Student Success Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SALMON. Mr. Chairman, I first want to thank Chairman Kline and Representative Rokita of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce for working with me on this important amendment, which is to ensure that parents have more authority and power over their children's educations.

My amendment is very, very simple. It would allow any parent to opt his child out of high-stakes testing, and it would protect schools from being punished by the Federal Department of Education if parents opted to take their children out of these tests.

Since the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, called No Child Left Behind, the Federal Government has placed increasing importance on academic assessments in K-12 education.

Assessments are important and even necessary to understand and measure a child's academic progress. However, academic assessments have become an overutilized metric to evaluate everything from the quality of a teacher to the strength of a particular program.

Because of this frenzied obsession with high-stakes testing, more and more time is being usurped from actual classroom learning. It was reported that the testing for a student in the 11th grade could take up to 27 days, a total of 15 percent of the entire school year, and a lot of the teachers complain about having to teach to the test. In fact, I think that is why the NEA has come out in support of this amendment.

Parents are becoming increasingly fed up with such constant and onerous testing requirements, and so are the teachers. While some States currently allow parents to opt their students out of assessments, there exists a simultaneous obligation on schools of a 95 percent participation rate in school assessments.

If schools don't meet these requirements, they risk enforcement measures from the Department of Education, which, at worst, could include losing access to Federal funding. These factors create a strange environment of conflicting interests for students, parents, and schools.

My amendment would ease a school's fear of penalties by directing that opted-out students not be counted among the 95 percent participation requirement while giving parents due power over their children's educations.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important amendment, which returns the power back to where it should be, with the parents.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SALMON. Mr. Chairman, I take serious umbrage with the arrogance that purveys this city in that we are the font of all knowledge. In fact, I lovingly joke with my constituents when I go back and say, ``I am from Washington, D.C., and I am here to help you.'' It always draws a loud amount of laughter because everybody knows that that is not the way things really are.

If we can't trust our parents, who have the biggest

vested interest in whether or not their children succeed in education, if we can't trust the teachers, if we can't trust the local school boards, whose members also have to run for election, then we might as well just fold up and go home.

I have a lot more confidence in parents, in teachers, in our local school boards, than I do in some nameless, faceless bureaucrat here in Washington, D.C. I say we put the power back where it should be: in the hands of parents and teachers and local school boards.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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