[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 193 (Tuesday, December 13, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7115-S7119]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Charter Schools

  Mr. SCOTT of South Carolina. Mr. President, tomorrow, we will have an 
opportunity to vote for students. Tomorrow, we will have an opportunity 
to vote for parents. Tomorrow, we will have the opportunity to vote for 
common sense in the U.S. Senate. Tomorrow, we will have an opportunity 
to vote for my resolution to stop the Biden Department of Education 
from destroying educational opportunities for millions of students and 
their parents.
  During the pandemic, we saw the devastating impact of prolonged 
school closures on America's kids, especially kids living in low-income 
communities.
  Big labor unions orchestrated these shutdowns, and blue city 
politicians fell in lockstep. They sided with union bosses over 
parents, over kids, and over plain old common sense.
  Now we see the tragic consequences. The 2022 NAEP scorecard shows the 
largest drop in reading scores for 9-year-olds in more than 30 years 
and the first-ever--the first-ever--drop in math scores, a 7-percent 
decrease.
  We warned them that this would happen. We said stop, stop letting 
labor bosses make decisions. Parents--parents--are the ones who know 
what is best for their kids. They need flexibility. They deserve 
choice.
  One of those options should always be high-quality public charter 
schools. These charter schools continue to outkick their coverage. This 
year, charter schools only represent 12 percent--12 percent--of all 
public high schools, but they make up 22 percent of the top 100 public 
high schools in our amazing country. That is nearly one out of four 
amazing public schools is a charter school, even though only 12 percent 
of all schools, all high schools, are charter schools.
  Think about this. In Colorado, 85 percent of charter school students 
met performance standards compared to only 66 percent of students in 
district-managed schools.
  Despite their proven track record of success for students, for 
parents, and, of course, for common sense, the Biden administration 
continues to attack charter schools. He campaigned against them. And 
then as soon as he got in office, he directed the bureaucrats at the 
DOE--the Department of Education--to put new restrictions on charter 
schools desperately, desperately looking for funding. These 
restrictions are a slap in the face to parents who are turning to 
charter schools as a better alternative for their children.
  Since the pandemic, charter schools have gained 7 percent--7 percent; 
that is, 240,000 more students have chosen charter schools because 
their parents are able to access common sense for their kids' education 
path. That means hundreds of thousand of students are better off today 
than they were before they had this option.
  These are kids growing up in some of America's most devastated 
communities, some of America's poorest communities, some of America's 
most disadvantaged communities.
  This is a game changer, not just for the students while they are 
enrolled in these schools, but this is a game changer for the rest of 
their lives. This is a game changer for them economically. This is the 
fastest path to the American dream, what we all hope to achieve one 
day. This is the game changer that we so often talk about.
  We have seen the success of providing parents with more options right 
here in Washington, DC, since the creation of the bipartisan--and let 
me say that word one more time because sometimes here in Washington, we 
don't think anything happens in a bipartisan fashion. But the DC 
Opportunity Scholarship is a bipartisan coalition of Senators and 
Congress members who came together to make sure that DC kids, since 
2004, have had opportunity for quality education through charter 
schools. Yes, 11,000 students, by the way--not 500, not 2,000, 11,000 
students--from low-income families here in DC were able to receive 
scholarships to attend the school of their choice, scholarships that 
were provided by Republicans and Democrats in Congresses since 2004.
  There is good news, by the way. The good news is that these students 
attending these remarkable public charter schools graduate 91 percent 
of the time--91 percent of the time. Compare that to students in the DC 
area who do not attend a public charter school who are in the public 
school system; they graduate only two out of three times, 66 percent. 
Wow.
  I can't imagine a world where my friends across the aisle who stood 
with me to protect DC Opportunity Scholarships would not stand with us 
today to protect more education options for kids all across America.
  By voting for the administration's restrictions, my friends across 
the aisle are telling these hard-working parents that labor union 
bosses and bureaucrats know what is best for their kids better than the 
parents themselves. That is plain wrong.
  Here is what I know: The greatest difference between the haves and 
the have-nots, it is not the color of your skin, it is not the 
neighborhood you live in, it is not the income of your parents, the 
biggest difference between the haves and the have-nots in our country 
will not be solved by playing politics and putting labor unions in 
front of your kids. The way that we close that gap, the biggest 
difference between the two sides--the haves and have-nots--my friend 
from Indiana, is education, quality education. It changes lives. It 
sets poor kids on the right path.

