Student Success Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 5 minutes.
Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to H.R. 5, the Letting Students Down Act.
H.R. 5 is supposed to be the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and a rewrite of No Child Left Behind. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was born out of Brown v. Board of Education. It is our Nation's education law, but it is fundamentally a civil rights law.
H.R. 5 runs our country in the opposite direction from those civil rights promises. This bill guts funding for public education. It abdicates the Federal Government's responsibility to ensure that every child has the right to an equal opportunity and a quality education. And it walks away from our duty to hold school systems accountable to students, parents and taxpayers.
For decades, providing all children with a quality education has been considered such a critical national priority that we have always found a way to come together in a bipartisan fashion to reauthorize and to update the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
We all recognize that a good education is a great equalizer, no matter where you come from, and it is necessary for a strong economy and a vibrant democracy. Each reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, in its own way, has moved our national education system forward.
That's why now-Speaker John Boehner and I worked with then-Senator Ted Kennedy and President George W. Bush in crafting the No Child Left Behind Act more than a decade ago. We agreed that there was a soft bigotry of low expectations in our education system. We agreed that schools were hiding low achievement by some students by using the averages of performance in the schools, and it was wrong. Parents wanted to know how their child was doing, not how the average child in the school was doing.
No Child Left Behind turned the lights on inside our Nation's schools. For the first time, parents could see whether or not their schools were actually teaching all students. Were they serving their student?
And in the decade since the law has been in effect, the evidence is irrefutable that all kids can learn, given the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their background, just given a chance.
However, as someone who has listened to experts in communities across the Nation and its pros and cons, I recognize that we now need to modernize the education law, No Child Left Behind, with fundamental changes. No Child Left Behind is very much the education reform of the past. It is inflexible, and encouraged some to lower their standards, to reduce their standards, to dumb down their standards, which this Nation cannot tolerate.
That's why it's time to rewrite this law, to embrace the principle that all students can learn if they're given an opportunity, and to encourage high standards that meet the needs of the 21st century global economy.
Unfortunately, H.R. 5 moves our education system in the wrong direction for students and schools already struggling under a broken system, and lets American kids down at a critical time.
H.R. 5 lets our students down by not guaranteeing all students have access to world-class, well-rounded educational opportunities needed to compete in a global economy.
It lets our students down by locking sequestration cuts into education funding. It allows funds to be moved away from schools with the most poverty, and removes the requirements of States and districts to adequately fund their schools.
It lets down students with disabilities by allowing schools to lower their standards for educating these children. And it lets our students down by not building on a broad consensus that we should continue to demand high standards of all students.
An extraordinary cross section of business, labor, civil rights, disabilities and education groups are opposing this bill because it lets our Nation's children down. It lets our economy down.
The National Center for Learning Disabilities says that this bill would dramatically alter the academic landscape for students with disabilities, jeopardizing their ability to graduate from high school or to go to college or to obtain employment.
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights believes that the merit of an education bill is determined by its treatment of the most disadvantaged among us. Yet H.R. 5 permits Federal funds targeted for this vulnerable group of students, such as English language learners and Native American students, to be reallocated for other purposes.
The business community opposes this bill. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is disappointed that the bill ``does not demand targeted support and real improvement for students stuck in low-performing schools or for students whose schools are not teaching them the basics in reading and math.''
I agree with these concerns. This bill is a huge step outside the mainstream consensus and an even bigger step backward for our Nation's students. We should be embracing the drive towards high standards across this country and ensuring that all of our children in all States benefit from this improved education system.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.
I hope that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will agree that a bipartisan Elementary and Secondary Education Act authorization is the right process we should move forward. This is about every child in our country getting the education they deserve, regardless of poverty, disability, or other challenges. To walk away from that commitment means letting our students down, letting the parents down, and letting down taxpayers who demand accountability. It means letting down teachers who deserve support. It means letting down businesses who are counting on our school system to produce college- and career-ready graduates. It means letting down our future.
We can do better than this. We can do it way better than this. I urge a ``no'' vote on H.R. 5, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 1 1/2 minutes.
Many of my colleagues have expressed concern over the fact that H.R. 5 takes the level of funding to the sequestration level. I think we ought to understand what this means in terms of ongoing improvement in the education program and the educational opportunity for those young people who are poor minorities and who go to some of the poorest schools in some of the poorest districts in our country. This is going to really grind down their ability to be able to respond, those schools, those districts, those teachers, those administrators, to the needs of those young people.
What it means is they will not have access to the kinds of support services that are necessary so that they will truly have an opportunity, have a full educational opportunity. We know that in many instances, in many of these schools, these students and these teachers require additional resources, require additional support systems for these students.
