Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. GOWDY. Mr. Chairman, I want to start by recognizing and thanking my friend and chairman, John Kline from Minnesota, for his leadership not just on this bill, but on the whole jurisdiction of Education and the Workforce. I want to also thank the folks on the staff, Mr. Chairman, of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, Mr. Miller, and especially my friend Peter Welch for working with me on this amendment.

The underlying bill, Mr. Chairman, as you know, seeks to support innovation in higher education by reenvisioning how regulators and institutions have measured student progress and student aid. This bill, Mr. Chairman, sets up demonstration projects to study the effect of competency-based education.

Our amendment, Mr. Chairman, simply permits participation of dual enrollment programs to be included in the demonstration projects created. As the chairman knows, many students--in fact, I am reluctant to cite statistics, but I think it is well north of 1 million students across our great country--have benefited in dual enrollment classes.

In fact, Mr. Chairman, I live with a student that has benefited back home in Spartanburg, both at Dorman High School and, I know, Spartanburg High School. Probably other high schools have partnered with institutions of higher learning to prepare, Mr. Chairman, our children, number one, to be able to gauge the speed of the pitches in college--the pitchers pitch a little faster in college sometimes than they do in high school--but more significantly, and particularly for my daughter's friends, it enables them to go ahead and start getting college credit and reducing both their caseload and, more importantly, the cost when these children decide to matriculate.

The dual enrollment programs are widespread, and they deserve to be considered as part of the demonstration projects.

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

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Mr. GOWDY. Mr. Chairman, I again want to thank Mr. Kline and all the hardworking folks on Education and the Workforce, the Members and especially the women and men of the staff.

The Upstate of South Carolina, Mr. Chairman, is home to several higher education institutions, public and private, large and small, and the issue of education affordability is front and center. And, frankly, Mr. Chairman, families are struggling trying to be able to plan for their kids' future.

I know that, both because I have the benefit of representing these families and I hear from them and I also know it anecdotally, Mr. Chairman. I have a 17-year-old daughter, and while she is blessed in many ways compared to her contemporaries, lots and lots of her friends come to the house from time to time. We preach to people that the road to prosperity is paved with hard work and education, but when this road is riddled with potholes called ``unsustainable debt,'' I don't know how we can expect them to get to the end.

You figure out what the cost of education is. In many of these instances, these children are the first ones in their family to try to go to school. And so they are looking at me. They have done well in high school. They have done everything we have asked them to do, and they are staring, in some instances, at massive amounts of debt just so they can do what we promised them that if you work hard and you get an education, the pathway to prosperity will be paved for you.

So against that backdrop, my friend from Vermont and I decided let's look at regulations and what impact they may have on the cost of higher education. Mr. Chairman, as you well know, you may conclude that a regulation is worth it. It may cost money, but it may still be worth it. That is fine. That is a separate analysis. But there really is no reason to not study the regulations themselves to see what impact they are having.

So I give a lot of credit to the gentleman from Vermont who approached me with his idea. I think it is a solid idea. I can't imagine any reason not to form a task force or a working group to study regulations and what impact, whether wittingly or unwittingly, those regulations are having on the cost of higher education.

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

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