Providing for Further Consideration of H.R. 5, Student Success Act, and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2647, Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, as a former teacher, elementary school principal, and school board member, I know firsthand that No Child Left Behind is in need of serious improvement. Improvements must take substantial steps towards fulfilling the promises made by ESEA, those simple, yet powerful, promises that are at the heart of this civil rights law, promises made to all American children.

H.R. 5 ignores these promises and endangers the educational gains made in the 50 years since ESEA was passed. H.R. 5 threatens to thrust us back to a time when the right to quality education was merely an intangible promise for disadvantaged children. It ignores the promises at the heart of this civil rights law.

We must take substantial steps towards fulfilling the promises made by ESEA. H.R. 5 ignores the promise to value every child by allowing States and school districts to redirect funds away from the schools and the children most in need. They call it portability. H.R. 5 ignores the promise that every child counts by using vague and undefined accountability measures and failing to provide Federal guardrails for student achievement.

H.R. 5 ignores the promise that every child deserves a quality education, and it does so by failing to address our excessive dependence on deeply problematic standardized tests. We need to move toward more balanced forms of assessment that effectively measure diverse kinds of success in teaching and learning.

Mr. Speaker, I have spent decades working to understand how children learn, and I can tell you this--that this bill fails to meet the very promises that are essential for educating our children and that are at the heart of the ESEA. I strongly urge all of my colleagues to vote against this bill of unfulfilled promises.

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