Providing for Consideration of H.R. 5 Student Success Act
Floor Speech
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Ms. FOXX. House Resolution 303 provides for a structured rule providing for consideration of H.R. 5, the Student Success Act.
Mr. Speaker, my colleagues on the House Education and the Workforce Committee and I have been working to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Our efforts in reauthorization have centered on four principles: reducing the Federal footprint in education, empowering parents, supporting effective teachers, and restoring local control.
H.R. 5, the Student Success Act, ensures that local communities have the flexibility needed to meet the needs of their students. This legislation reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as ESEA, for 5 years, while making commonsense changes to update the law and address some of the concerns following the last reauthorization.
Despite good intentions, there's widespread agreement that the current law is no longer effectively serving students.
Instead of working with Congress to reauthorize ESEA, the Obama administration began offering States temporary waivers in 2011 to exempt them from onerous requirements in exchange for new Federal mandates from the Department of Education.
These waivers are a short-term fix to a long-term problem, and leave States and districts with uncertainty about whether they will again be subject to the failing law, and if the administration will change the requirements necessary to receive a waiver.
It is time to give students, parents, teachers, and school districts certainty to make decisions and flexibility to make the best decisions for their communities. H.R. 5 is a step in the right direction and will provide this certainty and flexibility.
Since Republicans returned to the majority in the House in 2011, we've held 20 hearings on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The committee considered five reauthorization bills in four markups in the 112th Congress, in addition to a markup and favorabe reporting of H.R. 5 this year.
I'm pleased to work with my colleagues on the Rules Committee to report rules for floor debate and the consideration of legislation that promote transparency and participation.
I urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying bill.
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Over the last four decades, the Federal Government's role in elementary and secondary education has increased dramatically. The Department of Education currently runs more than 80 K-12 education programs, many of which are duplicative or ineffective.
As a school board member, I saw how the vast reporting requirements for these Federal programs tie the hands of State and local leaders who want to make the best education available for their students.
Since 1965, Federal education funding has tripled; yet student achievement remains flat. More money is clearly not going to solve the challenges we face in education.
Our children deserve better. It's time to acknowledge more taxpayer dollars and more Federal intrusion cannot address the challenges facing schools. H.R. 5, the Student Success Act, will streamline the Nation's education system by eliminating more than 70 duplicative and ineffective Federal education programs; cutting through the bureaucratic red tape that is stifling innovation in the classroom; and granting States and school districts the authority to use Federal education funds to meet the unique needs of their students.
The bill also requires the Secretary of Education to identify the bureaucrats in Washington who run the programs to be consolidated or eliminated in H.R. 5 and eliminate those positions to ensure that the bureaucracy shrinks with the programs.
Additionally, this legislation will take definitive steps to limit the Secretary's authority by prohibiting him or her from coercing States into adopting academic standards like the Common Core. It also halts the executive overreach in the waiver process by prohibiting the Secretary from imposing extraneous conditions on States and local districts in exchange for a waiver.
The Student Success Act protects State and local autonomy over decisions in the classroom by removing the Secretary's authority to add new requirements to Federal programs.
Mr. Speaker, Federal policy should not tie the hands of local educators to make the best decisions for their students and communities. H.R. 5 is a step in that direction.
I urge my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Our colleagues have said that H.R. 5 guts education funding. That is not accurate. H.R. 5 authorizes funding for all programs under the act as the final appropriated amount for ESEA programs in FY 2013. Those amounts are level-funded for the 6-year life of the bill.
While authorizing spending for the act at the final FY 2013 level, H.R. 5 prioritizes Federal spending by protecting core programs. Title I aid for the disadvantaged, as well as targeted population programs: migrant education, neglected and delinquent, English-language acquisition, Indian education, and rural education are authorized at FY 2012 levels.
Additionally, because the bill consolidates many existing programs, funds currently spent on those lower priority programs have been used to increase the authorization for these core programs. As a result, our bill would authorize more spending--I'll emphasize--more spending for these core programs in FY 2014 than the President's own FY 2014 budget proposal.
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 5 continues the charter school, magnet school, and tutoring programs to provide parents with more choices in educating their children.
