Washington, D.C. -- During a news conference today, Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) joined other Senators to present a process for developing a bipartisan education agenda. Education was identified as one of five priority initiatives by the Republican Congressional leadership and by the President during their meeting on Tuesday.

Following are Senator Cochran's comments on education technology, specifically PBS MATHLINE:

"Let me say at the outset that the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has really been in the forefront and provided impressive leadership in the development of national standards. We hear a lot about standards and goals. We have a National Education Goals Panel on which I served at one time. But, in the math area we have seen a lot of progress in developing a consensus among mathematics teachers and leaders in this field across the country. Maybe it is a subject that is more susceptible to standardization, than others. For whatever reason, that Council deserves a lot of credit in providing leadership.

In response to some of the suggestions made by the Council and by PBS, the Public Broadcasting System, an interactive teaching program was developed and was contemplated in the first legislation that was the Technology for Education Act, which was approved as a part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Reauthorization of 1994. So this program had its beginnings three years ago when that act was reauthorized, and we began a series of appropriations, following that, funding the program in 1995, 1996, and 1997.

We had a hearing in the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. We had math teachers, PBS officials, and experts in the development of this new interactive way of training teachers and sharing information across the country in new techniques of teaching mathematics. The response was overwhelming in terms of how this program was improving morale in the classroom among teachers. They no longer felt like they were alone and the problems in each teacher's classroom were unique. They found out that these problems were similar around the country in districts where you would think there were a lot more options and advanced funding for a lot of new techniques and modern teaching guides and the like. Even the small schools in Mississippi found that they were doing some things better than the so-called rich districts in the bigger and more wealthy states.

The point of all of this is that this will serve as a model, in my view, to other kinds of technology improvements and interactive teacher training that will help improve the content of instruction and help make us a leader in the world in mathematics education. It can be, and it should be. This is something that has been going on. We are glad the President has indicated some support and asking for additional funds to be appropriated for this program. We are very proud of it, those of us who were privileged to be involved in it at its inception. We think this is a great example of things we can do using technology and the emerging satellite communications that is available to our country."