mr. bennet: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado is recognized. mr. bennet: mr. president, thank you. and i have never done this in the two and a half years that i have been in the senate. i haven't been here a long time, and i've spent a lot of time complaining about the way this place works. but i had to come to the floor to implore the senator from kentucky to reconsider his objection. and i do it not because i have a perspective on this as a united states senator. i do it because i had the honor of serving as the superintendent of schools of denver for four years of my life and have dedicated years of my life, but more importantly, seen the dedication of the people that are working in our schools. the senator speaks of the tragedy of this process. i'll stem cell what you a -- i'll tell you what a tragedy is. the tragedy is that only nine of 100 children livering in poverty in this country in 2011 can expect to get a college degree. that's a tragedy. the fact that when i became superintendent in the denver public schools, on the 10th grade math test

mr. bennet: thank you."p & g's profits boomed with the increasing affluence of middle-class households in the post world war ii economy." the story i was just telling. "for generations, procter & gamble's growth strategy was focused on developing household stables for the vast american middle class. now, p & g executives say many of its former middle-market shoppers are trading down to lower-priced goods -- widening the pools of have and have-not consumers at the expense of the middle." quption p & g isn't the only company adjusting its business. a wide swath of american companies is convinced that the consumer market is bifurcating into high and low ends and eroding in the middle. they have begun to alter the way they research, develop and market their products." madam president, in other words, they have begun to alter their business plan with the assumption that the middle class is evaporating in this country, and that their growth markets are the very richest among us, on the one hand, and the very poor

mr. bennet: i will in one second. anything remotely approaching our claim to be a land of opportunity when 9 out of 100 children born in poverty can graduate with a college degree, when 91 out of 100 children who are unfortunate enough to be born poor are con straepbd to the march -- constrained to the racymarch -- constrained to the and the margin of our a economy. and i'll stop here, but just to be clear, there are 100 seats in the united statesat senate. abo think about what of the 100 people that were here were pover children living in poverty in the united states. here's how many would have a decree. thatcher, that chairth committes for chairs than this one.t of cd that's it. the rest of this chamber would be occupied at people he didn't have a college degree. >> what the senator yield? mr. e >> i'm asking tosi yield.nator r >> senator from iowa has the fuller. d >> i recognize the senator wants to do this in an orderly mannern people wanted to be here to speak. i think the senator from colorado made some h good

mr. bennet may know but i don't think there's any existing way you can. you have to create a mechanism to do that which probably means you have to create a person to carry out that tracking. that would be my guess. >> any other -- >> mr. chairman? >> senator murkowski. >> so just to clarify then from senator isakson, if you do receive the competitive grants and you cannot establish it, i guess it becomes a requirement you must establish this tracking mechanism for kids moving up from middle school in order to receive these competitive grants, is that correct? >> yes, i think that's right. in order to receive a competitive grant, as i understand it, yes. i'll let the senator describe it. >> it's a question, senator murkowski, of fracking the records that go from the eighth grade to the high school. so i think it's -- senator alexander made a good point. this is complicated stuff and all that we're trying to do here and i think we all agree the dropout rate is unacceptably high. all i would like to do here with minimal bureaucratic effort is to try to track

mr. bennet, you don't understand we are running an orphanage here. i understood her, what she was trying to say but what i said there was it said high school on the outside. if we are going to accept it as an orphanage we need to take that name off of the side of the building and call it something else. so my hope i am saying for the record is whatever these models are are at least as robust as the ones that are contained in the legislation because otherwise we are going to have the children marooned in that 5% of schools marooned in those schools for the rest of their k-12 education and the rest of our lives. i think that is the issue here. >> mr. chairman -- i know we want to get to of votes but i do think we got a little sidetracked on the vouchers may be. i think this is the key point. what is best for the kids? remembering that this is the bottom 5%, i still remember joel kline saying these mechanisms, these turnaround models gave him the ability to do it. on the other hand, i too understand senator alexander has the best intentions here and the

