Senate approves education bill after lengthy debate

By Ian Christopher McCaleb
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Senate voted 91-8 late Thursday afternoon to approve its version of a bill that would implement a massive overhaul of the public education system by establishing regular proficiency tests for grade school children, and setting performance standards for schools.

Congress' upper chamber passed the bill by the overwhelming margin of 91-8, ending a month and a half of debate.

Most of President Bush's education proposals are included in the Senate version. The House has already passed a version of the bill, and a conference committee will hammer out a reconciled version to be sent to the president.

RESOURCE Comparing House, Senate education bills     MESSAGE BOARD Education reform

"I commend the Senate for passing an education reform bill that will significantly improve and strengthen our public schools," Bush said in a written statement. "The reforms in this bill reflect the core principles of my education agenda: accountability, flexibility, local control and more choices for parents."

Republican leader Sen. Trent Lott, speaking in a joint news conference with Democrats after the vote, highlighted the school choice provisions of the bill.

"I've always said that choice is an issue whose time is coming. We're going to have that in America, there's no doubt about it, because it's the fair thing to do," he said. "If you're going to a public school that is drug infested and violent and failing ... then you will have the option to go to another public school."

After this bill becomes law, Congress will still be left with the task of funding the programs it calls for, and senators on both sides noted that may present problems.

"The funding levels got out of control," Lott said. "The Senate even voted yesterday to say that not all these programs have to necessarily be funded to the maximum extent."

"We can't have reform without resources," Democratic leader Sen. Tom Daschle said in the joint news conference, "and that will be the next step. How can we assure that we have the resources to commit to the things that we have now said will be important public policy? But that will be left to another day."

Much of Thursday's action on the floor focused on funding for schools that bar the Boy Scouts of America from making use of school facilities.

By 52-48, the chamber approved an amendment sponsored by North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms intended to withhold federal money to schools that deny the Boy Scouts access based on the Scouts' stance toward homosexuals.

The Supreme Court ruled last June that the organization was well within its rights to deny membership to homosexuals.

Helms said on the floor the amendment was a response to the organized efforts of "gays and lesbians in this country of ours."

But Democrats were livid. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, said the Senate might as well deny money to schools that deny organized prayer.

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Indiana, tells reporters accountability comes with a pricetag.

"You going to sign on for that one?" he said. "The truth of the matter is if you wanted to make the Helms amendment pass constitutional muster, you have to deny school funds to any organization that discriminates against anyone, anywhere."

The chamber has been engaged in six weeks of debate on the bill, which many have hailed as the most momentous alteration to education law since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of the 1960s.

The House passed its own version of the education bill at the end of last month. Senate debate was initiated by the one-time majority Republicans, who handed over control to the Democrats last week when Vermont Sen. James Jeffords' departure from the Republican Party took effect.

The education debate was interrupted several times so other legislative priorities could be considered -- including the $1.35 trillion tax relief package.

Bush has promoted reform of the public education system as one of the most pressing priorities of his young administration. As an early candidate for the 2000 Republican nomination for the presidency, Bush introduced his education overhaul proposals months before the primary election season opened.

He called for a testing regimen to get lagging or failing schools on track, saying student proficiency in reading and math must be measured so parents will know whether their children are advancing -- and so school administrators will know if their teachers are meeting local standards.

Much of Bush's testing scheme is included in the bill, but the Senate version adds a significant amount of money to the set-asides the administration called for. With Democrats now in control of the chamber, arguments over education funding are certain to crop up with the White House and the GOP-controlled House.

The Senate bill calls for $15 billion more in new spending than the Bush proposal -- an amount of extra spending that one Republican, Bill Frist of Tennessee, described as "frightening" on Thursday.

Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh, meeting with several CNN reporters Thursday afternoon, explained that the chamber's majority agreed for the most part with what the president was trying to accomplish with his education package. But he said a "bargain" would have to be struck.

Public schools are in need of more financial assistance, Bayh said. Senate Democrats were willing to boost spending, he said, but school systems would have to demonstrate steady improvement if they are to continue receiving federal monies.

"We have tended in the past to look at educational success in terms of how much money we spent," Bayh said. "Now, we are demanding accountability. Instead of focusing on input, we are looking at outcomes."

"But if you're going to improve outcomes, resources have to be part of the answer," he said.

School districts currently can count on the federal government for about 6 percent of their yearly budgets on average.

Under Bush's original plan, schools that continued to miss targets for student improvement would see portions of the federal money they receive taken away and handed to parents in the form of "vouchers," which parents could apply toward the cost of sending their children to better schools.

Bush suggested on the campaign trail that parents could send their children to another public school, a charter school or a private school with the money. He estimated the value of such a voucher could be as much as $1,500.

But Democrats and moderate Republicans in Congress have voiced strong objections to that sentiment, saying any denial of funds to public schools determined to be in dire need of improvement would only worsen the situation for the students left behind at that school.

Both the House and Senate turned back efforts to include vouchers in the legislation, opting instead to provide some amount of money to parents to hire tutors, or to transfer their children to a charter school or to a better public school in the same system.