Mr. President, I am today introducing the Teachers at the Table Act of 2007. This bill is the Senate companion to legislation introduced in the House of Representatives earlier this year by Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York and Representative Lee Terry of Nebraska. I am pleased this legislation is cosponsored by my colleagues, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

This legislation would create a Volunteer Teacher Advisory Committee to advise Congress and the Department of Education on the impact of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on students, their families, and the classroom learning environment. The teachers serving on this Committee would be chosen from past or present state or national Teachers of the Year and would be competitively selected by the Secretary of Education and the majority and minority leaders of both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

Every year I travel to each of Wisconsin’s seventy-two counties to hold a listening session to listen to Wisconsinites concerns and answer their questions. Since NCLB was enacted in early 2002, education has rated as one of the top issues brought up at my listening sessions. I have received feedback from constituents about the noble intentions of NCLB, but I have also heard about the multitude of implementation problems with the law’s provisions. The feedback from teachers, parents, school administrators, and school board members has been invaluable over the past five years and yesterday, I introduced the Improving Student Testing Act of 2007 in response to some of that feedback.

The Teachers at the Table bill I am introducing today seeks to help ensure that Congress and the Department of Education receive high-quality yearly feedback on how NCLB is impacting classroom learning around the country. The teachers who will serve on the committee will be competitively chosen from past and present Teachers of the Year, who represent some of the best that teaching has to offer. The bill would create a committee of twenty teachers, with four selected by the Secretary of Education and four selected by each of the majority and minority leaders in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. These teachers would serve two-year terms on the advisory committee and would work to prepare annual reports to Congress as well as quarterly updates on the law’s implementation.

Every state and every school district is different and this legislation ensures that the teacher advisory committee will represent a wide range of viewpoints. The bill specifies that the volunteer teacher advisory committee should include teachers from diverse geographic areas, teachers who teach different grade levels, and teachers from a variety of specialty areas. Creating a diverse committee will help ensure that the committee presents a broad range of viewpoints on NCLB to Congress and the Department of Education.

Much work needs to be done this fall to reform many of the mandates of NCLB and I look forward to working with my colleagues during the reauthorization to make those necessary changes. One thing is certain – whatever form the reauthorized NCLB takes, there will be a need for consistent feedback from a diverse range of viewpoints.

We need to ensure that the voices of students, educators, parents, and administrators, who are on the front-lines of education reform in our country, are heard during the reauthorization of NCLB this fall and going forward during the reauthorized law’s implementation in years to come. This bill seeks to help address that need by enlisting the service of some of America’s best teachers in providing information to federal education policymakers. The advisory committee created by this legislation will provide nationwide feedback and will allow Congress to hear about NCLB directly from those who deal with the law and its consequences on a daily basis.