  I want to do for the kids today what was done for me when I was a 
kid. I want to make sure that everybody understands that education is 
the closest thing to magic in America, and I do mean a good education.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.

[[Page S7116]]

  

  Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I come to the floor here to give an even 
simpler argument as it applies in many different areas in addition to 
education.
  Senator Scott came to the floor to ask for choice, opportunity, and 
competition all mixed in together. When you have got that, you have got 
the description of a perfect marketplace, whether it is for healthcare, 
whether it is for education. And, ironically, the two places in our 
country where expenses keep going up and up would be in healthcare. 
Most families would put that up there right along with education.
  K-12, having that ability to choose where you would want your own 
kids to go to school is something that you should never be afraid of. 
If you are not interested in it, you are probably trying to hide 
something. That would be, in many cases, where you are not mustering 
what it takes to minimally educate your own child properly.
  I was on a school board for 10 years--2004 through 2014--in Indiana, 
a public school system in one of the most Catholic places in the State 
of Indiana. I will never forget, a high school tried to start that was 
Catholic. Our public school system was so good it couldn't get to first 
base, but at least the attempt was made. Not all areas are blessed with 
a public school system, as we traditionally know it, offering that top-
notch education.
  Whenever you do fear competition, transparency--which doesn't 
necessarily apply here, but choice, it does--you are probably trying to 
cover up something that is not performing.
  And, sadly, here is where you need the choice more than any other 
place, where folks can't afford to have the choice. And if you are 
trapped in one system, what does that say for your kids' future?
  I ran a business for 37 years. So many businesses tried to do the 
same thing, get involved in markets. It gets concentrated. That is what 
is happening in our healthcare industry. It is like an unregulated 
utility, and it disguises itself as free enterprise. That is 
restricting competition, restricting transparency, restricting choice.
  Costs have been going up for decades with no end in sight; 
postsecondary education, very similar. Here, all we need to do is take 
a system that still has a pretty good value to it, it just is not 
producing the results.
  Indiana has been one of the leaders in charter schools and choice. We 
have over 100 charter schools. I reflect back--I think it was when I 
was a State legislator--on a neighboring county, there were three grade 
schools. The smallest of the three had to be shut down because of cost 
cuts--well, best performing of the three. Those kids would have had to 
travel 10, 15 miles to get to one of the other two public schools, 
elementary. This place worked as hard as it could over 2 years, scraped 
together the resources, and kept their Otwell Miller Academy open. It 
was the choice of the parents. They were part of a system that wasn't 
working, and they were able to do it. Had it not been for the charter 
school policy in our State, that community would have been out of luck.
  We have some of the best charters in the country in Indiana because 
we are a place that generally embraces competition, transparency, 
choice, and no barriers to entry. Whenever the healthcare industry is 
trying to lobby for not having more competition, for instance, through 
physician-owned hospitals, when public school systems want themselves 
to be the only option, sometimes you get lucky, like I did, and went to 
a great public school system, but many times you don't, and you are 
trapped in a bad system.
  Our schools, too, that are charter sometimes are a little more 
experimental. They focus on things like STEM, CTE, particular education 
that community might need, where if you are brought into the same old 
curriculum, the same old process, the same thing that is not generating 
even the basic results, you are trapped in something that should never 
be the case.
  Be for choice. Be for competition. Be for a successful education.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, charter schools have seen explosive growth 
