Providing For Congressional Disapproval of Rule Submitted by the Department of Education Relating to Accountability and State Plans

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise today in strong support of H.J. Res. 57.

Mr. Speaker, I was here also on this floor listening to the debate that just finished on H.J. Res. 58, and I have a feeling a lot of the same things are going to carry over because we are dealing with the same Department. In fact, we are dealing with the prior administration generally.

I was struck by the words that we need to ``give direction to the States.'' I think, by definition, those words demonstrate how one side here thinks that they know best; that their judgment is somehow better than the judgment of governors, of State legislators of parents, teachers, and superintendents themselves when it comes to this issue and, in fact, in a larger perspective, when it comes to most issues around here. We must give direction to the States--no.

The fact of the matter is, when the President signed into law, when we passed ESSA--the Every Student Succeeds Act--in a lot of ways we were saying to the States: You give the direction. You set the way that you think is best to educate your best assets. Your best assets, of course, being our next generation.

While we at the Federal level would like to be partners, the fact of the matter is it is their property. The tax dollars we are talking about are the property of the individuals living in the 50 States and other jurisdictions.
So now here we are using the Congressional Review Act to get rid of some regulations that are doing that very thing. We wrote a very specific law saying the States are in charge. Here we have a Federal agency inserting itself, not just interpreting law, but actually making law and taking us in the exact opposite direction that all of us intended.

When I say all of us, I say that in a very bipartisan way, Mr. Speaker, because--I am now in my fifth year of being chairman of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education here in the House. My first 4 years were consumed working with past Chairman John Kline, current Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, other members of the committee, and all our Democratic counterparts in getting this very bipartisan law passed and signed into law.

Let me go back, Mr. Speaker, and set the table here. You will have to remember that under the No Child Left Behind law, which was the law of the land for some 13 years--perhaps a well-intentioned law, but completely unreasonable in terms of its forced, ridged, one-size-fits- all accountability system that heavily dictated how we would gauge and address school performance--that system represented a top-down approach in K-12 education. After 13 years, the data is in and the results are in. It simply didn't work.

So that is why just a little more than a year ago, Congress passed-- again, former President Obama signed into law in a very bipartisan way--the Every Student Succeeds Act. With this law, Republicans and Democrats worked together to reform our education system to ensure that all children are able to receive the education they deserve. It represents a fundamentally different approach to education and, in the words of one superintendent, empowers local leaders to ``dream and lead and transform public education in this country.''
Unfortunately, almost immediately after the bill became law, the Obama administration began its attempt to roll back these bipartisan reforms. With the Every Student Succeeds Act, Congress promised to reduce the Federal role and restore State and local control over K-12 education. The law empowers States to develop their own policies to hold schools accountable to parents and taxpayers.

For accountability to work, Mr. Speaker, it must be driven by the State and local leaders who are best equipped to directly address the issues in their school. Those leaders know better than any Federal bureaucrat in the Department of Education what their kids need, even down to what their kids' names are. I challenge any Federal bureaucrat to know better.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration's flawed accountability regulation would reestablish the Washington-knows-best approach to accountability. It is the very same thing I mentioned earlier that we just heard regarding H.J. Res. 58. It is an approach that is deeply flawed.

How do I know? What is the best metric to prove the point that that Washington-knows-best approach is deeply flawed? Look at it. Look at the test scores since the Federal Government has been involved in education. You see that they haven't gone up. Yet we have spent billions and billions of dollars since the 1970s here at the Federal level on local education to see no improvement in the test scores.

Not only does the regulation dictate prescriptive accountability requirements, but it violates many of the prohibitions that we put in on the Secretary of Education. As we all saw, the top-down approach simply didn't work. So that is why we repealed No Child Left Behind and passed a bill to transform K-12 education.
Our students deserve better than the failed policies of the past, and that is what the Every Student Succeeds Act does, if implemented as Congress intended.

Now, our intent was not ambiguous, and the law is far from silent. We were very specific in the law we wrote. Our specificity dictated that the States and localities were back in charge. They were driving the bus again. No pun intended.

The Department has taken some kind of ambiguity, I guess, some kind of silence, and has inserted themselves into the lawmaking role. That wasn't our intent.

Our intent was for a new role for the Department, a much smaller role for the Department, a less supervisory role for the Department, and a less punitive role for the Department, one that would simply ensure that our specifically written law, as passed off this floor, passed off the Senate floor, and eventually signed into law, was followed as we wrote it. So an example of that was we require the States to have plans for how they were going to test, that they would test, but nothing more prescriptive than that. That is just one example, the testing. There were some other parameters.

Then they were to submit those plans to the Federal Government, and the Department of Education was simply to check the box and make sure that the plans were done and otherwise comply with the law. The Department wasn't to be more prescriptive than that. It wasn't to give any more regulation than that. It wasn't to, frankly, give too much more direction than that because we recognize that this responsibility is primarily that of governors, State legislators, school superintendents, parents, and teachers.

Now, States are already working to implement the law in their school districts. I want to be very clear that this resolution in no way does anything to stymie those efforts. States should move straight ahead.

Instead, the resolution gives States the certainty they need to continue moving forward, confident that their plans will be reviewed by the Department of Education against the requirements of the statute and nothing more, with deference given to the judgment of these local legislators, local superintendents, et cetera, as the law requires.

We are also committed to working with the new administration to ensure States receive the support they need consistent with the limits placed in the statute.

So, my colleagues, by passing this resolution and blocking implementation of the Obama administration's flawed accountability rule, we can ensure that the promises we made under the Every Student Succeeds Act to restore State and local control in K-12 education are kept.

I urge my colleagues to support H.J. Res. 57 and protect those important bipartisan reforms.

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The effect of this action will not halt State implementation efforts.

