Heidi Alexander: “last summer, by a vote of 81 to 17, the Senate passed a bill to fix No Child Left Behind. The House of Representatives…”

“last summer, by a vote of 81 to 17, the Senate passed a bill to fix No Child Left Behind. The House of Representatives had already passed their version. We had a conference report. We sent it to the President, and it was in December that President Obama signed the Every Student Succeed Acts to fix No Child Left Behind. The President not only signed it in a large ceremony attended by parents, teachers, students, Governors, and people from all walks of life, the President said it was a ``Christmas miracle.'' I think he said that for a couple of reasons. One, it was good news. Miracles are usually good news, and this was good news for 50 million children, 3.5 million teachers, and 100,000 public schools. They had waited 8 years for the U.S. Congress to fix the problems with No Child Left Behind. They knew it was difficult to do, and they looked forward to the result that we achieved because we achieved a consensus. There surely was a consensus if this was a law that everybody wanted fixed, but we also had a consensus about how to fix it. People who don't usually agree in the education world said: We want to keep the tests.…”