Along with parental involvement, encouraging and supporting effective teachers in the classroom is critical to student success in quality education. Most Americans can regale you with stories of their favorite teachers who made a lasting impact on their lives. H.R. 5 also supports the development and implementation of teacher evaluation systems that are designed by States and school districts with input from parents, teachers, school leaders, and other stakeholders.
In addition to evaluation systems, the Student Success Act reduces confusion and duplication by consolidating teacher quality programs into a single, flexible grant program to be used by States in school districts to support creative approaches to recruit and retain effective educators.
The recurring theme throughout this legislation is empowering the people closest to students to make decisions for their communities and ensuring that the law is flexible to meet the needs of diverse States, regions, and student populations.
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
It is really puzzling why our colleagues continue to misrepresent what H.R. 5 does when the public can read the bill and know the truth. For example, our colleagues have said that H.R. 5 eliminates protections for students with disabilities, low-income students, and students from major racial and ethnic groups. This charge is simply false.
The Student Success Act maintains annual testing requirements in reading, math, and science. It also maintains the law's requirement that schools in districts disaggregate and report subgroup data on student performance. This ensures student achievement results for special needs students and other traditionally disadvantaged populations are transparent and parents and communities have the information they need to evaluate their schools properly.
Critics of this approach believe in the now widely discredited premise captured in No Child Left Behind that the Federal Government can and should devise an accountability system appropriate for all of the nearly 100,000 public schools in the country. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, that is one of the most widespread criticisms of what we have known as No Child Left Behind, which was really a reauthorization of this bill several years ago. It is puzzling to me that they continue to criticize what is bad about what exists and yet say they want to do it again. It doesn't make any sense.
H.R. 5 is based on a different premise that true education reform comes not from the top down, but from the bottom up.
Acknowledging that Washington can't fix schools does not mean we are backing away from our strongly held belief that schools should have standards to which they are accountable and that those standards should be equally applied across all school groups. It means we must empower and trust States and communities, those closest to the classroom, to develop an accountability and school improvement system that best meets the educational needs of their students.
All of the wisdom of the world is not in Washington, D.C., Mr. Speaker. It is out there in the country. It is out there with the local people, with the American people who are very bright and know how to do things for themselves.
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Many of my Republican colleagues and I feel that the Federal Government should be out of education altogether, but that is not what we are recommending here. Rather, H.R. 5 is a reasonable first step in empowering the people closest to the students to make decisions for those students.
That being said, as long as taxpayer money is being used by the Federal Government to fund education, Congress must ensure that funding recipients are being held accountable for how they use that hardworking taxpayer money. Washington must live within its means just as families all across this country do, and limited resources require wise stewardship. Again, those closest to the students--parents, teachers, principals, local school boards, school district leaders, and States--know what works best for their diverse student populations.
The Student Success Act recognizes this by allowing States to develop their own accountability systems that incorporate three broad parameters: an annual measure of the academic achievement of all public school students against State academic standards; an annual evaluation and identification of the academic performance of each public school in the State based on student academic achievement; a school improvement plan to be implemented by school districts when schools don't meet the State standards. These broad accountability measures not only serve to steward taxpayer money carefully but ensure parents have the information needed to make the best decisions about their schools' education.
Let's give control back to the people who know the needs of their students and communities best, and let's pass this rule and underlying bill. We tried it the other way, and it hasn't worked. Control from Washington has not brought us improvement in our educational programs.
Mr. Speaker, my background as an educator, school board member, mother, and grandmother reinforces my belief that students are best served when people at the local level are in control of education decisions. I also believe that education is the most important tool Americans at any age can have. I was the first person in my family to graduate from high school and go to college, where I worked full time and attended school part time. It took me 7 years to earn my bachelor's degree, and I continued to work my way through my master's and doctoral degrees.
From my own experience, I am convinced this is the greatest country in the world for many reasons, not the least of which is that a person like me, who grew up extremely poor in a house with no electricity and no running water, and with parents with very little formal education and no prestige at all, could work hard and be elected to the United States House of Representatives.
No legislation is perfect, and that is why I look forward to working with my colleagues to address their concerns and improve the Student Success Act through the amendment process. However, I have never been one to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and while H.R. 5 isn't perfect, it's a step in the right direction of reducing the Federal role in education, empowering parents, teachers and local school districts, and increasing local control. That's why I am a proud cosponsor of this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this rule and the underlying bill.
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