Every Child Achieves Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I also rise in support of the Every Child Achieves Act and the good work that is being done in a bipartisan way to move elementary and secondary education forward in this country. I applaud Senators Alexander and Murray and all HELP Committee members and their staff for the good work that has been done on this bill, which is hugely important to our Nation's children but even more importantly to our economy and our global competitiveness. The fact that we are approaching this in a bipartisan manner creates a lot of hope and optimism.

I speak from a number of roles. I was well educated in public, private, and parochial schools myself. My three children have gone through the Richmond public school system, an urban public school system in Virginia, during the era of No Child Left Behind. So Federal education policy was coming home in their backpack, crumpled up at the end of every day. My wife and I have kind of lived through that with them. My wife is the current secretary of education in Virginia, with the responsibility of carrying out State and Federal education policy. In my own role, as an elected official--as mayor--education was our biggest expenditure, and I visited a school in our city every Tuesday morning. As Lieutenant Governor, in the State budget education was our biggest priority, and I visited schools in all 134 cities and counties in Virginia. Then, as Governor, I had the opportunity--the great opportunity--to work with our State, our teachers, our PTOs, and other educational stakeholders in the Virginia education system, which 50 years ago was one of the weakest in the United States, and I am proud to say is now one of the best in the United States.

I learned a lot as Governor when No Child Left Behind was being implemented in the schools of my State. I saw the good and the bad of No Child Left Behind, and I certainly saw the reason that we need to improve it. That is what the Every Child Achieves Act does.

First, I will speak about the good things of No Child Left Behind. There are two notable good things that, frankly, are critically important we maintain. No Child Left Behind made us disaggregate student data so that we couldn't hide behind averages. Averages can be deceiving. Virginia average test scores are great, but that doesn't mean they are great everywhere in Virginia. So we had to dig in and look at whether minority students were performing well or whether rural students were performing well or urban students. No Child Left Behind helped us to do that and not hide behind averages but really make sure that groups of students were not falling behind either statewide or in the individual cities and counties.

The second thing No Child Left Behind did--which is pretty amazing--was that before No Child Left Behind there was not a standardized definition of graduation or dropout rates in this country. So if you wanted to know how your own city was doing or your own county was doing or your own State was doing, and if you wanted to compare that against anywhere else, you couldn't because everybody was using their own measure. Usually folks would try to fuzz up the data because they were afraid of being held accountable around graduation rates and dropout rates. No Child Left Behind, together with some pioneering work from the National Governors Association, ended up standardizing the definition of graduation and dropout rates, which enabled us to compare and compete with each other.

Not surprisingly, as President Obama discussed in the State of the Union in the early part of 2015, our graduation rates are better than they have ever been because now we can focus on them, we know who is doing well and who is not, and that sense of focus and competition is enabling us to move ahead.

But No Child Left Behind also had some unintended negative consequences. The intense focus on high-stakes testing, which is supposed to help you diagnose and then lead to educational strategies down the road--sometimes testing has become an end in itself rather than a means to an end: better student performance. That creates all kinds of stresses on students and teachers and parents.

Similarly, the focus on disaggregating student data which demonstrates that there are achievement gaps in certain communities, whether it be minority communities or rural or urban areas, has often had the perverse consequence, when coupled with high-stakes testing, of encouraging some of our best and brightest teachers not to want to go into the schools where they are most needed. If they feel as if they will be punished because the test scores are not as high with poor kids, for example, then they will often choose not to go to those schools. That is clearly not what we meant to do with No Child Left Behind, but that has been one of its perverse consequences.

When I was Governor, I had a very funny--now it is funny; it was not funny at the time--argument with the Federal Department of Education. They absolutely insisted that jurisdictions in northern Virginia were administering certain tests wrong to students who don't speak English as their first language at home. Indeed, some of my cities and counties had a strategy of phasing students in. If they were coming from a background where they did not speak English at home, they would be tested in special ways for the first couple of years they were in the school system and then mainstreamed even in the way they were tested.

The Department of Education said: You cannot do that. You cannot do these tests differently.

What I would say to the Department of Education: Hey, let me show you the SAT scores of my Latino students. Let me show you how they are doing when they graduate, that they are some of the highest performing students in the country. Clearly, if you measure it by the outcomes, we are doing it the right way.

But the Department of Education said: Outcomes do not matter to us. We worry about the processes and the inputs and the way you provide the tests.

Well, outcomes should be important. Results should be important. Too often, No Child Left Behind was administered in a way where results did not matter. That is not what should happen.

