Tom Harkin: “We are blaming these kids. Title I: Do my colleagues know how much each kid gets from title I? Somewhere between $400…”

“We are blaming these kids. Title I: Do my colleagues know how much each kid gets from title I? Somewhere between $400 and $600 a year. Go to the best schools in America in high-income areas where they have nice houses and high incomes. Do my colleagues know what they are spending on kids there? Six to eight thousand dollars. Yet we are going to put $400 to $600 into some of the kids who have the poorest lives. As the Senator said, they move around a lot. They have been denied the opportunity since they have been born, and we expect all these great results from $400 to $600 per student. If the Senator from New Hampshire wants to propose we spend $6,000 on each one of those poor kids, then maybe we will see them start to advance more rapidly, but on $400 to $600 we are not going to do it. We are still way behind in what we ought to be doing in this country to help low-income students attain the same opportunity in education as kids from better, higher income areas are getting.”