On the recordJuly 14, 2015
we come together every few years to debate education. Why does the Federal Government get into the conversation about grade schools and high schools? Because 50 years ago we created programs sending Federal money to these schools. In my State, about 5 percent of all the money spent on education comes from Washington. The rest of it comes from State and local sources. Sending this money to schools was part of a program for accountability back in the 1960s. The problems we faced were largely twofold, problems of poverty and the resulting difficulties that children had in school and problems with racial discrimination. So we tried to resolve these by sending resources to States and holding them accountable if they received Federal money to move toward improving test scores and performance for children and breaking down the walls of segregation. It is 50 years later. We have tried so many different approaches to this, and under President George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, there was a surprising new approach called No Child Left Behind. What was surprising is that a conservative Republican President actually called for a bigger role of the Federal Government when it came to education. President Bush felt that we should hold schools and teachers accountable, that we should test to make sure they were making progress, and frankly, call them out if they were not. It was a pretty bold and controversial idea.…
