[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 208 (Wednesday, December 20, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8159-S8162]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EDUCATION

  Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, unlike most of my colleagues, the time I 
spent here in the Senate represents the sum total of my experience in 
elected office. For most of my life I approached politics and public 
policy from a very different perspective. I tried to be an educated 
citizen who understood how the issues being debated here in Washington 
affected me, my family, my neighbors, and those in my State and my 
country. I tried to be an advocate for the values I believed in--
honesty in public discourse, for sure, but also fairness, justice, and 
the idea that in America we are all in this together. I tried to be an 
activist, putting my voice and my energy behind candidates and causes 
that I cared for and about.
  When I leave the Senate in a few weeks, I will continue trying to be 
an educated citizen, an advocate, and an activist. Over the last 8\1/2\ 
years, as I have had the privilege of serving the people of Minnesota, 
I also gained a new perspective on the issues we face and the way we 
here in Washington make decisions.
  Before I go, I want to spend some time sharing some of what I have 
learned in a series of speeches focusing on the challenges I came to 
Washington to address--challenges that my colleagues will continue to 
wrestle with, challenges that will determine not just the political 
landscape we leave for the next generation of Senators but what kind of 
country we leave for the next generation of Americans.
  Today I want to start by talking about education. Even at a time when 
our politics is more polarized and more poisonous than it has ever 
been, you would think that education is one place where Democrats and 
Republicans could come together to make progress. After all, while we 
do have significant differences on the details of education policy, 
nobody disagrees about the importance of getting it right. We all agree 
that education from pre-K through college and beyond is essential to 
providing our economy with a skilled workforce that is ready to 
innovate and lead us into the future.
  Ever since I have been here, employers in Minnesota have stressed to 
me that they need employees with critical thinking and problem solving 
skills, with team work and creativity--tools that we need our children 
to be developing long before they enter the workforce. I am pretty sure 
that my colleagues hear this from employers in their States too.
  Of course, education isn't just about our economy. It is about the 
most basic responsibility we have as human beings. Many of us who have 
served in the Senate have children and grandchildren, and we would do 
anything to be able to promise to them that when they grow up, they 
will be able to follow their dreams and take a risk on themselves to 
achieve more than we ever could. Many of us remember just how hard our 
own parents worked to keep that promise to us. All of us, Democrat and 
Republican alike, want to be able to make that promise not just to our 
own children but to every child in America, no matter where they grow 
up or what their family life is like or what obstacles they may 
encounter along the way.
  We all want a country where every child has the opportunity to 
fulfill his or her God-given potential. We all understand that whether 
we can provide every child with a great education is the most basic 
measure of whether we are keeping that promise. Fortunately, the HELP 
Committee, which I had the honor of serving on since I first arrived in 
the Senate, has been led by public servants who share those values and 
a common commitment to delivering on that promise. Under Chairman 
Harkin and now under Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray, the 
HELP Committee has often been able to be an example of how Democrats 
and Republicans can work together to make progress.
  When I first got here, the debate was focused on No Child Left 
Behind, which Congress had passed and President Bush had signed into 
law in 2002. Democrats and Republicans worked together on that bill 
back then because they all believed that it was important that our 
schools be held accountable for the results they achieved on behalf of 
all students. But by 2009, it had become clear that No Child Left 
Behind simply wasn't getting the job done.
  A couple of weeks after I got to the Senate, I held a roundtable with 
principals at a school that had been turned around in a poor 
neighborhood by a great principal in St. Paul. One of the other 
principals told me that he referred to the NCLB tests as autopsies. I 
knew exactly what he meant. The kids were taking the tests in late 
April. The results didn't come back until late June or later--too late 
to let the results inform teachers' instruction of each child.
  In Minnesota, therefore, most school districts added computer 
adaptive tests

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in addition to the required NCLB tests--computers so the teachers could 
get the results right away and adaptive so that if a kid was getting 
all the questions right, the questions would get harder and if the 
kid was getting all of the questions wrong, the questions would get 
easier. That way, instead of measuring whether or not a student was 
appropriately proficient at grade level in reading and math, educators 
could find out exactly what grade level each student was at in those 
subjects--adaptive. NCLB, on the other hand, didn't allow a State to 
test outside of grade level. Schools and teachers were judged on 
whether a sufficient percentage of kids met this arbitrary standard. 
