I rise in support of H.Res. 552 offered by the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu). It urges the House to support mentoring and enrichment programs that promote and encourage young people to enter mathematics, science, engineering and…

how sad I would have been if on my last day, after 26 years in this Congress, I would not have had an opportunity to vote on this legislation. I certainly want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) and the gentleman from…

this is a very curious motion to instruct. In fact, it is the most curious motion to instruct I have seen in 26 years. Why? Well, first of all, it was originally drafted and submitted to this body on September 19. That is right, September…

First of all, I want to say we are not talking about construction, we are talking about maintenance and renovation. It would really be a joke if we were talking about construction at $1.3 billion. I also want to compliment North Carolina…

New York City would get an extra $190 million if we were fully funding the 40 percent, and Los Angeles would get another $90 million. When we talk about class size reduction, when we talk about school maintenance, think what they could do…

No question about. The minority and the former majority and the President were very much opposed to flexibility. As I indicated, when it became that successful for those who undertook that opportunity or took advantage of that opportunity…

the Governor Bush model, of course, is the model I have tried to follow for 26 years, and that is to put people before politics but put children before politics. That is what he has done in Texas. That is why we have seen the kind of…

I think that it has been a slow learning process for the minority, because I think they are at the point now where they realize these programs did not work. Well intended, no question well intended, but they now begin to realize, and we…

When we were doing that negotiating last year, it was a perfect time. The New York News newspaper had total front page coverage which said, Parents, do you recognize in New York City, 50 percent of your teachers are not qualified? And I…

I am reminded each time that we were negotiating that both the President and the Secretaries were governors. Think in terms of being a governor, rather than being a Washington bureaucrat, and you will be offering far better solutions to…

When we were negotiating the 100,000 teachers last year, the first thing the administration said is we have to take about 10 percent off the top, I think they wanted 15 percent, to keep on the Federal level. I said, wait a minute, you are…

I pleaded with the President, and I said, he can talk about class size reduction, but if he does not have a quality teacher to put in that new classroom, I will guarantee it does not matter whether the teacher-to-pupil ratio is 12 to 1, 20…

As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, two budgets submitted by the White House in a row had a decrease in funding for special education, 2 years in a row.

Over 25 years, $90 million a year for 25 years, that sounds like big money to me.

in IDEA, as we indicated, for instance, they were promised 40 percent of the average expenditure for students all over this country. Now, 2 years ago, that average expenditure per pupil was about $6300. If they were getting their 40…

On November 19, 1863, Mr. Speaker, President Abraham Lincoln delivered America's most famous speech during a brief visit to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for the dedication of a military cemetery for the war dead. But what few people really…

I take this time because today, we may have 40 minutes of a lot of to-do about nothing, because there are those who believe that the sky is falling on the Violence Against Women's Act. I want to read into the Record a letter that I sent to…

Today, I am pleased to bring to the floor for consideration House Concurrent Resolution 399, which recognizes and honors the 25th anniversary of the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act on November 29, 1975. Since…

what I learned more than anything else in the 20 years I sat in the minority on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and even I am reminded today as the chairman of that committee, the approach that we took all those years…

When we had the literacy bill on the floor, I made the statement that we have pretty close to 100 million people who are performing either on the first or second level of literacy. The first level gets them nowhere in the 21st century. The…

Well, I latched on to GW; he did not latch on to me. And I latched on to him primarily because of his ability to lead a Democrat house and a Democrat senate in the State of Texas to bring about the best education reform probably anywhere…

I chair the positive education caucus in the Congress of the United States. This positive education caucus believes that it is easy to be critical but much more difficult to find solutions. That positive caucus is called the Committee on…

Right. Secondly, only the partnership gets the money. The church itself cannot get the money. The partnership that the church is working with gets the money, not the church itself.

Mr. Speaker, the greatest problem facing the Nation, in my estimation and that of many, is the fact that we have close to 100 million people in the United States at the present time who are functioning on either Level I or Level II…