since they first came onto the scene in 1992 as a model for education. 
In 1993, there were just 23 charter schools in the United States, 
serving a little over 6,000 students. Today, there are over 7,000 
charter schools and counting, serving more than 3 million American 
students. It is not difficult to understand their increasing 
popularity. They offer an affordable alternative to parents and 
students who want more options. More options increase competition, and 
more options improve the quality of the traditional public education 
system.
  Unfortunately, the Biden administration's new rule threatens to 
stifle their progress by imposing stringent, onerous, burdensome new 
requirements on charter schools, specifically those that receive grants 
under the Federal Charter Schools Program, or CSP. This is a terrible 
idea.
  The CSP was established to provide grants to eligible charter schools 
to help ensure that all children have access to quality education 
regardless of their ZIP Code. The administration's new rules would 
stifle this proven, emerging, and burgeoning model, one that serves 
millions of the most vulnerable students in our traditional public 
school system. It would require CSP grantees to hold hearings--to hold 
hearings--specifically to prove that the presence of the school in 
question does not or would not contribute to increased racial 
segregation. This would impose a deliberately costly and inherently 
unfairly accusatory burden on charter schools and would disincentivize 
new schools from opening. This, I fear, is precisely the point. That is 
a feature, not a bug, in this program.
  Look, everyone can agree that we want our children to have access to 
quality education. The President's rule is antithetical to that very 
mission. The rule treats charter schools as if they have done something 
wrong, as if they are guilty somehow of racial segregation until they 
prove themselves innocent. The accusation of racial segregation is 
particularly egregious here because CSP schools are required to admit 
students through a lottery system if there are more interested students 
than there are available slots at the school. Clearly, this isn't an 
observation of reality but an injection of woke politics into an issue 
as fundamental as the education of America's schoolchildren.
  Most charter schools are doing their best to provide quality 
education to all students, regardless of race or ethnicity. Punishing 
them for behavior that they don't engage in simply isn't fair. It is 
not right.
  These regulations would also require the Secretary to examine whether 
a charter school is ``needed.'' Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I tend to 
think that parents--and certainly not the U.S. Secretary of Education--
should be the ones deciding the necessity of such schools.
  You know, we have seen this in other areas, other sectors of our 
economy. There are special interests that tend to stifle competition by 
pushing for regulations requiring new market entrants to demonstrate 
that they meet a need, to demonstrate that their facility of one sort 
or another, a hospital or otherwise, is ``needed.''
  I fear this requirement would do the same, and I fear this 
requirement has as its object the same thing as those other 
requirements in other industries: stifling competition, erecting 
barriers to entry, squelching competition. This is not OK. I don't 
think it is OK in any industry. It is certainly not OK where the 
victims are innocent schoolchildren who just need to learn, who need to 
be taught, need to go to school somewhere, and ought to be able to go 
to school with some options that their parents can have a role in 
choosing.
  Proponents of these rules argue that the regulations are necessary 
because charter schools are more likely to close than traditional 
public schools. They rightly argue that such closures can be disruptive 
to students' education. In reply, I first note that CSP schools are 
less likely to experience closure than other charter schools, but I 
would also note here that school closures also show why charter schools 
are so valuable.
  Unlike traditional public schools, where students in failing schools 
can go for 13 consecutive years without any other option, charter 
schools are subject to greater accountability. That is the power of 
choice.

