Heidi Alexander: “Senator Bennet and I have just announced an effort that I think most teachers, most principals, and many parents will…”

“Senator Bennet and I have just announced an effort that I think most teachers, most principals, and many parents will want to be a part of. We are going to look at the education system in Tennessee and in Colorado--two of the more progressive States in education--to see if there are too many tests and too many regulations. We want to make sure the tests we have are good tests and the regulations we have are reasonable regulations, and any minute we can save from an unneeded test or an unnecessary regulation is a minute a teacher can spend devoted to teaching. So we have done two things. First, we are introducing today legislation that we hope will be a part of the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act when it is passed that will have the Education Secretary set up a task force that will do something we don't usually do in government, which is subtract instead of add government--in other words, to continuously ask teachers, principals, and others what tests, what regulations are unnecessary so we can get rid of them. Second, we are going to start right away to do this in Colorado and Tennessee. We have talked to our Governors--Governor Hickenlooper and Governor Halsam--and we are going to put together a task force of educators in our State and ask them to say to us: What regulations are unnecessary? What tests are unnecessary? When I was Governor, I used to say to the Education Secretary, who was then Bill Bennett: There are too many Federal regulations.…”