Student Success Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WALBERG. I thank my chairman.

Mr. Chairman, our children are being held back by an outdated, cumbersome, and overbearing Federal system. It's clearly not working. Statistics show that only 34 percent of our eighth graders are proficient in reading and nearly one in four high school students fails to graduate on time.

For the last 40 years, we have not seen any significant improvement in students' math, English and science scores. These results are especially frightening at a time when we are spending three times more on education than we did in 1970.

Since then, the Federal Government's arm has extended even further into local school districts, leaving teachers and parents restricted by a growing number of rules and costly requirements. In one of the worst examples of this, the Department of Education has chosen to grant States waivers from a failing policy, but only if those States decided to adopt standards deemed necessary by Washington bureaucrats and not by Congress, let alone their educators.

Students and parents need real solutions with freedom and choice, not short-term fixes with more Federal intrusion. We need to get the Federal Government out of the way and instead work with the teachers, parents, superintendents, and State leaders who are already working hard to raise the standards of our schools in Michigan and throughout the Nation.

The Student Success Act's emphasis on increased State and local control by people closest to our kids will help put more students on a course for a successful future.

As a parent and grandparent, I encourage my colleagues to support the Student Success Act.

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