Every Child Achieves Act of 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, on the floor now when we return for debate is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which has been named the Every Child Achieves Act, and is before the Senate this week. We may finish it. The issue is our opportunity on a periodic basis to debate the future of K-12 education in America. Millions of Americans follow this debate. It affects their local schools and school districts.

It was under President George W. Bush that there was an amazing bill passed called the No Child Left Behind Act. What was amazing, politically, was that President Bush--a Republican and a conservative--called for a larger role by the Federal Government in evaluating school districts and teachers and in deciding whether they were succeeding. It was controversial from the start. Ultimately, we have moved away from it.

This new bill takes a much different approach. Instead of testing, testing, testing and grading school districts, we are basically shifting the responsibility back to the States to do this. It remains to be seen whether this is or will be an improvement.

We learned a lot under No Child Left Behind when we took a close look at test scores. To say what the average test score is at a school meant very little--or nothing--when we broke out the students at the school and found out that some were doing exceedingly well and some not so well at all. We could find groups of students--some minority groups, for example--who were not doing very well at school, but the other kids might have brought the scores up. So now, by disaggregating scores, we can target our efforts and make sure that some students have a fighting chance.

It remains to be seen, under this Every Child Achieves Act, whether we have gone far enough or too far in shifting the responsibility back to the States.

I will mention very briefly, because I see my friend and colleague from Vermont on the floor, that there is one amendment here that I have offered with Senator Capito. This bipartisan amendment would require States to include information on their State report cards about postsecondary enrollment rates at public and State institutions. It will allow States to go further and include information on private, public,

[Page: S4990] GPO's PDF
and out-of-State enrollment as well. It would encourage States to produce and publish data on remediation rates on students, so we can better understand which high schools are truly preparing their students for postsecondary education. Much of the data is already collected by the States. So the additional burden would be minimal.
Ensuring students coming out of high school are college and career ready is an important goal of the bill. Our commonsense bipartisan amendment would help track whether that goal is being met.

The amendment is supported by the Business Roundtable, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Education Trust, National Center for Learning Disabilities, National Council of La Raza, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and America Forward.

There is one other amendment I have, and I will close on this. When it relates to high school athletics, many of us are concerned about the incidents of concussions occurring in sporting events. I filed an amendment based on my Protecting Student Athletes from Concussions Act. It is supported by the American Academy of Neurology, American College of Sports Medicine, Illinois High School Association, NCAA, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Football League, National Hockey League, and many others.

It directs States to develop concussion safety plans for public schools to protect student athletes from this dangerous injury. Most importantly, it would require the adoption of a ``when in doubt, sit it out'' policy, promoted by the medical community. This means that a student athlete suspected of a concussion would be removed from play and prohibited from returning to play that same day, no matter what. It doesn't make any difference how much he pleads or what the score of the game is or who is sitting in the stands. If you think you have evidence of a concussion, be safe. Don't put that student athlete back on the field.

It would take the decision on when to put an injured athlete back in the game out of the hands of the coach, the athlete, and the parents. While I don't believe we will be able to get the adoption of the full amendment, I am pleased that a substitute includes a clear statement that allows funds to be used to develop these policies. I thank Chairman Alexander and Senator Murray for working with us to include that.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source