[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11206-11209]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        EVERY CHILD ACHIEVES ACT

  Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I thank Senators Alexander and Murray for 
crafting this bipartisan proposal to reform and reauthorize the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main source of Federal aid 
for K-through-12 education.
  The Every Child Achieves Act takes many important steps to return the 
authority of K-12 education back to the States and to the local school 
districts and directly to those who are best equipped to understand and 
respond to what it takes to educate our students. Importantly, this 
bill empowers States to develop their own education accountability 
plans. Instead of a one-size-fits-all Federal mandate, this bill 
charges the States to work with teachers, school districts, Governors, 
parents, and other stakeholders to develop a State-led education plan 
for all students without interference from Washington.
  The bill affirms that the Federal Government cannot dictate a State's 
specific academic standards, curriculum or assessment. I repeat. The 
bill affirms that the Federal Government cannot dictate State-specific 
academic standards, curriculum or assessments. It affirms local control 
and accountability while maintaining important achievement information 
to provide parents with information on how their children are 
performing as well as to help teachers target support to those who are 
struggling to meet State standards.
  We also recognize that science, technology, engineering, and 
mathematics--or STEM--education continues to play an increasingly 
important role in preparing our students for the careers of tomorrow.
  In North Dakota, STEM education prepares students to fulfill the 
workforce needs of our dynamic economy, from the high-tech industries 
in the east to the energy fields in the west. For example, we have one 
school district, the West Fargo school district, which has created a 
STEM center for students in grades 6, 7, and 8, and is doing an 
exceptional job of integrating STEM teaching into the classroom. This 
school district program started in 2009 with 150 students in the sixth 
and seventh grades. Since then, it has been expanded to serve eighth 
grade students as well. They have also created a STEM pathway program 
at the high school level. The approach focuses on project-based 
learning that connects their school work to solving real world problems 
through the engineering and design process.
  When Senator Klobuchar and I visited the school this spring, we 
witnessed students working hands-on with a wide range of technologies 
at cooperative lab stations, including drones and flight simulators. 
West Fargo students have received numerous awards and honors, placing 
first in the Nation in a lunar water recycling design competition 
sponsored by NASA to excelling in a number of Web page design and 
robotics competitions around the country.
  This education is not just about teaching students more science, math 
or engineering. This approach reaches across subjects to promote 
problem solving, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking 
skills.
  The Every Child Achieves Act includes a formula grant aimed at 
providing State resources to improve STEM education. The Improving STEM 
Instruction and Student Achievement Program provides grants to States 
to improve STEM instruction, student engagement, and increased student 
achievement in STEM subjects. Under this program, States have the 
ability to award subgrants to projects of their choice to serve high-
need school districts or form partnerships with higher education 
institutions. States can also use these funds to recruit qualified 
teachers and instructional leaders in STEM subjects or to develop a 
STEM master teacher corps.
  In recent years, North Dakota has chosen to award funds to projects 
that partner with our State's higher education institutions to provide 
professional development opportunities for K-12 math and science 
teachers.
  I have worked with Senator Klobuchar to craft amendment No. 2138. Our 
proposal will give States the option to award those funds to create or 
enhance a STEM-focused specialty school or a STEM program within a 
school.
  STEM-focused specialty schools or STEM programs within a school are 
those that engage students in rigorous, relevant, and integrated-
learning STEM experiences. Allowing funds to go toward a STEM program 
within a school will allow successful programs such as those occurring 
in our State to benefit. It will also encourage other school districts 
to begin their own programs.
  So if a school district would like to better integrate STEM concepts 
into their teaching practices, this amendment allows those districts to 
submit a proposal to the State for resources to carry out that plan.
  The Klobuchar-Hoeven amendment also requires the Education Secretary 
to identify STEM-specific needs of States and districts receiving funds 
and publicize information about those activities. The Secretary is then 
directed to align Federal STEM activities with State and district 
needs.
  Finally, this amendment directs the U.S. Department of Education to 
avoid unnecessary duplication of STEM programmatic activities supported 
by the Department and other Federal agencies. This is important because 
there are so many disjointed STEM activities and programs throughout 
our government.
  In a May 2015 report, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service 
states that despite recent reductions in the number of Federal STEM 
programs, recent estimates suggest there are still between 105 and 254 
STEM programs scattered throughout as many as 15 Federal agencies. 
These programs account for $2.8 billion to $3.4 billion in spending. 
These programs have their own distinct requirements and obligations 
that allow very little collaboration or coordination. We simply want

