With the House expected to vote on a bill to replace No Child Left Behind this week, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., criticized Democrats on Wednesday for trying to support local control of education while opposing legislation that would reduce federal power.
“You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say you want more local control and then support giving more of those powers to the superintendent in Washington to take that control away from parents,” Scalise told the Washington Examiner. “At the end of the day, the more power the Secretary of Education in Washington has, the less accountability control that parents can have over their kid’s education. We want to push those responsibilities back to the states and local governments so that decisions can be made closest to where the students are.”
Scalise stressed that it was important to reduce the Secretary of Education’s power, whether they’re a Republican or a Democrat.
“I feel strong whether it’s a Republican or Democrat president that local school districts and states know best what needs to happen,” Scalise said. “If a parent doesn’t like what’s happening in their local school, they shouldn’t have to call the Secretary of the Department of Education in Washington to get it changed. They ought to be able to hold their local school board member accountable or call their State Representative where they can get a greater impact of change.”
Scalise said he opposed efforts by the Department of Education to push states into adopting Common Core in exchange for waivers from No Child Left Behind.
Scalise said the Secretary of Education is using No Child Left Behind to “literally force schools to embrace programs like Common Core and using federal money and even waivers to do it. That’s wrong, and it needs to change. That’s one of the great things about the Student Success Act. It not only replaces No Child Left Behind but it also reins in so many of these powers of the Secretary to tell local school districts what they should be doing.”
Forty-three states are now operating under waivers from No Child Left Behind’s requirements that were granted by the Department of Education. These waivers generally came with strings attached, such as requirements that states adopt education reforms preferred by the Obama administration.
“People don’t like Common Core being forced down the throats of states using federal money. I don’t like that either. [Using the Student Success Act] we get the federal government out of things like Common Core. The federal government can’t use a dime of taxpayer money, it can’t even use things like waivers, as a threat to force states to embrace any form of testing, including Common Core. This allows decisions like that to be made exclusively at the state and local level.”
Scalise highlighted the inclusion of federal education funding portability for low-income students, allowing them to attend any traditional or public charter school of their choice.
“[The bill] takes the monopoly away from failing schools and empowers parents to have better choices for their kids. Because at the end of the day, that’s what this is supposed to be all about: helping educate kids, not propping up failed institutions. … Why would you want to have a federal one-size-fits-all approach that protects a system that’s not working for all parents?”
While the Senate works on its own replace for No Child Left Behind, Scalise said the Student Success Act will “set a strong bar,” and that “it helps us to get an even better product moved out of the Senate than they normally would.”
