James M. Jeffords: “I wish to speak against the amendment. I think the desires and the hopes of the Senator from Washington are certainly…”

“I wish to speak against the amendment. I think the desires and the hopes of the Senator from Washington are certainly admirable, but I think if one examines where the problems are in education right now the thought that it will be solved by just giving a blank check to the local agencies to correct these problems I think would find itself quite misdirected. First of all, it goes without saying and everybody must recognize that this is probably the grossest exercise of changing the situation from what is normally considered the authorization process that I have seen to date. Now, I do not disagree with the fundamental problem that the Senator from Washington recognizes, and that is we have an awful problem in this Nation educationally. When 51 percent of the students in this country graduate functionally illiterate, when we find ourselves trailing way behind other nations in competition for the type of work that is necessary in our country, we know we have a problem. Right now, for instance, we have 190,000 jobs available in this Nation that we cannot fill because schools have not produced students with the skills to take them, whereas our competitors do not have that problem. But where is the problem? The problem is at the local level because they have not had the guidance from above or whatever to increase the mathematical skills and to ensure that we do not push young people through the school systems by what is called social promotion. Those are the big problems.…”