Every Child Achieves Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, since our Nation's founding, the idea of a strong public education for every child has been a part of the fabric of America because when all students have the chance to learn, we strengthen our future workforce, our country grows stronger, and we empower the next generation of Americans to lead the world. A good education can provide a ticket to the middle class, so improving education is an important part of what it means to grow our economy from the middle out, not from the top down.

Today marks the first day of debate on our bipartisan bill to strengthen our education system by reauthorizing the Nation's K-12 education law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA. This work is a chance to recommit ourselves to the promise of a quality education. For every child, it is an opportunity to finally fix the current law, No Child Left Behind.

I have been very proud to partner with the senior Senator from Tennessee throughout this process, and I commend Chairman Alexander for working with me to create this bipartisan bill and for passing the Every Child Achieves Act through the education committee with unanimous support.

I think it is important at the onset to discuss why we need to fix the current law. I also would like to lay out what we accomplished in the Every Child Achieves Act and go through how I think we can best strengthen this bill and pass it through the Senate with bipartisan support.

I wish to acknowledge my committee members as well. This bill is better thanks to their hard work and commitment to their priorities and their communities.

Nearly everyone agrees that No Child Left Behind is badly broken. For one, the current law required States to set standards for schools but then didn't give the schools the resources they needed to meet those standards. Second, across the country we are still seeing inequality in education, where some schools simply don't offer the same opportunities as others, and some schools still have very large achievement gaps.

I have seen firsthand how this law is not working for my home State of Washington. No Child Left Behind has become so unworkable that the Obama administration began issuing waivers to exempt States from the law's requirements. Washington State had received a waiver but lost it last year, and now most of the schools in my State are categorized as failing.

A few months back, I stood here on the Senate floor and told the story of a mom from Shoreline, WA. Her name is Lillian. Last year her son was going into the fourth grade in the same school district where I once served as a school board member. Lillian's son had a learning disability. With the help of teachers and specialists at his elementary school, he showed great signs of progress. But then Lillian got a letter in the mail 2 weeks before school started, and that letter described her son's school as failing. That left her worried about the kind of education her son was getting, and she said it gave her a wave of uncertainty over the coming school year.

I have traveled around Washington State over the past decade and I have heard from a lot of my constituents, from teachers in the classrooms, to moms at the grocery stores, to tech company CEOs. They all have the same message: We need to fix the No Child Left Behind law. I was very glad that earlier this year we got to work on a bipartisan basis to find common ground to do just that, and I remain convinced that the only way to advance a bill to fix this broken law is with a bipartisan approach. Students, teachers, and parents are counting on us to do this, and now it is time to take the next step as we debate the Every Child Achieves Act here on the Senate floor.

This bill is a strong step in the right direction to finally fixing No Child Left Behind and making sure all of our students have access to a high-quality public education. It addresses the high-stakes testing. I have heard from parent after parent, teacher after teacher in Washington State that students are taking too many tests. The current law overemphasized test scores to measure how students are doing in school. Our bill will give flexibility to States to use multiple measures--not just a single test score--to determine how well a school is performing. The bill will create a pilot program for States to design new assessments, and that will provide our States with a lot of flexibility for innovation. Those steps will reduce the pressure on our students, our teachers, and our parents so they can focus less on test prep and more on learning.

The bill eliminates the one-size-fits-all provisions of No Child Left Behind that have been so damaging to our schools districts. Instead, the bill allows our communities, parents, and teachers to work together to improve schools and to ensure that every child receives a well-rounded education.

The bill maintains Federal protections to help students graduate from high school college- and career-ready. The bill also requires States to identify schools that do need improvement.

When the education committee debated the bill, I was also proud, as the Senator from Tennessee mentioned, to work on a bipartisan amendment with Senator Isakson to expand and improve early learning programs. As a former preschool teacher, I have seen the kind of transformation early learning can inspire in a child, so I am proud that this bill will help us expand access to high-quality early childhood education so more of our kids can start kindergarten ready to learn.