[[Page S7117]]

  Mr. President, we shouldn't subject new charter schools to onerous 
requirements. We should not set up rules purely to protect the 
interests of teachers unions--the very same teachers unions that also 
pushed to close schools, that resisted reopening those schools and 
repeatedly placed their interests above those of parents and students.
  The President's rule would only lead to fewer educational 
opportunities for America's schoolchildren.
  While accountability for any government-funded enterprise is 
undoubtedly important, these rules go far beyond mere accountability. 
In fact, they are not about accountability; they are about something 
else, something far less credible, far less defensible than 
accountability. This is about squelching competition and protecting 
teachers unions from competition, and that is wrong.
  I urge my colleagues to oppose this misguided rule, this misguided 
effort, and to protect parent choice, ensuring that all children have 
access to quality education regardless of their ZIP Code.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I want to tell a bit of a story. There 
are some great schools and great teachers in Oklahoma. They do an 
incredible job, and they serve our families every day, doing remarkable 
work, working alongside so many kids who struggle in their educational 
environment, who struggle to be able to learn but who excel. I am 
grateful to those teachers across our State. Those teachers who are in 
our public schools--both our public traditional schools and our public 
charter schools--deserve to be applauded and encouraged for the work 
they do every day, and I am proud to know many of them as friends and 
as neighbors.
  But what is interesting to me right now is there is a push that is 
happening from the Biden administration to divide teachers, teachers 
who are in public school education, that there are some who are like 
the good public school teachers, and apparently there are some that--
you are the bad public school teachers. And it is not based on the 
ratings for their students or the quality of their teaching; it is 
based on which public school they choose to be able to serve in.
  You see, the Biden administration has put out a new policy to try to 
crush public charter schools. How are they doing it? They are saying 
that if there are open desks in other public schools, then the public 
charter school can't prove a need for them to exist at all, and they 
want to just be able to wipe them out.
  Stop. Let me just set this in context for you. In Oklahoma, there is 
a school called Harding Charter Preparatory High School. Maybe you 
wouldn't know it, but U.S. News & World Report--they know it. U.S. News 
& World Report--with 18,000 schools in America, they rank the 18,000 
schools in America. U.S. News & World Report ranked Harding Charter 
Preparatory School in Oklahoma City 115th out of 18,000 schools. In 
fact, in Oklahoma, Harding Charter Preparatory High School was ranked 
No. 1. The No. 1 school in the State is this public charter school.
  Now, it happens to be in an area where there are open desks in other 
schools around it, so it won't meet the need requirement that the Biden 
administration is putting out to say: You can't prove a need for your 
existence. So the No. 1 school in our State could be wiped out because 
those public school teachers are teaching at the wrong public school.
  What else can I tell you about Harding? At Harding, 100 percent of 
the students go to AP classes--100 percent of them. What else can I 
tell you about Harding? Seventy-two percent of the students at Harding 
Preparatory School are minorities--72 percent--and it is the No. 1 
school in our State.
  What is different about a public charter school and a traditional 
public school? Well, the rules for the kids are exactly the same--the 
same testing requirements, the same State requirements, the same 
Federal requirements for the kids. The rules are exactly the same for 
the kids, but they are different for the grownups. The grownups have a 
different set of rules. They have a different set of accountability in 
charter schools.
  What is the result they are getting? The No. 1 school in our State is 
a charter school. The 115th school in the country is this charter 
school. Yet, now the Biden administration is saying: You are going to 
have to prove a need for it.
  Can I tell you, the parents and families in Oklahoma have already 
proven a need for it. I got an email in from one of those students, who 
said: I was not getting access to these AP classes in the school--in 
the public school they were in before. They had no shot of really 
getting into the college they wanted to be able to get into until they 
got into Harding Charter Preparatory School, a public charter school, 
and now they have a shot.
  I have to tell you, I don't understand the battle with choice that is 
happening with parents in this country. I don't understand why suddenly 
so many government officials want to be able to say to parents: You go 
to that school, the school we choose; you can't move; you have to stay 
right there--why that is suddenly the trend in America.
  This growing push across our country for public charter schools, for 
parents to be more involved in their child's education, for parents to 
have new options in education, for parents to be able to have a choice 
and some freedom, why is that so bad, that so many kids get a shot?
  Can I tell you, I have two daughters. They are not the same. They 
have different preferences. They have different ideas. They are both 
beautiful and amazing girls. But, for some reason, the folks in the 
Biden administration, in the Education Department, are saying: All kids 
are the same, and we are going to require them to do it the way we want 
all kids to do it--rather than allowing parents like me and parents 
like others to be able to say: This child's best education environment 
is in that location, in that public school, or another child has a 
better educational environment in a different charter public school.
  Don't lose track of this: They are both public schools. They both 
have requirements for the students which are exactly the same, but the 
rules for the grownups are different. Some in the teachers union do not 
like that, and so this plan is to shut down this type of school, like 
Harding.
  I say let's stand with those parents and with those students, with 
that charter school and a multitude of others in my State where parents 
are engaged in their child's education and administrators in those 
schools have to work twice as hard because they don't get the same 
level of funding as other public schools. Let's support them, not try 
to diminish them.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lujan). The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, I would like to thank my 
colleague from South Carolina for all of his work to promote school 
choice. I have been proud to partner with him each year to cosponsor 
the National School Choice Week resolution and promote the maximum 
amount of educational choice for parents.
  Since I have been in Washington, I have noticed how many different 
school options are available for families in the area: public schools, 
charter schools, private schools, religious schools, home schools, co-
ops. There are all kinds of options for parents and their children 
here.
  DC is an example of a place where school choice has helped everyone, 
as government-funded schools have generally failed.
  Of course, Washington, DC, is also where our Nation's political elite 
and their children reside. It is where diplomats from around the world 
come and send their kids to the school of their choice. Bureaucrats, 
politicians, and wealthy parents have all the choice in the world to 
send their kids to get a great education. But why should that choice 
only be available to the elite political class? Why is it that teachers 
unions and Democratic politicians want to fight school choice and keep 
students from middle and lower income families in failing schools?
  It is a perfect example of how the swamp works: They will give every 
advantage to their own kids, while pushing the working class down. The 
elites have always had school choice, and like my colleague from South 
Carolina, I simply want to extend that choice to every family.

