Burgess Owens: “I want to appeal to the conferees to please hold the course and not water down this bill any further. There is an…”

“I want to appeal to the conferees to please hold the course and not water down this bill any further. There is an education state of emergency in many American communities. There is an education state of emergency in the African American community in inner cities and in other inner-city minority communities and in rural poor communities. We need all the help we can get as fast as we can get it. The reading scores show there is a state of emergency, the SAT scores show it, the dropout statistics show it; but also there are other indicators that we ought to take a look at. The number of uncertified teachers are clustered and concentrated in these state of emergency communities. The number of unsafe, unhealthy buildings are concentrated in these communities. The lack of science laboratories and lack of physics teachers and chemistry teachers, they are all concentrated in these communities. Libraries with the oldest books are in these communities. So we need to maintain the focus and the concentration of this bill and not let the bill that came from the other body water it down and make flexible the funding so that it does not have the same concentration as the President's bill. The President is to be congratulated for focusing on where the greatest need is. The bill does do that. The focus on title I as a major component to be expanded in the authorization, the move towards an increase of title I funding to $17.2 billion in 5 years, that is very important.…”