[[Page 11207]]

to ensure that States and schools are aware of the existing efforts 
underway to best utilize public resources.
  In conclusion, we believe that this bipartisan amendment should be 
agreeable to both sides and will strengthen the Every Child Achieves 
Act. In fact, I have just been informed that both the chairman and the 
ranking member from the HELP Committee and the leaders on this Every 
Child Achieves Act have included our legislation in the manager's 
package with support from both sides of the aisle.
  I want to thank both Senator Lamar Alexander from Tennessee, who is 
the chairman of the committee and the sponsor of the bill, as well as 
Senator Patty Murray from Washington, who is the co-lead on this 
legislation, for their support of this STEM legislation.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I also rise in support of the Every Child 
Achieves Act and the good work that is being done in a bipartisan way 
to move elementary and secondary education forward in this country. I 
applaud Senators Alexander and Murray and all HELP Committee members 
and their staff for the good work that has been done on this bill, 
which is hugely important to our Nation's children but even more 
importantly to our economy and our global competitiveness. The fact 
that we are approaching this in a bipartisan manner creates a lot of 
hope and optimism.
  I speak from a number of roles. I was well educated in public, 
private, and parochial schools myself. My three children have gone 
through the Richmond public school system, an urban public school 
system in Virginia, during the era of No Child Left Behind. So Federal 
education policy was coming home in their backpack, crumpled up at the 
end of every day. My wife and I have kind of lived through that with 
them. My wife is the current secretary of education in Virginia, with 
the responsibility of carrying out State and Federal education policy. 
In my own role, as an elected official--as mayor--education was our 
biggest expenditure, and I visited a school in our city every Tuesday 
morning. As Lieutenant Governor, in the State budget education was our 
biggest priority, and I visited schools in all 134 cities and counties 
in Virginia. Then, as Governor, I had the opportunity--the great 
opportunity--to work with our State, our teachers, our PTOs, and other 
educational stakeholders in the Virginia education system, which 50 
years ago was one of the weakest in the United States, and I am proud 
to say is now one of the best in the United States.
  I learned a lot as Governor when No Child Left Behind was being 
implemented in the schools of my State. I saw the good and the bad of 
No Child Left Behind, and I certainly saw the reason that we need to 
improve it. That is what the Every Child Achieves Act does.
  First, I will speak about the good things of No Child Left Behind. 
There are two notable good things that, frankly, are critically 
important we maintain. No Child Left Behind made us disaggregate 
student data so that we couldn't hide behind averages. Averages can be 
deceiving. Virginia average test scores are great, but that doesn't 
mean they are great everywhere in Virginia. So we had to dig in and 
look at whether minority students were performing well or whether rural 
students were performing well or urban students. No Child Left Behind 
helped us to do that and not hide behind averages but really make sure 
that groups of students were not falling behind either statewide or in 
the individual cities and counties.
  The second thing No Child Left Behind did--which is pretty amazing--
was that before No Child Left Behind there was not a standardized 
definition of graduation or dropout rates in this country. So if you 
wanted to know how your own city was doing or your own county was doing 
or your own State was doing, and if you wanted to compare that against 
anywhere else, you couldn't because everybody was using their own 
measure. Usually folks would try to fuzz up the data because they were 
