Rob Bishop: “I appreciate the comments of the gentleman from California, but I have to take issue with them. There is no State in…”

“I appreciate the comments of the gentleman from California, but I have to take issue with them. There is no State in which a local district or a State or a city or a county is autonomous to the State itself. States create those entities. They can add to them. They can eliminate them. They are responsible for them. This is not an esoteric philosophical debate. There is a real situation in which this has happened, and in large part the base bill eliminates this from actually happening again in the future. If I can quote from Education Week, there was a policy in which this Department of Education tried to circumvent the States. The Department of Education has responded with the announcement it will begin to offer separate policy terms to individual school districts--circumventing not just Congress, but also the authority of States to direct education. In response to that, the superintendent from Virginia said that this move undermines the States. The Commissioner from Colorado said that this would ``bypass'' State authority and result in ``unintended consequences.'' From the Secretary of Education in Pennsylvania: To allow districts to go directly to the Feds to get waivers, it would be difficult to see who is exactly responsible for accountability and reforms in their States. Districts are creatures of State government.…”