We know that when they are given those support systems, when they are given those resources, these very same children are able to thrive. We see that demonstrated all across this country all of the time.
I represent some of the most difficult schools in the State of California in the most difficult areas in the State of California, where children navigate very dangerous streets to get to school and to come back, yet we see students who were given that opportunity to have a first-class education are now attending Brown University and the University of Nebraska and UCLA and other such institutions.
The fact is these children can learn. The question is whether we will supply them with the resources so they can have the opportunity to do so.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
This is a fundamental debate that we will be having now as we enter the amendment process for this legislation. This is really a debate about whether we go backwards or forwards as a Nation. Every Member of this Congress--I believe I would be correct in saying--both in the House and the Senate--has told their constituents how important it is that we have a world-class education system and how we are falling behind other nations. Yet we see here the consideration of legislation by this Chamber that, in fact, moves us to the past.
It restricts the resources that are available. It reduces the accountability in the system. It fails to support teachers and principals--those people who almost every speaker today has said are the most important people in our education system. While it provides for teacher evaluation, which I support, it really only provides it for the purposes of hiring and firing a teacher, not to provide the kind of support and not to provide the kind of collaboration that teachers--young teachers and new teachers to the system--bring with them in wanting to have that experience so they can improve their profession, the kinds of opportunities that teachers want, and the reason teachers are organizing independently among themselves, both on the Internet and in localities, so that they can share their skills and their talents to improve their abilities to deliver the education. That support is not here.
You can say, Well, it's block-granted, and they can do it if they want.
Not under sequestration.
They'll be lucky if they can provide survival for the students whom this legislation is directed at, which are the poorest children in this country--minority children, English learners, children on Indian reservations, children who need special attention to succeed. If they get it, they can succeed, but this legislation doesn't do that. This legislation doesn't address the priority that, again, every Member in this body has spoken about. As for the priority that needs to be put on STEM, you can do it if you want to do it.
I've listened for so many years--people say, within the Federal Government, it's only 5 percent of the money or it's only 6 percent of the money--and it's always so burdensome. Well then, don't take it. I know the manager's amendment says that, but that's the law today. You sign up for this. And if everything else is going so well, how does this 5 percent of the money have such bad results in the districts? Because the fact of the matter is, we know, for whatever reason, many, many school districts and many schools are failing the students that they're supposed to be teaching.
This is an effort to try to assist them. This is an effort to try to give them the flexibility so that they can make these decisions, but if you send it in the form of H.R. 5, they're not going to have the support to do it; they're not going to have the resources to do it; they're not going to have the trained teachers to do it; they're not going to have the trained principals to do it--and that's what we should not be doing. We should, in fact, be emboldening our schools with those resources, with those talents and with those skills. We should make sure that every teacher has the capability, has the subject matter competency.
In a poor school today, you're learning arithmetic in the fourth grade, you're learning mathematics in the eighth grade, you're learning algebra--your chances of having a teacher who understands those subjects and who has taken courses in those subjects is one in seven. Shouldn't it be, for those children, one in one? Shouldn't it be that every classroom has a teacher who has subject matter competency? But we all know in our districts that that's not what happens in many of these schools. We know that, in fact, an art teacher is asked to go into a mathematics class. We know that a part-time history teacher is asked, Can you help us out in the science class?
That's not how you maintain this country's being number one in the Nation. That's not the education system that will do it. We can poke along, and we can lament, and we can worry about China and India and about countries that are making a commitment to their education systems and to their research facilities, but unless we make that commitment, we won't be running that race in the next generation. We will have settled in to some other place than number one, and I don't think that's acceptable to the people of this country.
We have been told by all business leaders who come here--whether they come from Silicon Valley or they come from the manufacturing areas of the country in the Midwest--that they want a stronger K through 12 system. That's why the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have serious problems and are in opposition to H.R. 5, because it doesn't meet their needs that they say that they need in terms of a future educated population in order to get those skilled workers, to get that talent base, to get that future innovation. That's their decision, not my decision. That's also the decision of the civil rights groups. That's also the decision of the parents with children with disabilities and of the disabilities community. That's also the decision of the educators in these systems.
This legislation is not up to the standards of America. It doesn't meet America's future needs. It doesn't meet the standards of excellence, and it doesn't meet the commitment of resources that this Nation should be making on behalf of the schoolchildren in this Nation and of future generations.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.