I applaud Senators Alexander and Murray for this bill because I believe the Every Child Achieves Act gives school districts and States the incentive to work for the success of all students but also the flexibility they need to close achievement gaps. The bill maintains critical annual testing requirements to allow us to track progress of students, while letting States set their own goals for improvement. The bill invests in early childhood education, which is critical to give States the authority to determine teacher qualifications in those areas. I am very glad this bill recognizes there are factors other than test scores that determine whether our students will be successful. I applaud this act. I cannot wait to vote for it.

I would like to comment on two amendments I have worked with my team and my staff member Karishma Merchant, who is superb, to put into this bill--some that are already in and some that I think are forthcoming or are in the process on the floor.

The first is the very important challenge of young people, age 16 to 24, who are in the most vulnerable time in their lives to being the victims of sexual assaults. A kid age 16 to 24--that is the most likely period in their life where they would be vulnerable to any kind of sexual assault or sexual misconduct. That is whether they are in school, college, the military, the workforce, or whether they are somewhere else.

We are spending a lot of time working on this issue, but this bill contains an amendment I proposed called the Teach Safe Relationships Act to help tackle this issue. Basically, under the amendment Senator McCaskill and I introduced in February, schools that are receiving title IV funds must report on how they are teaching safe relationship behaviors to students--communication, understanding what coercion is, understanding what consent is, understanding how to avoid pressure, understanding where to go for help. These are matters which we will teach to our students at a younger age so they can keep themselves safe.

I need to give praise on this one--the idea for this came from students at the University of Virginia. I went and visited with them about sexual assaults on campus in December. They told me: We wish we came to campus better prepared to deal with these issues.

I asked them: Well, don't you take sex education classes in high school?

They said: Yes, but the classes are about reproductive biology. There needs to be a little more about safe behavior and relationship strategies.

I thought, what a great idea. That led to the amendment. The amendment has now been incorporated. I praise the students at UVA who put this on my radar screen. I thank Senators Alexander and Murray, who worked with me to incorporate this in the base bill. If we teach young kids the right strategies, whether they are in the military or on college campuses or in the workforce or anywhere else, our young students, 16 to 24, will be safer.

The second series of amendments--some have been included and others have been voted on--one today and one will be voted on on Monday night--are amendments dealing with career and technical education.

I was a principal of a school that taught kids to be welders and carpenters. I grew up the son of a guy who ran an iron-working shop. I am a huge believer in career and technical education. Every job in this country does not need the traditional 4-year bachelor's degree. In fact, there are many jobs in this country--and the unemployment rate is still too high--there are many jobs in this country that are going unfilled. We have to bring welders in on foreign visas and other important career and technical fields because we don't adequately promote and celebrate career and technical education. This is similar to the previous speech about STEM.

I have formed a Career and Technical Education Caucus, together with Senators Portman and Baldwin. We introduced the Career Ready Act. Some portions have already been included in the bill, and another portion will be voted on on Monday night. But the idea is basically to make career and technical education every bit as front-and-center as college prep courses because we want our kids to graduate from high school both college- and career-ready. Career and technical education is an important part of that.

Earlier today, we passed an amendment to make clear that for Federal purposes, career and technical education is not elective, it is core curriculum, because it is core, important education. Nations around the world recognize it. We need to as well.

I have two additional amendments. We will consider one Monday night--the Career Ready Act, which clarifies and encourages but does not require the use of accountability indicators in State accountability plans to promote readiness for postsecondary education and career readiness. Forty-one States already do this. We will encourage more to do it if we pass the career-ready amendment.

Second, I have an amendment that I am still working on and hope to get in on the floor. It is bipartisan by introduction. Senator Ayotte and I have this. It is to create a middle school career and technical exploration program called Middle STEP. Kids in the middle school years, if they get a broader exposure to the careers that are available to them, they will be better equipped to start picking curricular paths when they go to high school.

I am so passionate about the need for career and technical education because I lived it growing up in my dad's business and teaching kids in Honduras the value of career and technical fields.

Everywhere I go in this country, I have employers who tell me they need workers who are skilled, whether it is allied health professionals, such as EMTs, or culinary training or welding and iron-working training or computer coding. These career and technical fields that require some postsecondary education but not necessarily a 4-year college degree are paths to great livelihoods. We do not often emphasize them enough. This bill will help us do that.

I will close and say this: It has been 13 years since Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It is time to update No Child Left Behind, and this is good work to do it.

President Kennedy said in a message to Congress in 1961--and these words still ring true:

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progresses in education. Our requirements for world leadership, our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of citizenship itself in an era such as this all require the maximum development of every young American's capacity.

That is almost a great 20th-century paraphrase of what a Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, said in the 1780s:

Progress in government and all else depends upon the broadest possible diffusion of knowledge among the general population.

Those words were true then. Senator Kennedy's words are true. Education is still the path to success for an individual or for a community and nation. We will advance the cause of education and the cause of success if we pass the Every Child Achieves Act.

I yield the floor.

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