Jeff Bingaman: “I am proposing the National Dropout Prevention Act as an amendment to this Ed-Flex legislation. As I indicated, the…”

“I am proposing the National Dropout Prevention Act as an amendment to this Ed-Flex legislation. As I indicated, the cosponsors of this amendment are Senators Reid, Levin and Bryan. In my view, the amendment would create a much-needed program to target those schools in our country that have the highest dropout rates in the Nation. There is at present very little help from the Federal level going to some of these most troubled high schools, and the amendment is a valuable necessary addition to this legislation to begin moving ahead in solving this problem. Improving our schools, as we are trying to do through the Ed-Flex bill and through many other initiatives in Congress, is not going to make a whole lot of difference if half or a third--some substantial portion--of our students have already left before they graduate and they are no longer in those schools to receive the benefits of that assistance. Efforts to provide better teachers, more flexibility, computers in the classroom, higher standards--all of those efforts-- will be diluted if we continue to ignore the dropout crisis we have in this country. We do have what I refer to as a dropout drain.”