Barbara A. Mikulski
U.S. Senator for Maryland
Mikulski Calls for Collaborative Approach to Elementary and Secondary Education
Legislation incorporates Senator’s SUCCESS Act to Bridge Gaps Between School and Health Care, Provide Students with Necessary Community Resources
Bill Reforms One-Size-Fits-All Approach of No Child Left Behind
October 19, 2011
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), Chairwoman of the Help, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Subcommittee on Children and Families, today participated in a committee markup of legislation reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which establishes federal priorities for elementary and high school education. The bill incorporates the goals and proposals of her legislation, the Students Utilizing Comprehensive and Community Engagement for Success (SUCCESS) Act, to connect students to community resources to meet their academic, developmental and social needs in an effort to lower dropout rates and suspensions, increase graduation rates, and improve academic achievement.
"As our nation continues to look at how best to create jobs, how best to sustain jobs and how best to support high-paying jobs, we must look at how best to educate the children who will make up tomorrow's workforce," Senator Mikulski said. "If we educate and prepare them well, they can be anything. If we do not educate and prepare our children well, they will fail – and we will have failed them. I believe this bill takes us one step closer to succeeding."
The ESEA reauthorization includes provisions based on Senator Mikulski's SUCCESS Act that would amend the purposes of ESEA's Title I – a formula-funded program to help students from low-income families – to encourage strong partnerships between schools, students, families and communities to promote student success. The concepts of Senator Mikulski's SUCCESS Act are contained throughout the reauthorization, including in programs to address family engagement, competitive grant programs to promote innovation and improve struggling schools, and programs to address the challenges in our nation's lowest performing schools.
The bill also includes a competitive grant program called Promise Neighborhoods, based on a bill Senator Mikulski cosponsored. Through this program, funding would be directed to schools in partnership with a nonprofit or community-based organization to provide integrated services to children and families, which may include:
- High-Quality before-school, after-school and summer programs;
- Health care services to address physical, dental and mental health needs; and
- Family support, such as parenting classes and workforce, financial planning and other social services.
The bill reforms the No Child Left Behind program by requiring states to identify under-performing elementary and high-schools in the bottom five percent of academic results, and districts will be provided with federal resources to implement a research-driven strategy to improve these schools. It addresses accountability in each school rather than making unfair comparisons from one school district to the next. In addition, it establishes a definition for "college and career ready" based on the ability of a student to take coursework at a public college or university in the state without needing remedial classes in order to ensure that all states have a high bar in preparing children for success in the global economy.
Additionally, the reauthorization makes important investments in students and teachers. There are enhancements to continued education so that students with the greatest academic need can have additional teacher time to expand their learning. Key components of the To Aid Gifted and High-Ability Learners by Empowering the Nation's Teachers TALENT Act, which Senator Mikulski supported, are included so that students in gifted and talented programs can continue to grow and improve, rather than stagnate by allowing states to measure students based on their academic growth, as opposed to arbitrary proficiency benchmarks. Additionally, the bill contains a commitment to the Teach for America program through two different competitive grant programs for which they are ideally suited to compete – the Programs of National Significance, and Teacher Pathways – so our most high-needs schools are served by the recruits from this outstanding teacher preparation program.
Earlier this year, Senator Mikulski led an education tour of Maryland that took her from the Eastern Shore to Western Maryland and included rural, suburban and urban schools. She held five roundtables focused on the needs of Maryland's students and educators. The message of parents, teachers, students and administrators was clear: provide secure funding for students, mitigate the burden on teachers, and recognize that each school is unique and solutions need to be tailor-fit to their challenges.
"I have always said that the best ideas come from the people," Senator Mikulski said. "Washington doesn't have all the answers when it comes to improving our schools, supporting our teachers and knowing what kids need to succeed. That's why I've spent the past year in classrooms across Maryland, in our rural schools along the coast and in Appalachia, as well as our large urban and suburban schools. I heard from teachers, principals and administrators who all told me that a one-size-fits-all approach to education was not working. They told me that they hoped Congress would come together to provide schools with the flexibility and resources needed to help our next generation succeed. And that's exactly what this bill will begin to do."
Senator Mikulski's remarks, as prepared, follow:
I'd like to thank Chairman Harkin and Ranking Member Enzi for their work in putting together a bipartisan reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). I know it wasn't easy, especially in this political climate, but politics were put aside and children were put first.
This bill is not perfect. It won't solve all our problems. There are still areas where I'd like to see improvement. But this is the first major step toward improving No Child Left Behind and ESEA in over a decade. Senators Harkin and Enzi should be commended for this accomplishment.
