Senator Alexander Delivers Opening Remarks as Senate Begins Debate on Bipartisan Bill to Fix No Child Left Behind

           Before the Democratic Leader leaves the floor, in a few moments, the Senator from Washington and I will make our opening statement on our proposed committee legislation to fix No Child Left Behind. Before I do that, I want to say to the Majority Leader first, to express my appreciation for his putting this bill on the floor, because I know the Majority Leader has a variety of other options, and he's giving us a chance to take our bill, which we'll be describing in a few minutes, and putting it on the floor.

           But I also want to acknowledge and thank the Democratic Leader, because he has allowed the bill to come to the floor without delay so that we can move to the bill and allow senators to begin to vote on it. We hope to begin having those votes tomorrow morning. So we have a good example of cooperation, here, with the Majority Leader bringing the bill to the floor – a bill passed unanimously by the committee.

            Senator Murray, a member of the Democratic leadership, played a major role in the legislation. It was her advice, which I took, that caused us to have success in the committee, by presenting a bipartisan bill. I specifically want to thank Senator Reid for his attitude on the bill. I think that will create an environment in which we will have to, frankly, work through some contentious issues. This isn't an issue-free piece of legislation. We’re seven years overdue. It should have been passed in the last two congresses. But we've made a good start, and I thank both leaders for giving Senator Murray and I a chance to try to work in the next few days with other senators to continue the amendment process, allow senators to have their say, to get a result, to work with the House and to send a bill to the president that the president is willing to sign.

           We begin today debate on a bill to fix the problems with No Child Left Behind – the federal law that's been causing confusion and anxiety in 100,000 public schools in our country. This week, Newsweek magazine called this "the law that everyone wants to fix," and there's a broad consensus about that, and, remarkably, there's a broad consensus about how to fix it. This is the consensus: continue the law's important measurements of students' academic progress but restore to states, school districts, classroom teachers and parents the responsibility for deciding what to do about the results of those tests.

          In my view, this change should produce fewer tests and more appropriate ways to measure student achievement. We believe this is the most effective path toward high standards, better teaching and real accountability. Our Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, the Senate's education committee, obviously believes that too. The committee reported the bill unanimously. Senator McConnell, the Majority Leader, noted earlier that that committee has some of the Senate's most liberal Democrats and several of the Senate's most conservative Republicans, and it was a surprise to many people that the committee reported it unanimously. But the committee understood that this was a problem we needed to solve and that we had a fair and open process. Everyone had a chance to participate, and thought the bill was good enough to come to the floor where we could continue to work on it.

              Not only is there a consensus about how to fix it within the United States Senate committee on education, there is consensus outside of the Senate. This bipartisan bill which has come to the Senate floor has been supported by teachers, by school boards, by school superintendents, by chief state school officers and by governors. The presiding officer is a former governor, as I was. Both of us would have to go back a long time to remember something that was supported as enthusiastically both by the National Governors Association as well as the major teachers unions, but this bipartisan proposal is.

           Earlier, I thanked the Majority Leader, Senator McConnell, for putting the bill on the floor. That may seem like a small matter to those not involved in the Senate, but it's a big matter because he has a pretty good list of bipartisan legislation that's important to this country's future, and he could have chosen any of those to bring to the floor, but he saw the importance of education to our country—that we not only need a strong national defense, we need to be strong at home. We're going to be dealing with legislation that affects 100,000 public schools, 50 million children, and 3.5 million teachers. It may not be big news every day in Washington, D.C., but it sure is in Nashville, Tennessee, in Maryville, Tennessee, in Washington State and North Dakota. If you go home, you hear quite a bit about whether the standards that we have for our children are enough for them to get a job to help them succeed in the world we have. So, I thank the Majority Leader for bringing the bill to the floor.

