Scott: Conference Framework “Lives up to the Promises of Brown and the Intent of the Original ESEA”
WASHINGTON – Today, Ranking Member Bobby Scott (VA-03) delivered remarks at a joint House and Senate conference committee meeting to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. At today’s conference committee meeting, Ranking Member Scott emphasized the need to advance student-centered policy solutions that both fulfill the ESEA's civil rights legacy and move public education forward.
Remarks by Ranking Member Robert C. “Bobby” Scott:
2:30 P.M. EST
Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you for convening us here this afternoon. We have literally and figuratively come a long way since we were on the floor of the House debating H.R. 5, the Student Success Act, in February and again in July.
The bill we had before us then was the product of a partisan process, and I had sincere objections to much that was found in it. But thanks to earnest and diligent work with you Mr. Chairman, our counterparts Senator Alexander and Senator Murray, and many long nights from our respective staff, I can say that I fully endorse the framework that we have produced for this conference. It is an embodiment of what we can achieve here in Washington – a workable compromise that does not force either side to desert its core beliefs.
When I spoke on the floor during proceedings on H.R. 5, I began by highlighting how the modern federal role in elementary and secondary education began with the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In that pivotal decision a unanimous court held that the opportunity for a public education, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.”
While education would remain a fundamentally local issue, we recognized in the years following Brown that our local funding system produced, and would continue to produce, large gaps in equity, gaps that the federal government had a responsibility to fill.
In 1965, with the introduction of the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Congress provided federal money to address, and I quote from the original bill, “the special educational needs of children of low-income families and the impact that concentrations of low-income families have on the ability of local educational agencies to support adequate educational programs.”
ESEA was designed and works best when it provides limited funding targeted to schools and students who get left behind in an unequal system. The framework that we will be considering this conference lives up to the promises of Brown and the intent of the original ESEA. It does this building on the past reauthorizations of the law, while addressing the key challenges presented by the most recent authorization of ESEA, No Child Left Behind. And the framework does this in a bipartisan fashion.
· The framework puts in place assessment, accountability and improvement policies that will close the Achievement gap not with federally mandated solutions, but with locally designed, evidence-based plans.
· The framework ensures that high standards for all children are maintained, but does not set national curricula and mandates neither what is taught nor how it is taught.
· The framework requires meaningful state and local action when students aren’t learning, but stops short of prescribing what that action should be.
· The framework requires data reporting to ensure schools are responsible for the achievement of all their students, but does so in a transparent way respectful of student privacy.
· And in an important step forward, the framework recognizes the importance of early learning, a priority in both red and blue states alike.
Over the next few days we will talk through and debate provisions of this framework, and we will all have an opportunity to be heard and present changes to it. If we remain committed to the same bipartisan process that created this framework, I have no doubt that we can produce a conference report that will make a positive difference in the lives of our nations’ students and live up to all of our ideals.
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