[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 77 (Tuesday, June 4, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3957-S3958]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. HARKIN (for himself, Ms. Mikulski, Mrs. Murray, Mr. 
        Sanders, Mr. Casey, Mrs. Hagan, Mr. Franken, Mr. Bennet, Mr. 
        Whitehouse, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Murphy, and Ms. Warren):
  S. 1094. A bill to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 
of 1965, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Health, Education, 
Labor, and Pensions.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, throughout my career in public service I 
have been committed to ensuring that all children in this country 
receive a quality education. Today, I join my Democratic colleagues on 
the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which I 
chair, in introducing a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act of 1965, ESEA, which has become better known in 
recent years as the No Child Left Behind Act, NCLB. In my view, our 
bill will appropriately redefine the Federal role in education in this 
country and will focus our collective efforts to improve the lives of 
our most vulnerable children.
  I want to start with a few words about the Federal role in education, 
since ESEA, in large measure, determines that role. While it is 
certainly true that education is primarily a State and local function, 
the Federal Government also plays an important role, and a well-
educated citizenry is clearly in the national interest. A cardinal 
Federal role is to ensure all Americans, regardless of race, gender, 
national origin, religion and disability have the same equal 
opportunity to a good education. Likewise, the Constitution expressly 
states that our national government was formed to ``promote the general 
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.'' The general welfare is 
greatly endangered when the populace is not adequately educated. And, 
education is critical to liberty.
  ESEA was first passed in 1965 in order to provide aid to States and 
school districts to improve education for children from low-income 
families. And in 1975, Congress passed the Education for All 
Handicapped Children Act, later renamed the Individuals with 
Disabilities Education Act, to assist States and districts in educating 
children with disabilities. For more than 40 years, the Federal 
government has trained its focus on the mission that all children 
should have the chance to fulfill their full potential.
  The No Child Left Behind Act represented a departure from previous 
reauthorizations of ESEA. Lawmakers felt compelled to be more 
prescriptive with States to ensure that they improved their low-
performing schools and focused on closing pernicious student 
achievement gaps. NCLB defined ``adequate yearly progress'' for schools 
and districts; it required districts to put aside money to implement 
public school choice and tutoring in schools identified for 
improvement; it included a list of rigorous interventions for low-
performing schools and an additional category of ``restructuring'' for 
the most chronically low-performing schools with even more severe 
consequences. NCLB reflected good intentions. However, as we have seen 
over the course of the past 12 years, those good intentions did not 
translate to good policy on-the-ground. Many States lowered 
expectations for students with the standards and assessments they 
developed. Many local

[[Page S3958]]

schools and teachers were branded failing when some of their students 
did not meet the rigid benchmarks the Federal Government had set--even 
though in many instances students had made substantial progress. 
Districts felt hamstrung by the requirement to spend money on reforms 
that simply did not meet the needs of many students.
  The Secretary of Education has given schools a reprieve from these 
onerous requirements through a flexibility agreement that States have 
undertaken voluntarily. While this reflects a positive change for the 
time being, it is no substitute for a new law. The actions of the 
Secretary, while laudable, may only last as long as this 
administration. What will happen in 2016? Will the flexibility 
agreements stay in place or will States be forced to revert to the 
requirements of what will then be a 15-year-old law that reflects old 
thinking?
  The bill I am introducing along with HELP Committee Democrats follows 
a different course than NCLB, and one similar to the flexibility 
agreements instituted by the U.S. Department of Education. We ask for a 
system of shared responsibility with States and school districts. I 
believe that we are entering an era in which the Federal Government can 
work in partnership with States to improve our Nation's schools, while 
continuing to provide a backstop to avoid returning to old ways. Our 
bill gets rid of AYP, but sets Federal parameters for State-and 
locally-designed accountability systems. These systems must: cover all 
students, including students with disabilities and English learners; 
continue to measure and report on the performance of all schools; 
expect sufficient progress for all schools and subgroups of students; 
and provide for local interventions in low-performing schools or 
schools with low-achieving student subgroups beyond the lowest 
performing 5 percent. States that have received a waiver from the 
Secretary in the past two years can continue to operate under the 
agreements they made. States without a waiver will develop 
accountability plans that set schools on a path to attain the same 
levels of student achievement as the top 10 percent of schools in their 
State. However, if States have a different accountability system in 
mind, they can develop one that is equally ambitious to the ones above, 
subject to approval by the Secretary of Education, an important 
safeguard on the quality and integrity of these systems.
