[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.
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