           As I said earlier before, I thank the Democratic Leader, Senator Reid. He has allowed the bill to come to the floor as rapidly as it could. There have been no delaying tactics whatsoever. We didn't have to have a motion to proceed and a cloture vote. I’m grateful for that, because what that means is that we can work with other senators and put this bill into shape and give more people a chance to have their say on behalf of their constituents at home.

         I want to give my special thanks at the outset—and I probably will again during this debate more than once—to the Senator from Washington State, Senator Patty Murray. She’s a good partner to have in this. I’m glad that I took her advice in dealing with this bill. I knew we had a problem because we tried in the last two congresses to solve this problem and absolutely failed. We’re seven years overdue, but Senator Murray made a suggestion to me that she and I try to work together to create a bipartisan product that we could present to the committee and then work from that. I took that advice. It turned out to be excellent advice, and her ability to be a forceful advocate for her positions but at the same time command the respect within her caucus and among people around the country who know her, and to make this work is a principal reason, if not the main reason, why we had unanimous support from the education committee. So I’m grateful to her for that leadership.

          If you're a busy parent of one of the 50 million children attending public school today, you may not know that your child has been going to school for the last seven years under a broken and expired federal education law. You may not know that the United States Department of Education is practically running your child's school if you live in one of 42 states operating under waivers. You may have heard your child's teacher complain about how little flexibility he or she has to help your child and to innovate in the classroom, and you've probably seen your child's frustration at the number of tests he or she is taking. You’ve no doubt heard about the frustration of other parents and teachers about Common Core, the academic standard that most states have adopted.

         In 2009, the Department of Education created a $4.4 billion pot of money that states competed for. This was called "Race to the Top." States got additional points for adopting the Common Core State Standards. “Race to the Top” caused 30 states plus Washington, D.C., to adopt Common Core so that they could include the adoption of standards in their application.

          And then, along came the phenomenon of waivers. Because we in Congress had failed to act since 2007, the original No Child Left Behind bill passed in 2001 became unworkable. It established a goal that by 2014 that all of our children in 100,000 public schools would be proficient in math and science. We got to 2014 and the children weren't all proficient, so almost all our public schools were labeled as “failing.” To avoid that bizarre result, the secretary issued waivers, but at the same time, he issued some requirements about what you had to do to get a waiver if you were the state of North Dakota or Tennessee or some other state. So you likely have heard from teachers and school board members who are frustrated about the narrow definitions from Washington about exactly how to evaluate teachers and what to do about low performing schools. Those requirements came with the waivers. You may be frustrated that your child doesn't have more options for school than the nearest public school. I believe this bill will end many of those frustrations.

          This bill will restore responsibility to states for deciding what academic standards to use and will restore responsibility to teachers to do what they do best, which is helping your child learn what they need to know and be able to do. It will stop the trend of taking too many tests by restoring to states the responsibility for deciding how to use federal test scores in measuring school achievement. It will help states expand and replicate their best charter schools so more parents will have a choice of schools.

         The Senate education committee adopted 29 amendments during its debate on the bill. Already, Senator Murray and I are working with Democratic and Republican senators and are working on adopting a large number of other amendments. In fact, I will have a substitute amendment for our bill to introduce a little later this afternoon, which will include a number of those amendments. And we expect there to be robust discussion, debate and votes here on the senate floor.

          Now, just for some context about the debate we're having, when we talk about fixing No Child Left Behind, here's what we're talking about. We’re talking about reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We’re talking about the spending of about $23 billion, which the federal government distributes to states through the law's nine titles. The biggest title is Title I. That’s what we call it. It allocates about $14.5 billion specifically to help low-income students. Now, the $23 billion that's spent through this bill that we're debating is a lot of money but it's only about 4 percent of the total amount this nation spends each year on kindergarten through the 12th grade public education. The federal government contributes another 4 percent or 5 percent to K-12 education through various programs, but the rest of the money, about 90 percent, comes from state and local governments.

