Dale Kildee

By working together, we can ensure that the educational needs of both boys and girls are met in the 1999 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The Girls Act reauthorizes WEEA.

The Girls Act strengthens support for programs to keep pregnant and parenting teens in school to earn a high school diploma.

Education is the means for all girls, including pregnant and parenting teens, to achieve economic self-sufficiency.

The Girls Act affords an opportunity to greatly reduce the incidence of sexual harassment by gathering data on these often hidden offenses and providing programs to prevent sexual harassment and abuse.

Sexual harassment is widespread and affects female students at all levels of education, including those in elementary and secondary schools.

Current law lacks assurances that federal education programs will compensate for girls' different learning styles and different exposures to technology.

We need to dismantle the virtual ceiling now, before it becomes a real-life barrier to girls' futures.

The Girls Act responds to findings in the 1998 AAUW Educational Foundation Report, Gender Gaps: Where Schools Still Fail Our Children, which identified a number of areas where the educational needs of girls are still unmet.

I am pleased to introduce The Educating America's Girls Act of 1999, or the Girls Act, along with Representatives Nancy Johnson, William Clay, Connie Morella, Lynn Woolsey, and many of my other colleagues today.

Most Members of this House serve their country without ever being called upon to address two of the most awesome questions that could come before this body, and they are the question of war and the question of the impeachment of the…

I would like to indicate first that this bill, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was passed as one of the great achievements of President Lyndon Johnson, and helping President Lyndon Johnson pass this bill in a very, very…

Mr. Chairman, I want to tell the gentleman from Missouri he may think they are Federal mandates, but, as the gentleman from Wisconsin pointed out the other day, he made it very clear that there are no Federal mandates in this bill. There…

Many of my colleagues heard me state many times that education is a local function, a State responsibility and a very important Federal concern, and I think that balance is very important. But with this amendment we make education a…

We may not agree, but I just wanted to make my statement that it is not a federally mandated program.

Mr. Chairman, I think the gentlewoman from Hawaii [Mrs. Mink] has brought to us an area of very great interest to all of us, something that we have expressed interest in for the last few authorizations, and I would like to do this: I would…

I rise, again with a heavy heart, to oppose this amendment... to enact this amendment would mean the loss of dollars for a number of States... I do oppose the amendment, again with a heavy heart, but I feel that we must oppose it because…

The Ford-Kildee amendment refers to all home schools, however they are classified by the States. The reference is to all home schools.

Whatever the case may be, I do not read it that way and the attorneys do not read it that way, but we will nevertheless respond to those terms with very clear language.

Mr. Chairman, let me note that on the alleged unfunded mandate, the opportunity-to-learn standards, we have reached a compromise so that it will not be an unfunded mandate. I also wish to note that the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ford]…