Murray: GOP Moving Quickly to Gut Bipartisan Education Law, Secure Greater Authority for Betsy DeVos to Implement Anti-Public School Agenda

(Washington, D.C.) – Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, issued the following statement on Congressional Republicans’ efforts to undo new guidelines on the accountability and state plan provisions under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

“Senate Republicans just jammed through a new Secretary of Education with no experience in public education and with every Democrat and two Republicans opposing her. So now is the time for us in Congress to get back to working together to build on our bipartisan Every Student Succeed Act and invest in our students and schools, not for Republicans to poison the well with a partisan vote to gut our bipartisan law, give even more authority to the Secretary of Education to implement her anti-public school agenda, and open the door to students and communities across the country falling through the cracks.

“Rolling back the strong federal guardrails and halting state progress on implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act would be a devastating blow to students across the country and would throw state and district planning into chaos at the very moment when they had started to settle into the new law.”

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