Student Success Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chairman, I had the opportunity to serve on our State Board of Education in Colorado from 2001 to 2007, so this was during the implementation phase of No Child Left Behind.

Now, we knew at the time many of the flaws we are hoping to address through ESEA reauthorization today, but it took several years just to get up to the point where we had the tests, we had the standards, and we complied with it.

Education is a major public enterprise. In fact, it is the largest public enterprise at the State and local level. One of the frustrations that I have heard a lot of in the last few years--and it has really amplified the frustration about testing--is the fact that the ball has been moving, the testing has been changed.

My State of Colorado, which is fairly typical, moved from one test, the CSAP, to a temporary test, the TCAP, and then finally a third test, all in a period of 4 years.

What we need to do--and this is something that we will hear from education stakeholders as varied as teachers, school boards, and principals--is stop moving the ball.

We know it is not going to be perfect. Let's give it a little bit of time to work. Now, this bill is far from perfect, which is why I oppose the underlying bill; but whatever set of rules you set in place, I feel it is important to allow the rulemaking, the State laws, to catch up, which takes a period of time, a period of years.

I think the longer reauthorization, through 2021, rather than reducing it to 4 years, is absolutely in the interests of ensuring that whatever law we come up with can be implemented more effectively at the State and local level.

Not only is it frustrating for districts and teachers to chase a constantly moving ball, it detracts from their most important effort, which is to educate the next generation of Americans.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. Chairman, of course you can look at a bill during its period of initial authorization. There are routinely cleanup bills that move through this body.

And I wish--I wish--the No Child Left Behind had a cleanup bill in 2002 or in 2003 or in 2004, all during its initial period of authorization, but President Bush closed the doors on even the changes that I think that we could have had broad consensus that we needed to pass.

But of course whatever comes out of this ESEA process, if we can agree on cleanup things and unintended consequences 2 years, 3 years out, let's do them.

Look, the answer is not to move the ball. It leads to the spinning of the wheels for a period of years. And rather than working on educating kids, people are working on complying with an ever-changing matrix of Federal, State, and local law.

There is a lot that happens after we pass a law in this body. It goes to Federal rulemaking, input from various constituencies, final rules. It goes to States who might change their policies, State Boards of Education, State commissioners. It goes down to districts, busy superintendents who are worried about bus schedules, who are worried about opening new schools, have to worry about recommending to their boards the new policies that will comply with our new Federal law.

It takes a lot of time. It might take 2 years, 3 years before it finally reaches those policy implementation levels on the ground at a local level. And guess what, if this amendment becomes law and the authorization period is only 4 years, they might finally--finally--start complying with this law only to find that there is a future Congress, a future President that moves the ball once again and starts the whole cycle of spinning wheels all over again.

We need to make sure that whatever we do in this body, that we give time for a thoughtful implementation of it at the State and local level that doesn't detract from the core mission that the men and women who teach in our classrooms, the men and women who volunteer on school boards, the professionals who serve as superintendents commit their lives to in terms of educating kids.

So we need to move forward with a longer reauthorization. If there are cleanup matters that we can agree on during that authorization period, we should by no means preclude them from the discussion until the end of this authorization. That was one of the problems with No Child Left Behind, that this body never had a follow-up discussion.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I yield back the balance of my time.

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