afraid of being held accountable around graduation rates and dropout 
rates. No Child Left Behind, together with some pioneering work from 
the National Governors Association, ended up standardizing the 
definition of graduation and dropout rates, which enabled us to compare 
and compete with each other.
  Not surprisingly, as President Obama discussed in the State of the 
Union in the early part of 2015, our graduation rates are better than 
they have ever been because now we can focus on them, we know who is 
doing well and who is not, and that sense of focus and competition is 
enabling us to move ahead.
  But No Child Left Behind also had some unintended negative 
consequences. The intense focus on high-stakes testing, which is 
supposed to help you diagnose and then lead to educational strategies 
down the road--sometimes testing has become an end in itself rather 
than a means to an end: better student performance. That creates all 
kinds of stresses on students and teachers and parents.
  Similarly, the focus on disaggregating student data which 
demonstrates that there are achievement gaps in certain communities, 
whether it be minority communities or rural or urban areas, has often 
had the perverse consequence, when coupled with high-stakes testing, of 
encouraging some of our best and brightest teachers not to want to go 
into the schools where they are most needed. If they feel as if they 
will be punished because the test scores are not as high with poor 
kids, for example, then they will often choose not to go to those 
schools. That is clearly not what we meant to do with No Child Left 
Behind, but that has been one of its perverse consequences.
  When I was Governor, I had a very funny--now it is funny; it was not 
funny at the time--argument with the Federal Department of Education. 
They absolutely insisted that jurisdictions in northern Virginia were 
administering certain tests wrong to students who don't speak English 
as their first language at home. Indeed, some of my cities and counties 
had a strategy of phasing students in. If they were coming from a 
background where they did not speak English at home, they would be 
tested in special ways for the first couple of years they were in the 
school system and then mainstreamed even in the way they were tested.
  The Department of Education said: You cannot do that. You cannot do 
these tests differently.
  What I would say to the Department of Education: Hey, let me show you 
the SAT scores of my Latino students. Let me show you how they are 
doing when they graduate, that they are some of the highest performing 
students in the country. Clearly, if you measure it by the outcomes, we 
are doing it the right way.
  But the Department of Education said: Outcomes do not matter to us. 
We worry about the processes and the inputs and the way you provide the 
tests.
  Well, outcomes should be important. Results should be important. Too 
often, No Child Left Behind was administered in a way where results did 
not matter. That is not what should happen.
  I applaud Senators Alexander and Murray for this bill because I 
believe the Every Child Achieves Act gives school districts and States 
the incentive to work for the success of all students but also the 
flexibility they need to close achievement gaps. The bill maintains 
critical annual testing requirements to allow us to track progress of 
students, while letting States set their own goals for improvement. The 
bill invests in early childhood education, which is critical to give 
States the authority to determine teacher qualifications in those 
areas. I am very glad this bill recognizes there are factors other than 
test scores that determine whether our students will be successful. I 
applaud this act. I cannot wait to vote for it.
  I would like to comment on two amendments I have worked with my team 
and my staff member Karishma Merchant, who is superb, to put into this 
bill--some that are already in and some that I think are forthcoming or 
are in the process on the floor.