For the most part, this manager's amendment is technical changes to the underlying bill. For the same reasons that I oppose the underlying bill, I oppose the manager's amendment.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, and Members of the House, I oppose this amendment offered by the gentleman from Michigan because I think this amendment continues the ideological approach here that we have in taking away Federal dollars under H.R. 5 from the poorest schools in our systems, serving some of the poorest children in our country, at a time when this legislation locks in the post-sequestration funding for the schools now, as H.R. 5 does, and mandates that those scarce dollars go to the private sector. Now we're mandating that those schools now get involved with the private sector.
I don't know, maybe it's different in your States. But in my State, when local school districts put together their budgets, when local school districts consider engaging in developing new programs and new curriculums, they invite the community to come in and participate in those discussions across the board. Nobody has to mandate them to do that. They do that because those are community schools. Those are trying to serve the community.
Whether it's at the elementary level, or at the high school level or at the community college level, this is what they do in developing those curriculums and developing those assessments that are taking place. And so I don't understand.
In a bill that rails against Federal mandates, we're now on to our second mandate under this legislation. Why are we creating these mandates for these local districts that know better, that know how to do it best, according to all of the statements here?
Why are we then mandating from the Federal Government to do it this particular way?
In my community I would say they already do it this way, but I don't think they need to be mandated to do that. And for these reasons, I oppose this amendment because I think it continues the ideological bent that somehow, while mandates are bad for schools when they come from the Federal Government, apparently, when they come from the Congress they're good.
So we'll try to sort this out in the meantime. But in the meantime I'll oppose this amendment.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I thank the gentlewoman for introducing this amendment. I strongly support this amendment for all of the reasons that she laid out in her remarks in support of her amendment.
I believe that, in its current form, H.R. 5 would undo decades of progress and relegate students with disabilities to a second-class education. That's why the disabilities community stands united in firm opposition to this bill. It astounds me that this body is considering enactment of such draconian policies. I thought that by 2013 bipartisan consensus on natural ability and potential of all children would be commonplace, but I was wrong.
One of the biggest victories we had under No Child Left Behind was the attention to students with disabilities, with the assumption that this population of students can and will achieve. Students with disabilities have thrived under these high expectations. H.R. 5 returns us to the era of soft bigotry and of low expectations with respect to students with disabilities, and that is unacceptable.
This Republican bill completely removes students with disabilities from the accountability system, greenlighting States and districts to assess any student with disabilities to a lower standard by allowing States to develop and assess students based upon a lower set of standards regardless of the severity of the disability. This would return us to a time when students with disabilities are hidden and not given access to quality education. That was the situation when I came to this Congress.
I'm no prouder of any act that I've ever authored than the Children With Handicaps Act, now known as IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. We cannot undermine that legislation and the progress and achievements that those children and their families have made and to see their successes. And now to suggest they will not be in an accountability system so that we hold schools accountable for the achievement and the successes of those children is just unacceptable.
I strongly support the McMorris Rodgers amendment, and I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Colorado.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to the Reed amendment because it weakens accountability for ensuring that our Nation's students are achieving at high levels. This amendment seems like a good thing--allowing schools to measure in areas besides reading and math--but the amendment is so vague that it will allow almost any measure to be used, and that's not what we need in the system at this time.
Adding measures to this amendment does not fix any of the problems to help students. Too often, we've seen throughout the course of the last many years that adults try to make themselves look good by hiding and masking how well their students are doing academically by trying to seek other systems of measure that will make a school look better, even though the students inside that school are not performing at top level.
For those reasons, I oppose the amendment, and I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano).
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I thank the gentleman.
I agree with the gentleman that the testing provisions included in No Child Left Behind as well as the implementation of these provisions is imperfect and outdated. Unfortunately, ESEA authorization is 5 years overdue and the majority appears to have no interest in working with us to develop a bill that can pass both the House and the Senate.
However, I'll gladly work with you to address the issue of testing in America's schools to ensure that while we continue to measure whether or not students are achieving at grade level, we will also ensure such assessments be done in a way to improve both teaching and learning.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I rise to express appreciation for Mr. Benishek for this amendment. The gentleman from Michigan has an admirable goal, which is to improve career and technical education.
Members of the Congress are well aware of the needs in all of our local communities. As new systems of manufacturing are brought online and as new innovations take place, we want to know how well our students are doing and how well our schools are doing in helping to prepare those students for job opportunities that are presented in these many craft areas.
I would urge Members to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 3 minutes.
I rise in opposition to the Schock-Meehan amendment because it really is a political exercise that fails to fix the problems of H.R. 5, the Letting Students Down Act. The amendment is an ideological attempt to give school districts more control, but actually doesn't do that. It just creates more paperwork, more bureaucracy at the Federal level by consultations and chances to dispute regulations, many of which are already allowed in Federal law, but this would be a separate subset to require that.
