{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://roe.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=397946", "Rep. Roe Remarks to Conference Committee on Replacing No Child Left Behind", "2015-11-18", "2015", "2015-11", "Republican", "House", "TN", "Phil Roe", "R000582", "roe.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Rep. Roe Remarks to Conference Committee on Replacing No Child Left Behind\r\nAs Prepared for Delivery\r\nNovember 18, 2015\r\nThank you Mr. Chairman.\r\nI am excited to be a part of this conference committee and to get to work on the first substantive reform of our education laws since the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001. Everywhere I go in my district, I hear from teachers, parents, administrators and students, who all tell me that we need to return control to the local level. Just as a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work for health care reform, it will not work for education. Each state, school district and student are different, and local administrators, teachers and parentsnot the federal governmentshould make decisions based on what's best for their students.\r\nI was proud to vote for the Student Success Act, because that's what we were able to achieve. The most important thing that the bill does is return decision-making power to the states. It replaces the national accountability system with a state-led one, ensuring local leaders' voice is heard. It also eliminates duplicative, expensive and unnecessary programs and replaces them with a Local Academic Flexible Grant, providing funding for school systems to better serve and support their students.\r\nPerhaps most importantly, our bill took strong steps to give peace of mind to parents and teachers who are concerned about the adoption of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. While these standards were developed in a process that began as a state-led initiative, in recent years concern has increased as the Department of Education has required states to adopt these standards as a condition of getting education waivers and grants. The bill would take away the Department's ability to require Common Core as a condition of federal grants, which ensures the decision on whether or not to adopt Common Core will truly be left up to the states  as it should be. I hope we can preserve these important provisions in conference.\r\nMr. Chairman, a lot of people ask me, why does it matter whether we agree on education policy? Well, on my way home after work just the other evening, I met a boy at the grocery store who was looking for some items on the shelves. He asked me for help in locating crushed pineapples because he told me couldn't read the words. So I helped him and we found the crushed pineapples. But it hit me  this is why we want to invest in education. We have to have a system that ensures that boy and thousands of other kids just like him are given the opportunity to succeed in life, and that starts with a good education. We have a great opportunity to start helping that child by agreeing on a bill in this conference committee, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to make that happen.\r\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://roe.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=397946"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4598709531128407, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}