Dick Durbin: “on the floor now when we return for debate is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which has been named the Every…”

“on the floor now when we return for debate is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which has been named the Every Child Achieves Act, and is before the Senate this week. We may finish it. The issue is our opportunity on a periodic basis to debate the future of K-12 education in America. Millions of Americans follow this debate. It affects their local schools and school districts. It was under President George W. Bush that there was an amazing bill passed called the No Child Left Behind Act. What was amazing, politically, was that President Bush--a Republican and a conservative-- called for a larger role by the Federal Government in evaluating school districts and teachers and in deciding whether they were succeeding. It was controversial from the start. Ultimately, we have moved away from it. This new bill takes a much different approach. Instead of testing, testing, testing and grading school districts, we are basically shifting the responsibility back to the States to do this. It remains to be seen whether this is or will be an improvement. We learned a lot under No Child Left Behind when we took a close look at test scores. To say what the average test score is at a school meant very little--or nothing--when we broke out the students at the school and found out that some were doing exceedingly well and some not so well at all.…”