Success and Opportunity Through Quality Charter Schools Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. KLINE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the manager's amendment which makes important changes to the bill to support the growth of high-performing charter schools.

Charter schools epitomize choice and flexibility in education. Reform-minded States and school districts all across the country have embraced this innovative educational model to transform underperforming traditional public schools.

The manager's amendment improves the existing charter school program and the underlying bill by clarifying the grant award language, ensuring charter school funding is used for the intended purposes.

Additionally, the manager's amendment adds quality authorizing provisions, to include looking at school attrition rates, and asks States to assist schools in developing fair discipline practices that will help promote student retention.

Mr. Chairman, the act is an important piece of legislation that will streamline and modernize the charter school program to support the startup, replication, and expansion of high-quality charter schools. The manager's amendment includes commonsense changes to improve the underlying legislation.

I urge my colleagues to support the manager's amendment and the Success and Opportunity through Quality Charter Schools Act.

I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. KLINE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment, which will require a GAO study on the money allocated for administrative costs.

As the gentleman from Louisiana said, we need to ensure that we are providing flexibility in the use of funds to run a quality, efficient, and effective program; and that means carefully balancing small administrative set-asides while supporting the underlying program purposes.

I support this amendment and urge my colleagues to do so as well.

I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. KLINE. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would require the Secretary of Education to not only develop, but also enforce, guidelines on conflict of interest for charter schools. The gentlewoman points out that there are charter schools and charter school managers who sometimes don't perform as they should.

We believe very strongly that the underlying law and that the underlying bill here addresses that issue, because this amendment is an overreach of Federal authority. Each State that allows charter schools has determined what requirements the schools must follow in creating, opening, and operating the schools. We address the authorizing responsibilities in the underlying bill.

Simply put, this amendment is unnecessary. The underlying bill includes several provisions to have States help schools run more effectively and includes a set-aside of each State grant for quality authorizing. Quality authorizing will help each charter school run more effectively, both in academics and in operations.

We do not need the Secretary of Education getting more involved in these schools by layering on more burdensome requirements. These are issues best addressed at the State and local level, and the underlying bill already provides support for these efforts.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source