           Why No Child Left Behind must be fixed: The problems have been created by a combination of presidential action, but let us not forget our own responsibility and our own fault for this problem and that's called congressional inaction. So it's the combination of presidential action and congressional inaction that's led us to a situation where we have a bill described by a major news magazine as “the education law that everybody wants to fix.”

           It started in 2001 when President George W. Bush and Congress enacted a bill called No Child Left Behind. That bill requires a total of 17 tests between reading and math and science during a child's elementary and secondary education. The results of these tests must be disaggregated and reported according to race, ethnicity, gender, disability and other measures so parents, teachers and the community can see which children are being left behind. In other words, a typical third grader would have two tests, one in reading; one in math, each test should take about two hours. And then those test results for that school would be reported to the public and you'd break it down according to the groups I just mentioned, and we could see if any group of children in any community is being left behind. That wasn't all that the law did. The law also created federal standards here in Washington for whether a school is succeeding or failing, what a state or school district must do about that failure and whether a teacher was highly qualified to teach in a classroom. And these are all terms defined in Washington, D.C.

            If fixing No Child Left Behind were a standardized test, Congress would have earned a failing grade for each of the last seven years, because No Child Left Behind expired in 2007. We’ve been unable to agree on how to reauthorize it. As a result, the law's original requirements stayed in place and gradually became unworkable. As I mentioned earlier, this would have caused almost all of America’s public schools to be classified as failing schools under the terms of the law. The reason for that was the law set a goal that by 2014, all children would be proficient in reading and mathematics. That sounded like a fair enough goal to have when you're looking at it from 2001. But the closer we got to 2014, even by some of the lowest and easiest definitions of proficiency established by states, it was clear that most children and most schools wouldn't reach that goal. So President Obama's education secretary offered waivers from the terms of the law, and today 42 states operate their public schools under terms of those waivers from the original provisions of No Child Left Behind.

              Instead of the secretary just saying “yes” or “no,” each of those waivers contained some requirements. The secretary really had the state over a barrel--and said, “If you want a waiver from these unworkable provisions, you're going to have to do a few things.” One is to adopt certain academic standards, and that turned out to be Common Core in most cases. One was to take prescribed steps to help failing schools. Another was to evaluate teachers in a defined way. There was so much new federal control of local schools over the last several years that it produced a backlash against Common Core academic standards, a backlash against teacher evaluation and a backlash against tests in general. Governors and chief state school officers complain about federal overreach. Infuriated teachers say that the U.S. Department of Education has become a national human resources department or, in effect, a national school board.

              This doesn't come just from Republicans. This comes from Democratic chief state school officers who've come to my office and who've come to Senator Murray's office and said, “Please give us more flexibility. We’re with the children. We’re in our states. We think we know what to do.” They say it in different ways maybe, if they're Republicans or Democrats, but they all basically have said the same thing – which is why we have this consensus, at least so far, on how to fix this legislation, this law that everybody wants to fix.

So what is this remarkable consensus on how to fix the law?

Here are nine things the bill does.

            First, it strengthens state and local control. The bill gives responsibility for creating what we call accountability systems to states. That means, “Who's in charge of making sure the job gets done?” Well, that goes to states working with school districts, with teachers, with others to make sure that all students are learning and prepared for success. The accountability systems will be state designed. They will meet minimum federal parameters, including ensuring all students and subgroups of students are included in the accountability system. Disaggregating student achievement data—those are the tests I talked about earlier—and establishing challenging academic standards for all students. The federal government is prohibited from determining or approving state standards. So if you're in Alaska, Tennessee or Washington, the federal government says, “If you want the federal money, you must have challenging standards and you have to have tests of those standards.” But those are your standards, those are your tests. You need to publicize them so the world can know how kids and schools are doing. But the secretary in Washington is specifically prohibited by our bill from determining or approving those standards.

