Americans speaking out against that violence. I was very hopeful when I heard the majority leader, the new majority leader, Senator Dole, speak out on national television, condemning the violence and saying that he was appalled at the violence. I said to myself, we will have bipartisan support so we can go on the record in this U.S. Senate. I know my Republican friends have a contract, a Contract With America or for America--or on America, some people call it--and they believe in that contract. Some of the things in there are good. A lot of it is awful, in my opinion. And they are on a timetable to move that through. But I have to say that, while I believe the bill before us is very important--and I say to the occupant of the chair I know how much he worked, so hard on this unfunded mandates bill. I myself come from local government. I had to deal with the most ludicrous mandates in the 1980's that you could believe. I would love to be able to get a bill before us that does not go too far, that is sensible. And I want to work toward that end. I have a number of amendments that deal with it. But I thought, as reasonable men and women, we could respond to a terrible problem we have in our country, and I was very heartened when I had bipartisan support. The Senator from Maine and I worked in a bipartisan fashion to speak to the majority leader, to speak to the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee. This goes back many days ago. Can we not

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UNFUNDED MANDATE REFORM ACT
(Senate - January 18, 1995)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S1028-S1064] UNFUNDED MANDATE REFORM ACT Amendment No. 139 to Amendment No. 31 (Purpose: To prevent the adoption of certain national history standards) Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I send a second-degree amendment to the desk. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment. The legislative clerk read as follows: The Senator from Kansas [Mr. Dole] proposes an amendment numbered 139 to amendment No. 31. [[Page S1029]] Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is as follows: Strike all after ``SEC.'' and add the following: . NATIONAL HISTORY STANDARDS. (a) In General.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove, and the National Education Standards and Improvement Council shall not certify, any voluntary national content standards, voluntary national student performance standards, and criteria for the certification of such content and student performance standards, regarding the subject of history, that have been developed prior to February 1, 1995. (b) Prohibition.--No Federal funds shall be awarded to, or expended by, the National Center for History in the Schools, after the date of enactment of this Act, for the development of the voluntary national content standards, the voluntary national student performance standards, and the criteria for the certification of such content and student performance standards, regarding the subject of history. (c) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate that-- (1) the voluntary national content standards, the voluntary national student performance standards, and the criteria for the certification of such content and student performance standards, regarding the subject of history, that are established under title II of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act should not be based on standards developed by the National Center for History in the Schools; and (2) if the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, or any other Federal agency provides funds for the development of the standards and criteria described in paragraph (1), the recipient of such funds should have a decent respect for United States history's roots in western civilization. Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second. The yeas and nays were ordered. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate? Mr. GLENN. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll to ascertain the presence of a quorum. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I would like to address the pending amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont. Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, if one is not aware of the history of this issue over the past decade or so, this amendment might seem like one that we ought to concentrate on and seriously consider. It brings up the issue of educational standards, but it takes our attention away from the basic reasons for the development of the Goals 2000. When these goals were developed by the Governors in 1989, it came as a result of a 1983 report called ``A Nation at Risk.'' That report was released by the Secretary of Education at the time, Ted Bell, who served as Secretary of Education during the Reagan administration. It described serious deficiencies in our educational system. Those results have been verified by many studies including the somewhat recent Work Force 2000 report which pointed out very importantly and very critically that this Nation is not presently prepared to compete in the international market and will be less so in the future. Here are some of the problems that created the demand for Goals 2000. Too many of our people right now do not even graduate from high school. But much more seriously is that only half of those who presently graduate have what is considered an acceptable basic education. Even more troubling is the fact that two-thirds of that half are functionally illiterate to one degree or another. They do not have the basic skills necessary to handle an entry level job. This means that our school system turns out millions of young people each year needing remedial education before they can effectively help us compete in the world economy. The purpose of ``A Nation at Risk'' was to raise awareness that our Nation was facing a serious crisis. The standard of living had been slipping for the past decade or more and would continue to slip if we did not raise the quality of our education. In the late 1980's, the business community was concerned that educational reform was not being implemented, even after President Bush had convened the national education summit and the Nation's Governors had created the goals which, with the input of Congress, are now referred to as Goals 2000. The need for progress on this issue was important to the business community. I remember very well the first meeting I had in my office as a new Senator and as member of the Education Subcommittee with a group of this Nation's top CEO's whose firms were involved in international ventures. I expected that they might come to me and say, ``We have to do something about capital gains.'' They did not. They said that we must fully fund Head Start. If the United States did not make sure that everyone had the advantage of preschool training, early childhood education, and other compensatory programs, we would not produce the kind of high school graduates who would be able to compete internationally. Our educational failures impact the business community, especially in those areas of graduate education which are so critical to our competitive edge in high-technology fields. Right now, about 40 percent of the slots for graduate schools in critical areas of science, engineering, and mathematics go to foreign students because they are more competitive for those slots. That used to be fine, and I remember in my own State we had many foreign students who went to graduate school and ultimately worked for IBM. These days, unfortunately, foreign graduate students are not staying here. They are not returning the advantage of their skills and knowledge to our industries. They are all going home. In other words, we are sending about 40 percent of graduates from our schools, which are the best in the world, to work for our competitors. I wished to raise this specter because this is the kind of problem which national standards should address. When we passed Goals 2000, we set forth a set of voluntary national goals and standards. In addition to the original goals proposed by President Bush and the 50 Governors, we expanded upon the goal for math and science competitiveness and added such subjects as history and arts. What we are talking about today is the beginning of a process of developing standards which are necessary for our ability to compete in the international economy. I would hate to think we will begin debating subjects which are important but unrelated to the more important issue of competitiveness and thereby disparage our national and worldwide standards. Recently, members of the business community spoke about job training before the Labor Committee and said that we must enforce worldwide educational standards for our people can become qualified for the work force of the future. If people do not understand the requirements, they will continue presuming that the standards which we have been utilizing, the ones which we feel are an acceptable education, are quite all right. People fail to realize that students in Taiwan graduate 2 years ahead of our students in science and math. In addition, studies show that not only are we removed from the list of top nations in science and math achievement, but that we are at the bottom of the heap. My point is that we must concentrate on why the Goals 2000 bill was developed. It was deemed necessary to improve the standard of living of the Nation: To improve our standards and our competitiveness. While it is important for us to stay informed about recommendations for important subjects such as history, I am concerned that we will begin to forget why we are here, and that is to save the Nation. I will introduce a second-degree amendment at an appropriate time which will address the concern of my good friend, the Senator from Washington, regarding the development of certain standards at the UCLA Center for History in Schools, those standards [[Page S1030]] which have raised considerable controversy. But we must remember that those standards have not been adopted by anyone, and they are not in a form to be adopted. In fact, the panel which would approve them has not even been named yet. So we are prematurely criticizing something which is not even ready to be adopted. But more importantly, the amendment requires that anything meritorious or relevant or acceptable that is in those standards should not be used. Now, I am not sure whether that means the acceptable elements could be proposed and later approved, or not. The amendment does not say. It simply states that the standards cannot be used and that no more money can go to them. Therefore my amendment will leave in the final paragraph of the amendment of the Senator from Washington, which states the concern about how we adopt the history standards, but will remove that part which states that we should simply throw away everything that has been done in this area and prohibits the information from being used. Out of a very substantial number of examples in the history standards, only a very few have provoked great controversy. Therefore, I will speak again later, when I offer my amendment. But I just want everyone to realize that the critical goal is to have an educational system second to none which will keep the United States competitive in the next century by providing the necessary skilled work force. I will also mention the cost of doing nothing and the cost of trying to do away with these standards. Right now, over $25 billion each year are spent by our businesses on remedial education because of the failures of our school system. In addition, we have about a half a trillion dollars loss in the economy due to illiteracy, imprisonment, and the many other social ills that result from educational shortfalls. This is an extremely important issue, and I hope that we will remain focused on the primary issue of developing a more competitive nation for the future. Mr. President, I must oppose the amendment offered by my colleague from Washington. The amendment, which has not been subject to any hearings or review by the committee of jurisdiction, prohibits the National Education Goals Panel and the National Education Standards and Improvement Council from certifying any voluntary national content standards in the subject of history. As my colleagues may recall, under the Bush administration grants were awarded to independent agencies, groups, and institutions of higher education to develop worldclass standards in all the major subject areas. The history standards were developed by the UCLA Center for History in Schools with the contribution of hundreds of individual teachers, scholars and historians. The standards, which have just recently been published, have raised concern among some readers. Criticism has focused not on the standards themselves but upon the examples of activities for students in each grade level. Of the thousands of examples, not more than 25 were considered controversial. However, upon receipt of public input and criticism the Center for History in Schools is reviewing and altering its work. This, in fact is, and should be, the appropriate process and primary purpose of public commentary. But, I am not here to defend the specific content of these standards--that is best left to teachers, educators, and parents. Instead, I am concerned that this amendment has much broader implications. At issue is not so much the specific substance of these standards. Indeed, the standards have neither been endorsed by any Federal body nor, for that matter, even been finalized. Rather, the issue is whether or not we have in place a process for developing world class standards. I cannot overstate the importance of this matter. Countless reports have outlined that our country is falling behind in international test comparisons because our children have not learned the necessary skills in order to compete successfully. A recent survey of Fortune 500 companies showed that 58 percent complained of the difficulty of finding employees with basic skills. The chief executive officer of Pacific Telesis reported: Only 4 out of every 10 candidates for entry-level jobs at Pacific Telesis are able to pass our entry exam, which are based on a seventh-grade level. It is no longer enough for Vermont to compare itself to the national average. Comparing one State with another is like the local football team believing itself to be a champion of national stature because it beat the cross town rival. No, we must compare ourselves with our real competitors--the other nations of this global marketplace. To date, it appears that they are quickly outpacing us in many pivotal areas. I have had meetings upon meetings with the chairmen and CEO's of major U.S. corporations to urge me to support the development of high academic standards. Why? Because the status quo in our schools has failed. Too many of our graduates finish school without knowing the three R's, much less more rigorous content standards. For our country to remain competitive, it is essential that our schools prepare our future work force for the demands of the 21st century. Unfortunately, until we present our students with challenging content standards that goal will not be realized. Instead, estimates indicate that American businesses may have to spend up to $25 billion each year just for remedial elementary math and reading instruction for workers before they can train them to handle