I have always said that the best ideas come from the people. Washington doesn't have all the answers when it comes to improving our schools, supporting our teachers and knowing what kids need to succeed. That's why I've spent the past year in classrooms across Maryland, in our rural schools along the coast and in Appalachia, as well as our large urban and suburban schools. I heard from teachers, principals and administrators who all told me that No Child Left Behind and its arbitrary one-size-fits-all approach was not working. They told me that they hoped Congress would come together to provide schools with the flexibility and resources needed to help our next generation succeed. And that's exactly what this bill will begin to do.
I am very pleased that the reauthorization bill focuses on student growth instead of arbitrary goals that are the same for every school in the nation. What this means is that every child, from the student in remedial education performing three grade levels below their peers to the student in a gifted and talented program performing three grade levels above their peers will be expected to grow and improve every single year – no exceptions, no complacency.
This bill helps ensure that great teachers and principals are in every school. We ask our states and districts to provide high-quality professional development that is continuous and job-embedded, and we give them strong formula funding to do it.
This reauthorization will ensure that we focus our most intensive efforts on our nation's lowest-performing schools. States will have to identify their elementary and high schools in the bottom five percent, and districts will have to implement a research-driven strategy to improve these schools. And we'll give them the resources to do it.
In addition to supporting these large-scale changes, I fought for a number of other provisions that will work to improve children's lives and give them the greatest chance at success.
I am very pleased that the goals and proposals from the SUCCESS Act that I introduced with Senators Sanders and Franken are included in this bill.
Factors from outside of the classroom can have an enormous impact on a student's ability to learn and on a child's chances for a successful future. If a child is sitting in a class with a debilitating toothache, that child is going to have a harder time focusing. If a child is taking a test and hasn't had a nutritious meal in weeks, that child is not going to perform up to their potential. If a child goes to school day in and day out with an undiagnosed mental illness, that child is going to have a difficult time learning.
We must acknowledge that what these children face outside of the classroom has an impact on how they do inside the classroom.
The Children and Families Subcommittee held a hearing in June. We heard from Mr. Dennis Hillian, a Family Service Coordinator at a Charles County Judy Center. Judy Centers are fully-staffed centers located at or near Title I schools that typically help facilitate services for children and their families, such as ESOL classes for a child's parents, behavioral specialists for kids in need or dental services for children with broken or chipped teeth.
Mr. Dennis talked about how connecting these children and families with needed wrap-around services has a demonstrable and positive impact for both children and their families.
I am so pleased that we're talking what we've learned about the importance of wrap-around services from Judy Centers across Maryland and integrating those programs and lessons into this bill.
This reauthorization bill includes competitive grants for districts to provide integrated services in partnership with a non-profit or institution of higher education. It allows integrated services to be used as a strategy for reforming the lowest-performing schools. It ensures that schools with low rates of achievement are also able to use integrated services to improve student achievement. And it ensures that school districts can use parent coordinators to connect families with needed services.
I am also very pleased that components of the TALENT Act, which was introduced by Senator Grassley with my support, as well as with support from Senators Casey and Blumenthal, are included in this reauthorization bill.
Just recently, I visited with the Center for Talented Youth. This center was founded at Johns Hopkins over 50 years ago and has been described to me as 'a pearl' of the gifted and talented programs. They provide a haven for some of the most brilliant kids in our country. They have what they call 'Geek Camps' in the summer where you see 7th graders working on college-level biology.
Our country is founded on the idea that intelligence is randomly distributed in our population. Our most gifted need our help just as much as our most vulnerable do.
High-ability and high-potential students need to be held to high standards; they need to be engaged. This bill will ensure that gifted and talented programs are able to compete for funding in the 'Programs of National Significance.' In addition, this bill ensures that teachers are held accountable for student growth and improvement so our nation's brightest minds will get brighter each year and will not stagnate.
Finally, I fought to ensure that this bill contains a commitment to programs like Teach for America. Teach for America has been in Baltimore for nearly 20 years. In that time, they've given us more than 400 teachers who stayed beyond their two year commitment, some of our best principals, and they just gave us a State Senator.
Teach for America recruits the country's most outstanding college grads to teach in our nation's most struggling schools. Whatever you may feel about them, it is inarguable that they are having a tremendous impact on the conversations we have around education reform. Under this bill, programs like Teach for America will be eligible for two different competitive grants: the Programs of National Significance, and Teacher Pathways – a new program to recruit, place and train teachers in high-needs schools.
As our nation continues to look at how best to create jobs, how best to sustain jobs and how best to support high-paying jobs, we must look at how best to educate the children who will make up tomorrow's workforce.
If we educate and prepare them well, they can be anything: innovators who create the next iPhone; entrepreneurs who develop next-generation bio-fuels; scientists and researchers who cure cancer or Alzheimer's; doctors or nurses who find better ways to prevent and treat illness; and teachers who find new and better ways to educate future generations.
If we do not educate and prepare our children well, they will fail – and we will have failed them. I believe this bill takes us one step closer to succeeding.