There are a few key ways that I want to continue to improve this bill. First of all, I believe we should strengthen the accountability requirements in the bill. Too many schools have failed too many of our children for too many years. When we don't hold the schools and States accountable for educating every child, it is the kids from our low-income backgrounds, kids with disabilities, kids who are learning English, and kids of color who too often do fall through the cracks. Before No Child Left Behind, it was easy for schools to overlook the performance of these vulnerable groups of students. Before 2002, as long as the school's overall performance was OK, it didn't matter if students of color or students from low-income backgrounds struggled to make progress year after year. The overall average of all students allowed achievement gaps to be swept under the rug even as some students fell further and further behind. We cannot go back to those days, and we can't backtrack on holding our schools accountable for helping all of our students learn.

States should still be required to identify the schools that are struggling the most so they can get the help and resources they need to improve. States need to identify the schools where some groups of students aren't making enough progress. These schools should get the support and locally designed interventions they need to better serve their students. Let's remember that holding States accountable for all students will only work if schools get the resources they need to promote students' success.

Unfortunately, some schools simply don't provide the same educational opportunities as others. Oftentimes students of color don't even have the option to take an AP course or use up-to-date technology in the classroom. African-American and Latino students are significantly less likely to attend a high school that offers advanced math or art classes, and, on average, kids from low-income neighborhoods don't have access to qualified and experienced teachers like students from wealthier neighborhoods often do. A ZIP Code should never determine a student's academic success. We need to make sure all students have equitable resources.

In the 1800s, Horace Mann, who is often called the father of American education, worked to make it universal and free for all. He famously said: ``Education ..... is the great equalizer.'' I believe that is true but only if we continue to hold ourselves accountable for providing educational opportunities to all students. The Every Child Achieves Act takes some very important steps to do that. As we debate this bill, I hope we can build on the progress and continue to move in the right direction.

I do believe there are important ways we should be able to work together to improve the bill, but there are other ideas out there that may derail any chance of passing this bill and fixing No Child Left Behind. I know some of my Republican colleagues are interested in making title I funding ``portable.'' That name sounds innocuous enough, but that proposal would allow funds to be taken away from schools that need the help the most, and it would defy the original purpose of our Federal K-12 education law. ESEA was meant to help level the playing field for students growing up in poverty. Efforts to backtrack on our country's commitment to target funds to the highest needs schools and instead give funding away to our more affluent schools is a nonstarter.

Others are interested in voucherizing the public school system. That would undermine the basic goals of public education by allowing funding designated for the most average students to flow out of the public school system and into mostly unaccountable private schools. Vouchers are unacceptable to me and would jeopardize our bipartisan work.

I am looking forward to our debate to make this bill even better. Half a century ago President Lyndon Johnson directed Congress to improve education for our Nation's students. In January of 1965, in what would be just months before signing the original ESEA into law, President Johnson said that when it comes to education, ``nothing matters more to the future of our country,'' and that remains true today. The future of our country hinges on our students' ability to one day lead the world, and a high-quality education for every student is one of the best investments our country can make to ensure we have broad-based and long-term economic growth.

Finishing this process we are working on today and getting a bill signed into law isn't going to be easy. Nothing in Congress ever is. But students, parents, teachers, and communities across our country, including in my home State of Washington, are looking to us here in Congress to fix this broken law. We cannot let them down.

We need to work across the aisle to help our students and our schools and our teachers get some much needed relief from No Child Left Behind. We need to give our States flexibility while strengthening accountability and resource equity. We need to work together to reaffirm our Nation's commitment to ensuring that all students have access to a quality education regardless of where they live or how they learn or how much money their parents make. By doing so, we will help our Nation grow stronger for generations to come.

I again thank the Senator from Tennessee for his tremendous leadership in getting us to this point and for working with us to make sure we get this bill to the President and signed into law so that we can all go home and say we fixed a badly broken law.

I yield the floor.

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