modern equipment. Not only does this drain critical funds from our corporations but it dramatically affects our ability to compete in the global marketplace. For the past decade the average wage has gone down. The standard of living is slipping and wealth is accumulating only at the top. Until we are able to prepare our children for the future we will have failed ourselves, the next generation and this country. The first step to success is establishing strong academic standards so that our children leave school ready for the work force or for postsecondary education. Remedial education should not be the main function of our institutions of higher education or our businesses and corporations. By preparing our students while they are in school, we will reduce the need for catchup courses so many of our graduates now have to take. We have a process in place to get our children ready for the 21st century. That process includes reforming our school and creating high benchmarks for students. That process is done through the National Council on Education Standards and Improvement. NESIC will be a 19- member council composed of professional educators, representatives of business, industry, higher education, and members of the public. The council is authorized to certify voluntary national education standards and pass their recommendations to the goals panel for final approval. The role of the council is to certify that the standards developed in each subject area are credible, rigorous and have been developed through a broad-based process. NESIC provides a mechanism for ensuring that standards remain national rather than Federal. If this duty was not being performed by such a council, the responsibility for certifying national voluntary standards would fall squarely upon the shoulders of the Secretary of Education--which would positively result in greater Federal involvement. This body is a separate entity created to oversee the certification of voluntary national standards. It has absolutely no oversight authority over States. In other words, States are not required to agree with the voluntary national standards, they are not required to accept or incorporate any portion of the national standards or even acknowledge existence of standards. Yet such a national council is essential to States and local schools to assist them in weeding out and reviewing voluntary standards. Without such an entity, each State will have to undertake that review by itself. To do that 50 times over simply does not make sense. Clearly, the recommendations of the council are not binding on States. The council's certification process is simply a Good Housekeeping seal of approval to assist States in determining which standards are rigorous and competitive. For us to step in and derail this process makes no good sense. By passing [[Page S1031]] this amendment and legislating a Federal override of NESIC's responsibility we not only jeopardize the whole independent nature of NESIC, we also jeopardize the process of creating tough academic standards. I don't think we have that luxury. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas. Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, if I may enter into this debate for a moment from a little different angle. I have enormous respect for the Senator from Vermont, who has just spoken with great dedication to the issue of education. He has devoted a great deal of time to the issue, both when he was in the other body as a Member of Congress and since he has been in the Senate and is now chairman of the Education Subcommittee of the Labor Committee. I also can understand where the Senator from Washington is coming from in his concerns about the model national history standards which have been developed with Federal funds. However, as the Senator from Vermont has pointed out, they have not been adopted or certified as national standards yet. There has been a lot of controversy about these standards as they have been proposed--controversy which, I may say, could have been anticipated. I was troubled when we first started down the path of providing Federal funding for the development of national standards. I would like to note that standards in various subject areas have been developed by professionals in the field, not by Federal employees as some may think. However, where Federal moneys are involved, there is often misunderstanding about the nature of the Government's involvement. I am sure that developing these standards was very difficult for these professionals. It is far easier to develop standards, say in the field of mathematics or science, because there is more preciseness in both of those fields. When you get to history, however, so much revolves around a teacher's interpretation of the material that they may have in front of them. So I think when you get into particular areas of study like history, that it becomes much more difficult to develop standards on which there is going to be agreement. Whether it is with the particular standards we are discussing now or a totally different set of standards, I think you would find just as many people with concerns about them. Although these are voluntary standards, as has been repeatedly emphasized whenever we have had these debates, this is a point which often gets lost. One reason I opposed the Goals 2000 legislation which was enacted last year is that it took Federal activities in this area yet another step further by including an authorization for a national council to review and endorse the national standards. There is certainly a difference between voluntary national standards and mandatory Federal standards--but this is a distinction which is generally lost when such standards are put forward, particularly when they are likely to come before a group such as the national council which is charged with reviewing them. As one who believes strongly that the strength of our education system lies in its local base and community commitment, I have not felt it wise to expand Federal involvement into areas traditionally handled by States and localities. I will support the Gorton amendment due to my concern about Federal involvement in national standards, even voluntary ones. At the same time, I believe the real issue is far broader than the current controversy over the history standards. Prohibiting a federally authorized council from certifying a particular set of voluntary standards is not the real answer. The real problem is that we have established in legislation such a group--the National Education Standards and Improvement Council, or NESIC--in the first place. In the near future, I will be introducing legislation to repeal NESIC. My legislation would get the Federal Government out of the loop in an area which I believe is best handled by States and localities. Many of our States are already developing standards that the teachers and educators in the field of history feel is important for the schools in their States. But those States do not need to have a Federal seal of approval for those standards, voluntary or not. That is why I believe we may be missing the heart of this debate. Nevertheless, I think the Senator from Washington has addressed a real concern regarding the model national history standards that have been developed with Federal funds. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I wish to speak against the Gorton amendment. I think the Gorton amendment fails to recognize the immense amount of work that has gone into trying to put this country on a road to having and pursuing higher national standards, higher standards in education throughout the country. This is work that has primarily been done by the Governors of this country. I will point out that it began in Charlottesville, when President Bush was there with our 50 Governors some 5 years ago. Today, the National Education Goals Panel is made up primarily of Governors. There are eight Governors on this panel, there are two administration representatives, and there are four representatives from Congress. But clearly the Governors are those who set up the National Education Goals Panel. They are the ones who have led the way for this country to pursue national education goals and standards. The Governors who currently serve on that are an extremely distinguished group: Governor Romer, Governor Bayh, Governor Fordice of Mississippi, Governor Hunt, Governor Engler, Governor Carlson, Governor Edgar, and Governor Whitman of New Jersey. They are a very distinguished group of Governors. The amendment of Senator Gorton, in my view, would be an insult, if we were to pass this amendment, given the current state of deliberations by the National Governors and by the National Education Goals Panel on national standards. Essentially, this amendment says the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove some proposed standards which have not even been presented for consideration before the panel as yet. It completely puts the Congress in the position of preempting the National Education Goals Panel. It further puts us in the business of preempting the National Education Standards and Improvement Council, which has not even been established. The members of that group, NESIC for short--that is the acronym that has been applied to this National Education Standards and Improvement Council--have not even been appointed. Yet, we are here being asked to adopt legislation directing this unappointed panel not to certify certain standards which have not yet been presented to them since they are not in existence. It strikes me that this is the height of arrogance on the part of Congress, to be stepping into an area where we have not had the leadership. Just to the contrary, the Governors have had the leadership. And we are saying by this amendment, if we adopt it: Do not take any action to approve standards. You, the Governors and the other members of this panel, disapprove these proposed standards that have not yet even been presented to you. And second, if and when we get a National Education Standards and Improvement Council appointed, they are also directed not to certify any standards along the lines that have been proposed. I certainly agree that there are major problems with the national standards that were proposed on history. I do not think that is the issue that is before us today. This whole business of getting standards in history is something which was started by the former administration, during the Bush administration. I recall the then Chair of the National Endowment for Humanities, Lynne Cheney, let the contract at that time to have these national standards developed. She has also, I would point out, been the main spokesperson objecting to the standards that have come back, or the proposed standards. My reaction is that clearly she is right, that there are problems with what has been proposed, and we need to change what has been proposed or, on the contrary, we need to get some [[Page S1032]] other standards adopted in the area of history before we go ahead. But we are not in a position in my opinion as a Congress to be directing the National Education Goals Panel, made up primarily of Governors in this country, directing them as to what action to take or not to take on specific standards at this point. The whole standards-setting process I believe has been a very healthy, forward looking, progressive effort in this country, and it has been bipartisan. It was bipartisan when it was started in the Bush administration with the Governors. It has remained so since then. I have the good fortune of serving on a council that was established by the Congress to look at the whole issue of whether we should have national standards. That council came up with a report which said the high standards for student attainment are critical to enhancing America's economic competitiveness, the quality of human capital, and the knowledge of skills. The knowledge and skills of labor and management helps determine a nation's ability to compete in the world marketplace. International comparisons, however, consistently have shown the academic performance of American students is below that of students in many other developed countries. The standard setting process was a reaction to our concern in this area, and it is a reaction which the Governors took the lead in because of the primary responsibility for education has always been at the State and local level, and should remain there. But we found in that council that I served on--this is a quotation from the report they came out with: In the absence of demanding content and performance standards, the United States has gravitated toward having a de facto minimal skills curriculum. That is what the Governors were trying to deal with in the standard setting process. We should not allow our concern about some specific set of proposed standards which have not even been presented to the National Education Goals Panel for approval yet but we should not allow our concern about those specific standards to deflect us from the long- term objective of having standards, and holding ourselves accountable to reaching those standards. They are voluntary standards. They ought to be voluntary standards. But still they are standards. They are standards for which we believe certain benchmarks are appropriate. And clearly I believe that the standard setting process is an extremely important part of improving the American education system. It would be a tragedy for us to step in before the first set of those standards have been presented to the National Education Goals Panel for approval and pass legislation directing how the National Education Goals Panel and the Governors who make up the majority of that group, are to dispose of standards. So I hope very much that we will defeat the Gorton amendment. I know Senator Jeffords has an alternative which I will plan to support and speak for at that time. But I hope very much that the Congress does not overreach and try through this amendment that has been presented by the Senator from Washington to usurp the authority which I think has rightfully been seen as resting with the Governors of this country. I thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. Mr. PELL addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island. Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the Senator from Washington. To my mind, this amendment is an unwarranted governmental intrusion into what is basically a private effort. It also constitutes micromanagement to a degree that is neither wise nor necessary. First, the national standards that are being developed, whether in history or any other discipline, are purely voluntary. This was made clear in the Goals 2000 legislation and reinforced in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Second, the voluntary standards do not have to be submitted to either the National Education Standards and Improvement Council or the National Goals Panel. That, too, is voluntary. If the organization that developed the standards wants to submit them, they may do so at their own volition. It is not required. Third, certification is nothing more than a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. It carries no weight in law, and imposes no requirements on States or localities. They are free to develop their own standards, and may use or not use the voluntary national standards as they wish. Fourth, the history standards in question are proposed standards. They have not been finalized. Quite to the contrary, representatives from the National History Standards Project have met with critics and have indicated their willingness to make changes in both the standards and the instructional examples that accompany the standards. Their commitment is to remove historical bias and to build a broad base of consensus in support of the proposed standards. Fifth, make no mistake about it, these proposed standards were not developed in secret or by just a few individuals. They are the product of over 2\1/2\ years of hard work. Literally hundreds of teachers, historians, social studies supervisors, and parents were part of this effort. Advice and counsel was both sought and received from more than 30 major educational, scholarly, and public interest organizations. Mr. President, I strongly believe that we should not interfere with a process that is still in play. We should not inject ourselves in a way that might impede both the important work being done in this area and the effort to develop a broad base of consensus. Accordingly, I would urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and to support instead the substitute to be offered by the Senator from Vermont. I yield the floor. Mr. LIEBERMAN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut. Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the amendment offered by the Senator from Washington [Mr. Gorton]. In fact, I ask unanimous consent at this point that I be added as an original cosponsor of the amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I support this amendment because it puts the Senate on record opposing the national standards for U.S. and world history which, while not endorsed by any Federal agency, were developed with Federal tax dollars first issued in 1991. While not a Federal mandate in that sense, they are voluntary, nonetheless, I rise to speak in opposition to them because they carry the imprimatur of the Federal Government, and have the capacity to broadly affect the course of education and the teaching and understanding of history by succeeding generations of our children, the American children. Mr. President, I should make clear, as I believe the Senator from Washington has made clear, that I support the idea of setting national voluntary standards to upgrade our education and to give us something to aim for. But I must say that the standards that were produced, the national standards for U.S. and world history that are at the core of what this amendment is about, were a terrific disappointment and may undercut some of the fundamentals, the core values, the great personalities and heroes of America and Western civilization and world history. By doing so, we put our children at risk of not being fairly and broadly educated. While the hope of those involved at the time that these standards were authorized, which goes back some years, was clearly to encourage State and local educators to raise standards in the teaching of history to elementary and secondary school students, the draft proposed is full of the kind of valueless, all-points-of-view-are-equally-valid nonsense that I thought we had left behind--and I certainly believe we should leave behind--in the teaching of our children. The history that many of us who are older learned in school obviously had its failings. It was not as inclusive as it should have been in many ways. But at least it provided core information about who we are as a nation and how our world and our Nation have progressed over time. Mr. President, we have a lot to be proud of in American history. This [[Page S1033]] great idea of America grew out of the Enlightenment and was established--now more than 200 years ago--by a courageous, principled, and patriotic group of Founders and Framers who were not casual about what they were doing. They were motivated by an idea, by a set of values, and it is part of our responsibility as this generation of adults, let alone as this generation of elected officials and national leaders, to convey that sense of our history--about which we have so much to be proud--to our children. First, in the interest of truth, because the American idea is a unique idea and has dramatically and positively affected the course of world history since the founding of this country--not just the course of world history in a macro sense, in a cosmic sense--it has positively affected, in the most dramatic way, the course of the lives of millions of Americans and millions of other people around the world who have been influenced by the American idea and by American heroes. And we ought not to let that be disparaged. We ought not to let that uniqueness, that special American purpose, be lost in a kind of ``everything is equal, let us reach out and make up for the past exclusions in our history'' set of standards. So to me this is consequential. I guess the social scientists tell us that our children should think well of themselves if we expect them to do good things; that they have to have a good self-image. They mean this in the most personal sense of how parents raise children, how society gives children an impression of themselves. I say that in a broader sense of citizenship, our country has a responsibility, honestly and accurately conveying some of the blemishes as well as the great beauty of our history, to give our children a sense of self-worth as Americans. And part of that is respecting the great leaders in America that have gone before. Mr. President, these draft standards are, alternatively, so overinclusive as to lose major events in American and world history, major participants, leaders, heroes in American and world history, in a tumble of information about everybody and everything. And then, on the other hand, they are oddly underinclusive about important events, people and concepts. Robert E. Lee, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and the Wright Brothers, just to name a few, appear nowhere in these standards. Thomas Edison, whose most memorable invention has become the very symbol of a good idea--the light bulb--is not mentioned. Albert Einstein, whose extraordinary contributions to our sense of the physical universe, let alone beyond, who changed our understanding of our existence in so many dramatic ways--not mentioned. The Wright Brothers, whose courage and boldness and inventiveness, steadfastness-- with the development of airplanes, flight--has dramatically affected the lives of each of us and of society--not even mentioned in these standards. In another way, in the world history standards, slavery is mentioned briefly in reference to Greece. The only other discussion of slavery concerns the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery, to the world's shame, existed in many cultures over many centuries, and those examples are not mentioned. The Holocaust in Nazi Germany received significant attention, as it should. But the death, persecution, and humiliation in a cultural revolution in China go by with barely a whisper. There is nothing in the cold war section of these standards, this experience that dominated the lives of most of us in this Chamber from the end of the Second World War to 1989, when the Berlin Wall collapsed. The section on the cold war does not give the reader, the student, the teacher, the sense that that conflict involved principles at all, involved ideals. It describes it, in my opinion, solely as a contest for power. There is no indication that we were fighting a battle for democracy--not just a system, a way of government, but a way of government that has a particular view of what humans are all about, and a particular view that is rooted, I think, in the idea and the principle that people have a Creator. We say it in our founding documents, ``that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights,'' not a casual accident of nature, but a conscious act by a Creator. Democracy is on the one hand, and totalitarianism is on the other, which denies all of that. The cold war is described blandly and revealingly in one sentence as ``the swordplay of the Soviet Union and the United States.'' Inadequate, to put it mildly; insulting, to put it more honestly and directly. We do not need sanitized history that only celebrates our triumphs, Mr. President. But we also do not need to give our children a warped and negative view of Western civilization, of American civilization, of the accomplishments, the extraordinary accomplishments and contributions of both. I recognize that the Federal Government is not talking about forcing these standards on anybody. These standards were always intended to be voluntary, and I recognize that the standards we are talking about are not final. They are in a draft form. But the standards, by virtue of their being developed with Federal funds, have the unavoidable imprimatur of the Federal Government. Ten thousand of these are available throughout America. It is a very official-looking text. I, for one, worry that some well-meaning official of a local school district will get hold of it and think this is what we in Washington have decided is what the teaching of American and world history ought to be all about. In fact, I have been told that text book publishers are waiting to see what happens next with these standards so they can make their own plans as to whether to adopt the draft standards wholesale. In fact, I have heard also that some school districts are close to adopting them. I think it is particularly appropriate that my colleague from Washington has chosen this bill about mandates and Federal involvement in our society for us to speak out, to make sure that no one misunderstands these standards, to hope that teachers, parents, and students will understand the ways in which some of us feel they are deficient, and that, as the business of setting such standards goes forward from here, they will be developed with a better sense of balance and fairness and pride. History is important. We learn from it. It tells us who we are, and from our sense of who we are, we help determine who we will be by our actions. The interest in these standards, in some sense, confirms the importance of history. And what I am saying, and what I believe Senator Gorton is saying, is that we should celebrate the vitality of that interest in history by starting over to develop standards that more fairly reflect the American experience, not to mention world history, and to particularly give better and fairer attention to the positive and optimistic accomplishments and nature of the American people. I thank the Chair, and I congratulate my friend from Washington for taking the initiative on this matter. I yield the floor. Mr. BINGAMAN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me just make one additional point. I heard my good friend from Connecticut and my friend from Washington. I think it is particularly ironic that this amendment is being considered on the so-called Unfunded Mandate Reform Act of 1995. This bill that is being considered before the Senate today, the bill that is proposed to be amended, says in its preface: To curb the practice of imposing unfunded Federal mandates on State and local government; to strengthen the partnership between the Federal Government and State and local and tribal governments; to end the imposition, in the absence of full consideration by Congress, of Federal mandates on State, local and tribal governments. Mr. President, we did try to defer to the States when we set up the education goals panel in the legislation, the Goals 2000 legislation, last year. We established that panel with eight Governors, four State legislators. And those 12 who represent the States would be offset by six representing the National Government, two from the administration and four Members of Congress. Now we have taken this 18-member panel, the National Education Goals Panel, set them up and given them the responsibility to review proposals that [[Page S1034]] are made for national standards. And here in Senator Gorton's amendment, we are proposing to step in before any standards have been presented to them and to legislatively prohibit them from adopting a set of as yet unproposed standards. Now this is a Federal mandate, it is a mandate by this Senate, by this Congress to that National Education Goals Panel, made up primarily of State government representatives, and telling them what they shall and shall not do. I, quite frankly, think it is insulting to the Governors, who are giving of their very valuable time to serve on this National Education Goals Panel, for us to be rushing to the Senate floor and passing legislation of this type before they have even been presented with anything in the National Education Goals Panel. I am one of the two Senators that serves on the National Education Goals Panel. I represent the Democratic side. Senator Cochran represents the Republican side. We have not had a meeting to discuss these proposed standards. In fact, the proposed standards have not even been put on the agenda to be discussed at future meetings, and yet the Senate is considering going ahead and adopting an amendment by the Senator from Washington which says, ``Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove'' these standards in whatever form they ever come to us. Mr. President, I have no disagreement with my friend from Connecticut about the substance of the proposed standards that have been developed under the funding of the National Endowment for Humanities and the contract that Lynne Cheney let when she was in that position. I agree there are some serious problems there. But let us defer to that group primarily representing States and allow them at least to do some of their work before we step in and dictate the result. Particularly, let us not dictate the result as an amendment to a bill which is designed to end the imposition of Federal mandates on State, local and tribal governments. I think it is the height of irresponsibility for us to proceed to adopt this amendment at this stage. I really do think those Governors and State legislators who are serving on that National Education Goals Panel deserve the chance to do the job which they are giving of their valuable time to do before we step in and try to overrule them and second-guess something which they well may decide not to do. I have no reason to think they are less patriotic or less concerned about a proper depiction of U.S. history than we here in the Senate are. And I think we should give them a chance to do the right thing. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington. Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, first, I should like to say with respect to my friend and colleague, the Senator from Connecticut, that it is always a pleasure to deal with him on the same side of an issue just as it is very dangerous to disagree with him and attempt to prove a case. But as I have listened to the case presented against this amendment by three of my colleagues, one of my own party and two of the other, it seems to me that they argue in an attempt to have it both ways. Each of them was a strong supporter of Federal legislation, Goals 2000, which was designed to come up with national standards for the teaching of various subjects in our schools. Each of them, as far as I can tell, approved of spending some $2 million of Federal taxpayer money to finance a private study which resulted in these national standards. But when it comes to our debating these highly controversial and I firmly believe perverse and distorted standards for world and American history, we are told we should butt out; we, the Congress of the United States, should have nothing to say about national standards for the teaching of American history. Or, in the alternative, the Senator from New Mexico says it is too early because they have not been adopted yet. Would his argument be different if this commission had in fact adopted these standards? Well, of course not. His argument would be even stronger that we should have nothing to do with this process. Far better to express the views of Members of this body, and I hope of the House of Representatives, on a matter which is of deep concern to many of our citizens before some potential final action has been taken than to wait until afterwards. But, Mr. President, this volume does not look like a rough draft. Nothing in this volume, for which we have paid $2 million, indicates that it is only tentative, it is subject to huge revisions. This is a set of standards which without regard to whether or not it is approved by a national entity has already been distributed in some 10,000 copies to educational administrators and interested people all across the United States which already has behind it the force of being a national project financed with national money. I believe it more than appropriate that this technically nongermane amendment should be added to a bill on mandates, the bill we are discussing here today. While the Goals 2000 entity, the National Education Standards and Improvement Commission, cannot enforce its judgments on the States, they will certainly be given great weight by each of these States. And that council is a Federal entity. It may well be made up of some Governors as well as some Members of this body and some legislators and the like, but it is a national body created by the Congress with a national purpose. Nothing in my amendment, in which the Senator from Connecticut has joined, tells any Governor or State educational administrator that he or she cannot accept this book today, lock, stock, and barrel, if he or she wishes to do so. It does say that a Federal entity will not certify it as worthy of consideration as a guide for the teaching of American history. In that sense, each of these people is part of a national entity created by the Congress with a Federal purpose. Not only is it appropriate for Members to instruct such a group, I believe it to be mandatory. We created the group. If it is our view that this is, in fact, a perverse document that should not be the basis for teaching American history, now is the time we should say so. Not after it has been adopted by several States. Not after it has been adopted by this national organization, but right now. Opponents cannot duck behind the proposition that somehow or another they are taking no position. By voting against this amendment, they are taking the position that it is perfectly appropriate for these standards to be presented to the States of the United States as the way in which to teach the history of the United States of America. The very individual, Lynne Cheney, then Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who came up with much of the financing for this, finds these standards to be totally outside of what she or the Endowment expected or participated. And the critics are not from some narrow group in the United States. They represent the broadest possible mainstream of American thinking. Former Assistant Secretary of Education, Chester Finn, now at the Hudson Institute, called these history standards ``anti-Western,'' and ``hostile to the main threads of American history.'' Elizabeth Fox- Genovese, professor of history of women's study at Emory University declared ``The sense of progress and accomplishment that has characterized Americans' history of their country has virtually disappeared'' from these standards. The president of the Organization of History Teachers, Earl Bell, of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, called the world history standards ``even more politically correct than U.S. history standards.'' Charles Krauthammer, writing in the Washington Post, said that these proposed standards reflect ``the new history'' and ``the larger project of the new history is to collapse the distinction between fact and opinion, between history's news and editorial pages. In the new history, there are no pages independent of ideology and power, no history that is not political.'' Herman Beltz, history professor at the University of Maryland said ``I almost despair to think what kids will come to college with. I'm going to have to teach more basic things about the Constitution [[Page S1035]] and our liberal democracy.'' Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, described the original draft of World History Standards as ``a travesty, a caricature of what these things should be--sort of cheap shot leftist view of history.'' Finally, of course, Lynne Cheney said ``the World History Standards relentlessly downgrade the West just as the American history standards diminish achievements of the United States,'' both calling into question ``not only the standard-setting effort but the Goals 2000 program under which these standards became official knowledge.'' In U.S. News & World Report, John Leo wrote: This won't do. The whole idea was to set unbiased national standards that all Americans could get behind. Along the way the project was hijacked by the politically correct. It is riddled with propaganda, and the American people would be foolish to let it anywhere near their schools. Mark my words: To vote against this amendment is to vote approval of certifying a set of books, in this case entitled ``National Standards for United States History,'' paid for by the American taxpayer, submitted to a Federal organization for its approval. I want to repeat, we do not tell any school district or any State that if it wants to treat this as a bible that it is forbidden to do so. All we do is to tell an organization we created that it is not to certify these standards. That they are unacceptable. That they denigrate the Western and the American experience, ignore the most important achievements of our history, and that if the Federal Government wants to do this job it ought to start over and do it again with people who have a decent respect for American history and for civilization. I am a Senator who, unlike my distinguished colleague who sits next to me here, the junior Senator from Kansas, who voted in favor of Goals 2000 and in favor of national standards. And like others now seriously must question my own judgment in doing so, if this is the kind of product which is going to arise out of that process. I believe very firmly that if we are to have national standards, if we are to have support not only of this Congress but of the American people for national standards in education and various subjects, we must do much better than this. Not later. Not a year from now. Not 3 years from now. This is the time to say, ``This doesn't measure up.'' It does not reflect the American experience. It is not an outline of what we should be teaching our children about the history of this country, and for that matter, the history of the world. The vote, like it or not, is on whether or not you agree or disagree with what has been produced here. Turn down this amendment, we are telling this national council ``everything is OK; approve it, and go right ahead.'' Accept the amendment and we will have a positive impact not only on the teaching of our American history but of future standards in other subjects which are still incomplete. We may yet be able to save the true goals of Goals 2000. Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, could I ask the Senator a question as to his intent in the future, if the Senator would yield? Mr. GORTON. I am happy to yield. Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask my colleague from Washington, Mr. President, if it would be his intent every time a standard is developed for consideration, that we in the Congress would pass legislation for or against that before the goals panel got a chance to consider it? Mr. GORTON. My answer to the Senator from New Mexico is that is a very good question, to which the answer is ``no.'' I sense that educational goals are likely to fall into two categories, one of which is more likely to be controversial than the other. Some of the standards in other areas--for mathematics, for example, or for the teaching of physics--will, I think, be very unlikely to be found controversial or be driven by ideology. In the case of a set of standards which come from a narrow perspective, a narrow political perspective, it is certainly possible that there will be future debates, as there ought to be. I think the future debates are more likely to be driven by public reaction to these standards than they are by the preferences of individual Members of the Senate. This Senator was made aware of the standards by the blizzard of criticism which they created almost from the day that this book was published. Now, by the fact that so many traditional historians in the United States find them so terribly objectionable, my deep hope, I say to the Senator from New Mexico, as a member of this national commission, will be that a decent respect for American traditions in the future in this and in the study of other kinds of social services on the part of those academics who generally dominate their writing such standards, will result in no action at all on the part of the Congress, because while there may be elements of controversy and particular standards, that controversy will not reach the fundamental basis of the very philosophy or ideology out of which they arise. So I hope that this is not only the first time that we take up a subject like this, but the last time. Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me just ask one additional question. The education goals panel, to which we are here giving instructions prohibiting them from taking certain action, is scheduled to meet a week from Saturday here in Washington, with Governor Bayh--I believe he is the new Chair of the education goals panel. What is the Senator intending to do by this action, by this vote, by this amendment? What is he intending to tell that group of Governors, and others who sit on that panel, about what their responsibilities are for considering standards in the future? Should they wait until we get some reading from the Congress as to whether or not there has been too much public concern? I am just concerned that we are setting a precedent which essentially makes their job irrelevant or their role irrelevant if we are going to have public debates in the Congress and pass mandatory legislation dictating how they are to proceed every time a new set of proposals comes forward. Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I say to my friend from New Mexico, there is hardly an important commission or entity or agency in the United States whose controversial decisions or operations do not create controversy or debates on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We are elected by the people. We have strong views on particular subjects. Of course, frequently, well beyond this particular council, we are going to have debates on ideas which other people, appointed by the President or appointed by us, deal with. As the Senator from New Mexico well knows, there is not the slightest doubt that we will be engaged in a debate sometime later this year on the future of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Members will attack and defend the way in which Federal money is spent by that independent organization, as it is by a myriad of other organizations. As for the meeting a week from Saturday of this particular Commission, I would be astounded if this amendment were the law by then. Certainly the speed with which we have dealt with this unfunded mandates bill so far hardly indicates that it is going to be through this body and the House of Representatives, the differences between the two settled, on the President's desk and signed by the President by a week from Saturday. So I suspect that legally, at least, that Commission will be perfectly free a week from Saturday to take whatever action it wishes. I strongly suspect that many of those who are elected to positions in their own States and are appointed members of this Commission may have reached the same conclusion that I and others have at this point, and I strongly suspect that they will give great weight to the way in which this vote comes out. But they are going to give that great weight either way. If we vote in favor of this amendment, even though it has not become law, I think that will greatly influence that council in rejecting these standards. By the same token, if we turn down this amendment, my opinion is that many members of that council will, in effect, say the Congress has approved these standards and they ought to go ahead and do so themselves. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment? [[Page S1036]] Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. Mr. GORTON. Objection. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard. The assistant legislative clerk continued the call of the roll. Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Chair. I rise to speak about where we are at this time with this bill, to make the point that I have been basically on my feet since 12 noon trying to offer a very important and timely amendment that has bipartisan support, that is about an issue of great importance to the people of this country because, indeed, it is about law and order in this country. On December 30, there was a horrible shooting in Massachusetts at a health care clinic. The following day there was a shooting in Virginia, at a health care clinic. Obviously, at that time, the U.S. Senate, this 104th Congress, had not taken its place here and we were unable to respond, as I know we would have in a timely fashion, to condemn the violence and to call on the Attorney General to take the appropriate action to ensure the safety of those innocent people at those clinics around this country. As soon as I got back here I made a number of calls to Democrats and Republicans and I put together a resolution which currently has 21 cosponsors, some of them from the Republican side of the aisle. I knew that this Senate had a lot of important business, but I also believed in my heart we would take 60 minutes or 30 minutes, or some time to go on record, speaking out as Americans--not Republicans, not Democrats--Americans speaking out against that violence. I was very hopeful when I heard the majority leader, the new majority leader, Senator Dole, speak out on national television, condemning the violence and saying that he was appalled at the violence. I said to myself, we will have bipartisan support so we can go on the record in this U.S. Senate. I know my Republican friends have a contract, a Contract With America or for America--or on America, some people call it--and they believe in that contract. Some of the things in there are good. A lot of it is awful, in my opinion. And they are on a timetable to move that through. But I have to say that, while I believe the bill before us is very important--and I say to the occupant of the chair I know how much he worked, so hard on this unfunded mandates bill. I myself come from local government. I had to deal with the most ludicrous mandates in the 1980's that you could believe. I would love to be able to get a bill before us that does not go too far, that is sensible. And I want to work toward that end. I have a number of amendments that deal with it. But I thought, as reasonable men and women, we could respond to a terrible problem we have in our country, and I was very heartened when I had bipartisan support. The Senator from Maine and I worked in a bipartisan fashion to speak to the majority leader, to speak to the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee. This goes

