Barbara Mikulski: “yesterday I talked about the three R's that are needed in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. If we have…”

“yesterday I talked about the three R's that are needed in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. If we have reform--which I am firmly in support of--plus resources, that equals results. But if we have reform minus resources, all we end up with is rhetoric. So I believe we need to practice the three R's that give us the right results: reform, plus resources, equals the right results. One of the ways that we can really help have reform is by really backing what we need to do to help our special needs children. We are going to be debating very shortly the expansion of the funding for something called IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Some years ago, under the leadership of a former colleague, Senator Weicker, we passed legislation that said every child in the United States of America who had a special need required an individual education plan. We gave that as a mandate to States and local school districts. We also said we would provide 40 percent of the money to help pay that bill. In over the 20-plus years that IDEA has been in existence, we have only funded roughly 15 percent of the cost to local school districts to pay for these individual education plans for our children.”