I have been here a long time, and I can't think of any administration that gave both States and local school districts more options, more flexibility, more ability to design the systems under which they want to work than the Obama administration, which now there are 37 States who have undertaken Race to the Top, which gave them great flexibility, and there are 40 States that have undertaken waivers, which give them even more flexibility. When you talk to the superintendents and you talk to the Governors in those States, they are delighted to have that flexibility to design the systems that they want to be able to design and to improve the systems and to get better achievement by their students.
Now we are coming along with some continuation of some outdated, very conservative argument that all these problems are at the Federal Government. The fact of the matter is no administration has unleashed the skills and the talents and the desires of local school districts and States than this administration.
This is an ideological bent. It is an ideological fix. It is not going to end. What it doesn't do is it doesn't correct any of the very real and very big problems that underlie this amendment in the underlying bill, because the underlying bill gets education funding and it locks in the sequestration levels that are going to grind down every school district that has poor students and poor schools in that district, and it lets States dramatically reduce the funding for those districts.
The priority of this Federal spending is to try to equalize the opportunity for those poor minority children, and it diverts funds for teachers away from poor schools and districts toward the wealthier ones. It eliminates the block grant funding for vital programs with no accountability--no accountability--how those funds will be spent. We just saw an amendment offered here earlier today because people recognize all that does is just diminish the resources that are available for those populations with special needs.
I oppose this amendment, as I do the underlying legislation, and I would ask my colleagues to vote against it.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes.
I rise in opposition to this amendment to remove the requirement that States and school districts implement teacher evaluation systems.
We put $17 billion into this system every year, and we ought to at least see if we can make sure that those who are responsible for implementing it have the opportunity to improve their skills, to improve their talents, to collaborate with one another so that they can improve the teacher and learning environment. That is the goal of the evaluations: to take the skills that teachers bring to the classrooms and see, in consultation with others, with the principals, with their peers in that school district, whether or not we can improve their skills to deliver the education that we know that our children need.
We know that all teachers are not of the same talent, but by having evaluations, you, in fact, have the ability to then raise the skills of those individuals. If you would travel the country, and if you would talk to younger teachers all across the country, they would tell you how excited they are about evaluation systems, how excited they are about the collaboration--about their working with one another. I have visited teachers in the process of doing that, in developing that information--in developing the skills and in watching one another teach and in presenting the various lesson plans and curriculums, and then weighing back and forth what was more effective and what was less effective, what they would change, and how they would do it differently the next time.
Under this legislation, under our legislation, we encourage local districts to do that. We want them to take control of it. We want teachers to be in the design of those systems. Yet now the idea that you would not require some evaluation of the people who are delivering this education is just to go back to a time when it didn't matter, I guess, who dropped out of school or who didn't thrive or who didn't do well--but that's not this economy; that's not our social structure; and that's not the desire and the hopes and aspirations of the parents and of the students in those schools. So I would hope that we would oppose this amendment and that we would defeat this amendment.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield myself 2 minutes.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment offered by the gentleman from Utah. I just don't quite understand it.
If a State doesn't make application for various funds that are available under title II, I don't know why you would prohibit a district from doing so. I don't know the rationale for the State's decision not to make application, but that may have very little to do with the needs of a particular school district. In my State, it might be a large district like Los Angeles or it might be a small rural district in the northern corner of the State. If they feel that these funds would help them and they have a need for those, I don't know why and I don't know that we're interfering with any great relationship here between States and the Federal Government.
I don't pretend to be familiar with the exact governance in the State of Utah, but in California the districts are pretty darn autonomous and our county offices of education are very autonomous, and very often a county office will apply for these kinds of funds in an area of smaller school districts to bring them together to utilize those funds in the most efficient way to continue.
Most of title II is about the development of teachers and professional development.
I oppose this amendment. I think it just makes it much more difficult and more bureaucratic for local school districts. We've heard time and again here that these are the people who know best, so apparently they know better than the State officials, but we're going to let the State officials block them from doing what they know is best when they decide what is best is to try to access title II.
So I oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I didn't say they were autonomous. I said that they operate nearly autonomous. I guess if the State wanted to rein them in in California and Utah, they would rein them in. But they make applications all the time for title II funds, and apparently California and Colorado may want to do something about that. That sounds like a State problem.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman for his amendment and thank him for all of his work and leadership that he has brought to the committee on charter schools.