[[Page S7118]]

  During my 8 years as Governor of Florida, I was a proud champion of 
school choice and charter schools. I have long believed that parents, 
not the government, know what is best for their children.
  Near the end of my time as Governor, Florida had 653 charter schools 
operating across our great State. More than one in four K-12 public 
school kids in Florida chose a school other than the one that they were 
assigned to.
  We were ranked third in the Nation for our number of charter schools 
and the number of students enrolled in our charter schools. That 
competition helped everyone, including our public school system. When I 
was leaving, we ranked fourth in the Nation for K-12 student 
achievement. In other words, our push for maximum choice helped their 
students in all of our schools get ahead.
  That didn't happen overnight, of course. But we had to work at it. 
For example, I worked to expand access to Florida's Tax Credit 
Scholarship Program. This tax credit encourages voluntary contributions 
from corporate donors to scholarship funding organizations. These 
organizations then award scholarships to students from low-income 
families so they can attend private schools or get help transporting 
them to a public school in another school district.
  During my 8 years, the number of kids benefiting from that 
scholarship program grew from 40,000 to 108,000. Sixty thousand more 
students were able to attend a school that better met their needs 
because we gave them that choice.
  Similarly, I signed legislation creating open enrollment in Florida. 
That bill allowed more than 280,000 students to attend any public 
school in the State regardless of their ZIP Code.
  I also signed legislation to expand access to scholarships for 
students with disabilities so they could attend a public or private 
school of their choice.
  I also signed a bill creating the Schools of Hope Program. It 
established high-quality educational options for students attending 
persistently low performing public schools.
  Instead of attending the lower performing school, we drew in charter 
school networks that had a proven track record for operating high-
performing charter schools in underserved communities. Because we 
offered them increased autonomy and flexibility and gave them access to 
grants and low-interest facility loans, these charter schools were 
better able to serve Florida's neediest students.
  Add to that, I signed legislation to give every student access to 
virtual learning, with 428,000 students taking advantage of that 
program in the 2017-2018 school year. That number was up by 312,000 
students compared to 10 years earlier.
  Parents could use Florida Virtual School to supplement what was 
happening in person at school, and they could use a hybrid setup with 
home school or do completely online learning--whatever best suited 
their child's needs.
  In Florida, school choice isn't just for the elites, it is for 
everyone because every family deserves the chance to send their child 
to the school that best meets their needs. Whether it was virtual 
school, a private school, a religious school, home school, a charter 
school, or a public school in a different district, I fought to give 
the kids the best opportunity to get a quality education.

  And the best part about it, this kind of choice and competition among 
schools benefited everyone. It helped all of our schools, including our 
public schools and neighborhood schools, to improve.
  In October, a team of researchers from Northwestern University, UC 
Davis, and Emory studied the outcomes of Florida students who remained 
in public schools in the 2016-2017 school year--the same time we were 
continuing to expand school choice.
  I will read you what they concluded.

       We find broad and growing benefits for students at local 
     public schools as the school-choice program scales up.
       In particular, students who attend neighborhood schools 
     with higher levels of market competition have lower rates of 
     suspensions and absences and higher test scores in reading 
     and math.
       And while our analysis reveals gains for virtually all 
     students, we find that those most positively affected are 
     students with the greatest barriers to school success, 
     including those with low family incomes and less-educated 
     mothers.

  In other words, school choice helps students of poor and working 
class families, like the one I grew up in. I was born to a single mom 
with an 11th grade education and never met my birth father. My adoptive 
father never had more than a sixth grade education. We were poor and 
didn't have much to brag about. We lived in public housing and moved 
around a lot. But my mom pushed me to work hard in school and get a 
good education. And by God's grace, I was able to live the American 
dream. That is why I am here--because school choice shouldn't only be 
for the elites, it should be for everyone.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, my children are grown now, but every time 
that we moved or considered what neighborhood to live in, as they were 
growing up and attending public schools, the first question we would 
ask is, ``What about the schools?'' because we, like most parents, 
wanted to make sure that our children went to the very best schools 
possible. And if we had to dig a little deeper and figure out how do we 
buy a house in a neighborhood that was in that school district, then we 
would do it. But the sad fact of life is that many parents of lesser 
means, of lower income, don't have the luxury of buying a house in a 
neighborhood where a public school is excellent. In fact, many of our 
children, because they don't have access to charter schools, are 
literally trapped in failing schools, which will forever affect their 
course of life, their development, the jobs they can qualify for, the 
level of education they can achieve. All of that will be impacted 
negatively by the fact that many of our young people go to schools that 
are less than excellent and, in many cases, failing.
  In 2010, I think it was, I saw the documentary called ``Waiting for 
Superman.'' This was a story that in one way was exhilarating but in 
another way it was very depressing because it was all about the lottery 
system in New York's schools. If you were lucky enough to win the 
lottery, you knew that your life and your future was going to be 
forever impacted for the better.
  But I still remember looking at the faces and the tears of the 
children who did not win the lottery, who did not get to go to the best 
schools, and they knew that their life, too, would be forever impacted 
but in that case for the worse.
  I am a firm believer that competition makes us all better. It makes 
us work harder, strive for greater achievement. But I think the public 
school system--in particular, the teachers unions--they don't want any 
competition because they don't want anybody to show that our children 
can be educated better--with better teachers, better training, better 
facilities. And that is what the charter school movement has provided: 
some competition, some basis for comparison.

