Every Child Achieves Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, No Child Left Behind laid the groundwork for important reforms to our education system. But with its authorization expiring in 2007, and with the previous Senate majority failing to replace it with a serious proposal, many of the original requirements stayed in place anyway and gradually became unworkable.

This resulted in a lot of States getting tangled up in endless bureaucracy, reducing their ability to focus on boosting achievement and school performance. That was certainly true in the Commonwealth I represent. Kentucky was actually the first State to petition for some freedom from the law's requirements, and with that additional flexibility came better results.

Kentucky improved its graduation rate, climbing into the top 10 among all States. Kentucky increased the number of students who met statewide standards. Kentucky raised the percentage of students entering postsecondary education programs, increasing that number from about half to more than 68 percent in just a few years' time.

So this additional flexibility has been good for Kentucky but only to a point, because the White House began to tack on more and more requirements as a condition of continued relief from the original law's mandates, leaving many States in an untenable situation. This is how the White House was able to impose Common Core in many places that didn't necessarily want it. In a sense, the flexibility one hand gave, the other has continually taken away.

It is clear that temporary relief, strapped with other Federal mandates, is not a workable choice for States. This is why we need congressional action to replace the broken husks that remain of No Child Left Behind with reforms that build on the good ideas in the original law while doing away with the bad ones.

That is what the bipartisan Every Child Achieves Act before us would, in fact, achieve. It would grow the kind of flexibility we have seen work so well in States such as Kentucky, and it would stop Federal bureaucrats from imposing the kind of top-down, one-size-fits-all requirements that we all know threaten that progress.

Kentucky has already seen success with the limited and conditional flexibility granted to it so far. So just imagine what States such as Kentucky could achieve when fully empowered to do what is right for their students. This is how Kentucky education commissioner Terry Holliday put it in a letter he sent in support of this bill:

I can attest based on our experience that the waiver process is onerous and allows too many opportunities for federal intrusion into state responsibility for education. The long-term health of public education in the United States requires reauthorization and an end to the use of the waiver as a patch on an otherwise impractical system of requirements.

He is, of course, just right, and we have never been closer to achieving the kind of outcome our kids deserve. Many thought Washington could never solve this issue, but the bill before us was supported unanimously by Republicans and Democrats in committee. Members of both parties are having a chance now to offer and vote on amendments to the bill too. We had several amendment votes yesterday. I expect more today. If our colleagues from either side of the aisle have more ideas to offer, I would ask them to work with Senator Alexander and Senator Murray to get them moving.

This is what a Senate that is back to work looks like. With continued bipartisan cooperation, this is a Senate that can prove the pundits wrong again by passing another important measure to help our country and our kids.

Remember, the House of Representatives already passed its own No Child Left Behind replacement just last night, as it has done repeatedly in years past. Now is the time for the Senate to finally get its act together after 7 years of missed deadlines on this issue. A new Senate majority believes that the time for action and bipartisan reform should be now, and with continued cooperation from our friends across the aisle, it will be.

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