Every Child Achieves Act of 2015
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I rise today as the Senate begins its consideration of the Every Child Achieves Act under the leadership of Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray--two great leaders who have done a great job on this bill. The HELP Committee, under their leadership, has produced a truly bipartisan effort to find solutions to the seemingly intractable problems facing our educational system. I commend our distinguished chairman and ranking member for their leadership and their commitment to prioritizing concrete results over partisan grandstanding.
While the nature of compromise means that this bill may not be perfect in each Senator's eyes, it represents an opportunity for meaningful reform for America's schools, and I urge my colleagues to support its swift passage.
Ensuring that every child has access to a high-quality education is a top priority shared by all Republicans and Democrats alike. In 2001, I joined 86 of my colleagues in supporting No Child Left Behind to address the shortcomings of our educational system. Despite the best of intentions, No Child Left Behind fell short of true success. Its testing requirements hamper learning by compelling students to take test after test to satisfy the law's various requirements. Its focus on metrics incentivizes schools to report higher graduation rates even if that means pushing out failing students unprepared for the working world. Because of these and other unintended consequences, of course, the current law is in desperate need of reform.
With the Every Child Achieves Act, Congress now has an opportunity to correct the shortcomings of No Child Left Behind. Instead of setting artificial and unattainable requirements, the new legislation allows States to set their own standards for success. It defers to local leaders to formulate goals that are realistic and effective for their districts. It puts parents and teachers in the driver's seat, not Washington bureaucrats.
For years, States have sought relief from burdensome Federal mandates in education, and many States find themselves in untenable positions thanks to Federal law. For example, my home State of Utah has struggled in the past few years with an impossible decision--either ask for a continuation of Department of Education waiver mandates or fall back on unattainable No Child Left Behind requirements and risk losing crucial Federal funding all together.
Under this new bill, States will continue to develop their own standards and will establish their own accountability systems linked to these standards. States will also be able to say what they want their accountability systems to measure and will be able to determine how well their students are doing based on a variety of important metrics. Maintaining the Federal requirement for statewide annual testing is necessary to ensure transparency on school performance and to set a bar by which States can measure themselves in a comparable fashion.
My colleagues and I were able to make significant improvements to this legislation through the committee and the committee's process. I was especially pleased to see two amendments I care deeply about adopted by voice vote during the committee markup: the Innovative Technology Expands Children's Horizons--or I-TECH--Program and the Education Innovation and Research Program.
Senator Baldwin and I worked closely to develop I-TECH to ensure that technology in the classroom is coupled with teacher support to give students access to a wide range of personalized learning opportunities. By intertwining technology and traditional teaching methods, we can tailor each student's educational journey to his or her individual needs and learning style to boost achievement.
With the Education Innovation and Research Program, Senator Bennet and I created a flexible funding stream that would allow schools, districts, nonprofits, and small businesses to develop proposals based on the specific needs of students and the community.
Funding for that program will be awarded based on an initial evidence-based proposal, with continued funding tied to demonstrated successful outcomes flowing from the project. It is time we start looking at new ways of investing in education, much like we do in other realms. Money should not be tied to what the U.S. Senate or the Federal Department of Education thinks is a good prescriptive idea. It should be tied to local innovation and clear outcomes.
Senator Bennet and I have expounded on that idea by pushing for Pay for Success Initiatives in the underlying bill, as well as in the amendment process on the floor. Pay for Success allows the government to pay only for programs that actually achieve meaningful results. I have offered an amendment to allow funding from the early childhood program to be used in this manner.
My home State of Utah has the first-ever Pay for Success Program designed to expand access to early childhood education for at-risk children. The Utah High Quality Preschool Program delivers a high-impact, targeted curriculum that increases school readiness and academic performance among 3- and 4-year-olds. As children enter kindergarten better prepared, fewer students will need to use special education and remedial services in kindergarten through 12th grade, allowing schools and States to save money. We should build on this success and empower other States to do the same.
In addition to these cost-saving programs, technology will also improve the quality of education in our country, but advancements in technology must come side-by-side with a conversation on how best to protect our children's privacy. Education technology is a multibillion dollar industry, and it is important to balance the needs for innovation and expansion in schools with reasonable privacy safeguards.
To that end, I joined with the senior Senator from Massachusetts in filing an amendment to this legislation to create a structured commission to study important aspects of the convoluted world of student privacy. The primary law governing this realm--the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act--was last updated in 2001. Since Congress last acted in this area, there have been significant changes in the way student information is stored and how outside parties use that information. These changes have led to the introduction of numerous proposals to update this outdated law.
The amendment Senator Markey and I have introduced strengthens student privacy by requiring a commission to report to Congress on the current mechanisms for transparency, parental involvement, research usage, and third-party vendor usage of student information. The Commission will also be tasked with providing suggestions for improvement. This process will allow privacy experts, parents, school leaders, and the technology industry to provide us with a clear consensus on how best to protect personal data while not hampering development in schools or access to the important data we garner from aggregated student information.
In addition to protecting student privacy, I have introduced another amendment crucial to ensuring success in all schools nationwide. The Every Child Achieves Act asks States to identify low-performing schools and to allow localities to intervene in these schools. One of the greatest tools Congress could give localities in this process would be the power to renegotiate contracts and to reallocate money and policies in more effective ways. Under my amendment, many failing schools would be permitted to ask relief from contracts from vendors and unions, among others. These schools would also be able to renegotiate the terms of these contracts.
Currently, school funding is trapped in a cobweb of unwieldy and complicated vendor contracts and collective bargaining agreements. Old, automatically renewing contracts with janitorial services, transportation vendors, teachers unions, and testing companies represent massive locked-in expenditures. Education leaders need flexibility to enable failing schools to get a fresh start--the same opportunity available to successful charter and private schools. Right now, local leaders' budgets and staffing decisions are largely shaped by forces beyond their control. My amendment will encourage more commonsense change from the Federal level to empower localities to act in the best interest of the students they serve.
The bill we are now considering will make significant improvements to the quality of education in this country and the ability of our students to compete in a global economy once they enter the workforce. I strongly urge my colleagues to support these efforts, and I again express my congratulations and my support to the distinguished chairman and ranking member on this committee, Senator Alexander and Senator Murray, who have done a really good job in the best interests of children all over this society.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
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