Heidi Alexander: “in the world in which we live, every American's job is on the line. As every American knows, better schools mean better…”

“in the world in which we live, every American's job is on the line. As every American knows, better schools mean better jobs. Schools and jobs are alike in this sense: Washington cannot create good jobs and Washington cannot create better schools, but Washington can create an environment in which others can create good jobs and environments in which teachers and principals and students and communities can create better schools, along with their parents. A good place for Washington to start is with the five pieces of legislation we introduced today to fix the law known as No Child Left Behind. No Child Left Behind was a bipartisan effort in 2001 and 2002. President Bush and Democratic Members of the Senate and the House and Republicans as well agreed on it. By the 2013-14 school year, the law said that all 50 million students in nearly 100,000 public schools would be proficient in reading and math. There would be State standards, tests to measure performance against those standards, and requirements that the more than 3,000 teachers in America be highly qualified. There would be school report cards, disaggregated by subgroups of students, and schools that failed to make what was called adequate yearly progress would receive Federal sanctions. There would also be more choices of schools and charter schools for parents.…”