Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

This is in response to a recent news item, the headline of which would imply that partisan politics put me in a "tight spot" on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act vote (related story ). Partisan politics was the furthest thing from my mind. The most important thing on my mind at the time was the fact that nobody was able to tell my colleagues, the National Governors' Association, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, or anyone else that might ask, what the last-minute formula change did to any state or local school district in the last three years of the five-year authorization.

The straw that broke the camel's back was the realization that apparently the city of York, Pa., which has a poverty level of approximately 25 percent, would receive $50,000 less in 1999 under the new last-minute formula than it would have received under the formula that currently existed. If that is true, then surely the new formula made the idea of better targeting of funds political rhetoric rather than reality. No individual or organization should have put pressure on any member of Congress to vote for the unknown when there was no need to vote until we had the facts...