            Second, our legislation would end the Common Core mandate. The bill affirms that states may decide for themselves what academic standards they will adopt without interference from Washington, D.C. I mentioned a little earlier how the $4.4 billion pot of money caused maybe as many as 30 states to immediately say, “Yes, we'll adopt Common Core.” Now, maybe they were going to do it anyway, but that’s what it did. Under our proposal, the federal government may not, mandate or incentivize states to adopt or maintain any particular set of standards, including Common Core. States will be free to decide what academic standards to maintain in their states. If they want Common Core, they can have Common Core. If they want half of Common Core, they can have half of it. If they want “uncommon core,” states can have that. They have to have standards and the secretary is prohibited from telling them what those standards are.

             Third, the bill would end the secretary's waivers. The waiver provision was a small part of the original bill in 2001. I doubt that those who passed it ever expected it would be used the way it has been by the current secretary. The bill prohibits the secretary, though, from mandating additional requirements for states or school districts seeking waivers from federal law. In other words, if I come in as governor of Tennessee, to the secretary of education and say, “I’d like to have a waiver,” he could say “yes,” or he can say “no” but he can't say, “Well, you can get a waiver if you'll evaluate teachers this way, adopt these standards, and fix these underperforming schools in that way.” That's up to the state. The bill limits the secretary's authority to disapprove a request as well.

             Fourth, the bill maintains important information for parents, teachers and communities. No issue has stirred as much controversy in our discussion as testing. No Child Left Behind required students to take—as I mentioned earlier—17 standardized tests over the course of their K-12 education, and it attached high stakes for schools, school districts and states to those results. As we studied the problem, as we listened to teachers and governors, and people of both political parties, it became obvious to us that it wasn't those 17 federally required tests. It was the high stakes attached to them. A third grader, for example, is required to take only one test in math, one test in reading. The testimony of the Denver school superintendent was that each of those tests takes about two hours. Well, if you take two tests in the third grade and two in the fourth grade and those are the tests that are publicized so people can tell whether the school is succeeding, whether the child is succeeding or the children are being left behind, that’s not very much time out of the school year. But the accountability system for what to do about those test results contributed to the exploding number of state and local tests. Many of the tests were being given to prepare students for the high stakes federal test. So our proposal maintains the federally required two annual tests in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school as well as science tests given three times between grades 3-12. These are important measures of student achievement. They need to be reported publicly so parents can know how their child is performing. It’s important that the results be disaggregated so we can know if any particular group of students is being ignored or left behind. It can also help teachers support students who are struggling to meet state standards. We have included in our proposal before the Senate an amendment from Senator Collins and Senator Sanders. It is a pilot program that would allow states additional flexibility to experiment with innovative assessment systems – meaning tests – that might replace the kind of standardized tests that are used today. It’s important to point out that the federal requirement isn't for a particular test. It just simply says the state has to have one, and the state has to publicize it through the state report card.

               Fifth, our proposal ends federal test-based accountability. We discovered that the problem is the federal government's accountability system for what to do about the results of the tests. That is what has contributed to the exploding number of state and local tests. Or said another way: The system allowed Washington to make the decisions about what a highly qualified teacher is, how to evaluate a teacher and what adequate yearly progress is for a school. All of that is what seems to have caused the exploding number of tests that we heard so much about.

              To give you an example: Fort Myers, Florida, we learned in our committee hearing, had 183 tests for children in the kindergarten through 12th grade career of that child. Well, we know that only 17 of those tests are the federal tests under No Child Left Behind, so where did the rest of the tests come from? There are state and local tests. And once the spotlight was shown on Fort Myers, Florida, and their 183 tests, it became clear that it wasn't the federal tests causing that, it was all the state and local tests.

