[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 19750-19751]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS BILL

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to congratulate 
my colleagues on passage of the repeal and replacement of No Child Left 
Behind, the Every Child Succeeds Act. In particular, I want to thank 
Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray. It is really an example 
of how things can work in the Senate when we put our minds to trying to 
get to good policy instead of simply trying to get to good politics. 
There is a lot of politics surrounding early childhood education and 
elementary education. There is a lot of hyperbole out there about the 
role the Federal Government should play in local education--issues such 
as the common core. Yet we were able to set aside all of those 
potentially inflammatory and toxic politics and get to a bill that 
despite those challenges has broad consensus from Republicans and 
Democrats. It ends up in a place that is really going to support a lot 
of teachers, students, parents and administrators out there.
  When you look at that vote tally, it is impressive. It is a piece of 
legislation that has been able to unite progressive Democrats and 
conservative Republicans. In many ways it is a credit in this Chamber 
to debate that Senator Alexander and Senator Murray set us upon. They 
were determined to get to a product that both parties could support. 
When you start with the idea that we can achieve a bipartisan solution, 
rather than your starting point being having a debate in order to 
maximize political impact and political division, it is miraculous what 
we get. We can all be blamed for falling into that trap far too often.
  Mr. President, like you, my entire life has been spent in and around 
public education. I went to Connecticut's public schools. My mother was 
a public school teacher. My wife is a former public school teacher. I 
have two beautiful boys--one of whom is in the public school system as 
well. As it is for many of us, this conversation is deeply personal. It 
is also deeply personal for me as someone who is going to raise two 
boys in a country whose greatness depends more than ever on the quality 
of our public schools. The reality is that when my great-grandfather 
got off of a boat and showed up in New Britain, CT, he was guaranteed 
to get a good job in one of the ball bearing factories there, 
regardless of his education. He could get a good wage, a pension, and a 
decent health care benefit without a lot of skills that he couldn't 
learn on the job inside that factory.
  Of course, our economy has radically changed since those days. We are 
lucky that we have declining unemployment. We are lucky we continue to 
grow jobs, as we have over the course of the last several years. They 
are totally different kinds of jobs than were available to my 
forefathers, immigrants who came to this country from places such as 
Ireland and Poland and worked in those factories. We now have jobs that 
require highly skilled professionals. We are competitive globally, not 
because of the price of our workforce but because of the productivity, 
competence, and educational level of our workforce. We are more 
dependent now than ever on the quality and capacity of our workforce, 
which is, of course, dictated by the quality and capacity of our 
educational system. So getting an education policy right is not just 
about serving kids; it is about serving our economy.
  The fact is, we have been doing a disservice to students and teachers 
all across America since the passage of No Child Left Behind. This is a 
law that by and large was a disaster for us in Connecticut. I am 
somebody who believes that a strong Federal Government can play a 
beneficial role in people's lives, whether it is smoothing out the 
rough edges of the financial system, building roads and bridges, or 
protecting America from attacks, but the Federal Government has not 
done a good job in guaranteeing universal, quality education. Why? 
Because bureaucrats in Washington ultimately have a hard time 
intersecting with the provision of a service which has largely been 
administered at a local level. The prescriptive rules that were 
inherent in No Child Left Behind haven't matched the realities of how 
Connecticut assesses schools and student performance or how we think it 
is best to turn schools around.
  No Child Left Behind did at least have one redeeming quality. The 
legislation required an assessment of every single student no matter 
where they lived, what their background was, or what their learning 
ability was. The law did shed light on some unjustifiable, 
unconscionable disparities that existed in this country, and it put 
pressure on school districts and States to address those disparities. 
The law brought attention to the fact that there were disparities, such 
as the fact that the graduation rate for African Americans in this 
country is 16 points lower than that of their white peers. The results 
showed disparities with Latino fourth graders. Only 25 percent of them 
are meeting expectations for their grade level in math, which is half 
the rate of their white peers.
  The law also shed light on the practices within school districts, 
such as school discipline. If you are an African American and commit 
the exact same offense in this country inside of a school, you are 
twice as likely to get suspended or expelled as your white peer.

