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Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, charter schools have seen explosive growth since they first came onto the scene in 1992 as a model for education. In 1993, there were just 23 charter schools in the United States, serving a little over 6,000 students. Today, there are over 7,000 charter schools and counting, serving more than 3 million American students. It is not difficult to understand their increasing popularity. They offer an affordable alternative to parents and students who want more options. More options increase competition, and more options improve the quality of the traditional public education system.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration's new rule threatens to stifle their progress by imposing stringent, onerous, burdensome new requirements on charter schools, specifically those that receive grants under the Federal Charter Schools Program, or CSP. This is a terrible idea.

The CSP was established to provide grants to eligible charter schools to help ensure that all children have access to quality education regardless of their ZIP Code. The administration's new rules would stifle this proven, emerging, and burgeoning model, one that serves millions of the most vulnerable students in our traditional public school system. It would require CSP grantees to hold hearings--to hold hearings--specifically to prove that the presence of the school in question does not or would not contribute to increased racial segregation. This would impose a deliberately costly and inherently unfairly accusatory burden on charter schools and would disincentivize new schools from opening. This, I fear, is precisely the point. That is a feature, not a bug, in this program.

Look, everyone can agree that we want our children to have access to quality education. The President's rule is antithetical to that very mission. The rule treats charter schools as if they have done something wrong, as if they are guilty somehow of racial segregation until they prove themselves innocent. The accusation of racial segregation is particularly egregious here because CSP schools are required to admit students through a lottery system if there are more interested students than there are available slots at the school. Clearly, this isn't an observation of reality but an injection of woke politics into an issue as fundamental as the education of America's schoolchildren.

Most charter schools are doing their best to provide quality education to all students, regardless of race or ethnicity. Punishing them for behavior that they don't engage in simply isn't fair. It is not right.

These regulations would also require the Secretary to examine whether a charter school is ``needed.'' Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I tend to think that parents--and certainly not the U.S. Secretary of Education-- should be the ones deciding the necessity of such schools.

You know, we have seen this in other areas, other sectors of our economy. There are special interests that tend to stifle competition by pushing for regulations requiring new market entrants to demonstrate that they meet a need, to demonstrate that their facility of one sort or another, a hospital or otherwise, is ``needed.''

I fear this requirement would do the same, and I fear this requirement has as its object the same thing as those other requirements in other industries: stifling competition, erecting barriers to entry, squelching competition. This is not OK. I don't think it is OK in any industry. It is certainly not OK where the victims are innocent schoolchildren who just need to learn, who need to be taught, need to go to school somewhere, and ought to be able to go to school with some options that their parents can have a role in choosing.

Proponents of these rules argue that the regulations are necessary because charter schools are more likely to close than traditional public schools. They rightly argue that such closures can be disruptive to students' education. In reply, I first note that CSP schools are less likely to experience closure than other charter schools, but I would also note here that school closures also show why charter schools are so valuable.

Unlike traditional public schools, where students in failing schools can go for 13 consecutive years without any other option, charter schools are subject to greater accountability. That is the power of choice.

Mr. President, we shouldn't subject new charter schools to onerous requirements. We should not set up rules purely to protect the interests of teachers unions--the very same teachers unions that also pushed to close schools, that resisted reopening those schools and repeatedly placed their interests above those of parents and students.

The President's rule would only lead to fewer educational opportunities for America's schoolchildren.

While accountability for any government-funded enterprise is undoubtedly important, these rules go far beyond mere accountability. In fact, they are not about accountability; they are about something else, something far less credible, far less defensible than accountability. This is about squelching competition and protecting teachers unions from competition, and that is wrong.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this misguided rule, this misguided effort, and to protect parent choice, ensuring that all children have access to quality education regardless of their ZIP Code.

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