             Because of this, our proposal ends the high stakes federal test-based accountability system and restores the accountability system as a state and local responsibility for holding schools and teachers accountable. Teachers said to us, “Look, there are many different types of tests and assessments. Teachers are in the assessment business. We do this all the time. We have pop quizzes, we have end of the year tests, we have standardized tests, we have written tests, we have multiple choice tests and we have open-ended questions. We need to be deciding what those assessments should be and we need to be deciding what weight each of those has in deciding how this child is doing, or how this school is doing or how this group of children is doing.” And so they don't really object to having a standardized test as one of the measurements. What teachers object to is having that single standardized test set in Washington, D.C., count for so much--to pretend that we can make a decision here about what may be going on in native schools in Alaska, or the mountains of Tennessee or the schools in Harlem. So states must include these standardized tests in their accountability system, but states will determine the weight of these tests. States will also be required to include graduation rates; another measure of academic success for elementary schools, English proficiency for English learners and one other state-determined measure of school success or student support. States may also include other measures of student and school performance in their accountability systems in order to provide teachers, parents and other stakeholders with a more accurate determination of school performance. State accountability systems must meet limited federal guidelines, including challenging academic standards for all students. But the federal government is prohibited in this proposal from determining or approving state standards. So as I have said, whether a state adopts Common Core or any other academic standard, is entirely the state's decision. This transfer of responsibility for determining what to do about the results of tests is why I believe that our proposal will result in fewer, more appropriate tests for children. There are three more things that our proposal does.

              Sixth, it strengthens the charter school program. The bill provides grants to state entities and charter management organizations to start new charter schools and to replicate or expand high quality charter schools. This includes developing facilities, preparing and hiring teachers and providing transportation. It also provides incentives for states to adopt stronger charter school authorizing practices, and increases charter school transparency so we can know what's going on with these schools. It improves community engagement in the operation of charter schools.

             Charter schools are public schools. I remember in 1992 when I was education secretary, the last thing I did was write a letter to all the school superintendents in the country and all the different school districts. I guess there were about 14,000 or 15,000, and I asked them to consider creating one of the new “start from scratch” schools in their school district. In 1992, these schools had been created in the state of Minnesota by the Democratic Farmer Labor government. There were ten of these schools and they called them charter schools. Those were the first ten charter schools. Today there are 6,700 charter schools. About 6 percent of all public school students go to charter schools. Charter schools, in my view, are nothing more than public schools in which teachers have the freedom to give children what they need and parents have the freedom to choose the school that their child attends. I would think any teacher would much prefer to have that sort of arrangement. It allows for freedom from state regulations, freedom from federal regulations, and freedom from some union rules so they could basically provide to the children who come to that school, who choose to go to the school, the kind of education that those children deserve.

             Seventh, the proposal would help states fix the lowest performing schools. The bill includes federal grants to state and school districts to help improve low performing schools that are identified by state accountability systems. School districts will be responsible for designing evidence-based interventions for low-performing schools with technical assistance from the states. The federal government is prohibited from mandating, prescribing or defining the specific steps school districts and states must take to improve these schools.

              Now, why would one do that? Well, let me give you an example of what goes on today. Now under the waiver requirements, if you have a low-performing school, you have to identify a certain number. That’s prescribed by Washington, and then you have six ways you can fix the school. I insisted a couple of years ago that we add a seventh, showing my old governor biases. I said, “Let's just allow a state to come up with a seventh way of improving a low-performing school, and that would be whatever the governor thinks would be the best way to do it.” Well, that was adopted by the Congress. About 12 months later, out came a regulation from the United States Department of Education defining, limiting and explaining what a governor could do about it. The whole purpose of the exercise was to get rid of that sort of instruction from here and recognize that governors themselves might feel that their principal responsibility was to improve low performing schools. I always did when I was there, and with all due respect, I didn't really need advice from Washington, D.C., about how to do it.

               Eighth, our proposal helps states support teachers. The bill provides resources to states and school districts to implement activities to support teachers, principals and other educators. This includes high-quality induction programs for new teachers and ongoing rigorous professional development opportunities. The bill allows, but doesn't require, states to develop and implement teacher evaluation systems.

