[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 14, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2165-S2166]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    EVERY CHILD ACHIEVES ACT OF 2015

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed 
in the Record a copy of my opening remarks at the markup of the Every 
Child Achieves Act.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                    Every Child Achieves Act of 2015

       We are meeting today to write legislation that will fix the 
     problems with ``No Child Left Behind,'' the federal law 
     causing confusion and anxiety in our country's 100,000 public 
     schools.
       Working together the last few months, Senator Murray and I 
     have found a consensus about the urgent need to fix these 
     problems as well as a remarkable consensus about how to fix 
     them.
       That consensus is this: Continue the law's important 
     measurements of academic progress of students but restore to 
     states, school districts, classroom teachers and parents the 
     responsibility for deciding what to do about improving 
     student achievement. This change should produce fewer tests 
     and more appropriate ways to measure student achievement. It 
     is the most effective path to advance higher state standards, 
     better teaching, and real accountability.
       We have drafted a bill based upon this consensus which we 
     will offer as a starting point for our deliberations.
       The problems with No Child Left Behind have been created by 
     a combination of presidential action and congressional 
     inaction. In 2001, President Bush and Congress enacted ``No 
     Child Left Behind,'' requiring a total of 17 tests between 
     reading, math and science during a child's elementary and 
     secondary education. The results of these tests must be 
     disaggregated and reported according to race, ethnicity, 
     gender, disability and other measures so parents, teachers 
     and the community could see which children are being left 
     behind. The law also created federal standards for whether a 
     school is succeeding or failing, what a state or school 
     district must do about that failure, and whether a teacher 
     was highly qualified to teach in a classroom.
       If fixing No Child Left Behind were a standardized test, 
     Congress would have earned a failing grade for each of the 
     last seven years. ``No Child Left Behind'' expired in 2007 
     but Congress has been unable to agree on how to reauthorize 
     it. As a result, the law's original requirements have stayed 
     in place and gradually became unworkable. This has caused 
     almost all of America's public schools to be classified as 
     failing under the terms of the law. To avoid this bizarre 
     result, President Obama's Education Secretary offered waivers 
     from the terms of the law. But the Secretary required each of 
     the 42 states currently operating under waivers to adopt 
     certain academic standards, take prescribed steps to help 
     failing schools, and to evaluate teachers in a defined way.
       So much new federal control of local schools has produced a 
     backlash against ``Common Core'' academic standards, teacher 
     evaluation, and against tests in general. Governors and chief 
     state school officers complain about federal overreach. 
     Infuriated teachers say that the U.S. Department of Education 
     has become a ``National Human Resources Department or, in 
     effect, a national school board.''
       In each of the last two Congresses, this Committee produced 
     bills to fix No Child Left Behind. Basically, these bills 
     divided our committee along party lines. Even so, two 
     Congresses ago, Sens. Enzi, Kirk and I voted with the 
     Democratic majority to report a bill out of committee so that 
     the full senate could act. In the last Congress, the 
     committee majority passed a partisan bill without any 
     Republican votes, but I committed to support Chairman Harkin 
     in taking the bill to the floor if there would be an open 
     amendment process. Unfortunately, these bills never reached 
     the senate floor.
       In January, Sen. Murray suggested that the two of us work 
     together to try to bridge the partisan divide and to 
     recommend to the full committee a solution. I accepted her 
     suggestion and I want to thank her for it. We have listened 
     carefully to our senate colleagues, to teachers, principals, 
     governors, chief state school officers, students and parents 
     and the business and civil rights communities--and to each 
     other.
       I especially want to thank our staffs--Evan Schatz 
     (pronounced SHOTS), Sarah Bolton, and Amanda Beaumont on Sen. 
     Murray's staff, and David Cleary, Peter Oppenheim, and 
     Lindsay Fryer on my staff--for their hard work and the way 
     that they worked, trying to strip aside the rhetoric and look 
     for real solutions. I believe they, and we, have succeeded in 
     that.
       We found that no issue stirred as much controversy as 
     testing. Our proposal maintains the reading, math and science 
     tests and disaggregated reporting requirements established in 
     2001. The more we studied the problem; the issue seems not to 
     be the 17 federal tests. A third grader, for example, is 
     required to take only one test in math and one in reading 
     during one year. Denver Public Schools superintendent Tom 
     Boasberg testified before the committee that he'd like to 
     keep math and reading tests to a total of 4 hours a year--
