Political Quotes

“And I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. Mr. Speaker, this morning, I got to meet with one of the superintendents from my district, Bruce Messinger, superintendent of the Boulder Valley School District. Bruce told me, as so many others have over the previous years, how the outdated policies under No Child Left Behind stifle innovation and burden teachers and principals with a culture of overtesting. I remember a lot of these concerns well because I served on our State Board of Education in Colorado from 2000 to 2006, when we were originally implementing No Child Left Behind; and just as we are now frustrated, we were then frustrated with the lack of flexibility, the fact that solutions were coming out of Washington rather than honoring our local accountability system in how we were able to make things work locally, and a formula, adequate yearly progress, that we knew wouldn't work. We knew that we wouldn't have 100 percent proficiency in all subgroups within a decade. We knew we needed reasonable goals to look at student achievement growth rather than the 1-year picture. Since that time, there has been additional discretion given through a policy of waivers that have been given in many States, including my home State of Colorado, but I think we can all agree that it is past time to reauthorize and replace No Child Left Behind with a Federal education policy that makes sense.…”