A Quality Education for Every Child
Improving our Education System
Improving our
Education System
Helping all students receive a high quality education has always been my passion throughout my career in the school system.
Learn about the major education reforms I've worked on.
Helping all students receive a high quality education has always been my passion throughout my career in the school system.
Learn about the major education reforms I've worked on.
As a former high school teacher, principal, and school board member, education has always been my top priority. I believe that the greatest investment a nation can make is the education of its youth. Quality education assures the economic competitiveness of the nation, advances the arts and sciences, and provides the means for people to achieve individual success.
As a Member of the House Budget and Appropriations Committees, I am working to improve our nation’s investment in education in the following areas:
Educational Equity: A Quality Education is a Civil Right
It is distressed that 50 years after the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, we have not adequately addressed segregation or unequal educational opportunities in our schools. To this day, many schools are segregated by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Many of our students that face the greatest adversity are being served by schools that are poorly funded and may offer the fewest opportunities for them to succeed.
It is the right of every child to receive a quality education. Therefore, we must address our separate and unequal schools and the funding mechanisms of states that allow educational inequalities to exist. The vast majority of students of color are being served by poor schools - under-funded schools with outdated, dilapidated facilities, crowded classrooms, and insufficient textbooks. Poor schools in America are unacceptable.
Strengthening our Pre-K Education
The care and encouragement children receive from birth provide a foundation for life and greatly influences their future success. Children thrive in safe, nurturing, and healthy environments. That is why I support programs such as Early Head Start and Head Start, which provide significant support to young children and their families. By the time many of our most vulnerable children reach school age, they are already significantly behind their peers. If we are going to increase opportunities for youth, we must begin addressing the factors that will prepare these children for school. Improving access to high-quality and affordable child care will support working families and ensure their children are ready to enter kindergarten.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act
Our current education system and current education laws leave much to be desired. Unfortunately, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Reauthorization Act of 2001, the so called “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) act, has failed in many respects.
Congress passed NCLB in 2001 with the best of intentions. We saw NCLB as the beginning of a strong national education policy. Many bipartisan compromises were made for the bill to become law. Unfortunately, the story of NCLB has been a tale of broken promises and unfunded mandates.
This legislation is currently up for reauthorization and I am taking an active role in proposing changes to NCLB in order to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. I have extensive experience understanding the strengths and weaknesses of our educational system and have been meeting with local, state, and national leaders continuing a campaign to make significant improvements to the American school system
The cornerstone accountability index
One of the most damaging aspects of NCLB is its cornerstone accountability index, Adequate Yearly Progress(AYP). AYP attempts to evaluate a school’s success based entirely on scores in Mathematics and Language Arts (English). In addition to being too narrow in scope, the AYP metric is not a logical method for evaluating the effectiveness of a school. Currently AYP does not evaluate how much each student has improved in a given area, but instead compares the test scores of the current year’s students to those of the previous year. All of the students in a school can improve, but they won’t show improvement in AYP unless their scores are higher than the students that came before them.
The current formula for calculating AYP has contributed to several negative trends in K-12 education, such as the narrowing of the curriculum, teaching to the test, and penalties for diverse schools.
Narrowing of the curriculum: School programs in the arts, music, foreign languages, and science are all suffering because of an overzealous emphasis on mathematics and English. We cannot forget that schools should provide a rich, diverse, stimulating curriculum, while still ensuring that every student can read, write, and do mathematics. California is a leader in technological innovation, but to help students prepare for tests in mathematics and English, schools are substantially reducing, or even eliminating, the amount of science instruction our elementary school children are receiving. The narrowing of the curriculum identified in this study solidifies my concerns about an overemphasis on testing literacy and mathematics under ESEA. I am worried that America will lose its competitive advantage in our global economy if this trend continues.
Teaching to the test: The rote learning and scripted programs that have become popular as a response to standards-based education are not the kind of teaching that will foster the creativity and ingenuity that are so critical in the 21st century marketplace. Educators require academic freedom to engage students in the kinds of creative projects and problem-based approaches that will foster innovation.
Penalties for diverse schools: Schools that have the greatest racial and ethnic diversity have the most difficult testing requirements. Overwhelmingly, diverse schools are being labeled as “in need of improvement.” The testing requirements are actually discouraging schools from embracing the benefits of a diverse student body.
Accountability is a two way street
In spite of its problems, AYP has also highlighted areas where education is in need of improvement. Perhaps most strikingly, AYP shows that the neediest students in America are not receiving sufficient resources to help them succeed. In fact, by and large, schools that are labeled ‘in need of improvement’ are the same schools that are considered underfunded. Undoubtedly, a more thorough, holistic evaluation method would be better for evaluating schools and informing policy.
If we are going to demand accountability from schools, teachers and students, we must also hold the government accountable to provide the resources and assistance that will actually contribute to success. In addition, we need to hold states accountable for their inequitable funding practices that leave too many schools under-funded. We cannot expect our students to achieve world-class standards and remain competitive in the global marketplace without providing world-class funding for education.