               I know that I’m using some of my own experiences here, but that's how I have learned. I believe that teacher evaluation is the holy grail of public education. Parents are more important than teachers, but I have yet to figure out how to pass a better parents law. Most of the evidence we know about shows that the single most important way to help a child succeed is to put that child in the presence of a really exceptional teacher. So in 1984, Tennessee became the first state to pay teachers more for teaching well. That included a year and a half brawl with the National Education Association who objected to it. Reagan was president then. He came to Tennessee, not to tell us to do it, not with any federal dollars, but just to say this is important to do. This is good to do. That helped me greatly in passing the legislature, which was Democratic at the time, and that kind of leadership began the process across this country. The evaluation of teachers has spread, in order to identify the better teachers, to encourage them, to reward them and try to keep them in the teaching profession. It was assumed when I came here that because I was so involved in teacher evaluations that I would want to come to Washington and say, “Okay, now everybody has to do what Tennessee did,” but I did just the reverse. The last thing we needed in Tennessee when we were trying to do teacher evaluations in a fair way was Washington looking over our shoulder, making it more difficult and complicated. Evaluating good teachers, and particularly rewarding outstanding teaching, is not easy to do. It sounds simple, but it's hard. It needs to be something that teachers buy into. It may be different in Alaska and Tennessee and Washington, and it needs to respect what the circumstances are in each place. The goal is to reward outstanding teaching, to make teaching a better respected profession and to recognize that excellent teachers of math have great opportunities at IBM or some other company, and I want to encourage that they stay in the classroom. This does that, but it doesn't mandate it from Washington.

            And finally, this bill helps states improve the fragmentation of early childhood education programs. I suspect you will hear a lot about this from Senator Murray because we heard a great deal about it in the committee from her. She is a pre-school teacher. My mother was as well. I think one of the things Senator Murray learned as a pre-school teacher was how to work well with others. She is a passionate advocate for early childhood education. It may not go as far as she would like, but we have an important step forward in this bill, in my opinion. Senator Murray and Senator Isakson offered an amendment. It was approved by the committee and it will provide competitive planning grants to help states expand quality early childhood education by addressing the fragmentation of spending of federal dollars currently for early childhood education programs. We spend about $8 billion on Head Start. We spend about another $6 billion or $7 billion on child care development block grants. That total amount of money is as much money as we spend in the entire Title I program for kindergarten through the 12th grade. We spend another $8 billion or $10 billion throughout different parts of the federal government for early childhood education. Then there is state funding for early childhood education. Then there is local funding. Then there is private funding. Testimony from the Superintendent of Education for Louisiana, for example, was that as much as more money, what would help create more educational opportunities for children who are 2 and 3 and 4, is for states and local governments to be able to spend the money we're already spending more effectively. “There are too many silos,” he said. Currently you can't use the Head Start money in conjunction with this money or that money. This proposal in our bill would be a step toward helping states use federal dollars more effectively in early childhood education.

             Finally, I said earlier that if fixing No Child Left Behind were a standardized test, Congress would have earned a failing grade for the last seven years. In each of the last two congresses, the Senate committee that Senator Murray and I head, produced bills to fix No Child Left Behind but these bills divided our committee along party lines.

            Even so, two congresses ago Senators Enzi, Kirk and I voted with the Democratic majority to report a bill out of the committee so that the full Senate could act. In the last Congress, the committee majority passed a partisan bill without any Republican votes, but I supported Senator Harkin in taking a bill to the floor. Unfortunately, these bills never reached the floor.

            We needed obviously to do something different which is why Senator Murray’s leadership became so important. She suggested the way we proceed was through a bipartisan agreement, which allowed us to create a bridge across the partisan divide so that we could recommend to the full committee a bipartisan solution upon which they could build and upon which the full senate could build. I accepted her suggestion, and I have repeatedly thanked her for it. She and I have listened carefully to our Senate colleagues and teachers, principals, governors, state school officers, students and parents and the business and civil rights communities. And we've listened to each other. I’m grateful that the Majority Leader has put the bill on the floor and the Democratic minority has allowed it to come to floor expeditiously. Already in our Senate education committee we considered 58 amendments and we've adopted 29. We’ve had a fair and open process which I believe is the main reason the committee vote was unanimous.

