Thomas Daschle: “I think, as everyone has already noted, this is an important debate for a lot of reasons. The Elementary and Secondary…”

“I think, as everyone has already noted, this is an important debate for a lot of reasons. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act is truly the blueprint that guides all Federal education policy from prekindergarten through high school. So this is the big one. This is the one that really counts when it comes to the Federal policy framework under which we will work for the next 6 years. Every 5 or 6 years, Congress has the responsibility to do what we are doing now, to decide what is working, to fix what is not. In the past, this debate on ESEA has always been vigorous, but it has always been bipartisan. In the end, the votes have always been bipartisan. Unfortunately, that is not the way things have shaped up so far this year. Two months ago, Republican leaders in the Senate stunned us by announcing that they were abandoning efforts to develop the bipartisan approach we have used now for 35 years.”