This became known as measuring for proficiency, and it created what 
teachers in Minnesota described to me as ``a race to the middle.'' It 
made them focus on kids just below or just above proficiency. So the 
ones just below would get above and the ones just above would stay 
above proficiency, and they would ignore the kid at the top because 
those kids at the top, no matter what you did, wouldn't go below 
proficiency. They would ignore the kids at the bottom because no matter 
what you did that year you couldn't get those kids to proficiency. So 
there was this race to the middle. Think about how perverse that is.

  Think about a fifth grade teacher who takes a kid from a second grade 
level of reading to a fourth grade level of reading. Well, that kid 
didn't get to proficiency. So under No Child Left Behind, that teacher 
was a goat. But a teacher who helps a child grow by two grade levels in 
a single year is a hero. Teachers, principals, superintendents, school 
board members and parents all argued that it was time to stop measuring 
just for proficiency and to measure for growth or measure just growth, 
instead. This became quickly a central focus of the debate over how to 
reform No Child Left Behind, and it remains a pivotal debate when it 
comes to the future of our education system, which is why it was so 
shocking when President Trump picked a Secretary of Education, Betsy 
DeVos, who turned out to have no idea what the growth versus 
proficiency debate was even about.
  It would be as if our children's future relied on the outcome of a 
football game and the President nominated a head coach who didn't know 
how many yards it took to get a first down. It was a deeply upsetting 
moment, not just because of what it revealed about Mrs. DeVos or the 
President who had picked her to be in charge of our Nation's education 
system but because these are the kinds of problems that we should be 
able to solve. There is nothing ideological about the debate. It is 
simply a matter of coming together and working in good faith to make 
things work better. A functioning democracy should be able to get stuff 
like this right, and sometimes we have.
  For example, in the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act we were 
able to address some of the excessive testing that was burdening 
educators and students alike. Under the new law, schools would still 
have to test every year between third and eighth grade and once in high 
school, but each State would control the consequences of the test 
results and that would almost certainly mean fewer high stakes tests, 
less drilling, more time to teach and learn.
  Meanwhile, the law included important priorities like strengthening 
STEM education, expanding student mental health services, increasing 
access to courses that help high school students earn college credit, 
and preparing and recruiting more and better principals to lead better 
schools. These are all things that I fought to include in that final 
law.
  It also included a long overdue investment in early childhood 
education, but not enough--not enough. We know from study after study 
that a quality early childhood education returns between $7 and $16 for 
every dollar invested. That is because children who get a quality early 
childhood education are less likely to be referred to special ed and 
less likely to be held back a grade. They have better health outcomes. 
Girls are less likely to get pregnant in adolescence. They are more 
likely to graduate high school, go to college, and get a good job and 
pay taxes. And they are less likely to go to prison.
  If we really want to address future deficits, we would be pouring 
money into training early childhood educators. Instead, in his budget 
in the Congress, the Trump administration proposed major cuts to early 
childhood education. We could easily put more money into these programs 
if we weren't giving enormous tax cuts to the wealthy and to powerful 
corporations.
  We also need to make sure that as our kids get older, they can rely 
on quality afterschool programs. Last spring, I visited Roosevelt High 
School in Minneapolis. During my tour of the school's afterschool 
program, I saw students rehearsing for a production of the ``Addams 
Family.'' I saw students getting critical academic support like 
tutoring and college prep. In fact, Roosevelt's successful afterschool 
programs contributed to their graduation rate going from less than 50 
percent to over 70 percent in just 3 years. That is pretty incredible. 
That is why I fought to renew the 21st Century Community Learning 
Centers Program in the reform of No Child Left Behind. It is a program 
that keeps schools open after school.
  If we all agree that education should be a priority, we should be 
willing to put our money where our mouths are and fund these programs. 