             Still I would like to say this: Senator Murray and I have exercised restraint. Neither of us has insisted on forcing into the bill every proposal about which we feel strongly. We know that to get a result, we have to achieve consensus and we know that in the Senate, consensus means at least 60 votes. We know that if we succeed here, we'll have to deal with our friends in the House of Representatives. And after that, if we want a result, which we do, we want the president's signature. We want to fix No Child Left Behind, not just make a political statement. The only major objection to this bill that I have heard is one from some groups who believe that the path to higher standards, the path to better teaching, and the path to real accountability is through Washington, D.C., instead of state by state. I would like to offer three reasons why I think this is wrong and why I believe our consensus to restore decisions to those closest to the children is right.

            First, states are better prepared today to set higher standards, to evaluate teachers, to develop good assessments, and to develop good accountability systems than they were when No Child Left Behind passed in 2001. President Bush and President Obama can take some credit for that and should.

                Second, the national school board, which I call it, which was created over the last ten years as we move more and more responsibility from the states to Washington, D.C., has created a backlash.  It has made it harder to have higher standards, made it harder to evaluate teachers and it's showed conclusively that the better path to higher standards, better teaching and real accountability is through the states, not through Washington.

               And finally, most Americans understand that you don't get wiser and more caring simply by getting on a plane and flying to Washington. In fact the people closer to the children are better equipped usually to make decisions about their well-being. Now, I have, because of age, a long view of this whole process and the idea that states are better prepared today than they used to be. I was governor when Terrel Bell, President Reagan’s education secretary in 1983 issued a “Nation at Risk,” saying our schools were in such a shape that if a foreign country had done that to our country we could have considered it an act of war. I worked together with other governors, the governors who were elected adjacent to me especially, Governor Clinton, Governor Riley, Governor Graham and the National Governors Association. In 1985 and 1986, Governor Clinton and I caused all of the governors to work on something we called “Time for Results” to move state by state toward more achievement for our students. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush called the governors together to a summit and set national education goals. That had never happened before in our country. It may sound like an easy thing to do to say, “Let's have goals for all children being proficient in math, science, history and geography,” but just to pick those subjects was controversial and just to spend the time on it was a great step forward. Then, there was America 2000. I was education secretary then, where the way to reach the goals—and there we began to see this debate again—is the best way to do it state by state, community by community, or is the best way through Washington, D.C.?

            President George H.W. Bush believed the best way to do it was state by state, community by community. So he advocated voluntary national standards, but they were voluntary and he advocated voluntary national tests, but they were voluntary, and accountability systems but they were voluntary as well. He advocated more choices for parents of low-income children and an expansion of charter schools and what the governors have done since that time is worked together state by state to create higher standards, better tests, our accountability systems better. And the governors have also agreed that states would take the NAEP test, National Assessment of Educational Progress. It’s a sample test, so not all students take it. But it keeps the governor of Tennessee from setting a low standard which we once did so we looked good when we achieved the standard. Now we can see whether Alaska and Tennessee are comparable because that test is public.

