Pete Sessions: “I will speak in opposition to the second-degree amendment proposed by the Senator from Minnesota. First and foremost, as…”

“I will speak in opposition to the second-degree amendment proposed by the Senator from Minnesota. First and foremost, as everybody knows who has been participating in this debate and can understand how the system works, the second-degree amendment, as proposed, would gut Senator Feinstein's and my first-degree amendment. It would simply make it impossible to enforce. Of course, that is what the Senator from Minnesota desires. He is not for testing or accountability or the end of social promotion. I respect that position. But his President, the President of the United States, in his State of the Union Address, to a cheer from the audience, called for an end of social promotion. It is something whose time has come and gone. It is time to care about children and to care about the billions of dollars we are spending on education. And we are going to spend more next year than we did this year. But if we care about what is happening with it, we have to ask if there is some accountability. We can't simply allow children to go on and on, be promoted, and end up being an all-pro football player who can't read and write. That is happening in America, to a lesser degree mostly, but to a sad degree too often throughout this country. We are not making sure children are meeting minimum standards. When we do so, problems arise. They have to be confronted. Right now, we are denying the problem. We are enabling an inefficient system to continue.”