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UNFUNDED MANDATE REFORM ACT
(Senate - January 18, 1995)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages S1028-S1064] UNFUNDED MANDATE REFORM ACT Amendment No. 139 to Amendment No. 31 (Purpose: To prevent the adoption of certain national history standards) Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I send a second-degree amendment to the desk. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment. The legislative clerk read as follows: The Senator from Kansas [Mr. Dole] proposes an amendment numbered 139 to amendment No. 31. [[Page S1029]] Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is as follows: Strike all after ``SEC.'' and add the following: . NATIONAL HISTORY STANDARDS. (a) In General.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove, and the National Education Standards and Improvement Council shall not certify, any voluntary national content standards, voluntary national student performance standards, and criteria for the certification of such content and student performance standards, regarding the subject of history, that have been developed prior to February 1, 1995. (b) Prohibition.--No Federal funds shall be awarded to, or expended by, the National Center for History in the Schools, after the date of enactment of this Act, for the development of the voluntary national content standards, the voluntary national student performance standards, and the criteria for the certification of such content and student performance standards, regarding the subject of history. (c) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate that-- (1) the voluntary national content standards, the voluntary national student performance standards, and the criteria for the certification of such content and student performance standards, regarding the subject of history, that are established under title II of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act should not be based on standards developed by the National Center for History in the Schools; and (2) if the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, or any other Federal agency provides funds for the development of the standards and criteria described in paragraph (1), the recipient of such funds should have a decent respect for United States history's roots in western civilization. Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second. The yeas and nays were ordered. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate? Mr. GLENN. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll to ascertain the presence of a quorum. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I would like to address the pending amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont. Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, if one is not aware of the history of this issue over the past decade or so, this amendment might seem like one that we ought to concentrate on and seriously consider. It brings up the issue of educational standards, but it takes our attention away from the basic reasons for the development of the Goals 2000. When these goals were developed by the Governors in 1989, it came as a result of a 1983 report called ``A Nation at Risk.'' That report was released by the Secretary of Education at the time, Ted Bell, who served as Secretary of Education during the Reagan administration. It described serious deficiencies in our educational system. Those results have been verified by many studies including the somewhat recent Work Force 2000 report which pointed out very importantly and very critically that this Nation is not presently prepared to compete in the international market and will be less so in the future. Here are some of the problems that created the demand for Goals 2000. Too many of our people right now do not even graduate from high school. But much more seriously is that only half of those who presently graduate have what is considered an acceptable basic education. Even more troubling is the fact that two-thirds of that half are functionally illiterate to one degree or another. They do not have the basic skills necessary to handle an entry level job. This means that our school system turns out millions of young people each year needing remedial education before they can effectively help us compete in the world economy. The purpose of ``A Nation at Risk'' was to raise awareness that our Nation was facing a serious crisis. The standard of living had been slipping for the past decade or more and would continue to slip if we did not raise the quality of our education. In the late 1980's, the business community was concerned that educational reform was not being implemented, even after President Bush had convened the national education summit and the Nation's Governors had created the goals which, with the input of Congress, are now referred to as Goals 2000. The need for progress on this issue was important to the business community. I remember very well the first meeting I had in my office as a new Senator and as member of the Education Subcommittee with a group of this Nation's top CEO's whose firms were involved in international ventures. I expected that they might come to me and say, ``We have to do something about capital gains.'' They did not. They said that we must fully fund Head Start. If the United States did not make sure that everyone had the advantage of preschool training, early childhood education, and other compensatory programs, we would not produce the kind of high school graduates who would be able to compete internationally. Our educational failures impact the business community, especially in those areas of graduate education which are so critical to our competitive edge in high-technology fields. Right now, about 40 percent of the slots for graduate schools in critical areas of science, engineering, and mathematics go to foreign students because they are more competitive for those slots. That used to be fine, and I remember in my own State we had many foreign students who went to graduate school and ultimately worked for IBM. These days, unfortunately, foreign graduate students are not staying here. They are not returning the advantage of their skills and knowledge to our industries. They are all going home. In other words, we are sending about 40 percent of graduates from our schools, which are the best in the world, to work for our competitors. I wished to raise this specter because this is the kind of problem which national standards should address. When we passed Goals 2000, we set forth a set of voluntary national goals and standards. In addition to the original goals proposed by President Bush and the 50 Governors, we expanded upon the goal for math and science competitiveness and added such subjects as history and arts. What we are talking about today is the beginning of a process of developing standards which are necessary for our ability to compete in the international economy. I would hate to think we will begin debating subjects which are important but unrelated to the more important issue of competitiveness and thereby disparage our national and worldwide standards. Recently, members of the business community spoke about job training before the Labor Committee and said that we must enforce worldwide educational standards for our people can become qualified for the work force of the future. If people do not understand the requirements, they will continue presuming that the standards which we have been utilizing, the ones which we feel are an acceptable education, are quite all right. People fail to realize that students in Taiwan graduate 2 years ahead of our students in science and math. In addition, studies show that not only are we removed from the list of top nations in science and math achievement, but that we are at the bottom of the heap. My point is that we must concentrate on why the Goals 2000 bill was developed. It was deemed necessary to improve the standard of living of the Nation: To improve our standards and our competitiveness. While it is important for us to stay informed about recommendations for important subjects such as history, I am concerned that we will begin to forget why we are here, and that is to save the Nation. I will introduce a second-degree amendment at an appropriate time which will address the concern of my good friend, the Senator from Washington, regarding the development of certain standards at the UCLA Center for History in Schools, those standards [[Page S1030]] which have raised considerable controversy. But we must remember that those standards have not been adopted by anyone, and they are not in a form to be adopted. In fact, the panel which would approve them has not even been named yet. So we are prematurely criticizing something which is not even ready to be adopted. But more importantly, the amendment requires that anything meritorious or relevant or acceptable that is in those standards should not be used. Now, I am not sure whether that means the acceptable elements could be proposed and later approved, or not. The amendment does not say. It simply states that the standards cannot be used and that no more money can go to them. Therefore my amendment will leave in the final paragraph of the amendment of the Senator from Washington, which states the concern about how we adopt the history standards, but will remove that part which states that we should simply throw away everything that has been done in this area and prohibits the information from being used. Out of a very substantial number of examples in the history standards, only a very few have provoked great controversy. Therefore, I will speak again later, when I offer my amendment. But I just want everyone to realize that the critical goal is to have an educational system second to none which will keep the United States competitive in the next century by providing the necessary skilled work force. I will also mention the cost of doing nothing and the cost of trying to do away with these standards. Right now, over $25 billion each year are spent by our businesses on remedial education because of the failures of our school system. In addition, we have about a half a trillion dollars loss in the economy due to illiteracy, imprisonment, and the many other social ills that result from educational shortfalls. This is an extremely important issue, and I hope that we will remain focused on the primary issue of developing a more competitive nation for the future. Mr. President, I must oppose the amendment offered by my colleague from Washington. The amendment, which has not been subject to any hearings or review by the committee of jurisdiction, prohibits the National Education Goals Panel and the National Education Standards and Improvement Council from certifying any voluntary national content standards in the subject of history. As my colleagues may recall, under the Bush administration grants were awarded to independent agencies, groups, and institutions of higher education to develop worldclass standards in all the major subject areas. The history standards were developed by the UCLA Center for History in Schools with the contribution of hundreds of individual teachers, scholars and historians. The standards, which have just recently been published, have raised concern among some readers. Criticism has focused not on the standards themselves but upon the examples of activities for students in each grade level. Of the thousands of examples, not more than 25 were considered controversial. However, upon receipt of public input and criticism the Center for History in Schools is reviewing and altering its work. This, in fact is, and should be, the appropriate process and primary purpose of public commentary. But, I am not here to defend the specific content of these standards--that is best left to teachers, educators, and parents. Instead, I am concerned that this amendment has much broader implications. At issue is not so much the specific substance of these standards. Indeed, the standards have neither been endorsed by any Federal body nor, for that matter, even been finalized. Rather, the issue is whether or not we have in place a process for developing world class standards. I cannot overstate the importance of this matter. Countless reports have outlined that our country is falling behind in international test comparisons because our children have not learned the necessary skills in order to compete successfully. A recent survey of Fortune 500 companies showed that 58 percent complained of the difficulty of finding employees with basic skills. The chief executive officer of Pacific Telesis reported: Only 4 out of every 10 candidates for entry-level jobs at Pacific Telesis are able to pass our entry exam, which are based on a seventh-grade level. It is no longer enough for Vermont to compare itself to the national average. Comparing one State with another is like the local football team believing itself to be a champion of national stature because it beat the cross town rival. No, we must compare ourselves with our real competitors--the other nations of this global marketplace. To date, it appears that they are quickly outpacing us in many pivotal areas. I have had meetings upon meetings with the chairmen and CEO's of major U.S. corporations to urge me to support the development of high academic standards. Why? Because the status quo in our schools has failed. Too many of our graduates finish school without knowing the three R's, much less more rigorous content standards. For our country to remain competitive, it is essential that our schools prepare our future work force for the demands of the 21st century. Unfortunately, until we present our students with challenging content standards that goal will not be realized. Instead, estimates indicate that American businesses may have to spend up to $25 billion each year just for remedial elementary math and reading instruction for workers before they can train them to handle modern equipment. Not only does this drain critical funds from our corporations but it dramatically affects our ability to compete in the global marketplace. For the past decade the average wage has gone down. The standard of living is slipping and wealth is accumulating only at the top. Until we are able to prepare our children for the future we will have failed ourselves, the next generation and this country. The first step to success is establishing strong academic standards so that our children leave school ready for the work force or for postsecondary education. Remedial education should not be the main function of our institutions of higher education or our businesses and corporations. By preparing our students while they are in school, we