Jeff Bingaman: “let me first just respond to a couple of points that were made by the Senator from Tennessee. He says we made huge…”

“let me first just respond to a couple of points that were made by the Senator from Tennessee. He says we made huge progress. That is not what the people in my State believe. That is not what the school administrators and students and parents in my State believe. The Department of Education report that just came out this year indicates their conclusion is that there has been no overall progress in lowering dropout rates during the last 10 years. That is the decade during which we were supposed to be moving up to 90 percent of all of our students completing high school before they left school. In 1989, when the Governors and President Bush met in Charlottesville, the goal was set at 90 percent. It was 86 percent then. It is today 86 percent, according to the National Education Goals Panel. In the last 10 years there has been no progress, in spite of the fact that we have had this national goal. Another part of the goal, in addition to getting 90 percent of our students to complete high school, was to eliminate the disparity in the different groups in our society so that you didn't have such a large dropout problem among one group--in this case, the Hispanic students-- and such a disparity between the problem with that group and other groups. Clearly, those disparities have not been eliminated. The problem is very much with us. It needs attention, and it is every bit as serious now as it was in 1989 when we established the national goal of getting to 90 percent.”