Dianne Feinstein: “the Senate's consideration of elementary and secondary education policy offers us an opportunity to begin to institute…”

“the Senate's consideration of elementary and secondary education policy offers us an opportunity to begin to institute some fundamental reforms of American public education. I fervently hope that the Senate does just that. I hope we will send to the President promptly a bill that brings about real change. In the past week, we have debated several approaches and today we will debate another. First, let me say that federal education funding is only 6 percent of total spending for elementary and secondary education. So in terms of dollars, the federal role is small. Public education spending and policy are largely set by local and state governments and that is the way it should be. Nevertheless, federal dollars can and should leverage other dollars and in writing legislation to revamp federal education policy, we have the opportunity to stimulate some real reforms. Why do we need reform? The numbers tell us a sad story. American students lag behind their international counterparts in many ways. American twelfth grade math students are outperformed by students from 21 other countries, scoring higher than students from only two countries, Cyprus and South Africa. Three-quarters of our school children cannot compose a well-organized, coherent essay. U.S. eighth graders score below the international average of 41 other countries in math. U.S. twelfth graders score among the lowest of 21 countries in both math and science general knowledge.”