[[Page 11208]]

  The first is the very important challenge of young people, age 16 to 
24, who are in the most vulnerable time in their lives to being the 
victims of sexual assaults. A kid age 16 to 24--that is the most likely 
period in their life where they would be vulnerable to any kind of 
sexual assault or sexual misconduct. That is whether they are in 
school, college, the military, the workforce, or whether they are 
somewhere else.
  We are spending a lot of time working on this issue, but this bill 
contains an amendment I proposed called the Teach Safe Relationships 
Act to help tackle this issue. Basically, under the amendment Senator 
McCaskill and I introduced in February, schools that are receiving 
title IV funds must report on how they are teaching safe relationship 
behaviors to students--communication, understanding what coercion is, 
understanding what consent is, understanding how to avoid pressure, 
understanding where to go for help. These are matters which we will 
teach to our students at a younger age so they can keep themselves 
safe.
  I need to give praise on this one--the idea for this came from 
students at the University of Virginia. I went and visited with them 
about sexual assaults on campus in December. They told me: We wish we 
came to campus better prepared to deal with these issues.
  I asked them: Well, don't you take sex education classes in high 
school?
  They said: Yes, but the classes are about reproductive biology. There 
needs to be a little more about safe behavior and relationship 
strategies.
  I thought, what a great idea. That led to the amendment. The 
amendment has now been incorporated. I praise the students at UVA who 
put this on my radar screen. I thank Senators Alexander and Murray, who 
worked with me to incorporate this in the base bill. If we teach young 
kids the right strategies, whether they are in the military or on 
college campuses or in the workforce or anywhere else, our young 
students, 16 to 24, will be safer.
  The second series of amendments--some have been included and others 
have been voted on--one today and one will be voted on on Monday 
night--are amendments dealing with career and technical education.
  I was a principal of a school that taught kids to be welders and 
carpenters. I grew up the son of a guy who ran an iron-working shop. I 
am a huge believer in career and technical education. Every job in this 
country does not need the traditional 4-year bachelor's degree. In 
fact, there are many jobs in this country--and the unemployment rate is 
still too high--there are many jobs in this country that are going 
unfilled. We have to bring welders in on foreign visas and other 
important career and technical fields because we don't adequately 
promote and celebrate career and technical education. This is similar 
to the previous speech about STEM.
  I have formed a Career and Technical Education Caucus, together with 
Senators Portman and Baldwin. We introduced the Career Ready Act. Some 
portions have already been included in the bill, and another portion 
will be voted on on Monday night. But the idea is basically to make 
career and technical education every bit as front-and-center as college 
prep courses because we want our kids to graduate from high school both 
college- and career-ready. Career and technical education is an 
important part of that.
  Earlier today, we passed an amendment to make clear that for Federal 
purposes, career and technical education is not elective, it is core 
curriculum, because it is core, important education. Nations around the 
world recognize it. We need to as well.
  I have two additional amendments. We will consider one Monday night--
the Career Ready Act, which clarifies and encourages but does not 
require the use of accountability indicators in State accountability 
plans to promote readiness for postsecondary education and career 
readiness. Forty-one States already do this. We will encourage more to 
do it if we pass the career-ready amendment.
  Second, I have an amendment that I am still working on and hope to 
get in on the floor. It is bipartisan by introduction. Senator Ayotte 
and I have this. It is to create a middle school career and technical 
exploration program called Middle STEP. Kids in the middle school 
years, if they get a broader exposure to the careers that are available 
to them, they will be better equipped to start picking curricular paths 
when they go to high school.
  I am so passionate about the need for career and technical education 
because I lived it growing up in my dad's business and teaching kids in 
Honduras the value of career and technical fields.
  Everywhere I go in this country, I have employers who tell me they 
need workers who are skilled, whether it is allied health 
professionals, such as EMTs, or culinary training or welding and iron-
working training or computer coding. These career and technical fields 
that require some postsecondary education but not necessarily a 4-year 
college degree are paths to great livelihoods. We do not often 
emphasize them enough. This bill will help us do that.
  I will close and say this: It has been 13 years since Congress 
reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It is time to 
update No Child Left Behind, and this is good work to do it.
  President Kennedy said in a message to Congress in 1961--and these 
words still ring true:

       Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our 
     progresses in education. Our requirements for world 
     leadership, our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of 
     citizenship itself in an era such as this all require the 
     maximum development of every young American's capacity.

  That is almost a great 20th-century paraphrase of what a Virginian, 
Thomas Jefferson, said in the 1780s:

       Progress in government and all else depends upon the 
     broadest possible diffusion of knowledge among the general 
     population.

