Contributor
Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., Senior Republican, Committee on Education and Labor, U.S. House of Representatives
Related Link:
http://republicans.edlabor.house.gov/
Biography provided by participant
Congressman John Kline has been proud to represent the men and women of Minnesota's 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives since first being elected to Congress in 2002. Kline was selected by his colleagues to serve as the Senior Republican Member of the House Education and Labor Committee in June 2009, positioning him as the leading conservative voice on critical issues facing our nation's families, schools, workers, and retirees. He has served on the panel since coming to Congress, and in that time he has built a reputation as a strong advocate for greater flexibility and local control in education and increased federal funding for special needs and low income students. Kline has been recognized for his efforts with honors from the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, and the Minnesota TRiO Association.
Recent Responses
November 2, 2009 05:48 PM
I agree the Race to the Top Fund is a likely blueprint for the Administration’s plans for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is one reason I’ll be watching closely when the final regulations are released this month. I’m struck by the notion that states – including my own – are relying on grants from nonprofit foundations to navigate the complex RttT grant application process. I’m reserving judgment until the final regulations are released, but the complexity and prescriptive detail of the draft regulations certainly gave me pause. Because of RttT’s implications for ESEA reauthorization, it seems…
Read moreOctober 20, 2009 01:10 PM
The question of how to ensure teacher effectiveness is a tricky one – especially for those of us in Washington. Everyone can agree we want to get as many effective teachers into America’s classrooms as possible. And yet most of us recognize the way to achieve that goal differs from state to state and school district to school district. This is why the federal government cannot step in and dictate a one-size-fits-all approach to measuring teacher effectiveness. As AEI researcher Rick Hess cautioned during a recent Education and Labor Committee hearing, research indicates the most effective teacher in one classroom…
Read moreSeptember 29, 2009 10:02 AM
Virtually everyone agrees that to achieve success, one needs to set ambitious goals. This is true in life, and it’s true in our schools. States and local communities are constantly grappling with the best and most effective strategies to help their students strive for excellence, and one of the avenues being explored is the movement toward common standards as a baseline for educational attainment. Common standards have great potential to raise the bar and change the culture – but common standards must not be confused with federal standards. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is an example worth watching. I…
Read moreSeptember 21, 2009 04:59 PM
In Washington, we tend to look for specific, quantifiable answers to problems such as the dropout crisis. We think we can solve these challenges if only we unlock the magic equation – whether it’s the number of hours in the school day or years of experience on a teacher’s resume, federal policymakers seem to gravitate toward measurable, even tangible solutions. Perhaps this is because if the solution lies in the numbers, it would be easy for Washington to control. Unfortunately, there is no magic equation. There’s no doubt high-quality teachers are essential – but the number of years in the…
Read moreSeptember 1, 2009 11:32 AM
Gary Huggins makes a good point – turnaround successes tend to be isolated, and we don’t have a lot of research on scalable, systemic approaches that can work on a nationwide basis. The existence of chronically underperforming schools is not evidence that no one has tried to turn these schools around; it’s proof that doing so is incredibly difficult, and requires both educational expertise and political will. Still, there are examples worth noting. In Los Angeles, city leaders recently agreed to turn over control of 200 chronically underperforming schools – along with 50 new ones – to charter school…
Read moreAugust 26, 2009 01:38 PM
Senator Kennedy was a legislative giant. We had little in common ideologically, but his reputation as an honest broker and effective leader is one to which lawmakers of all stripes can aspire. In the years I’ve spent on the education committee, Senator Kennedy’s indelible mark could be seen on all the legislation he touched. I send my deepest condolences to his family for their loss.…
Read moreAugust 24, 2009 01:01 PM
A college education today is as vital as a high school diploma was a generation ago. Students leaving high school must be prepared for some kind of postsecondary education or training. Yet as the question notes, just a fraction of graduating high school seniors are prepared to succeed in traditional higher education. This translates to remediation and attrition, problems plaguing institutions of higher education and making a college education more expensive for students. However, I’m skeptical of the question’s premise that the answer lies entirely with reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB was crafted on the hypothesis that…
Read moreAugust 17, 2009 12:39 PM
Once again, we’re asking the right questions at the wrong time. The Early Learning Challenge Fund could fundamentally reshape early childhood education at both the state and federal levels, yet Congress failed to hold a single hearing on the program before slipping it into a broader piece of financial aid reform legislation. We began to scrape the surface of these issues in a pair of hearings held earlier this year, but neither hearing specifically analyzed the proposed Early Learning Challenge Fund or the basic questions raised in this blog. The proposal requires states to create standards-based, outcome-driven systems in order…
Read moreJuly 27, 2009 12:08 PM
While I’ve been critical of the heavy-handed involvement of the federal government in administering the No Child Left Behind Act, I think its overall goal was the right one. NCLB exposed a troubling pattern of systematically leaving certain children behind in our schools. Despite a narrowing achievement gap and an increase in achievement for all students in recent years, much work remains. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act became law more than 40 years ago – clearly, federal intervention alone is not the silver bullet. In fact, I have been very encouraged by the work of the business community and others…
Read moreJuly 6, 2009 12:22 PM
I’ll echo what’s already been said by others because it bears repeating: Mayoral control is not a universal remedy for what ails every urban school system, but the evidence we’ve seen merits further exploration. What mayoral control has allowed is a greater degree of accountability and personal responsibility, which in turn has promoted quicker, more aggressive reforms. When enterprising local leaders are able to wrest control away from the entrenched education establishment, we’ve witnessed major transformations in attitudes and expectations, which is a critical first step to achieving lasting reform. I’m an advocate for local control in education because I…
Read moreJune 30, 2009 01:06 PM
This is an important question. It’s exactly the type of question that should have been debated by Congress before the stimulus was enacted, and it’s the perfect example of why it was a mistake to pass the bill first and ask questions later. With $100 billion on the line, it’s hard to argue against the idea that taxpayers should get something for that investment. Simply throwing money at schools has never solved their problems in the past, and there’s no reason to believe that it would solve their problems today. But let’s not forget, this money was sold to states…
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