Improving teacher quality
Requiring a qualified teacher in every classroom is also a desirable goal of ESEA, but the implementation of the Highly Qualified Teacher requirements has left much to be desired. Many under-funded schools are having difficulty hiring teachers that meet the highly qualified teacher requirements. Meanwhile, many capable individuals with unconventional backgrounds have been prevented from teaching mathematics and science, because of inflexible requirements.
To bring more qualified teachers into the classroom, we need to improve teacher compensation, preparation programs, recruitment strategies, and retention. While incentives for qualified, specialized teachers can bring them into high-need schools, we also need to address the working conditions in these schools that are keeping these teachers from remaining where they are needed most.
Inaccurate Assessment English Language Learners and Students with Special Needs
To have a strong K-12 system, we must consider of the needs of English language learners, students with special needs, and students with diverse backgrounds. We need to reward and assist diverse schools, not penalize them. Instead of stamping out second languages, we should encourage every child learn a second language in addition to English.
Improving ESEA
The Federal government faces many challenges in providing direction, encouragement, and support to address the diverse needs of our nation’s schools. I am taking an active role in proposing changes to the legislation in order to meet the challenges of the 21st Century by working with my colleagues in Congress and meeting with local, state, and national education leaders.
Student Privacy Protection Act
Did you know that the ESEA law requires your child’s high school to divulge his or her personal information to military recruiters?
The Student Privacy and Protection Act, H.R. 1091, which I have introduced over the past few Congresses, seeks to reverse a little known provision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which requires school districts to give military recruiters the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of students, unless their parents “opt-out” of the list.
I respect the right of an individual to choose to enter the military. I also respect the duty of the armed forces to engage in a recruiting process. Recruiting efforts, however, should honor the privacy rights of individuals and families. Many constituents brought this matter to my attention. Parents expressed frustration that their children were persistently being contacted at home by military recruiters, and wanted to know how the military gained access to their personal contact information without their consent.
Information acquired through ESEA is used by the Department of Defense (DoD) in a massive recruiting database. Under the current requirements, school districts must give lists of students and their personal contact information to military recruiters, on request, unless parents explicitly express in writing that they do not wish their child’s information to be given out. Schools are only required to provide a single notice to parents in a letter or obscurely in a student handbook. The process confuses many parents and students, who may not understand the many forms that are sent home, or who may overlook the single notice. If they do not respond to that one notice by explicitly objecting to having their child’s personal information released to recruiters, it is assumed that they have no objections. My legislation would honor both the recruiting needs of our military and your family’s privacy rights. Parents privacy rights would be preserved since under my legislation information would only be shared with the consent of the family.
Ensuring a Comprehensive Curriculum
As the divided Congress works towards attempting to find a bi-partisan agreement on reauthorizing ESEA, I am confident that the President will fight to ensure that the bill continues to prioritize providing assistance to help low-income districts provide a comprehensive curriculum. More must be done, however, to send a strong signal to all stakeholders that the congressional intent of this legislation is to provide a comprehensive curriculum for all students. To this end, I have recommended to the Education and Labor Committee that the following statement be prominently inserted into the bill to declare this intention:
“No part of this Act shall be construed to require schools to provide anything other than a diverse, comprehensive curriculum to all students, regardless of race, gender, disability, or language ability. Such a curriculum should include the core subjects of Mathematics, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, Physical and Health Education, as well as diverse enrichment offerings which include courses or instructional units in Visual and Performing Arts, Technical Education, Environmental Education, Foreign Languages, and other subjects that prepare students for the 21st century such as global awareness, information literacy, and financial literacy.”
Improving Assesments of English Language Learners
Navigating the American education system is a daunting task, especially for parents of English Language Learners (ELL) who do not speak English. Often, there is a communication gap between schools and ELL parents/guardians because of this language barrier. In the case that a native language assessment is not available for an ELL, I have recommended that parents and guardians be granted the right to request an assessment in the student’s native language. This right should be clearly communicated to parents/guardians in their native language.
In addition to a written notice, I suggested that a community liaison be dispatched to communicate this right to parents/guardians.In addition, I have been working closely with the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to include language that will require states to disaggregate data to capture all the sub-groups in the API community.
Combating the Narrowing of the Curriculum, Improving the Determination of the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)
The White House and the Department of Education’s ESEA blueprint contains provisions that move away from a single test for accountability by allowing states to apply to the Department of Education to use multiple measures or a growth model in their definition of adequate yearly progress (AYP). I have recommended that indicators such as decreases in drop out rates, increases in students passing AP exams, growth in score on state social studies assessments and others be given even more weight in calculating AYP than the draft allows. Specifically, I believe states should be permitted to use these other indicators to account for up to 50% of AYP. This greater weight gives states stronger incentives to develop these alternative means of assessing the performance of a school.