I am proud that during the course of my time here, we have had a 
bipartisan commitment in doing just that. We made progress--not enough, 
but we made progress. Again, however, that progress was put at risk 
under this administration. That afterschool program was zeroed out in 
its proposed budget. What is more, this administration seems to be 
outright hostile to the idea that we have responsibilities to provide 
children with a quality public education.
  I am proud of the work we have done to support and improve our public 
schools, but the Department of Education is now led by a Secretary with 
a long history of actively undermining public education. Secretary 
DeVos and her family have spent millions and millions of dollars 
advocating for an ideology that would steal funds from public schools 
in order to fund private and religious education.
  Now, let's take a moment to talk about what that means. Secretary 
DeVos ran a political action committee called All Children Matter, 
which spent millions in campaign contributions to promote the use of 
taxpayer dollars for school vouchers. The argument was that these 
vouchers would allow low-income students to leave the public school 
system and attend private schools of their family's choice. Secretary 
DeVos has been pushing to expand vouchers for years, even though 
research clearly shows that voucher programs don't work. In fact, the 
academic outcomes for students who use vouchers to attend private 
schools is abysmal.
  A New York Times article from February of this year reported on three 
different studies of large State voucher programs in Indiana, 
Louisiana, and Ohio. Each study found that vouchers negatively impact 
results in both reading and math. In fact, in Louisiana's voucher 
program, public elementary school students who started at the 50th 
percentile in math and then used a voucher to transfer to a private 
school dropped to the 26th percentile in a single year. Harvard 
education professor Martin West said this negative effect was ``as 
large as any I've seen in the literature,'' and he was talking about 
all literature, the entire history of American education research.
  Secretary DeVos is a serious threat to our public school system and a 
threat to the quality of education in this country overall. I have 
pushed as hard as I can to protect our students from what this 
administration has been trying to do. I have sent the Secretary over a 
dozen letters this year on protecting students from harassment, helping 
defrauded students, and holding for-profit schools accountable. It is 
my hope that my colleagues will continue to be vigilant in overseeing 
the Department of Education and making sure our public education system 
is not dismantled.
  Our public education system was designed to give all kids a real 
chance in life, but teachers and administrators often lack the 
resources they need to give the kids the opportunities they deserve. 
Every year, I push appropriators to increase funding for a number of 
critical education programs like early childhood, STEM, and 
professional development for teachers, and I hope my

[[Page S8161]]

colleagues will continue that fight to increase resources for these 
programs.
  Improving our education system isn't just about funding and 
accountability. If we want to keep the promise of opportunity to every 
child, we have to recognize that some kids face obstacles others do 
not, and we have to do more to make sure they are not left behind. For 
example, particularly kids who grow up poor are far more likely to 
suffer what are called adverse childhood experiences, not just the 
stress of living in poverty itself but exposure to domestic violence, 
abuse or neglect, drug and alcohol abuse, the incarceration of a 
parent, the death of a sibling. All of those adverse childhood 
experiences affect brain chemistry and the ability to learn. If we want 
to improve education, we need to do a better job of helping these 
children overcome these traumas and a better job of addressing economic 
inequality so fewer have to deal with the trauma in the first place. 
This is another reason we need more high-quality, early childhood 
programs and more training for childcare providers so they can better 
support kids who have experienced trauma.
  Here is another example, foster kids. It is not uncommon for foster 
children to have 10, 11, 12 sets of foster parents during their 
childhood. This wreaks havoc on their education. Sometimes foster kids 
fall through the cracks of our education system. If a child's new 
foster parents live in a different school district, the foster child is 
yanked out of school and sent to one in the new school district. Kayla 
VanDyke, who at the time was an incredibly impressive high school 
senior from Minnesota, testified before the HELP Committee that she had 
been in seven foster homes, and she did fall through the cracks. She 
missed fourth grade entirely. For foster kids, school is often the one 
constant in their life--maybe they have a teacher they really like or 
an extracurricular activity that means everything to them or maybe they 
have these things called friends. That is why I wrote a provision in 
the Every Student Succeeds Act to require school districts to work with 
child welfare agencies to make sure foster children who are changing 
homes are not forced to change schools. I would like to think that 
somewhere there is a foster child running cross-country or developing a 
passion for history because of a great teacher or doing homework with a 
good friend because of legislation I worked on, legislation that passed 
with a strong bipartisan majority.

