The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“H.J. RES. 57” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S1803-S1804 on March 14, 2017.
The State Department is responsibly for international relations with a budget of more than $50 billion. Tenure at the State Dept. is increasingly tenuous and it's seen as an extension of the President's will, ambitions and flaws.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
H.J. RES. 57
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, in December 2015, this body came together to enact what then-President Obama called a Christmas miracle, the Every Student Succeeds Act, ESSA. This truly bipartisan, bicameral compromise reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA, for the first time in more than 14 years on the compromise of local control for Federal safeguards. First enacted more than 50 years ago as a part of the civil rights era, the ESEA sought to ensure that all children, regardless of their ZIP Code, were able to obtain a high-
quality education. The legislative process is about compromise, and I have concerns that last Thursday's vote to use the Congressional Review Act to repeal the Department of Education's ESSA regulations will roll back that compromise and leave our neediest students without the Federal safeguards they deserve.
Ensuring access to a high-quality education is one of the most important duties of Federal, State, and local governments. I supported ESSA, along with 84 other Members of this body, to move our State and local school systems away from a Federal, one-size-fits-all ``adequate yearly progress'' accountability system and allow States to design their own accountability systems to identify, monitor, and assist schools. Rather than rely on a collective set of test scores to measure student performance as under No Child Left Behind, ESSA allows States to design accountability systems that will take into consideration student growth over the course of a school year. States will be able to consider multiple measures of student learning, including access to academic resources, school climate, and safety, access to support personnel, and other measures which can allow for differentiations in student performance within a school or a local school district. All of this is being done while ensuring students are held to the high, yet achievable, standard of being college- and career-ready upon completion of high school. While State and local school systems have newfound flexibility under ESSA, they must adhere to a Federal civil rights safeguards meant to ensure children with disabilities, students of color, low-income students, and our English language learners are not forgotten.
Just as the Bush administration led Department of Education provided after the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, the Obama administration led Department of Education worked to enact regulations and provide States with guidance and technical assistance to properly implement ESSA. After work for nearly a year and feedback from more than 20,000 education stakeholders, the Department published its final accountability, State plans, and reporting regulations in November 2016. The regulations provided broad flexibility for State and local school systems to improve student outcomes in their States and districts while ensuring all students receive an excellent and well-
rounded education. The regulations provided certainty to States and local school systems and clarified how to comply with their statutory requirements.
The Congressional Review Act was the wrong instrument to modify the Department's accountability regulations. In 2006 and 2008, the Bush administration led Department of Education responded to concerns regarding the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act by education stakeholders and updated the regulations and guidance necessary for State and local school systems to adhere to the law. Now that the Congressional Review Act has struck down the existing regulations, the Department is prohibited from issuing similar regulations or addressing future implementation concerns raised by those same stakeholders. Just as we have worked to move away from the one-size-fits-all Federal solutions under the No Child Left Behind Act, the Congressional Review Act wrongly utilizes a one-cleaver-eliminates-
all approach. We could not pick and choose which parts of the regulations we would have wanted to keep, such as the regulation's additional year for States to implement their State-designed accountability systems before taking corrective action, all aspects of the regulation, and nearly a year's worth of the Department's work is eliminated. School systems will now have to rely on nonlegally binding guidance from the Department on how to adhere to their statutory requirements.
In my home State, the Maryland State Department of Education has worked for more than a year to develop our State's education plan as required under ESSA. Our State superintendent of schools, Dr. Karen Salmon, has traversed the State, listening and engaging with Marylanders who seek to have a voice in their child's education. The purpose of ESSA was to ensure that we return the ability of our State and local school systems to provide for the education of our children in exchange for staying within certain Federal safeguards for our neediest students. This is what we are doing in Maryland. The concerns and feedback expressed by Marylanders will be incorporated into a revised State plan and submitted to the Department of Education later this year. All of this work to comply with the Department's draft and final ESSA regulations, all of the consultation with members of the local community, is now for naught now that the Senate agreed to the use of the CRA. Our State and States are left with uncertainty as to how to comply with their statutory Federal requirements. Our States are clamoring to move away from the uncertainty of the Department's No Child Left Behind waivers from 2012 and have a clear understanding of how to comply with Federal law. The elimination of the Department's accountability regulations further delays the ability of State and local school systems to move away from No Child Left Behind policies.
Throughout Secretary DeVos's confirmation hearing, the Secretary repeatedly demonstrated a lack of depth in the longstanding debates surrounding the education community. I have concerns that Secretary DeVos, who did not understand the protections afforded to children with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA, would be a forceful advocate to require States and local school systems to ensure that children with disabilities are counted and not forgotten. Given Secretary DeVos's expressed support for the privatization of our Nation's public schools and resistance to meaningful Federal oversight of nontraditional schools, I have concerns that any new regulations created by the Department could incentivize States and local school systems to promote the privatization of low-
performing public schools or set different accountability standards between public schools and nontraditional schools. These concerns are not unfounded; Secretary DeVos has already informed States that the Department will be creating a new template for submitting State plans outside of what is required under the Department's existing accountability regulations. Our students need a Secretary of Education that will uphold Congress's ESSA compromise, local control for Federal safeguards.
The use of the CRA to repeal the Department's ESSA accountability regulations provides Secretary DeVos with the ability to significantly undermine the bipartisan nature of ESSA and Federal safeguards necessary to protect our students. I am disappointed a majority of my colleagues voted in favor of this shortsighted measure that fails to protect our children with disabilities, students of color, low-income students, and our English language learners.
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