Improving Science, Technology and Mathematics Education
I am concerned by the narrowing of the curriculum within our K-8 schools. It has been widely documented that schools have adjusted their curriculum to prepare students for the state assessments in language arts and mathematics required under ESEA. As schools focus on the mathematics and literacy assessments, many untested subjects are falling by the wayside. States are currently required to assess students in science, but these tests do not count in AYP. There is no incentive to teach science in our schools. I have asked the committee to count science in AYP along with mathematics and language arts in an effort to combat the narrowing of the curriculum. By including science in AYP, together with my previous recommendation to increase the contribution of multiple indicators to 50% of AYP, we will begin to reverse a negative trend that is narrowing the curriculum and forcing other subjects into the fringes. In addition, including science in AYP will help our students meet the challenges of the 21st Century and ensure our nation remains competitive in the global economy.
IDEA: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
We will not achieve equity in education simply from equal funding. There are many students who need additional resources in order to receive equal opportunities. To truly grant all students equal opportunities, children from low income households, English language learners, and students with disabilities need special accommodations and assistance. That is why I strongly support strengthening and fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Competitiveness: Improving Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Instruction
Scientific innovation accounts for about 50% of the increase to the United States’ gross domestic product. Our nation must commit to increasing and improving the quality of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) workforce if we are to sustain and strengthen America’s ability to compete in the global economy.
The United States is falling behind in international comparisons of mathematics and science literacy. According to the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the United States ranked 15th out of 26 countries. The 2009 PISA results ranked the United States 20th among the 30 member countries in mathematics, 13th in science.
Providing a quality education for every child is vital to maintaining the competitiveness of America’s workforce in a growing global economy. To prepare our youth for the jobs of tomorrow we need strong science and engineering education that doesn’t begin at the university level, but instead spans across all grades. Good education policy is good for schools, good for teachers, good for students and good for the nation.
Then-Senator Barack Obama and I developed the Enhancing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Act to enhance the coordination among the state and federal government to improve STEM education across the nation. The bill will provide the infrastructure required to work collaboratively, establish national STEM Education goals, and to coordinate STEM education initiatives.
I support additional initiatives to improve STEM Education and increase research and education funding such as the Democrats’ Innovation Agenda. I also introduced the Innovations for our Nation’s Vital Educational Needs for Technology (INVENT) Act, which would establish competitive programs within the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop and make available curriculum tools for the use at the elementary, secondary, and undergraduate levels to help foster inventiveness and innovation. Provisions of the INVENT Act were included in the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act (COMPETES Act), which was signed into law in 2007.
The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, signed into law in 2011, is designed to invest in innovation through research and development, improve the competitiveness of the United States, and address many of the same broad challenges in STEM education and federal research in the physical sciences and engineering as the 2007 America COMPETES Act. The law extends increased support for federal research in the physical sciences and engineering. Its appropriations authorizations are in line with a ten-year doubling path for NSF, NIST laboratories, and the DOE Office of Science. Authorizations for NSF, NIST, and DOE, as well as those for Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E(, would be provided through FY2015. The Act strengthens educational opportunities by creating new programs and amending existing programs designed to increase collaboration between existing federal STEM education programs, improve STEM teaching and learning in higher education, and provide for STEM education research. The science and engineering research provisions continue previously established commitments to encourage increased research collaboration and commercialization and to invest in high-risk, high-reward research. Examples of federal research and development activities authorized in this provision include the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program, Technology Innovation Program (TIP), and the ARPA-E.
Reauthorization of COMPETES also builds upon the original legislation with a number of new provisions that seek to broaden participation in STEM education and occupations by underrepresented populations. Among these are provisions directing NSF to examine grant proposals for their potential to increase the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM, and directing NSF to train staff and merit review panelists on effective methods to broaden participation. The bill also strengthens the position of minority-serving institutions in research partnerships with other institutions by specifying that some portion of research funds must be awarded directly to the minority-serving institution and broaden the definition of minority-serving institutions to include those that serve large numbers of students with disabilities.
Vouchers are Not the Answer
Parents should have the right to make decisions about the education of their children. Individual children have different needs, and parents should be provided with information and options that will help them find the best education for their child. However, I do not believe that public education funds should be used to supply vouchers. The school voucher movement sidesteps the greater goal of improving schools. If a school is so poor that parents wish to remove their children, then our education policy is failing. When I was a classroom teacher, I provided students that performed under their ability level with additional support to improve their learning—this is the same model we should be using with our schools. Diverting public education funds to private schools will only make the problem worse. Instead, we should focus on measures to improve public schools and the structures that fund them.
Higher Education
In order to ensure a world class workforce, and to stimulate tomorrow’s scientific and technological innovation, America needs a robust higher education system, one that is accessible and affordable for all. Federal student loan programs need to be adequately funded in order to make loans and grants available to low income students. We need to be sure that our public universities are not closing their doors to qualified candidates based on their income or background.
For decades, increases in college tuition have outpaced inflation, posing financial challenges to many students and families. However as soon as the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives they passed HR 1 which included a $5.6 billion cut to Pell Grants, making it more difficult for low- and middle-income families to pay for college. These cuts would eliminate or reduce aid for almost 1.5 million students.
America’s colleges and universities are some of our most important institutions for the advancement of science. University research programs lay the groundwork for future innovation by engaging in pure science, and by providing research experiences for our future scientists and engineers. We need to continue to support and expand research initiatives at the university level.
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