  Those words were true then. Senator Kennedy's words are true. 
Education is still the path to success for an individual or for a 
community and nation. We will advance the cause of education and the 
cause of success if we pass the Every Child Achieves Act.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I want to take this time to thank Senators 
Alexander and Murray on the bill that is before our body, the Every 
Child Achieves Act. It is so important that we focus on this area of 
education.
  Two important provisions I asked to be included have been included in 
the bill. I want to specifically talk about those and again thank both 
Senators for including those important initiatives in this important 
bill.
  One of them is the reauthorization of afterschool programs--something 
I have worked on my entire life in Congress. It goes back a very long 
time. Another one is on e-cigarettes, which I believe are endangering 
our Nation's youth.
  Senator Murkowski was very instrumental in the committee, working 
with Senator Murray to make sure my bipartisan After School for 
America's Children Act was incorporated in the bill. I thank her.
  In the Senate, I first introduced my afterschool bill in 1997. I 
worked with Senator Ensign at that time. The Federal Government at that 
time only funded small afterschool pilot programs. When we got to 2001, 
I saw an opportunity to take that pilot program and turn it into a 
real, funded authorization for afterschool programs. The bill we have 
on the floor today and next week will modernize that afterschool 
program. It is the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program, 
which incorporates afterschool. It will help States support quality 
afterschool programs. It encourages parental engagement and involvement 
and ensures that afterschool activities complement the academic 
curriculum. Our kids don't stop learning just because the clock strikes 
2 or 3 or 4; they keep learning. So the afterschool activities are very 
important.
  Most important to me is that this bill preserves the stream of 
funding that is necessary to protect the afterschool programs because, 
to be quite honest, we have had a lot of issues with people trying to 
grab those funds and

[[Page 11209]]

use them for something else. Let me tell you why we cannot do that. We 
now serve more than 1.6 million children of working families every year 
through this afterschool program. That is progress. Think about 1.6 
million children. Think about all of their parents and the relief it 
brings to them to know they have their children in a quality 
afterschool program.
  But there are still 11.3 million children left unsupervised when the 
day ends. In other words, one in five children is unsupervised from 3 
to 6 p.m. Those are the hours where juvenile crime peaks and risky 
behaviors are most likely to occur. Law enforcement and mayors have 
been telling us for years that afterschool programs reduce crime. It 
truly is a no-brainer. Our kids need a safe place to go after school. 
Our parents need to make sure their kids are safe after school because 
most parents work in today's world.
  No matter what leading candidates for the Republican nomination say, 
today my understanding is Jeb Bush said our workers don't work hard 
enough. He said that our workers don't work hard enough. Just talk to 
the parents of these kids. They are working hard, sometimes multiple 
jobs. They need to know their kids are safe.
  I want to talk about one student, Gerardo Rodriguez, who grew up in 
poverty in Los Angeles. He dealt with the threat of violence and the 
allure of gang life. While he was at Carson Middle School, he chose to 
join an afterschool program that was run by the Boys and Girls Club 
instead of a gang. Gerardo went to an afterschool program instead of 
joining a gang. In statistics, he would be told he was likely to be a 
dropout. Instead, he graduated from Carson High. In 2012, he obtained 
$3,000 in college scholarships. He is in his second year at California 
State University, Long Beach, and he is majoring in engineering.
  We need to save kids like this. Yes, the parents are working hard, 
many hours, and they need afterschool help. This bill helps those kids. 
I would like to do more for more children, but I am thankful we are 
preserving this program.
  Our working families need to know their kids are safe because there 
are more than 28 million parents of school-age children who are 
employed, including 23 million who work full time. These parents miss 
an average of 5 days of work a year because they don't have afterschool 
care and their child gets sick. We all know that. We have all gone 
through that. Our children have gone through that. So it was 30 years 
ago when I started to work on this issue.
  I again thank Senators Alexander and Murray for preserving 
afterschool care for our children.

                          ____________________