their goal of closing the achievement gap and i urge my colleagues to support it. >> senator bennet. >> thank you, mr. chairman. senator franken's amendment combines provisions from two pieces of legislation. the school principal recruitment and training act, which was sponsored in the lead at which i introduced. and i won't describe it any more than you did, except to say that there is the data that may show the second most important thing is a great principle, but you can't have a great school with a degree principle. and what we have done in this country has failed to train our folks to be, especially in these turnaround situation. and we haven't had available to do it. and senator sanders and i in the last discussion were talking about a high turnover rate of teachers, particularly in high poverty schools. a huge amount that relates to principal leadership. if you've got a great principle than they are making sure that everybody is pulling together in the right direction and moving kids forward, the turnover rates are actually quite low. if you are in a place where you don't see that kind of lead

bennet. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. chairman. i will like to thank you and the ranking member for holding this markup. i deeply appreciate it. if there was a rally to keep "no child left behind' the same, no one would,. i consider this a rally to change a law that has done an lot of good things. it has shined a light on the failure of too many of our public schools to live up to the promise to deliver opportunities from one generation to the next. yesterday, i said on the floor if 100 of our senators were living in poverty in this country, only nine of us would graduate with a college degree. fewer than half of the people sitting around this table. yesterday, i cannot think of any other fact that is more at war with who we think we are as americans than that one. the time has come to shift the burden of proof from those who want to change this system to those who want to keep it the same. i think we have a great opportunity today to build on the elements of "no child left behind." over 4000 coloradans have signed a petition. i wa

bennet from colorado. with that, i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. alexander: i want to congratulate senator corker for his usual good judgment and insight in helping us work on a difficult problem. no member of this body has done more in the last year to try to highlight the problem of the federal debt. his cap plan which has been a part of almost every discussion we had seriously about it, through his effort more recently to support efforts to try to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction as a part of the select committee and his suggestion today that allowing americans to understand something that most of us really hadn't focused on, that during our lifetimes we're paying in $110,000, $120,000 to medicare and during our lifetimes we're taking out $330,000. americans understand that's a problem that has to be solved. i've been doing some research lately on our debt situation. fundamentally speaking, our problem lies with health care costs. it lies there with families. it lies there with businesses. and it lies there with the united states governm

something that senator bennet and i have talked about, and i look forward to working with him on that, if that correctly states his -- >> it does. >> and then i would like to offer, mrmr. chairman, alexandr amendment number six on public school choice. this is an existing program that requires local education agencies to provide students and lowest performing -- well, today if you're a failing school, to use the vernacular, school districts have to provide parents with the opportunity to put a child in a different school, one they think is better. this amendment, what secretary duncan has said if we don't succeed in what we're trying to do here than 80% of the schools under the current law are going to be identified as failing. which means we have an unworkable law at the moment. this would say that that same provision about public school choice would apply to the bottom 5% of schools that we've been talking about today. so it's not a new program but it is a slimmed, it is a program that will affect 5000 schools instead of tens of thousands of schools. it's only public schools, since it's a title i program. and i ask for support. >> as i understand this amendment, i

mr. bennet: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado is recognized. mr. bennet: mr. president, thank you. and i have never done this in the two and a half years that i have been in the senate. i haven't been here a long time, and i've spent a lot of time complaining about the way this place works. but i had to come to the floor to implore the senator from kentucky to reconsider his objection. and i do it not because i have a perspective on this as a united states senator. i do it because i had the honor of serving as the superintendent of schools of denver for four years of my life and have dedicated years of my life, but more importantly, seen the dedication of the people that are working in our schools. the senator speaks of the tragedy of this process. i'll stem cell what you a -- i'll tell you what a tragedy is. the tragedy is that only nine of 100 children livering in poverty in this country in 2011 can expect to get a college degree. that's a tragedy. the fact that when i became superintendent in the denver public schools, on the 10th grade math test