Heidi Alexander: “the question is not whether but how best to make early childhood education available to the largest number of children.…”

“the question is not whether but how best to make early childhood education available to the largest number of children. The approach that I am offering is quite different than the Democratic proposal. Last year this time around, the Senate HELP Committee held a markup on another bill which was the Senate Democrats' proposal to reauthorize No Child Left Behind. I said then that over the last decade, the combination of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Obama administration's use of waivers has created a congestion of Federal mandates and rules that amount, in effect, to a national school board for elementary and secondary education. The proposal that the HELP committee approved last year on a partisan vote would have ``doubled down'' on those mandates by setting performance standards, giving the Secretary of Education the authority to tell 100,000 public schools what their standards and tests should look like, how to measure their students' progress, and how to evaluate their teachers. And I said, then too, that if we wanted anyone to serve as chairman of the national school board, Arne Duncan would be a terrific one but Congress has said repeatedly that we don't want a national school board. Unfortunately, the bill that Senate Democrats are proposing today has a familiar ring to it. It would, in effect, create a national school board for 3- and 4-year-olds.…”