Timothy Roemer: “I rise to applaud the authors of the amendment, who I deeply respect, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller)…”

“I rise to applaud the authors of the amendment, who I deeply respect, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee), and also to applaud their amendment. I think that the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) and I already have much of what they are requiring in their amendment in our bill. I do not know how many times it has to be said, and then say it again, about assessments or measurement or accountability or termination, if it does not work. We do not need to get into the bureaucratic and legislative babble and blather that the people here are talking about not wanting to repeat. We do not want to get into that. I applaud the authors of the amendment for the following reasons, because they are concerned with what we try to get at and is the very heart and soul of this legislation, and that is the nexus between increased flexibility and reliable accountability. We do not want to do that with new paperwork. We do not want to do that with handcuffing our local parents and teachers. We do not want to do that with more mandates coming from Washington. We want to do it by one rope of accountability to student achievement, and we want to be able to measure that student achievement.”