Political Quotes

“last month several Republican Senators came to the floor and offered legislation to fix No Child Left Behind, the legislation that was passed nearly 10 years ago to try to address our Nation's 100,000 public schools. In that legislation, we sought to fix problems with the legislation, not just to create another big reauthorization bill. The ideas we had were not all our ideas. They included many ideas from President Obama and his excellent Education Secretary, Secretary Duncan, as well as Democratic and Republican Members of Congress. They included having more realistic goals for No Child Left Behind. The original goal set in 2001 would, according to Secretary Duncan, create an unworkable situation where 80,000 of the 100,000 schools might be identified as failing in the next few years. A second goal of our legislation was to move decisions about deciding whether schools and teachers were succeeding or failing out of Washington, DC, and back to State and local governments. A lot has happened in the last 10 years in the States--really the last 20 or 25 but especially in the last 10 years. We have better reporting requirements from No Child Left Behind. We have new State common standards, higher academic standards. We have new State tests that have been created--not here but by the States to do that. And now States are working together to create accountability systems.…”