  Our bill sets the high bar of ensuring that students who graduate 
from high school are college- and career-ready. It narrows the Federal 
focus to turning around persistently low-achieving schools and our 
Nation's dropout factories--those schools that graduate less than 60 
percent of their students--as well as schools with significant student 
achievement gaps.
  Our bill also asks States to put greater emphasis on the learning of 
children in the early years because we know that so many of our 
children, particularly children from low-income families, have gaps in 
learning before they even enter the school door. I have often said that 
learning begins at birth and the preparation for learning begins before 
birth. For the first time in the law's history, it is a purpose of 
Title I to provide children access to high-quality early learning 
experiences so that they come to school ready to learn. Our bill also 
encourages States to begin providing full-day kindergarten if they do 
not do so already. It also asks States to have, or establish, early 
learning and development guidelines that describe what children should 
know and be able to do before they enter kindergarten so that States 
can address gaps in learning as early as possible.
  Our bill also takes the significant step of closing the 
``comparability loophole'' so that funds provided through Title I of 
ESEA will finally serve as additional dollars for our neediest 
students, and Title I schools will get their fair share of Federal 
resources. It also provides districts with more flexibility in how 
States and districts spend their Federal funds while ensuring that the 
resources designated to serve our most disadvantaged students get to 
those students. The bill creates a Professional Growth and Improvement 
System that requires the development of rigorous and fair teacher and 
principal evaluations, and provides these critical school staff with 
the support they need to continually improve teaching and learning. It 
also leverages opportunities for more children to access high quality 
early learning programs and adds new protections for some of our most 
vulnerable children--homeless students and students in foster care--so 
that they will be better served by schools.
  Our bill strategically consolidates programs and focuses grant funds 
on a smaller number of programs to allow for greater flexibility, and 
supports districts in extending the school day and year, strengthening 
their literacy, science, math or technology programs, fostering safe 
and healthy students, and offering a more well-rounded curriculum that 
includes the arts and physical education. It invests in effective 
programs to train and support principals and teachers for high-need 
schools. And, it fosters innovation through new programs like Race to 
the Top, Investing in Innovation, and Promise Neighborhoods.
  I believe this is a very good bill and I am proud of our efforts. We 
owe it to our kids and our nation to produce a law that provides States 
and districts with the certainty, support and resources they need to 
make meaningful strides in improving our educational system. To that 
end, I would note that historically, education policy in Congress has 
been done in a bipartisan fashion. I want to give appropriate credit to 
the Ranking Member of the HELP Committee, the distinguished senior 
Senator from Tennessee, Senator Alexander. We worked in good faith for 
many months to attempt to forge an agreement on a path forward. 
However, in the end, there were certain fundamental issues on which we 
could not agree. That is why, along with other HELP Committee 
Democrats, I have decided to move forward with a Democratic bill. It is 
my strong hope that Senate Republicans will recognize the significant 
changes that we have made in this bill to address their concerns, and 
will work with us to reconcile remaining disagreements so that together 
we can pass a law that provides children with a greater chance at 
reaching their full potential. It is the duty and responsibility of 
members of Congress in both houses to replace the No Child Left Behind 
Act with a new and better law.
  This bill represents significant change, and change is difficult. We 
must work to together to move from a culture of minimal compliance with 
Federal requirements to one of shared innovation, shared responsibility 
and success for all students. I look forward to working towards this 
new partnership and to the next chapter of an effective Federal role in 
promoting educational excellence and equity.
                                 ______