John Kline: “We have now had a few days to look at the 851-page amendment that the Democrats brought forward. It was a little bit…”

“We have now had a few days to look at the 851-page amendment that the Democrats brought forward. It was a little bit surprising during the markup to have it brought up to us. I think one of my colleagues said something about not legislating by the pound, but if we had been legislating by the pound, there are a lot of pounds there, so I appreciate the time we have had to look at this. It seems to me that the Democrats' substitute amendment just doubles down on the policy that we have now. The gentleman from Virginia--my friend, the ranking member--talked about areas of concentrated poverty, and we need to spend money there. That is what we do. We spend money there now. We spend a lot more money per student in high-poverty areas; yet, in those areas, we have less than half the kids graduating. He talked about progress that has been made, but right now in America, one in five students will drop out of high school. Only 26 percent of high school seniors are proficient in math, and only 38 percent of high school seniors--just over a third, Madam Chair--are proficient in reading. The current system is not working. As I have said again and again in this debate, Republicans and Democrats agree that No Child Left Behind is fundamentally flawed and needs to be replaced. We have different ideas about how we want to go about doing that.…”