     that's about what they are right now in Denver, according to 
     our calculations.
       Instead, the problem is the federal government's 
     accountability system for what to do about the results of 
     these tests. This federal accountability system has greatly 
     contributed to the exploding number of state and local tests.
       Because of this, our proposal would end federal test-based 
     accountability and restore state and local responsibility for 
     creating systems holding schools and teachers accountable. 
     State accountability systems must meet limited federal 
     guidelines, including challenging academic standards for all 
     students, but the federal government is prohibited from 
     determining or approving state standards or even 
     incentivizing states into adopting specific standards. In 
     other words, whether a state adopts Common Core is entirely 
     that state's decision. This transfer of responsibility is why 
     we believe our proposal will result in fewer and more 
     appropriate tests.
       Our proposal allows, but does not require, states to 
     develop and implement teacher evaluation systems that link 
     student achievement to teacher performance. States will be 
     allowed to use federal funds to implement evaluations the way 
     they see fit.
       States will determine their lowest-performing schools and 
     receive federal funds to assist those schools but the federal 
     government will not mandate specific steps to fix those 
     schools.
       Sens. Murray and Isakson will propose and I will support an 
     amendment for competitive planning grants to help states 
     expand quality early childhood education by addressing the 
     fragmentation of current early childhood federal, state, 
     local, public and private programs.
       In conclusion, I have this request for members of the 
     committee: please exercise restraint and help us get to a 
     result.
       If we senators were students in a classroom, none of us 
     would expect to receive a passing grade for unfinished work. 
     Seven years is long enough to consider how to fix No Child 
     Left Behind. The members of this committee are thoroughly 
     familiar with the issues. Twenty of our 22 members were on 
     the committee during the last Congress when we considered and 
     reported a bill. Sixteen of our members were here in the 
     previous Congress. Over the last 6 years and 3 months we have 
     had 27 hearings on elementary and secondary education.
       Knowing this, Sen. Murray and I have exercised restraint. 
     Neither of us insisted on putting into our base bill every 
     proposal about which we feel strongly, although we will offer 
     some of these as amendments when we reach the senate floor. 
     We know that to get a result we have to achieve consensus, 
     which means more than sixty votes. We also know that in 
     conference we will need to agree with the House of 
     Representatives, which is of one political party, and then 
     with the President, who is of another.
       During our committee discussions, any germane amendment 
     will be in order to the bipartisan agreement Sen. Murray and 
     I will offer. Any amendment related to K-12 education will be 
     in order on the senate floor. Nevertheless, I would ask each 
     member of this committee to exercise restraint in search of a 
     result. If we can agree on most things, let's put aside the 
     other things until another debate and another day.
       And I would ask one other thing: in offering your 
     amendments, please keep in mind the advice we received 
     earlier this year from Carol Burris, New York's 2013 High 
     School principal of the Year:
       ``I ask that your committee remember that the American 
     public school system was built on the belief that local 
     communities cherish their children and have the right and 
     responsibility, within sensible limits, to determine how they 
     are schooled.
       While the federal government has a very special role in 
     ensuring that our students do not experience discrimination 
     based on who they are or what their disability may be, 
     Congress is not a National School Board.

[[Page S2166]]

       Although our locally elected school boards may not be 
     perfect, they represent one of the purest forms of democracy 
     we have. Bad ideas in the small do damage in the small and 
     are easily corrected. Bad ideas at the federal level result 
     in massive failure and are far harder to fix.''
       In other words, our well-intended guidance from Washington 
     is usually not as effective as a decision made in the home, 
     classroom, and community by those closest to the children.
       What we heard over and over again from Democrats as well as 
     Republicans was that while continuing measurements of 
     academic progress are important in holding schools and 
     teachers accountable, we should respect the judgments of 
     those closest to the children and leave to them most 
     decisions about how to help 3.4 million teachers help 50 
     million children in 100,000 public schools improve student 
     achievement.
       Fifty years ago on Palm Sunday, President Lyndon B. Johnson 
     signed the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act. A 
     good way to celebrate that anniversary is to fix the problems 
     with the most recent version of the act so that all our 
     children can have the best possible opportunity to learn what 
     they need to know and be able to do in an increasingly 
     complex world.

                          ____________________