[[Page 19751]]

  No Child Left Behind forced us to understand, recognize, and address 
those disparities. The challenge with this repeal and rewrite was to 
hand control back to States and local districts without removing the 
imperative to identify those disparities and cure them.
  I voted against the version of this bill that was originally passed 
by the U.S. Senate, and I did so because I labored under the belief, as 
a member of the HELP Committee, that it is not worth passing a national 
education law if it isn't also a civil rights law. I wasn't convinced 
that we had that balance in the bill that initially came before the 
Senate. I am grateful to Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, 
Representatives Kline, Scott, and others who managed to get that 
balance right in the conference committee.
  Today we were able to pass a bill that is both a proper return of 
authority to the States and a preservation of civil rights protections 
that are going to guarantee the perpetuity of the small, positive 
legacies of No Child Left Behind.
  What we have in the bill is a recognition that school systems should 
identify the 5 percent of schools that are the lowest performing 
schools and have specific plans to attack those schools and turn them 
around. Those interventions will be decided at the local and State 
level rather than at the Federal level.
  There is a requirement in this bill to identify what we call dropout 
factories--schools in which a disproportionate number of students show 
up freshman year but don't graduate. Similarly, States have to have a 
plan to turn those schools around, dictated by decisions that are made 
at the local level.
  Lastly, this bill contains a provision that requires us to continue 
to track the performance of certain subsets of students, whether they 
are minority students, disabled students, poor students, or non-English 
speaking students. Again, it requires those vulnerable populations that 
may not be hitting the goals that are set by the State or school 
district to have interventions to try to do better. All of the 
accountability will occur locally, but the mandate is to pay attention 
to those lower performing schools or those populations that sometimes 
get the short end of the stick within a school system or State 
educational system and ensure that they get special attention.
  I think this is the right balance. This is a bill that rightfully 
returns power to States and school districts but retains civil rights 
protections that have been the foundation of our Federal education 
policy since the 1950s and 1960s.
  I am also happy that there were a number of other civil rights wins 
in this bill. States have to note on their report cards indicators of 
school climate and safety. They have to disclose rates of suspension 
and expulsion, school-based arrests, and referrals to law enforcement 
so we can get a better handle on whether minority students are being 
treated fairly when it comes school discipline policies.
  States have to submit plans on how they will reduce the use of 
discipline practices that threaten student safety, including seclusion 
and restraint. Increasingly, school districts are relying on the 
restraint of kids by binding their hands and feet or the seclusion of 
children by locking them in padded rooms as a means of discipline. In 
almost all cases, those means of discipline make the underlying 
behavior worse, not better. They disproportionately affect disabled 
kids and children with autism whose school districts unfortunately 
don't understand their students' issues as well as they should. This 
legislation will require States to submit plans as to how they will 
reduce the use of seclusion and restraint.
  Finally, this bill retains the requirement that every kid, regardless 
of learning ability, should be expected to meet the same standard. This 
bill still allows for 1 percent of students to take an alternate 
assessment, but it requires the majority of special education students, 
or students with learning disabilities, to be tested against their 
nondisabled peers. They will have to compete against their nondisabled 
peers in the workforce, so they should be measured against their 
nondisabled peers while they are in the school system. Those are all 
important wins as well.
  In the end, as someone who was educated in the public school system 
and spent his lifetime around teachers, I know that No Child Left 
Behind not only sucked the effectiveness out of schools, but it also 
sucked the joy out of learning and teaching because so much of it was 
driven toward that test which became the only measurement of what a 
good school is.
  I am a parent who is deeply involved in looking at schools and 
deciding which one is right for my kid. While I pay attention to the 
test scores that come out of that school, that is not the beginning and 
end of my analysis. I take careful pains to meet with the 
administrators, talk to other parents, look at their curriculum, and 
look at other measurements, such as attendance and graduation rates, in 
order to build a full picture of what a good school is.
  Now States will be able to devise systems of measuring schools that 
mirror the way almost every responsible parent measures schools--in a 
comprehensive, robust way that doesn't just look at that test. Perhaps 
more importantly, as we try to grow a healthy economy that recognizes 
the strengths we have and the quality of our workforce under this new 
law, the Every Child Succeeds Act, we will be able to create a new 
generation that will have great innovators, great leaders, great mold 
breakers, and not just great test takers.
  Congratulations to Senator Alexander and Senator Murray, and many 
others, like Senator Booker and Senator Warren, who worked closely with 
me on the accountability provisions.
  This is a really important day for teachers, students, and parents 
all across the country. It is also a pretty good day for us when we get 
to come together and do something very important in a bipartisan pay 
way.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Toomey). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in 
morning business for 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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