[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Page 10639]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        EVERY CHILD ACHIEVES ACT

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, this week we will begin floor debate on 
yet another such bipartisan measure, the Every Child Achieves Act.
  Many Washington pundits assumed that Congress could never agree on a 
workable solution to replace a broken No Child Left Behind law, and 
they certainly didn't believe one would receive unanimous committee 
support from both Republicans and Democrats. But many of those folks 
didn't think Washington could reform the Medicare payment system or 
pass trade legislation either. So it is a good thing Chairman Alexander 
and Ranking Member Murray didn't listen to them. The new Congress has 
proved the pundits wrong already. If the senior Senator from Tennessee 
and his Democratic counterpart from Washington State have their way, 
the new Congress will prove them wrong yet again.
  The Every Child Achieves Act aims to assure we are helping students 
to succeed instead of helping Washington to grow, and it recognizes an 
obvious truth; that the needs of a student in Eastern Kentucky aren't 
likely to be the same as those of students in South Florida or downtown 
Manhattan. The bill would give States the flexibility to develop 
systems that work for the needs of their students rather than the one-
size-fits-all mandate of Washington, taking decisions out of the hands 
of Federal bureaucrats and putting them into the hands of real experts: 
parents, teachers, and State and local leaders.
  I will be talking more about the bipartisan Every Child Achieves Act 
later this week. But the fact that we are even on the floor today 
discussing yet another important reform solution to yet another 
seemingly intractable problem is one more reminder that this is a new 
Congress that is focused on solutions for the American people.

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