Every Child Achieves Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I am grateful to Senator Bennet. Senator Bennet and I met around education issues. Senator Bennet led the largest public school system in the State of Colorado. Senator Bennet has been in the weeds of education for years, if not decades.

I am grateful that Senator Bennet began his remarks by saying all of the things that have been wrong with No Child Left Behind. That was a bad piece of legislation. We saw the aspects of it that were causing problems and that have created a bipartisan push to fix them.

I want to give credit to Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator Patty Murray for joining together and doing the things necessary to improve the bill. The culture of education has shifted in this country, from high-stakes testing to looking at measures that made no sense to creating artificial deadlines that could not be met or even doing things that undermined the very goals and aspirations that we have for our country, which is to lead the globe in educational excellence.

So, I am encouraged by Senator Bennet and myself and the majority of this body who agree that this legislation needs to be changed. It is a left-right coalition that is encouraging to me.

But I want to echo Senator Bennet's concerns about a problem that is not being addressed--that as the pendulum swings away from the problems of No Child Left Behind, we not create new ones that cut against the very ideals with which this legislation was put in place by Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson said clearly that this was a bill to bridge the gap in this country between help and the helpless, for those children who are suffering on the educational margins of our society, drowning in the eddies of educational lack of opportunity, caught in the quicksand of poverty and race, and with challenges that undermine and contribute to the dysfunction and inequality in our Nation. This was to be the bridge. It is why this body acted under President Johnson.

So now, Senator Bennet, I have a distressed heart, because what this amendment we are trying to put forward does is to allow us to get to a point where we are now not even putting a spotlight on where we are failing to live up to our values. This amendment calls for us to at least acknowledge that there are children in our country who are stuck in so-called dropout factories, children who are perpetually underachieving, and schools that are failing the genius of our children. What this amendment was seeking to do was to say that we cannot ignore our children, we cannot turn our backs on these children, we cannot turn over and say it doesn't exist, because we do have a problem in our Nation. What anguishes me about this problem is that the children we are turning our backs on and not focusing on are children that are poor and children that are disproportionately minority.

To paraphrase Martin Luther King, he said that what we will have to repent for in this day and age is not the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people.

I hear time and again that we love our children in America. Well, if we love them, we should do something about the challenges that are afflicting a small percentage of our kids who do not get the educational environment they deserve. This is a peculiar form of American insanity--insanity being defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We are not going to change this problem of perpetual failure in too many of our schools that affect poor and minorities by not having some attention to that problem.

Let's be clear. We have learned lessons. This amendment No. 2241, the ESEA accountability amendment, does not do the things that this body in its majority thinks should no longer be done by the Federal Government.

Let me be clear. This amendment does not reinstate any type of adequate yearly progress, or AYP. In fact, the underlying bill is repealed. AYP is repealed. It does not establish artificial deadlines such as No Child Left Behind did, saying that all children will be proficient by 2014. It does not establish Federal goals for our students. States will have the prerogative to set their own. It does not impose test-based accountability on States. States must include a range of factors in their State-designed accountability systems. It
does not require schools to implement a one-size-fits-all intervention. Local districts will design the intervention for underperforming schools.

This legislation is not prescriptive. This legislation is not Washington telling local districts what to do. This amendment does not design programs. It simply says that there must be a commitment made when there are these dropout factories and when there are these populations that are not being served to ensure that States identify certain low-performing schools so that students in these schools receive the support they need.

It would require locally designed, evidence-based interventions to schools identified in the following categories: the lowest performing 5 percent of our schools; high schools where less than two-thirds of students graduate; and schools where subgroups, including low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities, and English learners miss State-established goals on multiple measures for 2 consecutive years. This amendment says that we cannot ignore those children whom we are failing to serve, and that we can't turn our back on these kids.

We salute this flag and say ``liberty and justice for all.'' Well, every issue that I hear discussed in this august body cannot be dealt with unless we deal with all children. The achievement gap in America will not be addressed unless we focus on all children. The poverty gap in America will not be addressed unless we focus on all children. The opportunity gap in America will not be addressed unless we deal with all children. Issues that I am passionate about such as mass incarceration will not be addressed unless we focus on all children. And the competitive economy--the productivity of our Nation--will not reach its full strength unless we focus on all children.

So I am distressed today that this body will put into place a piece of educational legislation that ignores the very children to whom this original legislation was dedicated to serving years ago. We cannot be a great nation if we have parts of our country--be they neighborhoods or schools--that fail to experience what should be the bedrock of our country: equal opportunity, a great education, and the opportunity to succeed through one's grit, sweat, and hard work. We don't have that now.

If we in this body create legislation that pours millions of dollars into the States and then say that if States choose to ignore these kids, if States choose to turn their backs on the children who need them most, if States don't even want to put forward an idea of how to address this persistent problem, and we are OK, then to me we belie the oath we took, the pledge we gave to bring justice to all children.

We speak of accountability in this country. Well, we should be accountable to the government dollars that we spend for America. We should be accountable for the ideals of this Nation.

So I hope I can get my colleagues to support this bill that Senator Murphy and Senator Bennet are leading so well. I hope we can stand up in a chorus of conviction in this body, saying that every single child--no matter what station in life, no matter how poor your parents are, no matter what your background, color, creed or religion--can have hope and opportunity in our public schools.

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Mr. BOOKER. Before our leader on this amendment speaks, Senator Murphy, I do want to echo what Senator Bennet said. He has been leading this charge in a bipartisan manner, pulling people together trying to get this across. I just want to echo that last point that Senator Bennet made. We as a nation have this ideal that America is the best country if you are poor to be born into; that you can make it here. This is the country--Statue of Liberty, give us your tired, your hungry, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores. This is the country you can make it in.

Well, unfortunately, in social mobility, which is a measurable index--the ability for somebody to make it out of poverty into the middle class--we have fallen. We have fallen on that list compared to our peers from other nations. If you just have the simple goal of making it out of poverty, America is no longer the No. 1 country to do that.

The principle reason for this is that the tried and true pathway to the middle class must be the schoolhouse door. That path must lead through educational systems. If our children don't have that access or if we leave some children behind, we shut those doors to quality education. Then it is an affront to the very ideal of the American dream, and we are failing the purpose, the greatness, the glory that is America.

I yield the floor.

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