Heidi Alexander: “I thank the Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Burr, for his insight and leadership on how we help create an environment…”

“I thank the Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Burr, for his insight and leadership on how we help create an environment in which teachers, parents, principals, and community leaders can make schools better, rather than through orders sent from Washington telling them how to do that. Senator Kirk from Illinois will be here in a few minutes to introduce the charter school bill, which is the same bill that passed the House of Representatives yesterday with 365 votes in a bipartisan way. As I mentioned at the outset, our purpose is to get things moving. We think there ought to be a law before the end of the year that fixes No Child Left Behind. Toward that end, the senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Senator Enzi of Wyoming, began to meet quietly more than a year ago with the chairman of the committee, Senator Harkin, and with Secretary Duncan and, on some occasions, with the President. They were able to come to a good deal of agreement about fixing No Child Left Behind, and then, on the nine areas we would focus on, which I put into the Record a few minutes ago. Senator Enzi is here now, and I thought he might want to speak about that effort. While all of us who are introducing these bills today are Republicans, we are only doing this as a way of moving the process forward and are hoping to attract Democratic support so we can end up with a bipartisan result.…”