Student Success Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. BONAMICI. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank Representative
Clark for yielding and for offering this important amendment.

High-quality early childhood education sets up students for success
throughout their lives and is a critical component of any education
system. We should be doing all we can to support early childhood
educators, to help engage families in early education, and to take
steps to close the achievement gap before it opens.

This amendment is an important step to building a strong foundation
for our country's students. I urge my colleagues to support
Representative Clark's amendment.

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Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you, Representative Polis, for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Representatives Polis and Rokita for
offering this amendment.

High-quality charter schools are laboratories for innovation. In
exchange for offering families, students, and educators the autonomy to
experiment with new educational models, we expect that successful
approaches to teaching and learning will be widely shared so that the
roughly millions of students--in fact, the vast majority of students--
in traditional public schools can benefit from the lessons learned.

Last Congress, an amendment I authored was included in the bipartisan
Success and Opportunity through Quality Charter Schools Act. That
provision, which is now included in H.R. 5, asks States to track and
report on the sharing of best practices emerging from charter schools.

I am pleased that the Polis-Rokita amendment encourages the
collaboration between charter schools and school districts to improve
the dissemination of promising practices, and I urge my colleagues to
join me in supporting this amendment.

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Ms. BONAMICI. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank Chairman Kline and
Ranking Member Scott for their leadership on the committee and on this
important legislation. I know that we will need to continue to work
together to identify opportunities for bipartisan collaboration if we
are going to successfully replace No Child Left Behind, and I have
confidence we can do that.

I also thank Representative Costello for his work on this amendment
and for his partnership on the SMART Act. Mr. Costello's dedication to
public education is commendable, and I look forward to continuing to
work with him.

Mr. Chairman, the Bonamici-Costello amendment is an example of
finding common ground on a way to support teaching and learning in our
Nation's classrooms. We have all heard about the overuse and misuse of
standardized tests. Too much time is lost in preparing for and in
administering assessments, and too few of these assessments provide
timely information that meaningfully supports the learning that is
taking place in our schools, but the purposeful use of high-quality
assessments can support teaching and learning. Good assessments used
appropriately can serve as one tool for monitoring students' progress
and in helping parents, teachers, and school leaders see how students
are performing across the State.

This amendment will help to reduce the testing burden and build high-
quality assessment systems that support teachers and students.
Importantly, the amendment recognizes that a one-size-fits-all policy
to address excessive testing won't work. There is evidence that time
spent testing fluctuates significantly among districts, with some
districts dedicating three times as many hours to testing as other
districts.

This variety in the use of tests is why our amendment lets the States
and local districts design their own plans to improve the use of
assessments.

Our amendment reserves a portion of local academic flexible grant
funds for States and school districts to improve the use of
assessments. The amendment allows States and school districts to use
those funds to audit their assessment systems and report to the public
the results, which might include the amount of time students spend
taking tests, whether those tests are high quality, and whether the
tests provide prompt feedback to support teaching.

The amendment allows States and school districts to use the funds to
develop and implement a plan to make assessments work better for their
teachers, families, and students. States and school districts can
eliminate low-quality or redundant tests, provide professional
development on assessment literacy, or speed the delivery of assessment
results to student and educators.

Once again, I thank Representative Costello for his partnership, and
Chairman Kline, Representative Rokita, and Representative Scott for
their willingness to work with us to make sure States and school
districts have the ability to eliminate unneeded assessments and get
the most out of high-quality assessments.

I urge my colleagues to support the Bonamici-Costello amendment, and
I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. BONAMICI. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank, again, my cosponsor of
this amendment and those who spoke in favor. Good, quality assessments
can inform instruction. Duplicative assessments need to be eliminated.
This amendment gives districts and States the flexibility to do that. I
urge my colleagues to support it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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