Heidi Alexander: “in 2015, 85 U.S. Senators voted to fix the No Child Left Behind Act. We reversed the trend to a national school board…”

“in 2015, 85 U.S. Senators voted to fix the No Child Left Behind Act. We reversed the trend to a national school board and began to restore decisions to classroom teachers, local school boards, and States. The Wall Street Journal said that it was ``the largest devolution of federal control to the States'' in 25 years. The Department of Education regulation that we seek to overturn today does exactly the reverse. It begins to restore the national school board, and it begins to take away responsibility from classroom teachers, local school boards, and States. It does that in direct violation of the law we passed with 85 Senators voting for it 15 months ago. The question before us today is not only whether we believe in a national school board or local school board, the question is whether we believe Congress ought to write the law or the U.S. Department of Education ought to write the law. Article I of the U.S. Constitution says that the U.S. Congress--we--should write the law. The purpose of this resolution is to overturn a Department of Education regulation that in seven specific cases directly violates the Every Student Succeeds Act passed 15 months ago, and in 16 additional cases exceeds the authority allowed by the law. I spoke on this floor yesterday in detail of each of those 23 instances. It is very unusual for the Congress to actually prohibit a department from regulating on an issue, but that is exactly what Congress did.…”