Student Success Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for
yielding.

This amendment will make evidence-based prevention approaches a
reality. We all know that many evidence-based approaches save more
money than they cost. This will allow the private sector to make those
investments and prove that we are right. So I want to thank the
gentleman from Maryland for introducing the amendment and thank him and
the gentleman from Indiana for their leadership.

This is a great amendment, Madam Chair. I trust it will be adopted,
and we will be able to make great progress in education and other
social services.

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for
yielding.

Madam Chair, copyright law is a complicated field, and any guidance
we can give teachers and parents in how to avoid copyright infringement
and refrain from unintentional or intentional piracy would be
worthwhile.

I support the gentleman's amendment.

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from
Tennessee for this great amendment. I know, working with him on the
Committee on the Judiciary for many years, that he is a strong
supporter of crime prevention initiatives; and restorative justice and
conflict resolution programs have been shown to reduce crime time and
time again, and so these concepts are appropriate in our schools. They
will help create safe learning environments. I am delighted to support
it.

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is not necessary
because there is no prohibition against people withdrawing from Common
Core.

I think we need to say a few things about Common Core.

It is not a national or a Federal initiative. It is State led. States
develop the Common Core standards through the Council of Chief State
School Officers and the National Governors Association. The U.S.
Department of Education did not participate in that. The administration
does not coerce States into adopting Common Core. In fact, States have
received waivers under NCLB and have not adopted Common Core, like my
home State of Virginia.

In Virginia, our State system of higher education certified that when
a child is proficient under our standards of learning, they could enter
public universities without the needed remediation. Those standards
were okay, not the Common Core.

Frankly, we need those kinds of standards, college and career-ready,
because you want people, when they graduate from high school, to be
able to go to college without remediation. That is not a high bar, and
we want to make sure that whatever happens to this amendment, we are
not exempting States from meaningful standards.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, I just want to reiterate that
the Commonwealth of Virginia had received a waiver without accepting,
without being involved in Common Core. We need to make sure that we
have meaningful, high standards so that when someone graduates from
high school, they are college- or career-ready without remediation.
Whatever happens to this amendment, we want to make sure that States
are not trying to exempt themselves out of reasonable standards.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Texas has
raised some good points about data privacy with this amendment. The
Subcommittee on Elementary and Secondary Education held a hearing on
data privacy in the digital age earlier this month, and I think we are
going to be looking at ways that we can improve FERPA for the 21st
century during this Congress.

Mr. Chairman, that bill was written 40 years ago when data in the
classroom was all in a teacher's grade book and technology was not
employed anywhere close to where it is today. Parents need to be able
to trust that their children's personal information is secure and will
not be used for marketing or noneducational purposes. Teachers need to
be given resources to understand how they can best protect the
students' data. As policymakers, we need to safeguard student privacy
while supporting technological innovation happening in American
schools.

We must help researchers and educators diagnose and address
achievement gaps and enable all students to achieve their greatest
potential. So I support the gentleman's amendment, and yield back the
balance of my time.

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