              The second point I made about this is about the backlash. It may seem counterintuitive for President Clinton to say, “It's harder to create higher standards because of the Common Core debate,” but you'd understand it pretty well if you ran for the United States Senate in a Republican primary or even a general election, which I did last year and it was an issue both in the primary and in the general election-- Common Core. And what I said was, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, I think Washington should stay entirely out of it,”, but people were so upset with Common Core, not really so much because of what is in it, but because Washington was requiring it, or at least it seemed to them that it was Washington taking over local schools. The truth of the matter was that Common Core began with Bill Bennett, a former education secretary, a leading conservative when he was head of the National Endowment for the Humanities here in Washington, D.C., he sponsored research by Edie Hirsch in Virginia, who wanted more vigor in academic curriculum. When the first President Bush called governors together and said, “We want to set goals.” We started to talk about what are the standards were for those goals, governors began to work together on something called “Achieve.” And there were some who said, “Let's have Washington do it,” but the governors said, “No, you stay out of it, we'll do it together.” So it was out of that that the Common Core Academic Standards came. It was a bunch of conservative governors working together to add rigor to the system. What spoiled it was Washington’s involvement in it creating this enormous backlash, and governors are now backpedaling at a time when in our state we have advanced manufacturing coming in and workers need to know a lot in order to get a job, we're arguing about whether to have high standards or not because of the backlash against Common Core.

                  We need to get Washington out of the Common Core mandate debate. We need to let Tennessee and every other state make their own decisions about what their academic standards should be. If you don't like what your child is learning, you can go talk to your governor or your legislature and they have 100 percent of the authority to decide whether that's good or whether that's bad. And then the teacher evaluation--as I said, I spent a lot of time on that in the 1980s and since. It’s hard to do. It’s hard enough to do without adding a new element and the new element is the highly prescriptive methods about how to conduct a teacher evaluation. That’s produced a backlash. Teachers unions are up in arms. When they're up in arms it makes it harder to put in a teacher evaluation system. So if you, like I do, believe that high standards and teacher evaluation are the underpinnings of a great education, and the way you help children learn what they need to do, you do not want to create a backlash to those efforts by insisting on prescriptive definitions from Washington, D.C.

              And finally, there are those of us who fly from Knoxville to Washington, or Senator Murray who flies a long way each week, she goes all the way to the west coast and back, but almost all of us go home almost every weekend. And I don't think any of us really think we get that much smarter and that much wiser on the plane flight here. You know, I may get a little less smart and a little less wise on the plane flight here. It doesn't help me know more about what's going on in the Tennessee mountains or the native areas of Alaska or eastern Washington State by being here in Washington, D.C. We spend 4 percent of the nation's education dollars through this bill we're debating today. We have a right to ask, I think, “How are these children doing, how are these schools doing? Take a test, report the results, and let us see if children are being left behind.” But we shouldn't presume then to say, “Here is what you ought to do about it. We’re going to decide who is succeeding, who is failing, what the right way to fix that is.” We can't do that with 50 million children, 100,000 schools, all of those are better done by men and women closer to the children.

              One of the most eloquent statements of what I’ve tried to say came from Carol Burris, the New York high school teacher of the year. She wrote us and this is what she said: "Please remember that the American public school system was built on the belief that local communities cherish their children and have the right and responsibility within sensible limits to determine how they're schooled. While the federal government has a very special role in ensuring that our students do not experience discrimination based on who they are or what their disability might be, congress is not a ‘national school board.’” That's the principal of the year in New York State saying that. She went on to say, "Although our locally elected school boards may not be perfect, they represent one of the purest forms of democracy that we have. Bad ideas in the small, do damage in the small and are easily fixed. Bad ideas at the federal level result in massive failure and are harder to fix.” That's advice from the New York principal of the year. In other words, our well-intentioned guidance from Washington is usually not as effective a decision as a decision made in the home, the classroom, the community by those closest to the children.

            We heard over and over again from Democrats as well as Republicans that while continuing measurements of academic progress are important in holding schools and teachers accountable, we should respect the judgments of those closest to the children and leave to them most decisions about how to help 3.4 million teachers help 50 million children in 100,000 public schools. A little humility on our part is an important part of the recipe for a successful fix of No Child Left Behind. I look forward to this debate. I particularly look forward to fixing this law that everybody seems to agree has to be fixed, and that most people seem to agree on how to fix it. If Senators were in the classroom, none of us would expect to receive a passing grade for unfinished work. Seven years is long enough to consider fixing No Child Left Behind.

I thank the President, and I yield the floor.

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