Eleanor Holmes Norton: “my mother, Vela Lynch Holmes, now in her eighties, is a retired schoolteacher. She taught many disadvantaged children in…”

“my mother, Vela Lynch Holmes, now in her eighties, is a retired schoolteacher. She taught many disadvantaged children in this very city. She would be the first to say that it is much tougher to teach such children today. I have come to the floor to thank the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ford], the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Kildee], and the ranking members for the compromise they have forged that begins to recognize that compensatory education title I funds should begin to shift more toward those most in need of compensatory education. I believe that more is needed, but I appreciate that a compromise was also needed to move this bill and that the committee has been skillful in crafting one. I would certainly not want to shortchange a single child based on geography, and I do not believe that this compromise does that. Surely, what we see when we go home to our own districts or nearby, and I know what we see through the local media in this city, reinforces the need to pay more attention to the many children we are simply losing in the inner city. And we lose them beginning with elementary school. We simply are increasingly unable to reclaim them. High poverty rates correlate to high dropout rates. And of course, these dropout rates, in turn, correlate to the high crime rates. The weighted student formula at least begins to recognize that some districts have overwhelming poverty and overwhelming numbers of poor children.”