Every Child Achieves Act

Floor Speech

Mr. President, this week we are having a particularly important debate. Fortunately, it is a bipartisan debate. Great credit is owed to Senator Alexander and Senator Murray for their work on the Every Child Achieves Act. This bill is a significant piece of legislation because educational opportunity in America is a right which should start at birth and last a lifetime.

As a parent, I know that mothers and fathers want their kids to be able to climb the economic ladder throughout their lives. That effort begins with a top-flight education. In my view, the Every Child Achieves Act is a good step toward expanding opportunity for students nationwide. It is built around the proposition that each school, each district, and each community is different. So rather than resorting to the sort of one-size-fits-all policies, this legislation focuses on trying to build on smart ideas, ideas with real promise that are actually going to make a big difference in classrooms.

I am going to get to several amendments I want to highlight, but I wish to start by recognizing some vital components of the legislation I have strongly supported.

The most important proposal I have worked on is one that focuses on raising graduation rates. This is one of the major economic challenges in my home State and many other States across the country. In Oregon, more than 100 high schools with high rates of poverty are blocked from tapping into Federal resources that can help important programs--programs such as mentoring, before- and afterschool programs, programs where there is real evidence that they can make a difference in terms of helping these youngsters.

This is not an issue just in my State. There are more than 2,000 of these schools nationwide. Because these schools are in a very difficult spot when it comes to securing Federal resources, too often the students suffer, and, in my view, the lack of resources for these schools often contributes to sky-high dropout rates.

What I will discuss here briefly is how this proposal I have worked for is going to make the school improvement grants easier for middle and high schools to obtain and use to help these students, whom we want to see graduate and make their way to productive lives as citizens and workers.

If a failing school has 40 percent or more low-income students, it would become eligible for assistance. These Federal dollars can be used, as I indicated, to fund programs that really work, such as extended learning programs, programs that would be available during the weekend or perhaps during the summer. The funds can be used to prevent dropouts and encourage students who have already dropped out to reenter the educational system. Schools can find other ways to help students stay at it and get through to graduation day. This will be a significant improvement over the status quo. What it does is provides support where it is needed most, and it will help us get more value out of scarce dollars to approach the challenge of helping students who are dropping out to get back in the system and graduate.

I am also pleased to see the inclusion of several provisions championed by my colleague Senator Boxer to create more opportunities for students to enroll in afterschool programs and summer learning programs. In today's economy, with so many families walking on an economic tightrope--parents working long hours, multiple jobs--the fact is, there can't always be a parent around at 3 in the afternoon when kids get out of school or during the summer months. Senator Boxer really took the initiative for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program and the After School for America's Children Act. Both of them are worthy of support because they go to bat for students by providing extra learning opportunities for children both after school and in the summer.

There are other key elements in this legislation, but the Senate ought to seize the opportunity in this debate to make some significant improvements. The Every Child Achieves Act can go a lot further to raise graduation rates. There are more than 1,200 high schools, serving more than 1.1 million kids, that are failing to graduate a third or more of their students each year. Too often, it is the minority youngsters who live in economic hardship who attend these schools.

Senator Warren and I are on the same page with respect to the need to make it possible for more of the young people who go to these schools to get to graduation. Her amendment would help identify the struggling schools and provide some fresh approaches to help turn them around--a smart idea that I believe warrants bipartisan support.

Finally, I have just a couple other approaches that I think are particularly valuable in terms of this debate and particularly how we can use the machinery of the Federal Government to play a constructive role in terms of education at the local level.

Senator Booker and I have worked for an amendment that tries to help homeless children and foster youngsters graduate from high school. Once again--and we can see it in kind of what undergirds my remarks here--the focus is on trying to create opportunity for young people who constantly are out there swimming upstream. The hurdles these youngsters face are obviously large. Many of them move frequently, constantly, from one place to another throughout their lives. As a result, it is hard for them to feel any connection to the school, to feel some sense of stability. What Senator Booker and I would seek to do is to make it easier for school districts and policymakers to try to help those school districts provide additional support for those youngsters who are homeless and those children who are in the foster care system.

Finally, Senator Franken has offered an important proposal--the Student Non-Discrimination Act--that provides strongly needed protection for LGBT students. Schools ought to be safe and welcoming places that assist every child in getting ahead and thriving. If schools--particularly for the youngsters I have talked about in my remarks--aren't challenging enough, it is hard to imagine how much harder it gets for a youngster who faces harassment or discrimination because of their sexual orientation. The Franken amendment goes a long way to protect LGBT students and their friends at school and prevent them from feeling they have to skip class to avoid bullying.

In wrapping up, the kinds of proposals I have outlined--starting with the effort to try to prevent students from dropping out and getting up the graduation rates--this is all about helping students get ahead through education, to expand opportunities for these young people throughout their lives through education.

What the focus of the Senate ought to be is to make sure that no matter where a child lives or how much his or her parents earn or what obstacles they face--the message ought to be, here in the Senate, with every Democrat and every Republican, picking up on what Chairman Alexander and Senator Murray have said, that this bill will help to drive home the principle that hard work in school leads to success. I believe the Every Child Achieves Act is a good step in that direction. I urge my colleagues to support these important amendments.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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