Every Child Achieves Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, this week we will begin floor debate on yet another such bipartisan measure, the Every Child Achieves Act.

Many Washington pundits assumed that Congress could never agree on a workable solution to replace a broken No Child Left Behind law, and they certainly didn't believe one would receive unanimous committee support from both Republicans and Democrats. But many of those folks didn't think Washington could reform the Medicare payment system or pass trade legislation either. So it is a good thing Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray didn't listen to them. The new Congress has proved the pundits wrong already. If the senior Senator from Tennessee and his Democratic counterpart from Washington State have their way, the new Congress will prove them wrong yet again.

The Every Child Achieves Act aims to assure we are helping students to succeed instead of helping Washington to grow, and it recognizes an obvious truth; that the needs of a student in Eastern Kentucky aren't likely to be the same as those of students in South Florida or downtown Manhattan. The bill would give States the flexibility to develop systems that work for the needs of their students rather than the one-size-fits-all mandate of Washington, taking decisions out of the hands of Federal bureaucrats and putting them into the hands of real experts: parents, teachers, and State and local leaders.

I will be talking more about the bipartisan Every Child Achieves Act later this week. But the fact that we are even on the floor today discussing yet another important reform solution to yet another seemingly intractable problem is one more reminder that this is a new Congress that is focused on solutions for the American people.

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