Every Child Achieves Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I rise today with the understanding that I have been a Senator for just a short while--about 19 months--and with the knowledge that I stand in a body full of champions for our Nation's kids. I am proud of the conversations I have had on both sides of the political aisle and see the earnestness and hard work to ensure that America is a place where all children can thrive.
I wish to give a special thanks to Senators ALEXANDER and MURRAY, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate HELP Committee. They have worked tirelessly in an effort to expand educational opportunities for children, and I have no doubt that they have already made lasting contributions to the lives of our children. In addition to that, they have taken a flawed legislative reality in No Child Left Behind and have already made significant strides in improving it. It should be applauded. They have done good work. In a nation that has been overcome with test craziness, they lowered those ridiculous bars and barriers that are being put up at the local level to achieving high education.
I am proud to see a bipartisan consensus forming to correct the ills of No Child Left Behind which have been foisted upon school districts all over our country and which have made the quest for educational excellence more difficult, not easier or more empowering.
I say all of that, but I must also say that I am here because there is an enormous amount of work still to do. This body must confront the dark places in our country where the ideals of the American educational system and where the dream of this country of equal access to opportunity is being failed. We have work to do. There is a moral urgency in this country, and that is what I am worried about today.
It is deeply disconcerting to me that I cannot stand in the well of the Senate before you today and say that a child born in any ZIP Code in America will have access to a quality education and an equal shot in this Nation at learning the skills they need to make the most out of their lives, to contribute to our country, and to live their American dream.
It is troubling that I cannot stand here in the well of this auspicious body and say that we are leading our peers around the globe when it comes to the number of our kids--percentage of the population--who graduate from high school ready to succeed as part of the global economy.
It is shameful and ignominious that I cannot stand here today and say that we are doing everything we can to ensure that all of our students can succeed and that we are holding those schools that are performing the worst in our Nation--those schools that often deal with the poorest of our country, the most marginalized of our country--that we are doing everything we can to serve them.
There should be standards to which we hold ourselves accountable. For this Senator, it is this America where children are still struggling for the basic foundations of our ideals that concerns me.
It was back in 1967 at Stanford University--my alma mater--that Martin Luther King stood and gave a speech about the other America. Sadly, we are a nation that still reflects these words from decades ago. He talked about a great America where children have quality schools, quality housing, and opportunities to succeed. That is the majority of our Nation. It makes us all proud and honored to serve this country that is an example to the globe of what is possible in a vibrant and strong democracy. But in that speech, Martin Luther King also talks about the other America. It is in this America, he said, that people are poor by the millions. ``They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity,'' King said.
He said:
In a sense, the greatest tragedy of this other America is what it does to little children. Little children in this other America are forced to grow up with clouds of inferiority forming every day in their little mental skies. And as we look at this other America, we see it as an arena of blasted hopes and shattered dreams.
He details this other America by saying that ``many people of various backgrounds live in this other America. Some are Mexican-Americans, some are Puerto Ricans, some are Indians.'' Millions of them are White. ``But probably the largest group in this other America in proportion to its size in the population is the American Negro.''
We are moving now on education legislation, but let's tell the truth of what is happening in this other America--that there is still a dark underside where lack of achievement and lack of opportunity in this other America must be addressed.
I have visited schools all over New Jersey. We are a State that is the envy of America in the quality of our schools. We have reached heights of educational attainment, and New Jersey youngsters go to great, prestigious universities all over our State and our country. I am proud that we are one of the greatest education States in America. But I also know that even New Jersey has some schools--particularly in vulnerable places of high poverty--that fail to serve the genius of our children.
I have also had the privilege to travel our Nation, having been invited to speak in cities from coast to coast, and, like New Jersey, I see signs of hope and signs of promise. I see kids going to schools in the toughest neighborhoods, but those schools are more than schools-they are cathedrals of learning that serve their genius. Yet I am still told by parents from New Jersey and in our Nation, who look me in the eye and know their schools are failing their kids--they don't need reports from any government body to let them know their kids are not getting the education they deserve and to know the even more painful truth that their children, should they not get the education they deserve, will have options for themselves that are lost and constricted in this greatly global economy we have.
I worry that if we put legislation forward which does not keep those children in the center of our hearts and our minds, the consequences of dashing those dreams are great for our Nation.
When I was a child, I heard this poem by Langston Hughes:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
In our country, people who are in environments with schools that fail the genius of our kids witness the disastrous manifestation of that failure on a daily basis. We now know that in America, a young Black boy who does not graduate from high school has a 70 percent chance, without that diploma, of ending up in jail by his midthirties. We now know that in our prisons in this Nation, 67 percent of inmates are high school dropouts. We know that the national average spent for a student in our country is $12,643. Yet, somehow we allow funds to drain from the National treasure that are the kids in our schools, by spending almost $29,000, on average, to keep one person behind bars in federal prison.