  Here is yet another example--kids in Indian Country. When I first 
came to the Senate, I asked for a seat on the Indian Affairs Committee. 
Serving on that committee, you are confronted with the tragic 
disparities from which Native people in our country suffer. One of them 
is the huge disparity in educational resources for Native kids compared 
to their peers. That inequity in education plays out in many ways, but 
you can literally see it in the school buildings some Native kids are 
forced to learn in. Indian school buildings are often unsafe, harmful 
to the health of children and teachers, and ultimately a barrier to the 
education of the students.
  So going back to early 2009, I had been fighting for funding to fix 
the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig High School on Leech Lake Reservation in northern 
Minnesota. When I first visited the school, I saw exposed wiring, mold, 
roof leaks, rodents, uneven floors, poor lighting, and sewer problems. 
I learned the students had faced these horrendous conditions in their 
classrooms for years. It was deplorable and was a terrible place to 
learn, so I worked for the better part of a decade to rebuild that 
school. I sent my colleagues a series of powerful editorials about 
conditions at the school as written by the Minneapolis StarTribune. I 
raised this issue at what seems like countless Indian Affairs hearings. 
After a lot of work from the community, the Tribe, and the Obama 
administration, we were able to secure the funding to rebuild the Bug-
O-Nay-Ge-Shig school.
  I am thrilled so many bright, young students in Leech Lake will be 
able to feel safe and comfortable in a brandnew school, which will be 
opening this coming March, but this is one school, one reservation, and 
there are hundreds of schools like the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig High School 
that are not suitable for learning, and we need to do so much more for 
our Native kids.
  In Indian Country, we know that historical trauma has a huge impact 
on our children. We have seen the ripple effects of intergenerational 
trauma, and we know it can lead to other types of trauma experienced in 
childhood.
  That is why, when we look at these adverse childhood experiences, 
particularly within the Native community, we can't dismiss their 
effects on kids' ability to learn. Kids in Indian Country are woefully 
underserved when it comes to housing and economic opportunity. A report 
by Wilder Research states that this can ``threaten their educational 
success, health and mental health, and personal development.'' I am 
pleased Senator Heitkamp of North Dakota has been focused on addressing 
this issue.
  One more example: LGBT students deserve to learn in an environment 
free from discrimination, and they deserve to be treated with dignity 
and respect. Far too often, LGBT kids endure harassment and 
discrimination. More than 30 percent of LGBT kids report missing a day 
of school in the previous month because they felt unsafe. You can't 
learn when you dread going to school, and when that happens, those 
students are deprived of an equal education.
  In America, we have passed laws that guard against harassment in our 
schools on the basis of race, national origin, sex, and disability, but 
LGBT students continue to face bullying and intimidation without 
recourse. I have a bill called the Student Non-Discrimination Act that 
would merely provide LGBT students the same legal remedies available to 
other kids under our Federal civil rights laws. It says, schools would 
have to listen when a parent says ``my child isn't safe,'' and the 
school has to do something about it. It would ensure that LGBT kids 
have the same protections as every other child. I worked very hard to 
get this provision into the final law, and I was greatly disappointed 
it wasn't included, even though it got 52 votes on the Senate floor.
  It is our responsibility, not just as Senators but as adults, to 
protect children and help them flourish, and I sincerely hope every one 
of my colleagues will take up this fight and work to get this across 
the finish line.
  The last thing I want to mention on the subject of education is this. 
For a long time, we thought about learning as something that started 
when you went to kindergarten and continued until you got your high 
school diploma and either went off to college or went off to work. We 
now know education is a lifelong pursuit, but we also know we need to 
do more to make it possible for it to continue long after 12th grade.
