Bob Schaffer: “I commend them for their hard work, commitment and dedication.”

Granting more freedom from federal mandates of--federal mandates of NCLB--does not mean lowering the bar for any child.

You can't have all of this change that has been developed in the states or all of the reluctance to change that has been developed in other states and say that this is somehow one-size-fits-all.

This is the greatest environment for school reform I have seen in my career in here, in 38 years on this committee, and we should be taking advantage of it.

The question is now, when we see all of the reform that is taking place, before you didn't know where your qualified teachers were, you wouldn't say where the distribution was, your graduation rate--any improvement made you AYP.