will reduce the need for catchup courses so many of our graduates now have to take. We have a process in place to get our children ready for the 21st century. That process includes reforming our school and creating high benchmarks for students. That process is done through the National Council on Education Standards and Improvement. NESIC will be a 19- member council composed of professional educators, representatives of business, industry, higher education, and members of the public. The council is authorized to certify voluntary national education standards and pass their recommendations to the goals panel for final approval. The role of the council is to certify that the standards developed in each subject area are credible, rigorous and have been developed through a broad-based process. NESIC provides a mechanism for ensuring that standards remain national rather than Federal. If this duty was not being performed by such a council, the responsibility for certifying national voluntary standards would fall squarely upon the shoulders of the Secretary of Education--which would positively result in greater Federal involvement. This body is a separate entity created to oversee the certification of voluntary national standards. It has absolutely no oversight authority over States. In other words, States are not required to agree with the voluntary national standards, they are not required to accept or incorporate any portion of the national standards or even acknowledge existence of standards. Yet such a national council is essential to States and local schools to assist them in weeding out and reviewing voluntary standards. Without such an entity, each State will have to undertake that review by itself. To do that 50 times over simply does not make sense. Clearly, the recommendations of the council are not binding on States. The council's certification process is simply a Good Housekeeping seal of approval to assist States in determining which standards are rigorous and competitive. For us to step in and derail this process makes no good sense. By passing [[Page S1031]] this amendment and legislating a Federal override of NESIC's responsibility we not only jeopardize the whole independent nature of NESIC, we also jeopardize the process of creating tough academic standards. I don't think we have that luxury. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas. Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, if I may enter into this debate for a moment from a little different angle. I have enormous respect for the Senator from Vermont, who has just spoken with great dedication to the issue of education. He has devoted a great deal of time to the issue, both when he was in the other body as a Member of Congress and since he has been in the Senate and is now chairman of the Education Subcommittee of the Labor Committee. I also can understand where the Senator from Washington is coming from in his concerns about the model national history standards which have been developed with Federal funds. However, as the Senator from Vermont has pointed out, they have not been adopted or certified as national standards yet. There has been a lot of controversy about these standards as they have been proposed--controversy which, I may say, could have been anticipated. I was troubled when we first started down the path of providing Federal funding for the development of national standards. I would like to note that standards in various subject areas have been developed by professionals in the field, not by Federal employees as some may think. However, where Federal moneys are involved, there is often misunderstanding about the nature of the Government's involvement. I am sure that developing these standards was very difficult for these professionals. It is far easier to develop standards, say in the field of mathematics or science, because there is more preciseness in both of those fields. When you get to history, however, so much revolves around a teacher's interpretation of the material that they may have in front of them. So I think when you get into particular areas of study like history, that it becomes much more difficult to develop standards on which there is going to be agreement. Whether it is with the particular standards we are discussing now or a totally different set of standards, I think you would find just as many people with concerns about them. Although these are voluntary standards, as has been repeatedly emphasized whenever we have had these debates, this is a point which often gets lost. One reason I opposed the Goals 2000 legislation which was enacted last year is that it took Federal activities in this area yet another step further by including an authorization for a national council to review and endorse the national standards. There is certainly a difference between voluntary national standards and mandatory Federal standards--but this is a distinction which is generally lost when such standards are put forward, particularly when they are likely to come before a group such as the national council which is charged with reviewing them. As one who believes strongly that the strength of our education system lies in its local base and community commitment, I have not felt it wise to expand Federal involvement into areas traditionally handled by States and localities. I will support the Gorton amendment due to my concern about Federal involvement in national standards, even voluntary ones. At the same time, I believe the real issue is far broader than the current controversy over the history standards. Prohibiting a federally authorized council from certifying a particular set of voluntary standards is not the real answer. The real problem is that we have established in legislation such a group--the National Education Standards and Improvement Council, or NESIC--in the first place. In the near future, I will be introducing legislation to repeal NESIC. My legislation would get the Federal Government out of the loop in an area which I believe is best handled by States and localities. Many of our States are already developing standards that the teachers and educators in the field of history feel is important for the schools in their States. But those States do not need to have a Federal seal of approval for those standards, voluntary or not. That is why I believe we may be missing the heart of this debate. Nevertheless, I think the Senator from Washington has addressed a real concern regarding the model national history standards that have been developed with Federal funds. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I wish to speak against the Gorton amendment. I think the Gorton amendment fails to recognize the immense amount of work that has gone into trying to put this country on a road to having and pursuing higher national standards, higher standards in education throughout the country. This is work that has primarily been done by the Governors of this country. I will point out that it began in Charlottesville, when President Bush was there with our 50 Governors some 5 years ago. Today, the National Education Goals Panel is made up primarily of Governors. There are eight Governors on this panel, there are two administration representatives, and there are four representatives from Congress. But clearly the Governors are those who set up the National Education Goals Panel. They are the ones who have led the way for this country to pursue national education goals and standards. The Governors who currently serve on that are an extremely distinguished group: Governor Romer, Governor Bayh, Governor Fordice of Mississippi, Governor Hunt, Governor Engler, Governor Carlson, Governor Edgar, and Governor Whitman of New Jersey. They are a very distinguished group of Governors. The amendment of Senator Gorton, in my view, would be an insult, if we were to pass this amendment, given the current state of deliberations by the National Governors and by the National Education Goals Panel on national standards. Essentially, this amendment says the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove some proposed standards which have not even been presented for consideration before the panel as yet. It completely puts the Congress in the position of preempting the National Education Goals Panel. It further puts us in the business of preempting the National Education Standards and Improvement Council, which has not even been established. The members of that group, NESIC for short--that is the acronym that has been applied to this National Education Standards and Improvement Council--have not even been appointed. Yet, we are here being asked to adopt legislation directing this unappointed panel not to certify certain standards which have not yet been presented to them since they are not in existence. It strikes me that this is the height of arrogance on the part of Congress, to be stepping into an area where we have not had the leadership. Just to the contrary, the Governors have had the leadership. And we are saying by this amendment, if we adopt it: Do not take any action to approve standards. You, the Governors and the other members of this panel, disapprove these proposed standards that have not yet even been presented to you. And second, if and when we get a National Education Standards and Improvement Council appointed, they are also directed not to certify any standards along the lines that have been proposed. I certainly agree that there are major problems with the national standards that were proposed on history. I do not think that is the issue that is before us today. This whole business of getting standards in history is something which was started by the former administration, during the Bush administration. I recall the then Chair of the National Endowment for Humanities, Lynne Cheney, let the contract at that time to have these national standards developed. She has also, I would point out, been the main spokesperson objecting to the standards that have come back, or the proposed standards. My reaction is that clearly she is right, that there are problems with what has been proposed, and we need to change what has been proposed or, on the contrary, we need to get some [[Page S1032]] other standards adopted in the area of history before we go ahead. But we are not in a position in my opinion as a Congress to be directing the National Education Goals Panel, made up primarily of Governors in this country, directing them as to what action to take or not to take on specific standards at this point. The whole standards-setting process I believe has been a very healthy, forward looking, progressive effort in this country, and it has been bipartisan. It was bipartisan when it was started in the Bush administration with the Governors. It has remained so since then. I have the good fortune of serving on a council that was established by the Congress to look at the whole issue of whether we should have national standards. That council came up with a report which said the high standards for student attainment are critical to enhancing America's economic competitiveness, the quality of human capital, and the knowledge of skills. The knowledge and skills of labor and management helps determine a nation's ability to compete in the world marketplace. International comparisons, however, consistently have shown the academic performance of American students is below that of students in many other developed countries. The standard setting process was a reaction to our concern in this area, and it is a reaction which the Governors took the lead in because of the primary responsibility for education has always been at the State and local level, and should remain there. But we found in that council that I served on--this is a quotation from the report they came out with: In the absence of demanding content and performance standards, the United States has gravitated toward having a de facto minimal skills curriculum. That is what the Governors were trying to deal with in the standard setting process. We should not allow our concern about some specific set of proposed standards which have not even been presented to the National Education Goals Panel for approval yet but we should not allow our concern about those specific standards to deflect us from the long- term objective of having standards, and holding ourselves accountable to reaching those standards. They are voluntary standards. They ought to be voluntary standards. But still they are standards. They are standards for which we believe certain benchmarks are appropriate. And clearly I believe that the standard setting process is an extremely important part of improving the American education system. It would be a tragedy for us to step in before the first set of those standards have been presented to the National Education Goals Panel for approval and pass legislation directing how the National Education Goals Panel and the Governors who make up the majority of that group, are to dispose of standards. So I hope very much that we will defeat the Gorton amendment. I know Senator Jeffords has an alternative which I will plan to support and speak for at that time. But I hope very much that the Congress does not overreach and try through this amendment that has been presented by the Senator from Washington to usurp the authority which I think has rightfully been seen as resting with the Governors of this country. I thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. Mr. PELL addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island. Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the Senator from Washington. To my mind, this amendment is an unwarranted governmental intrusion into what is basically a private effort. It also constitutes micromanagement to a degree that is neither wise nor necessary. First, the national standards that are being developed, whether in history or any other discipline, are purely voluntary. This was made clear in the Goals 2000 legislation and reinforced in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Second, the voluntary standards do not have to be submitted to either the National Education Standards and Improvement Council or the National Goals Panel. That, too, is voluntary. If the organization that developed the standards wants to submit them, they may do so at their own volition. It is not required. Third, certification is nothing more than a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. It carries no weight in law, and imposes no requirements on States or localities. They are free to develop their own standards, and may use or not use the voluntary national standards as they wish. Fourth, the history standards in question are proposed standards. They have not been finalized. Quite to the contrary, representatives from the National History Standards Project have met with critics and have indicated their willingness to make changes in both the standards and the instructional examples that accompany the standards. Their commitment is to remove historical bias and to build a broad base of consensus in support of the proposed standards. Fifth, make no mistake about it, these proposed standards were not developed in secret or by just a few individuals. They are the product of over 2\1/2\ years of hard work. Literally hundreds of teachers, historians, social studies supervisors, and parents were part of this effort. Advice and counsel was both sought and received from more than 30 major educational, scholarly, and public interest organizations. Mr. President, I strongly believe that we should not interfere with a process that is still in play. We should not inject ourselves in a way that might impede both the important work being done in this area and the effort to develop a broad base of consensus. Accordingly, I would urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and to support instead the substitute to be offered by the Senator from Vermont. I yield the floor. Mr. LIEBERMAN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut. Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the amendment offered by the Senator from Washington [Mr. Gorton]. In fact, I ask unanimous consent at this point that I be added as an original cosponsor of the amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I support this amendment because it puts the Senate on record opposing the national standards for U.S. and world history which, while not endorsed by any Federal agency, were developed with Federal tax dollars first issued in 1991. While not a Federal mandate in that sense, they are voluntary, nonetheless, I rise to speak in opposition to them because they carry the imprimatur of the Federal Government, and have the capacity to broadly affect the course of education and the teaching and understanding of history by succeeding generations of our children, the American children. Mr. President, I should make clear, as I believe the Senator from Washington has made clear, that I support the idea of setting national voluntary standards to upgrade our education and to give us something to aim for. But I must say that the standards that were produced, the national standards for U.S. and world history that are at the core of what this amendment is about, were a terrific disappointment and may undercut some of the fundamentals, the core values, the great personalities and heroes of America and Western civilization and world history. By doing so, we put our children at risk of not being fairly and broadly educated. While the hope of those involved at the time that these standards were authorized, which goes back some years, was clearly to encourage State and local educators to raise standards in the teaching of history to elementary and secondary school students, the draft proposed is full of the kind of valueless, all-points-of-view-are-equally-valid nonsense that I thought we had left behind--and I certainly believe we should leave behind--in the teaching of our children. The history that many of us who are older learned in school obviously had its failings. It was not as inclusive as it should have been in many ways. But at least it provided core information about who we are as a nation and how our world and our Nation have progressed over time. Mr. President, we have a lot to be proud of in American history. This [[Page S1033]] great idea of America grew out of the Enlightenment and was established--now more than 200 years ago--by a courageous, principled, and patriotic group of Founders and Framers who were not casual about what they were doing. They were motivated by an idea, by a set of values, and it is part of our responsibility as this generation of adults, let alone as this generation of elected officials and national leaders, to convey that sense of our history--about which we have so much to be proud--to our children. First, in the interest of truth, because the American idea is a unique idea and has dramatically and positively affected the course of world history since the founding of this country--not just the course of world history in a macro sense, in a cosmic sense--it has positively affected, in the most dramatic way, the course of the lives of millions of Americans and millions of other people around the world who have been influenced by the American idea and by American heroes. And we ought not to let that be disparaged. We ought not to let that uniqueness, that special American purpose, be lost in a kind of ``everything is equal, let us reach out and make up for the past exclusions in our history'' set of standards. So to me this is consequential. I guess the social scientists tell us that our children should think well of themselves if we expect them to do good things; that they have to have a good self-image. They mean this in the most personal sense of how parents raise children, how society gives children an impression of themselves. I say that in a broader sense of citizenship, our country has a responsibility, honestly and accurately conveying some of the blemishes as well as the great beauty of our history, to give our children a sense of self-worth as Americans. And part of that is respecting the great leaders in America that have gone before. Mr. President, these draft standards are, alternatively, so overinclusive as to lose major events in American and world history, major participants, leaders, heroes in American and world history, in a tumble of information about everybody and everything. And then, on the other hand, they are oddly underinclusive about important events, people and concepts. Robert E. Lee, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and the Wright Brothers, just to name a few, appear nowhere in these standards. Thomas Edison, whose most memorable invention has become the very symbol of a good idea--the light bulb--is not mentioned. Albert Einstein, whose extraordinary contributions to our sense of the physical universe, let alone beyond, who changed our understanding of our existence in so many dramatic ways--not mentioned. The Wright Brothers, whose courage and boldness and inventiveness, steadfastness-- with the development of airplanes, flight--has dramatically affected the lives of each of us and of society--not even mentioned in these standards. In another way, in the world history standards, slavery is mentioned briefly in reference to Greece. The only other discussion of slavery concerns the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery, to the world's shame, existed in many cultures over many centuries, and those examples are not mentioned. The Holocaust in Nazi Germany received significant attention, as it should. But the death, persecution, and humiliation in a cultural revolution in China go by with barely a whisper. There is nothing in the cold war section of these standards, this experience that dominated the lives of most of us in this Chamber from the end of the Second World War to 1989, when the Berlin Wall collapsed. The section on the cold war does not give the reader, the student, the teacher, the sense that that conflict involved principles at all, involved ideals. It describes it, in my opinion, solely as a contest for power. There is no indication that we were fighting a battle for democracy--not just a system, a way of government, but a way of government that has a particular view of what humans are all about, and a particular view that is rooted, I think, in the idea and the principle that people have a Creator. We say it in our founding documents, ``that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights,'' not a casual accident of nature, but a conscious act by a Creator. Democracy is on the one hand, and totalitarianism is on the other, which denies all of that. The cold war is described blandly and revealingly in one sentence as ``the swordplay of the Soviet Union and the United States.'' Inadequate, to put it mildly; insulting, to put it more honestly and directly. We do not need sanitized history that only celebrates our triumphs, Mr. President. But we also do not need to give our children a warped and negative view of Western civilization, of American civilization, of the accomplishments, the extraordinary accomplishments and contributions of both. I recognize that the Federal Government is not talking about forcing these standards on anybody. These standards were always intended to be voluntary, and I recognize that the standards we are talking about are not final. They are in a draft form. But the standards, by virtue of their being developed with Federal funds, have the unavoidable imprimatur of the Federal Government. Ten thousand of these are available throughout America. It is a very official-looking text. I, for one, worry that some well-meaning official of a local school district will get hold of it and think this is what we in Washington have decided is what the teaching of American and world history ought to be all about. In fact, I have been told that text book publishers are waiting to see what happens next with these standards so they can make their own plans as to whether to adopt the draft standards wholesale. In fact, I have heard also that some school districts are close to adopting them. I think it is particularly appropriate that my colleague from Washington has chosen this bill about mandates and Federal involvement in our society for us to speak out, to make sure that no one misunderstands these standards, to hope that teachers, parents, and students will understand the ways in which some of us feel they are deficient, and that, as the business of setting such standards goes forward from here, they will be developed with a better sense of balance and fairness and pride. History is important. We learn from it. It tells us who we are, and from our sense of who we are, we help determine who we will be by our actions. The interest in these standards, in some sense, confirms the importance of history. And what I am saying, and what I believe Senator Gorton is saying, is that we should celebrate the vitality of that interest in history by starting over to develop standards that more fairly reflect the American experience, not to mention world history, and to particularly give better and fairer attention to the positive and optimistic accomplishments and nature of the American people. I thank the Chair, and I congratulate my friend from Washington for taking the initiative on this matter. I yield the floor. Mr. BINGAMAN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me just make one additional point. I heard my good friend from Connecticut and my friend from Washington. I think it is particularly ironic that this amendment is being considered on the so-called Unfunded Mandate Reform Act of 1995. This bill that is being considered before the Senate today, the bill that is proposed to be amended, says in its preface: To curb the practice of imposing unfunded Federal mandates on State and local government; to strengthen the partnership between the Federal Government and State and local and tribal governments; to end the imposition, in the absence of full consideration by Congress, of Federal mandates on State, local and tribal governments. Mr. President, we did try to defer to the States when we set up the education goals panel in the legislation, the Goals 2000 legislation, last year. We established that panel with eight Governors, four State legislators. And those 12 who represent the States would be offset by six representing the National Government, two from the administration and four Members of Congress. Now we have taken this 18-member panel, the National Education Goals Panel, set them up and given them the responsibility to review proposals that [[Page S1034]] are made for national standards. And here in Senator Gorton's amendment, we are proposing to step in before any standards have been presented to them and to legislatively prohibit them from adopting a set of as yet unproposed standards. Now this is a Federal mandate, it is a mandate by this Senate, by this Congress to that National Education Goals Panel, made up primarily of State government representatives, and telling them what they shall and shall not do. I, quite frankly, think it is insulting to the Governors, who are giving of their very valuable time to serve on this National Education Goals Panel, for us to be rushing to the Senate floor and passing legislation of this type before they have even been presented with anything in the National Education Goals Panel. I am one of the two Senators that serves on the National Education Goals Panel. I represent the Democratic side. Senator Cochran represents the Republican side. We have not had a meeting to discuss these proposed standards. In fact, the proposed standards have not even been put on the agenda to be discussed at future meetings, and yet the Senate is considering going ahead and adopting an amendment by the Senator from Washington which says, ``Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove'' these standards in whatever form they ever come to us. Mr. President, I have no disagreement with my friend from Connecticut about the substance of the proposed standards that have been developed under the funding of the National Endowment for Humanities and the contract that Lynne Cheney let when she was in that position. I agree there are some serious problems there. But let us defer to that group primarily representing States and allow them at least to do some of their work before we step in and dictate the result. Particularly, let us not dictate the result as an amendment to a bill which is designed to end the imposition of Federal mandates on State, local and tribal governments. I think it is the height of irresponsibility for us to proceed to adopt this amendment at this stage. I really do think those Governors and State legislators who are serving on that National Education Goals Panel deserve the chance to do the job which they are giving of their valuable time to do before we step in and try to overrule them and second-guess something which they well may decide not to do. I have no reason to think they are less patriotic or less concerned about a proper depiction of U.S. history than we here in the Senate are. And I think we should give them a chance to do the right thing. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington. Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, first, I should like to say with respect to my friend and colleague, the Senator from Connecticut, that it is always a pleasure to deal with him on the same side of an issue just as it is very dangerous to disagree with him and attempt to prove a case. But as I have listened to the case presented against this amendment by three of my colleagues, one of my own party and two of the other, it seems to me that they argue in an attempt to have it both ways. Each of them was a strong supporter of Federal legislation, Goals 2000, which was designed to come up with national standards for the teaching of various subjects in our schools. Each of them, as far as I can tell, approved of spending some $2 million of Federal taxpayer money to finance a private study which resulted in these national standards. But when it comes to our debating these highly controversial and I firmly believe perverse and distorted standards for world and American history, we are told we should butt out; we, the Congress of the United States, should have nothing to say about national standards for the teaching of American history. Or, in the alternative, the Senator from New Mexico says it is too early because they have not been adopted yet. Would his argument be different if this commission had in fact adopted these standards? Well, of course not. His argument would be even stronger that we should have nothing to do with this process. Far better to express the views of Members of this body, and I hope of the House of Representatives, on a matter which is of deep concern to many of our citizens before some potential final action has been taken than to wait until afterwards. But, Mr. President, this volume does not look like a rough draft. Nothing in this volume, for which we have paid $2 million, indicates that it is only tentative, it is subject to huge revisions. This is a set of standards which without regard to whether or not it is approved by a national entity has already been distributed in some 10,000 copies to educational administrators and interested people all across the United States which already has behind it the force of being a national project financed with national money. I believe it more than appropriate that this technically nongermane amendment should be added to a bill on mandates, the bill we are discussing here today. While the Goals 2000 entity, the National Education Standards and Improvement Commission, cannot enforce its judgments on the States, they will certainly be given great weight by each of these States. And that council is a Federal entity. It may well be made up of some Governors as well as some Members of this body and some legislators and the like, but it is a national body created by the Congress with a national purpose. Nothing in my amendment, in which the Senator from Connecticut has joined, tells any Governor or State educational administrator that he or she cannot accept this book today, lock, stock, and barrel, if he or she wishes to do so. It does say that a Federal entity will not certify it as worthy of consideration as a guide for the teaching of American history. In that sense, each of these people is part of a national entity created by the Congress with a Federal purpose. Not only is it appropriate for Members to instruct such a group, I believe it to be mandatory. We created the group. If it is our view that this is, in fact, a perverse document that should not be the basis for teaching American history, now is the time we should say so. Not after it has been adopted by several States. Not after it has been adopted by this national organization, but right now. Opponents cannot duck behind the proposition that somehow or another they are taking no position. By voting against this amendment, they are taking the position that it is perfectly appropriate for these standards to be presented to the States of the United States as the way in which to teach the history of the United States of America. The very individual, Lynne Cheney, then Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who came up with much of the financing for this, finds these standards to be totally outside of what she or the Endowment expected or participated. And the critics are not from some narrow group in the United States. They represent the broadest possible mainstream of American thinking. Former Assistant Secretary of Education, Chester Finn, now at the Hudson Institute, called these history standards ``anti-Western,'' and ``hostile to the main threads of American history.'' Elizabeth Fox- Genovese, professor of history of women's study at Emory University declared ``The sense of progress and accomplishment that has characterized Americans' history of their country has virtually disappeared'' from these standards. The president of the Organization of History Teachers, Earl Bell, of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, called the world history standards ``even more politically correct than U.S. history standards.'' Charles Krauthammer, writing in the Washington Post, said that these proposed standards reflect ``the new history'' and ``the larger project of the new history is to collapse the distinction between fact and opinion, between history's news and editorial pages. In the new history, there are no pages independent of ideology and power, no history that is not political.'' Herman Beltz, history professor at the University of Maryland said ``I almost despair to think what kids will come to college with. I'm going to have to teach more basic things about the Constitution [[Page S1035]] and our liberal democracy.'' Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, described the original draft of World History Standards as ``a travesty, a caricature of what these things should be--sort of cheap shot leftist view of history.'' Finally, of course, Lynne Cheney said ``the World History Standards relentlessly downgrade the West just as the American history standards diminish achievements of the United States,'' both calling into question ``not only the standard-setting effort but the Goals 2000 program under which these standards became official knowledge.'' In U.S. News & World Report, John Leo wrote: This won't do. The whole idea was to set unbiased national standards that all Americans could get behind. Along the way the project was hijacked by the politically correct. It is riddled with propaganda, and the American people would be foolish to let it anywhere near their schools. Mark my words: To vote against this amendment is to vote approval of certifying a set of books, in this case entitled ``National Standards for United States History,'' paid for by the American taxpayer, submitted to a Federal organization for its approval. I want to repeat, we do not tell any school district or any State that if it wants to treat this as a bible that it is forbidden to do so. All we do is to tell an organization we created that it is not to certify these standards. That they are unacceptable. That they denigrate the Western and the American experience, ignore the most important achievements of our history, and that if the Federal Government wants to do this job it ought to start over and do it again with people who have a decent respect for American history and for civilization. I am a Senator who, unlike my distinguished colleague who sits next to me here, the junior Senator from Kansas, who voted in favor of Goals 2000 and in favor of national standards. And like others now seriously must question my own judgment in doing so, if this is the kind of product which is going to arise out of that process. I believe very firmly that if we are to have national standards, if we are to have support not only of this Congress but of the American people for national standards in education and various subjects, we must do much better than this. Not later. Not a year from now. Not 3 years from now. This is the time to say, ``This doesn't measure up.'' It does not reflect the American experience. It is not an outline of what we should be teaching our children about the history of this country, and for that matter, the history of the world. The vote, like it or not, is on whether or not you agree or disagree with what has been produced here. Turn down this amendment, we are telling this national council ``everything is OK; approve it, and go right ahead.'' Accept the amendment and we will have a positive impact not only on the teaching of our American history but of future standards in other subjects which are still incomplete. We may yet be able to save the true goals of Goals 2000. Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, could I ask the Senator a question as to his intent in the future, if the Senator would yield? Mr. GORTON. I am happy to yield. Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask my colleague from Washington, Mr. President, if it would be his intent every time a standard is developed for consideration, that we in the Congress would pass legislation for or against that before the goals panel got a chance to consider it? Mr. GORTON. My answer to the Senator from New Mexico is that is a very good question, to which the answer is ``no.'' I sense that educational goals are likely to fall into two categories, one of which is more likely to be controversial than the other. Some of the standards in other areas--for mathematics, for example, or for the teaching of physics--will, I think, be very unlikely to be found controversial or be driven by ideology. In the case of a set of standards which come from a narrow perspective, a narrow political perspective, it is certainly possible that there will be future debates, as there ought to be. I think the future debates are more likely to be driven by public reaction to these standards than they are by the preferences of individual Members of the Senate. This Senator was made aware of the standards by the blizzard of criticism which they created almost from the day that this book was published. Now, by the fact that so many traditional historians in the United States find them so terribly objectionable, my deep hope, I say to the Senator from New Mexico, as a member of this national commission, will be that a decent respect for American traditions in the future in this and in the study of other kinds of social services on the part of those academics who generally dominate their writing such standards, will result in no action at all on the part of the Congress, because while there may be elements of controversy and particular standards, that controversy will not reach the fundamental basis of the very philosophy or ideology out of which they arise. So I hope that this is not only the first time that we take up a subject like this, but the last time. Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me just ask one additional question. The education goals panel, to which we are here giving instructions prohibiting them from taking certain action, is scheduled to meet a week from Saturday here in Washington, with Governor Bayh--I believe he is the new Chair of the education goals panel. What is the Senator intending to do by this action, by this vote, by this amendment? What is he intending to tell that group of Governors, and others who sit on that panel, about what their responsibilities are for considering standards in the future? Should they wait until we get some reading from the Congress as to whether or not there has been too much public concern? I am just concerned that we are setting a precedent which essentially makes their job irrelevant or their role irrelevant if we are going to have public debates in the Congress and pass mandatory legislation dictating how they are to proceed every time a new set of proposals comes forward. Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I say to my friend from New Mexico, there is hardly an important commission or entity or agency in the United States whose controversial decisions or operations do not create controversy or debates on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We are elected by the people. We have strong views on particular subjects. Of course, frequently, well beyond this particular council, we are going to have debates on ideas which other people, appointed by the President or appointed by us, deal with. As the Senator from New Mexico well knows, there is not the slightest doubt that we will be engaged in a debate sometime later this year on the future of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Members will attack and defend the way in which Federal money is spent by that independent organization, as it is by a myriad of other organizations. As for the meeting a week from Saturday of this particular Commission, I would be astounded if this amendment were the law by then. Certainly the speed with which we have dealt with this unfunded mandates bill so far hardly indicates that it is going to be through this body and the House of Representatives, the differences between the two settled, on the President's desk and signed by the President by a week from Saturday. So I suspect that legally, at least, that Commission will be perfectly free a week from Saturday to take whatever action it wishes. I strongly suspect that many of those who are elected to positions in their own States and are appointed members of this Commission may have reached the same conclusion that I and others have at this point, and I strongly suspect that they will give great weight to the way in which this vote comes out. But they are going to give that great weight either way. If we vote in favor of this amendment, even though it has not become law, I think that will greatly influence that council in rejecting these standards. By the same token, if we turn down this amendment, my opinion is that many members of that council will, in effect, say the Congress has approved these standards and they ought to go ahead and do so themselves. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment? [[Page S1036]] Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. Mr. GORTON. Objection. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard. The assistant legislative clerk continued the call of the roll. Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Chair. I rise to speak about where we are at this time with this bill, to make the point that I have been basically on my feet since 12 noon trying to offer a very important and timely amendment that has bipartisan support, that is about an issue of great importance to the people of this country because, indeed, it is about law and order in this country. On December 30, there was a horrible shooting in Massachusetts at a health care clinic. The following day there was a shooting in Virginia, at a health care clinic. Obviously, at that time, the U.S. Senate, this 104th Congress, had not taken its place here and we were unable to respond, as I know we would have in a timely fashion, to condemn the violence and to call on the Attorney General to take the appropriate action to ensure the safety of those innocent people at those clinics around this country. As soon as I got back here I made a number of calls to Democrats and Republicans and I put together a resolution which currently has 21 cosponsors, some of them from the Republican side of the aisle. I knew that this Senate had a lot of important business, but I also believed in my heart we would take 60 minutes or 30 minutes, or some time to go on record, speaking out as Americans--not Republicans, not Democrats--Americans speaking out against that violence. I was very hopeful when I heard the majority leader, the new majority leader, Senator Dole, speak out on national television, condemning the violence and saying that he was appalled at the violence. I said to myself, we will have bipartisan support so we can go on the record in this U.S. Senate. I know my Republican friends have a contract, a Contract With America or for America--or on America, some people call it--and they believe in that contract. Some of the things in there are good. A lot of it is awful, in my opinion. And they are on a timetable to move that through. But I have to say that, while I believe the bill before us is very important--and I say to the occupant of the chair I know how much he worked, so hard on this unfunded mandates bill. I myself come from local government. I had to deal with the most ludicrous mandates in the 1980's that you could believe. I would love to be able to get a bill before us that does not go too far, that is sensible. And I want to work toward that end. I have a number of amendments that deal with it. But I thought, as reasonable men and women, we could respond to a terrible problem we have in our country, and I was very heartened when I had bipartisan support. The Senator from Maine and I worked in a bipartisan fashion to speak to the majority leader, to speak to the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee. This goes back many days ago. Can we not