  College used to be an affordable and accessible step into the middle 
class for so many Americans. I always think of my wife Franni and her 
family. You see, when Franni was 17 months old, her dad, a decorated 
World War II veteran, died in a car accident, leaving her mom widowed 
with five kids. Neil, her brother, went into the Coast Guard and became 
an electrical engineer, but all four girls went to college, and they 
went on combinations of Pell grants and scholarships. You see, back 
then, a Pell grant covered about 80 percent of the cost of a public 
college education. Today, it is less than 35 percent.
  So today kids have to work while they go to college. That is not new, 
but when I have done roundtables at colleges across Minnesota, many of 
them tell me they are working full time, in addition to going to school 
full time, which seems like it might make it harder to focus on your 
studies or to stay awake. That is why I have been working to bring down 
the cost of college, increase financial aid to students, and make 
textbooks cheaper. We need to help millions of Americans refinance 
their student loan debt at lower interest rates, and we need to help 
low- and middle-income students go to college debt-free. This is 
something we could easily be doing if we weren't giving giant tax cuts 
to the superwealthy and to powerful corporations.
  It is important to remember, too, that young people don't necessarily 
need to start at a 4-year college to become successful in life or to 
build a secure middle-class lifestyle. In many career and technical 
programs, students complete their education after they have been 
employed in good jobs because they had the credentials to get those 
jobs--good jobs with benefits that promise a secure career. Some of

[[Page S8162]]

those benefits are often that company paying for the rest of your 
education--finishing, maybe, your associate's degree or your bachelor's 
degree or graduate school.
  We need to overcome the assumption that career and technical schools 
are a ceiling to future success. They are a ladder to careers with good 
wages and benefits that can support a comfortable lifestyle.
  There is a high demand for these workers now. That is because we have 
what is called a skills gap in this country. Every Senator has it in 
their State. It is one of the things I hear about frequently when I 
travel around Minnesota, especially when I talk to businesses. I hear 
about job positions employers can't fill because they can't find 
qualified workers or workers with the right skills. At the same time, I 
hear from students who are anxious to start a career but lack specific 
technical skills.
  To remain competitive in today's global economy, we need a better 
trained workforce. That is why I introduced the Community College to 
Career Fund Act. The grants would help create public-private 
partnerships that support Learn and Earn on-the-job training programs. 
Employers would develop a workforce with the specific skills they need 
to grow their businesses, and everybody wins.
  Here is how it works. You go to get a credential. That credential 
gets you a job. Then the employer will pay for you to continue your 
education as you continue to work and make a living. I have seen this 
time and again, and it works.
  We also need to reauthorize the Perkins Career and Technical 
Education law, which includes support for public-private partnership 
training programs in K-12.
  I think some of the things we need to do to make college more 
affordable and accessible and valuable for students are pretty clear. 
But let's be honest. The Trump administration--after nearly a year in 
office--has been going in a very different direction and has been 
working against the best interests of college students. One of the most 
unfortunate aspects of this is that predatory for-profit colleges have 
been able to get even more of a foothold in our higher education system 
since Secretary DeVos took over.
  The good news when it comes to education is that America still has 
teachers and principals and school board members and superintendents 
who work hard every day to take responsibility for every student under 
their care and deliver on the promise of a great education. We still 
have parents and neighbors and coaches who look out for our children's 
well-being and who work to equip them with the skills they need to 
succeed in school and beyond.
  As anyone who has spent any time in a school lately can tell you, our 
kids themselves still have some pretty impressive potential. What is 
more, we still have people on both sides of the aisle in the Senate who 
care passionately about education and are willing to do the hard work 
of bipartisan legislating in order to improve our schools and keep that 
promise of opportunity for the next generation.
  If the last 8\1/2\ years have taught me that progress on education is 
possible, even in a divided Washington, this past year has taught me 
that further progress isn't inevitable and that the progress we have 
already made may not be safe.
  It will be up to my colleagues not to address just the policy 
challenges posed by an education system that faces a big transition and 
a budget that forces hard choices but also the political challenges of 
the moment. It is my hope and prayer that they will be up to the task. 
Our children's future depends on it.
  Thank you.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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