On the recordOctober 19, 2011
I would like to say to the Senator from North Carolina, before he leaves the floor, that I am well aware of his longstanding commitment to education issues and to the kids in this country. I have no doubt of that, and I hope he didn't take anything I said to suggest that. I actually think the two of us probably share a lot of agreement on what we ought to be doing. My issue is simply--and as I said about the Senator from Kentucky, he has every right to do this--that, as my colleague and other members of the committee, I want to engage in a debate on the bill. I want to consider the amendments of my colleagues and to offer my own. I am painfully aware, having been in a school system, that Congress was supposed to reauthorize this bill in 2007. It is now 4 years later, and because of our own fecklessness, our own inability to get anything done, every single year teachers and parents and principals keep having to put up with what is the crudest accountability system I could imagine. The only thing cruder than the accountability system was the response of big school districts, such as the one I used to work in, to that accountability as people tried to comply with well-intentioned but incredibly poorly thought-through laws and regulations from Washington, DC.…