  If everybody is operating at this level, with no one operating at 
this level, then everybody is going to continue to operate in a subpar 
performance. Of course, I am not painting with a broad brush, but I am 
saying that a lot of low-income children are condemned to bad schools 
with no way out. And charter schools offer a way out for those 
children.
  Now, I think sometimes the term ``school choice'' gets confused with 
charter schools because school choice, as I understand it, is more 
broadly interpreted to mean parochial schools and that sort of thing--
private schools. But charter schools are public schools. We are talking 
about high-quality, tuition-free public schools that are open to all 
students.
  In my State, in Texas, we have 900 charter schools. They don't serve 
the elite. They don't serve the wealthy. They don't serve even the 
majority population. In fact, 62 percent of Texas charter school 
students are Hispanic. We have about a 42-percent Hispanic population. 
So you can say that charter schools disproportionately benefit Hispanic 
students.
  Twenty-seven percent of the students that attend charter schools have 
limited proficiency in English; that is, English is not their first 
language. And

[[Page S7119]]

the overwhelming majority of students are economically disadvantaged. 
In other words, their parents can't buy a house in the best school 
district in town. Their parents don't have the money to send them to a 
private school. And so charter schools represent the only real option--
public, tuition-free schools that are open to all students.
  I am concerned that the Biden administration is too close to the 
teachers unions that were responsible for much of the extended 
lockdowns we saw during COVID-19, and many of their members basically 
refused to go back to the classroom even though across the country 
private schools and many other educational institutions were able to 
continue--yes, observing social distancing, masking, all of the 
protocols we became very familiar with during the pandemic. But they 
continued to learn in person, in school--my understanding is, for 
example, virtually all the Catholic schools because they depend on the 
tuition dollars from parents, and parents weren't going to pay to have 
their children learn sitting in front of a computer, if they were able 
to learn at all. And we are only today beginning to skim the surface of 
the kind of damage that occurred to our students--our children--as a 
result of remote learning.
  You know, I sort of envision a single mom with three children who may 
not have even graduated from high school, much less college, herself, 
worried about her own job, worried about being able to provide for her 
family, with three school-aged children, all attending different grade 
levels. I can't imagine being able to adequately supervise and make 
sure that your children are able to learn in those circumstances. Maybe 
you have three kids from three different grades with three separate 
curricula sitting in front of a computer trying to pick up whatever 
educational benefit that you can.
  What we learned, as a result of the draconian lockdowns supported and 
encouraged by Randi Weingarten and the teachers unions, is that many of 
our children have fallen far behind. And it may take not months, not 
weeks, but literally years to catch up, if they ever do.
  So I don't really understand this idea of some of the Biden 
administration and the teachers unions who don't like and won't 
tolerate charter schools. Is it because they are OK with children being 
trapped in failing schools? I can't really understand why they would 
view this as a threat.
  Public, tuition-free, high-quality charter schools--these are public 
schools. They aren't private schools. These aren't for the elite. This 
isn't for the rich. This is for overwhelmingly economically 
disadvantaged students.
  And so I support Senator Tim Scott. I applaud his leadership in this 
area in saying that the Biden administration should not stand in the 
way of these charter schools.
  Every child deserves a quality education, and every parent deserves 
the freedom to choose the school that will serve their child best.
  So I appreciate the fact that Senator Scott is such a tireless 
advocate for charter schools and is a champion of choices and 
alternatives for parents, many of whom are economically disadvantaged 
and have no other choice other than to send their child to a failing 
school.
  I hope our colleagues will join us in voting to overturn this 
damaging new rule tomorrow when we vote on it.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.