If we deny poor children a quality education, there will be disastrous consequences. We now know that in our Nation, if you are born in poverty, you have a 9-percent chance of going to college. I will repeat that. If you are born in poverty, you have a 9-percent chance of going to college and graduating. This is unacceptable.
We cannot design legislation in this body that does not stand up to this reality. Indeed, the legislation we are passing now has its roots in its initial focus on the disadvantaged.
Fifty years ago this past April, President Lyndon B. Johnson sat in front of what once was a one-room schoolhouse in Texas, next to a woman named Kate Deadrich Loney, and signed into law the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It had a purpose to it. It had a mission.
Sitting next to his former teacher and in front of his former school, President Lyndon Johnson signed the law and said that this law ``represents a major commitment of the federal government to quality and equality in the schooling that we offer our young people. By passing this bill, we bridge the gap between helplessness and hope for more than five million educationally deprived children.''
That is not all he mentioned, but he specifically focused on those disadvantaged children--those 5 million in our Nation--who were not getting access to the American ideal, the American dream. Their dream was to be deferred or stolen or denied.
Today in America, 6 percent of high schools fail to graduate one-third of their students. We must do better by them. It is this issue in our country that we have to recognize.
As stated in President Johnson's words, the Federal Government's role in education has been that of a bridge between helplessness and hope, one that identifies the needs of the underserved and the most vulnerable students and the schools that are not serving them. Since 1965, the Federal Government has done a good job of playing a critical role in advancing equality and greater educational opportunity so that more children are included. The creation of Pell grants, title IX, and the first Education for All Handicapped Children Act are great strides our Nation has taken in being that bridge from helplessness to hope.
The reauthorization of the critical legislation that first established that ``bridge'' has taken different forms over the past 50 years. In certain instances, as in the case of No Child Left Behind, it took a step too far. That is why this Senator praises Senator Alexander and Senator Murray for beginning to correct the inadequacies and deficiencies and harm that bill has done.
When it comes to reauthorization of the ESEA, we cannot allow for an overly prescriptive No Child Left Behind bill. We cannot afford to go back to that era. We must change. However, we cannot allow the pendulum to swing so far that we abdicate our responsibility to make sure every student--to make sure the students in that other America are being served by a quality school.
It is not overly prescriptive to ask schools that are failing to graduate a large share of their students to do something differently. It is not overly prescriptive to ask schools--these 6 percent of our schools that are dropout factories in our Nation--to make changes to honor the children, their beauty, their dignity, and their potential. And it is certainly not asking too much that we who are putting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Federal Government into a system--that there is some accountability for these dropout factors.
This body should be a steward of taxpayer dollars. Congress has a role when it comes to the investments we make in housing, when it comes to the investments we make in infrastructure, and when it comes to defense dollars, to make sure these dollars are serving the purpose to which they are extended--to make sure these investments produce returns for taxpayers. Today, the Federal Government and this body still have that critical role to play when it comes to making sure all American children have access to a quality education.
The status quo is unacceptable. Too many of our children are still stuck in failing schools--schools that are so bad that they put thousands of children into that world where they do not have a chance at a college education or even getting a high school degree. The students succeeding in our country's quality schools will have the opportunity to become the next generation of teachers, mayors, police, firefighters, doctors, and Senators. They will lead the globe. This is what I am proud of as an American. The students in our country's failing schools deserve to have that same opportunity.
I know this from traveling our country and traveling our State: that prodigy isn't bounded by geography and that genius is equally distributed in our country. Talent is as concentrated in one ZIP Code as it is in another. There are as many geniuses in Camden as there are in Princeton. The next Einstein or Gates or Hemingway is as likely to be growing up in Newark as they are in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I have seen schools flourish in poor neighborhoods. I have seen great schools meet incredible challenges and succeed in educating our kids. We know it is possible, and we should expect better than we are seeing now.
Our moral test is whether we will be able to attain success everywhere it might be found, whether we will be able to nurture the genius in all of our kids.
We owe it to every child in America to ensure that every door is open for them to demand better. We need to demand better for our kids. We need to keep them front and center as we consider this bill on the floor.
I want to conclude by saying that we cannot succeed as a nation, in an increasingly global competitive environment, if we leave genius on the sidelines. Our educational determination to help those children is not simply about them, it is about us. It is about whether we will get the full bounty of the strength and potential of our Nation or if we will cast many aside into those dark places, into that other America.
We cannot now be damned by the self-defeating stakes of low expectations for ourselves and all of our children. Kids who languish in this other America because of a lack of compassion and support and investment cannot afford to have less accountability for their success.
I know as we debate this bill there will be resistance to the idea that those failing most, those stuck in dropout factories, those in the other America don't deserve levels of accountability. But I know that if we focus on those children, to keep them at the center of our thoughts, as was done by President Johnson when this bill originated, I know we can be the America we want to be, a nation that when our children put their hands on their hearts and say those words, ``liberty and justice for all,'' that they are real, indeed, for all children.
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