Jack Reed: “I rise as a cosponsor of the Wellstone amendment and a strong supporter of the amendment. I believe what Senator…”

“I rise as a cosponsor of the Wellstone amendment and a strong supporter of the amendment. I believe what Senator Wellstone is doing is calling our collective bluff. We talk about high standards, high accountability for every school in America. We talk about not leaving any child behind. We talk about authorizing significant amounts of money for title I. In fact, we have all come together, 79 of us, to vote for a substantial increase in title I spending--authorization, not appropriation, under the leadership of Senator Dodd and Senator Collins. What he is saying is, if we are all in favor, if we have all voted for it, let's make sure we do it. Let's make sure we do it in conjunction with the testing, not after the fact, not testing first, money later. Let's do it together. That is very wise public policy. It reflects what we have all been talking about for weeks and weeks now. I have heard in the course of the debate analogies to other realms of endeavor, talking about the efficacy, the importance of testing. We know testing is important. There is no one in the Senate who does not recognize that if you test students to see if they are making progress, you have to evaluate the test scores of schools to see if they are adequate. No one is arguing with that logic.”