On the recordOctober 19, 2011
I have never done this in the 2\1/2\ years I have been in the Senate. I have not been here a long time, and I have spent a lot of time complaining about the way this place works. But I had to come to the floor to implore the Senator from Kentucky to reconsider his objection. I do it not because I have a perspective on this as a Senator; I do it because I had the honor of serving as the superintendent of the public schools in Denver for 4 years of my life and have dedicated years of my life but, more importantly, seen the dedication of the people who are working in our schools. The Senator speaks of the tragedy of this process. I will tell you what a tragedy is. A tragedy is that only 9 of 100 children living in poverty in this country, in 2011, can expect to get a college degree-- that is a tragedy; the fact that when I became superintendent in the Denver public schools, on the 10th grade math test, there were 33 African-American students proficient on that test and 61 Latinos proficient on that test--the test that, if we are honest with ourselves, which we are not, measures a junior high school standard of mathematical proficiency in Europe. That is a tragedy. It is a tragedy that there are people working in our schools right now, at 11:15 a.m. in Colorado, doing the best they can to serve our kids, and we think a 2-hour meeting is too long. That is a tragedy. I would not have drafted the bill exactly the way it has been drafted. The chairman knows that.…
