The Constitution Caucus

Floor Speech

THE CONSTITUTION CAUCUS -- (House of Representatives - May 23, 2007)

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I am a member of the Constitution Caucus, and we take it as an important responsibility to come to the floor every week to talk about an issue related to the Constitution.

Tonight, we are here to talk about the Federal Government's role in education through the No Child Left Behind Act. But I question whether the premise of Federal involvement is even legitimate.

The tenth amendment to the Constitution that enumerates States' rights throws Federal involvement in education into question.

The tenth amendment tells us that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

No Child Left Behind has a problem. The problem is that the individual States have learned that Federal Government involvement in local education is often uninformed, inefficient and unnecessarily burdensome.

What many Americans don't know or don't remember is that No Child Left Behind is simply a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a law first passed in 1965 and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. It has been revised and reauthorized so many times that it barely resembles the original law.

Today the law spawned by the repeated tinkering over four decades is increasingly complicated and burdensome. It attempts to tie Federal money to disparate yardsticks that may or may not make sense for the thousands of local school districts around the country.

How can one law effectively regulate both a rural school in North Carolina and an inner-city school in L.A.? I believe it cannot. Accountability needs be a State and local issue left to parents and teachers. It should not be delegated to Washington bureaucrats who don't even step inside the thousands of schools that are scrambling to comply with cookie-cutter regulations that often don't make sense on the local level.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965 was primarily concerned with the relationship between poverty and low educational achievement. That is, indeed, a noble goal. But the law has since gone far afield. Now it infringes on States rights to oversee school systems and strays into unconstitutional areas.

Again, the 10th amendment to the Constitution says, ``The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.''

The Constitution does not give the Federal Government the express right to dabble in local education. We need to give States back their full constitutional right to set education policy and encourage innovative solutions to the unique education issues faced by every State.

Tens of billions of Federal dollars cannot fix faulty schools. Broken schools need to be held accountable on the local level. By pushing accountability to the Federal level, we've produced a counterproductive system that is not responsive to the local needs of students, parents and teachers.

As we look towards the next reauthorization of this law, we must take States rights into account, lest we again fail the most important people in this equation, our Nation's children.

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