Let me say that again. The effect of this action will not halt State implementation efforts.

Our intent is to require clarity and consistency so implementation can, in fact, continue. States are continuing to develop State plans that comply with the law, as you have already seen being done across the country. The States and school districts are in the driver's seat here, Mr. Speaker, and they should continue moving forward.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to say to the gentlewoman that I agree that we have to be careful to make sure underserved children are not vulnerable, which is what we did in the underlying law in a bipartisan manner when we passed it and when the President signed the law.

I reject the premise that State and local leaders, however, cannot be trusted to deliver an excellent education to all of their students.

More importantly, that premise was rejected by Congresses in ESSA itself.
Beyond that, the criticism just levied is simply not true. The Department of Education has the right and, indeed, the obligation to enforce the law. That has never been in dispute.

There are clear requirements in this statute for States to develop ways to hold their schools accountable and to report information about school performance to parents and their communities. That duty continues.

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Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

The gentleman talks about accountability. I want to reassure all the Members here that will be voting on this joint resolution that we are not throwing accountability out the window.

What we decided last year when we passed the Every Student Succeeds Act is that accountability was a good thing. But the best leaders and the best persons to determine what that accountability should be and what that accountability should look like are found in our States and are found in our local jurisdictions. They know our best assets the best--our best assets being our children. They know what they need.

So we are not throwing accountability out the window. We are saying accountability is to be measured at the State level by the States, by the local jurisdictions, and they are to simply report to the Department of Education what their accountability plan is in a transparent way so that, again, parents, teachers, and taxpayers can decide if that State is doing a good job, so that people like the NAACP--if they are and should be, as we all should be, worried about achievement gaps--could affect how to close those achievement gaps in those respective States and, by the way, perhaps come up with a more effective way, a better plan, a more aggressive plan to close that achievement gap rather than the one-size-fits-all bureaucracy that is the Federal Department of Education. That is the whole point.

Secondly, regarding civil rights. Nothing in this resolution that takes back this draconian rulemaking from the Department of Education affects civil rights. We are very clear in the Every Student Succeeds Act that the civil rights protections remain. We agreed with that in a bipartisan way, and all of that remains. Don't let the gentleman from Colorado scare you into thinking anything different.

There was a lot of talk about uncertainty from previous speakers-- uncertainty for States--and that blocking implementation of these regulations will create that uncertainty. Let me address that for just a couple of minutes.

We, Congress, cannot allow Federal agencies to ignore the clear prohibitions against executive overreach. These regulations clearly attempt to reassert Federal control that was returned to the States by Congress under ESSA.

Repealing these regulations is the only way to give States and school districts the certainty that they need with sufficient time to move the implementation process forward. The law itself provides enough guidance. We were very specific how we wrote this law. We were very specific in the requirements needed. That removes the need to have the kind of rulemaking that the Department of Education, either through habit or through direct intent, is trying to do here. We don't need to do it here.

The law itself lays out clear criteria for the State plans. It states explicitly that the onus is on the Department of Education to demonstrate how a plan does not comply with the law that we wrote and that the President signed into law. It does not require, and the States are not required, to go jump through the hoops that the Department is trying to have them jump through now through this rulemaking.

The law also requires the Department to review the State plans with deference to State and local judgments. The Department is trying to take that judgment away from the States and put it under its own umbrella.

Under the law, as long as States can demonstrate that their plans comply with the statute, they will be approved. We wrote that into the law. Because of this, States can have the certainty that the work they began can continue. The Department, with this rule, is trying to unravel all that. The resolution stops the Department from doing that.

I know Congressman Costello mentioned teacher performance. Others have talked about student assessment participation rates. Let me give you a few examples for the record, Mr. Speaker. ESSA allowed States to determine how to hold schools accountable for assessing students. The final rule limits States to only four options for assessing students and requires schools to implement a plan to address low test participation--not required in the law, not part of what we are doing here. The Department, by doing that, is making up law.

Regarding teacher performance and some things that Mr. Costello referenced, ESSA explicitly prohibited the Secretary from mandating the creation of teacher evaluation systems. As the Federal Government, we are getting out of the business of teacher evaluation systems. It didn't mean the States couldn't do it. It didn't mean that most States wouldn't do it. However, the final rule requires States to establish a statewide definition for what an ineffective teacher means that differentiates between categories of teachers.

Now, if you look at this in effect, in practical terms, it would be almost impossible for States to fulfill this requirement without implementing a teacher and school leader evaluation, something the law specifically didn't require, specifically prohibited. Yet, here we are with the Department's rule basically making States do it. Not what was intended. Not what we wrote. Not what we voted on on the floor of this House, and not what was signed into law by the President of the United States at the time.

So these are the kinds of things that we are fighting against here, Mr. Speaker. These are the kinds of things that H.J. Res. 57, and H.J. Res. 58 for that matter, would stop the Department from doing. H.J. Res. 57 protects the positive reforms Congress made with Every Student Succeeds Act and ensures that those reforms are implemented as Congress intended. In doing so, the resolution preserves State and local control over K-12 education and provides States and school districts the certainty they need to proceed with the plans that they are already in the process of writing.

That is why a number of groups--including the National Governors Association; AASA, the School Superintendents Association; and the Council of the Great City Schools--have spoken out in support of the resolution. It is also why the National School Boards Association supports this resolution, and it is why H.J. Res. 57 is supported by Citizens Against Government Waste.

I am confident that Congress will continue working in a bipartisan manner to empower our State and local communities to take the lead in accountability. There will be accountability. By putting a stop to the Obama administration's flawed and overreaching accountability regulation, however, we can keep the promise we made to reduce the Federal role, restore local control, and ensure all children receive the high-quality education that they deserve.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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