And I will vote for the amendment if the gentleman can say again five times ``starter charter startup funds.'' If you can say that really quickly five times, then I will vote for the amendment.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I want to commend you so much for offering this amendment. In touring schools my entire time in Congress and talking to parents and talking to school officials where we have these kinds of resources available to engage parents, the outcomes of the students are very often dramatically improved. The participation by the parents is dramatically improved. The participation by the parents at home with the students is changed in a very dramatic fashion.
Just recently, in the North Bay in the San Francisco area up in Napa County, the participation of the parents with English learning students who are in kindergarten with the use of an iPad and getting the parents to come together and understand this technology, how it could help their children learn English, how it could help them learn English, and then imparting with the parents that they could also use it for job search, the engagement was just phenomenal, and these students continue to soar as they now are in the third grade.
So these kinds of possibilities where you bring parents and get that kind of involvement, it changes it so much. Helms Middle School in my district, we not only tore it down and rebuilt it, but we made it a community school with family engagement, and there are parents on that campus all of the time engaged with their kid's education, with their neighbor's kid's education, and their own education.
I really commend you. I think this is a very important amendment as we seek to have parents involved in schools, and thank you so much.
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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to this amendment.
This is some kind of political exercise. I don't know what the value of this is to the public. It is to take Federal officials in the Department of Education, including the Secretary, and somehow going to create a lot of make-work for them. I think it is unnecessary. I don't quite understand the theory behind it.
There is program consolidation going on, so we are going to learn the average wage of the people whose jobs were unfortunately, I guess because of sequestration at the moment, eliminated, and I don't know how that will help the education of the young children. Then we are going to figure out the average salary.
All this information is available to the Appropriations Committee. It is a matter of public record. It is available to the public. But we will go through some kind of computation then, those who are left making more than $100,000. I really don't know, again, what this has to do with the education of young children across this Nation.
Again, I know we had to pass an amendment to say this, but it's already the law. There is nothing that requires any State, any school district to accept these programs. You have to sign up. You have to make applications for programs. If you don't make applications, you don't get them. This isn't forced down your throat. It's very hard to make sense out of this amendment.
Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.
Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I appreciate it.
The purpose of this is just transparency so that American citizens can know exactly what's going on.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. In reclaiming my time, I understand transparency when it's of value. I understand transparency when it's directed to a specific purpose. This is transparency in the sense that the general knowledge of these wages is a matter of public record, as your salary and my salary are a matter of public record.
When you get it all compiled, then what are you going to do--send out notices to everybody in the United States as to where this resides and how they can get ahold of it? Put it online? That's what you're going to spend your money doing? It's already available. They can look up somebody in the Department of Education at any time.
Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.
Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you. I appreciate it.
The purpose is, as we consolidate programs, we have all of these employees in the Department of Education who are going to lose a lot of their function. As we do so, particularly with sequestration and with the scarce dollars in the Federal Government across the board, we need to know who is doing what and what they're being paid and what they're being paid for.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. In reclaiming my time, why doesn't the Appropriations just tell the Congress the results of sequestration? They're involved in sequestration every day. Why don't they just file a report and tell the Congress and tell the public and put out a press release and tell the people, ``This is what happened''? Why do you have to mandate all of this sort of ``make work''? I thought the purpose was to try to eliminate unnecessary work for people.
Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. The gentleman has time remaining, and I don't have much time.
I would just say that, again, this really doesn't address the major concerns underlying this bill, and that is that this bill continues to let students down and that this amendment does nothing to ensure that students graduate from high school.
If you want to talk about serious transparency in this bill, students with disabilities become invisible in terms of the accountability by school districts as to how they're doing with their education and if education has been offered to them and if they've had a chance at assessment so they can demonstrate what they've learned. This legislation doesn't do that, and this amendment doesn't help that in terms of transparency.
It's some mindless transparency about the wages of government officials that's already transparent and all a matter of public record. It doesn't do anything about what the impact is of sequestration on the poorest schools in some of the poorest districts in the country--in trying to educate some of the poorest kids in this country, kids who need those additional resources. This bill grinds away on those, and this amendment doesn't change it.
This amendment doesn't change the block grants that now allow money to leave the public sector, to leave public schools that are in desperate need of these resources--taking care of the title I students and schools--and then send that off to the private sector.
So the transparency here is all wrong. The real transparency is what this legislation does, and the American people ought to understand how damaging this is to our local schools all across this country and how exceptionally damaging this legislation is to the poorest schools in our country and in our States and to the students who are going to those schools and who are trying to achieve a first-class education. That opportunity is being denied to them under this legislation.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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