Stuck in the Senate

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROKITA. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank the gentleman for organizing this here tonight.

I think the gentleman is exactly right. We need leadership. Leaders are supposed to lead. When you look at what the gentleman rightly put here on the House floor in terms of the stack of work that sits in Harry Reid's--the Senate majority leader's--in-box, you realize what leadership isn't, and that is a real problem.

If my constituents, Mr. Speaker, saw that pile in my in-box, I don't know how much longer I would last. I wonder what the citizens and voters and taxpayers of Nevada think at this point.

Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, I rise today to discuss with my colleagues the importance of improving education in our country.

This House has done excellent work in that regard. We understand here in the House--and parents, teachers, and school administrators are all too aware--that the current state of our education system threatens the American Dream for the current and future generations of students.

I know that we want to help create a better world and the possibility of a better life for our young students. Leaving the world in better shape than we found it is as much a part of our American exceptionalism as is the freedom we enjoy that allows us to pursue the American Dream.

To our credit, frankly, when American citizens see what is not being done in the Senate, they can look to the House for some great things that have been accomplished in terms of righting what is wrong on education.

Right now, sadly, we are not faring well on the international education stage. Our children are not reading at grade level, while math and science performance by U.S. students trails far beyond that of our counterparts in other developed countries. We are not competing to win in a 21st century world.

The comical irony of that--if it weren't just so plain sad--would be that the American education system is failing the students that its most passionate advocates claim to want to help. Sure, you can argue that somehow while we aren't universally successful, our best and brightest rival any in the world, and our leading institutions will continue to provide the high-quality instruction that will keep us afloat, but I would say to the gentleman of Georgia, Mr. Speaker, that the America I know, the America that I believe in--the America that my constituents and that, I think, Americans across the country believe in--doesn't include a two-tiered system. We want everyone to have an equal opportunity. We want everyone to only be limited by the capacity of their dreams.

At the subcommittee level, in what we call K-12 education and in a more broad sense on the Education and the Workforce Committee and then on the floor of the House, we have done some things to right that ship, as I explained.

One of those bills that passed the House was H.R. 10, the Success and Opportunity through Quality Charter Schools Act. This was a bipartisan bill. It passed on 5-9-14, just this year. The vote tally, Mr. Speaker, was 360-45. It has been in the Senate for 82 days. 360-45 is a huge bipartisan victory. It is one of the biggest bipartisan victories we have had on the floor of the House.

This is a charter school bill. It is school choice. I believe charter schools--like a majority of the people on the floor of this House believe--play a critical role in creating educational options for all children. Charter schools encompass two key principles American families want from our Nation's education system: choice and flexibility.

These innovative institutions will empower parents to play a more active role in their children's educations, open doors for teachers to pioneer fresh teaching methods, encourage State and local innovation, and help students escape poor-performing schools.

Why do we want to continue to shackle students to poor-performing schools and give them no choice and take away that equal opportunity for them to be successful? This bill, Mr. Speaker, did it. This bill now sits in Harry Reid's in-box.

Across the Nation, charter schools are leading the way in innovation and in improving education outcomes. In my home State of Indiana, for example, the Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School in Indianapolis--which serves a predominantly low-income and minority student body--expects every student, no matter his or her background or circumstances, to have a college acceptance letter upon graduation.

No matter his or her background or circumstances, one has to have a college acceptance letter upon graduation. The school's rigorous curriculum and laser focus on preparing students for higher education has helped 100 percent of its students to date gain acceptance into college. This bill sits, awaiting action in the Senate. It is not leadership.

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