Heidi Alexander: “the vote was 81 to 17. What that says to me and should say to the American people is that not only is there a consensus…”

“the vote was 81 to 17. What that says to me and should say to the American people is that not only is there a consensus in this country that everybody wants to fix No Child Left Behind, that is the consensus we began with. Not only was there consensus in the Senate's education committee about how to fix it-- which was unanimous in a 22-member committee that includes Members who are about as diverse as you could find in the Senate--the entire Senate has a consensus on how to fix it. The Senator from Washington and I were just talking. This is a complicated piece of legislation. There are crocodiles in every corner, any of which could have made it difficult for this bill to succeed. For the Senate to take a look at the 100,000 schools in this country for the 50 million children and the 3.5 million teachers and say, ``We hear you. We know you want to end the confusion, the anxiety, and the feeling that you are not in charge of your own children. We hear you. We have listened to you, and we have come up with a solution with which you agree''--and that we voted by a vote of 81 to 17 is a remarkable event. So we have a remarkable consensus that No Child Left Behind needed to be fixed. We had a remarkable consensus on how to fix it in the committee. There are not many times on a bill this difficult and this encompassing that we have a consensus this remarkable--81 to 17--in the Senate. I mentioned in my earlier remarks the importance of the Senate in this way.…”