[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 85 (Wednesday, May 23, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H5688-H5689]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1930
                        THE CONSTITUTION CAUCUS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I am a member of the Constitution Caucus, and 
we take it as an important responsibility

[[Page H5689]]

to come to the floor every week to talk about an issue related to the 
Constitution.
  Tonight, we are here to talk about the Federal Government's role in 
education through the No Child Left Behind Act. But I question whether 
the premise of Federal involvement is even legitimate.
  The tenth amendment to the Constitution that enumerates States' 
rights throws Federal involvement in education into question.
  The tenth amendment tells us that the powers not delegated to the 
United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, 
are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
  No Child Left Behind has a problem. The problem is that the 
individual States have learned that Federal Government involvement in 
local education is often uninformed, inefficient and unnecessarily 
burdensome.
  What many Americans don't know or don't remember is that No Child 
Left Behind is simply a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act, a law first passed in 1965 and signed into law by 
President Lyndon Johnson. It has been revised and reauthorized so many 
times that it barely resembles the original law.
  Today the law spawned by the repeated tinkering over four decades is 
increasingly complicated and burdensome. It attempts to tie Federal 
money to disparate yardsticks that may or may not make sense for the 
thousands of local school districts around the country.
  How can one law effectively regulate both a rural school in North 
Carolina and an inner-city school in L.A.? I believe it cannot. 
Accountability needs be a State and local issue left to parents and 
teachers. It should not be delegated to Washington bureaucrats who 
don't even step inside the thousands of schools that are scrambling to 
comply with cookie-cutter regulations that often don't make sense on 
the local level.
  According to the Congressional Research Service, the Elementary and 
Secondary Act of 1965 was primarily concerned with the relationship 
between poverty and low educational achievement. That is, indeed, a 
noble goal. But the law has since gone far afield. Now it infringes on 
States rights to oversee school systems and strays into 
unconstitutional areas.
  Again, the 10th amendment to the Constitution says, ``The powers not 
delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by 
it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the 
people.''
  The Constitution does not give the Federal Government the express 
right to dabble in local education. We need to give States back their 
full constitutional right to set education policy and encourage 
innovative solutions to the unique education issues faced by every 
State.
  Tens of billions of Federal dollars cannot fix faulty schools. Broken 
schools need to be held accountable on the local level. By pushing 
accountability to the Federal level, we've produced a counterproductive 
system that is not responsive to the local needs of students, parents 
and teachers.
  As we look towards the next reauthorization of this law, we must take 
States rights into account, lest we again fail the most important 
people in this equation, our Nation's children.

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