[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23597-23598]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, this House will soon be 
considering a reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. Now, when 
President Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law 5 years ago, the 
theory went that schools would raise their standards and strive to make 
improvements and that this would then eventually trickle down and 
assist all, even the underperforming students that needed the help the 
most. Now as we now reconsider this reauthorization of this bill, I 
submit that many of these changes brought on by this bill have had 
tremendous burdensome unintended consequences.
  See, instead of giving local school districts the flexibility to 
develop their own curriculum, they are instead hampered by the NCLB's 
testing requirements and must tailor their classes now around these 
tests. Instead of schools setting their standards high in an aggressive 
drive towards excellence, we have seen just the opposite. In order to 
maintain their Federal funding, the States are now setting their 
standards low. In essence, it's a race to the bottom, if you will, as 
far as standards in this country. And instead of allowing our educators 
to focus on education, NCLB has instituted some absurd regulatory 
burdens on the States.
  According to the GAO, 41 percent of the financial support and 
staffing of State education agencies was a product of Federal dollars 
and regulations. In other words, this means that the Federal Government 
was the cause of 41 percent of the administrative burden at the State 
level, despite the fact that the Federal Government only sends 7 
percent of overall education funding in this country.
  Also, according to the GAO, the testing requirements of NCLB alone 
will cost States around $1.9 billion between 2002 and 2008 and spend up 
towards 6.6 million hours to administer all the paperwork that comes 
with it as well.
  Now, I recently held a town hall meeting on NCLB. Every person that 
came to that meeting, showed up, had something negative to say about 
the administrative burdens in NCLB. At one point during the meeting I 
asked how many people had contact and met with either their local 
principal or their local school board about some of these problems. 
Just about every hand in the room went up.
  So then I said, Well, how many people here in the room went and 
talked to somebody down at the New Jersey capital, the New Jersey 
Department of Education? About half the people raised their hand.
  I said finally, Well, how many people went to Washington and took the 
time out to go and visit somebody with the U.S. Department of 
Education? Only one person raised their hand.
  You see, my point in this is, by instituting these requirements for 
NCLB in Washington, we are moving accountability for education farther 
and farther away from where it belongs: parents, students, educators at 
the local level.
  In addition to this, the regulations NCLB places on schools often 
attempts to fix problems that really don't exist.
  One of the schools in my district consistently was cited in 
publications as one of the top performing schools in the State, but it 
was placed, because of NCLB, on its watch list 2 years after NCLB was 
instituted. Now, notice, this was not an underperforming school. Every 
year nearly 100 percent of the kids graduated. Most went on to college. 
The average combined scores of SATs was 1100; 14 AP programs were 
offered at the school. This was a great school. But instead, NCLB found 
it underperforming. And because of this, now the teachers and 
administrators at this school have to turn their attention away from 
what they were doing, which was running an excellent school and now 
focus on the paperwork and the burdensome accountability requirements 
of NCLB. So less good education is coming about because of this.
  Now, let me be clear. I share, along with all my colleagues from both 
sides of aisle in Congress here, the ultimate goal of providing a high 
quality education for every child in America. This year I introduced 
legislation that would allow a State then to opt out of the majority of 
the requirements of NCLB, but, at the same time, would allow that State 
to keep their education funding through a refundable tax credit.
  My bill is H.R. 3177. I call it the LEARN Act. That stands for Local 
Education Authority Return Now. It gives the States the ability to opt 
out of NCLB and provides residents of those States a State tax credit 
equal to the amount of money that otherwise would have gone to 
Washington and then come back to their State for Federal funding. What 
it does is give control back to the States, allow them, the States, the 
parents, the school boards, the option to pursue local and State 
educational initiatives based on

[[Page 23598]]

what they know is best for their kids. It allows the States and local 
school districts to set their own standards, enforce their own 
penalties for failure, and establish their own goals for their teachers 
and their students. With my bill, education accountability is 
transferred from DC bureaucrats back to the people who know the schools 
and the students personally.
  See, under my proposal, States that feel that the regulation of NCLB 
is both necessary and beneficial to continue on, well, they can stay in 
the system. If they need Washington bureaucrats in their State to tell 
them what to do, well, they can stay in NCLB.
  However, if the State's residents feel that the responsibility for 
educating their children is best left in the hands of the State, then 
this legislation will empower them to do so and keep the funding in 
place that the States rely on.

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