Political Quotes

“I want to respond briefly to some of Chairman Kline's introduction. I think both sides can agree that there are flaws in No Child Left Behind. AYP is a flawed formula. Personally, I think the answer reflected in the Democratic substitute is to get accountability right, not take a step back from accountability. The chairman mentioned that ``now we have more information about the quality of teachers and schools'' thanks to No Child Left Behind. And to his credit, in the initial draft bill, we replaced after 3 years the teacher evaluation system. However, unfortunately, that was amended on the floor with the Scalise-Bishop amendment. So I think one thing we can be assured of in the underlying bill is it will lead to less information about the quality of teachers and any assurances that our Federal funds are going to fund teachers that have any kind of qualification or in fact are effective. The Democratic substitute takes into account student growth, proficiency rates, graduation rates, and designs targeted interventions to help turn around our lowest-performing schools. Whereas H.R. 5 guts education funding, the Democratic substitute provides funding for critical programs like STEM, school turnaround grants, safe and healthy students. This amendment would help invest in our Nation's teachers' quality. I strongly support the Democratic substitute and call on my colleagues to make sure we move forward in education reform to help serve all kids in our great country.”