Every Child Achieves Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado for his
graciousness. I come to the floor to speak about this important topic
of early elementary education

I recall that when President George W. Bush was Governor of Texas--of
course, education was one of his biggest priorities both at the State
and the national level when he became President. He had an interesting
observation. He said the more you talk about education, the more people
realize you actually care about it. So I actually think it is important
to talk about it, that we think our way through this legislation and
figure out what we can do to equip our children who are increasingly in
a competitive environment, not only locally in our States and Nation
but globally.

One of the real joys of the job of a U.S. Senator is getting to visit
with students in our State, and I did so last week when I was back
home. I met with a group of middle-school students in Amarillo, way up
in the Texas Panhandle, at the tail end of a camp teaching students
valuable skills in science, technology, engineering, and math, the so-
called STEM fields. I was very impressed with what I saw. First of all,
the instructors found out how to make this fun, which is an important
element in this education because some of this stuff can be pretty dry
and boring, if my memory serves me correctly. They were literally
building robots, and then they presented their final projects to
parents and teachers in a friendly competition. Needless to say, I wish
I had that kind of instruction. Maybe I wouldn't have veered into the
legal profession. I would have done something more productive in a
field of science. I am saying that with a tongue planted firmly in
cheek, of course. But I wish I had instructors who would have inspired
me to learn more about those important topics by using these sorts of
tools.

I also previously visited, for example, United High School in Laredo,
where I was able to meet with high school students who were taking part
in a first-of-its-kind program that teaches curriculum specific to the
oil and gas industry in the region. Why is that? Well, because the
shale plays in Texas are the source--the reservoirs really--this huge
volume of oil and natural gas is being produced from. Lo and behold, it
is not just producing income for the people who are drilling those
wells and completing them, it is creating a lot of jobs. What these
students and the school districts, such as United High School in
Laredo, have discovered is that this is really an opportunity for these
students in high school to begin to learn some of the basics of
petroleum engineering and other things that will prepare them for good,
well-paying jobs later in life.

This program included internships, training, and dual-credit courses
at a local community college. These students were going to high school,
but they were actually getting college credit at the same time at the
local community college. Of course, they were getting real-world skills
that they need to succeed in a burgeoning industry once they graduate.
Importantly, graduates from the program will have, as I said, access to
high-paying, good jobs right out of high school, which, unfortunately,
the history has been in Laredo, TX, in South Texas, that that hasn't
always been the case.

So this is a very hopeful development, thanks to the innovation in
the oil and gas industry and thanks to the foresight and the genius,
really, of the local school district there in Laredo, TX.

This is a great example of how local communities and the economy can
work to shape education and provide a win-win opportunity for students,
local industries, and the greater community. United High School was
able to create this program because it had the freedom and flexibility
to develop its own curriculum with tailored input from local leaders,
teachers, parents, and industry leaders--the people who create jobs and
who are looking for people with discrete skills that they would then
bring to the table to provide the workforce they need.

This groundbreaking program in Laredo was not thought up here in
Washington, DC. It is a product of local ingenuity and a community
response to the educational needs specific to its students. I think
this type of mindset is very important in education because, as we have
learned over the years, the bureaucracy in Washington can't tailor
programs that will suit the needs of children in a wide variety of
school districts across our States and across the country--not in
Laredo, not in Amarillo, and not anywhere else in the country.

That is why I am happy this week that the Senate is considering
legislation that will help return a large measure of the responsibility
for our children's education to those closest to them--their parents,
their teachers, the local school boards--and not so much the Federal
Government. The Federal Government does have an interest and we as
Americans all have an interest in being able to compete in a global
environment and in high standards, those that will cause our students
to strive to attain skills that they can use to compete anywhere in the
world. But in terms of its actual implementation, I am pleased that
this legislation will push more of those decisions out of Washington
and back home to local school districts and parents.

This legislation is, of course, called the Every Child Achieves Act.
It provides a roadmap to ensure that our children receive and retain a
quality education. By giving the responsibility for actually
implementing programs that will help students achieve these high
standards--it will give each State and the districts the flexibility
they need to design and implement their education programs and systems.

This is really sort of another application of what Louis Brandeis
called the ``laboratories of democracy'' when he was referring to the
State government. I think he was referring to that important principle
of our Constitution known as federalism, as ensconced in the 10th
amendment in particular.

There is an irreplaceable role that the Federal Government plays in
some aspects of our life. National security is perhaps the preeminent
one. But there is a lot of benefit to getting some experiments at the
State level, and then we can learn without imposing a one-size-fits-all
approach from Washington, DC. What works best? Then we can then learn
and be informed by those practices in a way that improves the result. I
am thinking of criminal justice reform as another example in my State,
where we were an early participant in prison reform, which now has
formed some of the basis for bipartisan legislation that we are
considering here in the Senate.

Because of the successful laboratory experiments back in Texas and
Rhode Island and other States, we are now taking those best practices
and those results and figuring out how we apply those to the benefit of
other parts of the country.

Under this legislation, States such as Texas can decide how to use
federally mandated test results to assess performance of students,
schools, and teachers. This gives the States much needed relief from
pressure to teach to the test--something I hear over and over again
back home, that teachers are finding that rather than a program where
they teach STEM subjects using robots and inspire young, creative minds
to engage and learn the science they need in order to play these sorts
of games in a competition with robots, teachers are finding themselves
in a position of teaching to the test in sort of a mind-numbing process
that nobody would find particularly inspiring. So this takes some
pressure from that teach-to-the-test mentality and also gives States
additional freedom to provide students with a well-rounded education.

Put simply, with this legislation, States can decide for themselves
what standards they need to adopt, and, importantly, this legislation
limits the power of the Secretary of Education to ensure that the
Federal Government cannot dictate, direct, or control State curriculum
or standards.

How insulting is it to have the States come on bended knee to the
Secretary of Education and ask: Will you please let us have a waiver so
we can try this creative or innovative way of delivering an education
to our students back home? How insulting is that and how contrary to
the original scheme of our government as created by our Founders.

So this bill, which was unanimously passed out of committee--and I
congratulate the chairman, Senator Alexander, and the ranking member,
Senator Murray, and all members of the Health, Education, Labor and
Pensions Committee for voting out this bill unanimously. This is a
great bipartisan process which has produced a very good product. It is also just one of
more than 150 bills reported out of Senate committees so far this
year--another sign that the Senate is back to work for the American
people.

I look forward to continuing the great progress we have made in this
Senate by getting real education reform passed soon.

I yield the floor.

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