Joe Lieberman: “I rise today to join with several of my colleagues in offering a comprehensive education reform proposal that I believe…”

“I rise today to join with several of my colleagues in offering a comprehensive education reform proposal that I believe can serve as the foundation for building a bipartisan legislative consensus and ultimately a better future for our children. It is a common-sense strategy that we believe can be the basis for a common ground solution--reinvest in our public schools, reinvent the way we administer them, and restore a sense of responsibility to the children we are supposed to be serving. Hence the title of our bill: the Public Education Reinvention, Reinvestment, and Responsibility Act, or the Three R's for short. Our Senate New Democrat Coalition originally proposed this plan, which seeks to bring together the best ideas of both parties into a whole new approach to federal education policy, during the debate last year on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We drew significant interest from Members on both sides of the aisle, as well as from a number of voices in the education reform community, but not enough to overcome the partisan tensions of an election year. We return to this cause now, at the start of this new session, with the same sense of urgency and a new sense of optimism.”