Chair's Press

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 29 – Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today said the committee’s objective, in its work to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, is to ensure that any federal law or regulation will help the nation’s 6,000 colleges and universities create a campus environment that...

Washington, D.C.—Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the senior Republican in the United States Senate as well as a member and former chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, introduced the Employee Rights Act in the United States Senate today, alongside the sponsor of the House companion...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 26 – Following today’s vote on an amendment offered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to repeal Obamacare, Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a cosponsor of the amendment, said: “Passing Obamacare was an historic mistake—just last month, tens of thousands...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 24 – Senate labor committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today led a group of 10 Republican senators in urging the administration to give the public “a reasonable opportunity” to review and respond to its proposed rule to make drastic changes to existing overtime eligibility. Alexander said:...

“If I found myself suddenly at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center emergency room and the doctors there wanted to get my paperwork from the hospital and doctors I usually use —information blocking means that there is some obstacle getting in the way of my personal health information getting sent to them.”– Lamar...

“The American higher education system of today is like the American automobile industry of the 1970s. Like the Japanese auto manufacturers that ultimately brought the American auto industry to its knees for a time, there is an emerging market of new or upstart providers of affordable higher education.” – Lamar...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 17 – Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.), with Senate health committee members, Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Senate Special Committee on Aging Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) commended Senate passage yesterday of the Older...

Thank you, Andrew. It’s great to be here. It’s great to be at AEI, an organization for which I have lots of respect. I also have great respect for our institutions for higher education. As Dr. Kelly said, I was once president of the University of Tennessee. That’s harder than it looks. I remember on my first day on campus a...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 16 – The Senate today passed by a vote of 81 to 17 the Every Child Achieves Act, the bipartisan agreement by Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to fix the No Child Left Behind law, which is seven years overdue. Alexander said: “Last week,...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 10 – Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) released the following statement today on House passage of the 21st Century Cures Act:   “The House has worked diligently on its legislation to spur innovation and reform the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of...

“Not only is there consensus about the need to fix No Child Left Behind, there’s also remarkable consensus about how to fix it. That consensus is this: Continue the law’s important measurements of academic progress of students but restore to states, school districts, classroom teachers and parents the responsibility for deciding...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 10 – Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today made the following statement on the nomination of Andy Slavitt to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:  “I will be interested in hearing from Mr. Slavitt whether he is ready to work with Congress to make the...

The House on Wednesday arguably passed a bill that will have the most impact on the GOP presidential nomination of any this year. That is saying a lot considering the House (and Senate) passed Corker-Menendez (to give Congress an up-or-down vote on any final Iran deal), trade promotion authority, the first significant entitlement reform bill (the...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 9 – Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today released the following statement on House passage of legislation to fix No Child Left Behind:  “Newsweek magazine calls No Child Left Behind ‘the education law everyone wants to fix,’ so it’s hard to overstate...

MYTH: The Every Child Achieves Act allows for federal involvement in state standards. FACT: FALSE. The bill explicitly prohibits any federal involvement with State standards. The HELP Committee incorporated language from bills introduced by Sen. Pat Roberts and Sen. David Vitter that prevents the Secretary from reviewing state standards,...

 “This is a real answer to inequality in America: giving more children more opportunity to attend a better school.” – Lamar Alexander WASHINGTON, D.C., July 8 – Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today offered an amendment (Click HERE for video) to the bill being debated by the...

Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., rose to the Senate floor Wednesday to tell his colleagues that state and local governments know best when it comes to educating students. Alexander was speaking in support of a K-12 education bill that would replace No Child Left Behind. "We need to show some humility and recognize, as...

Senators began work in earnest Wednesday on a bipartisan bill to replace No Child Left Behind by congratulating themselves on finally taking up legislation that is eight years overdue, and then unanimously passing an amendment to support school libraries. That comity is likely to yield to more vigorous debate in the days ahead, but for the moment,...

Pell grants, state aid, modest loans and scholarships put a four-year public institution within the reach of most. Paying for college never is easy, but it’s easier than most people think. Yet some politicians and pundits say students can’t afford a college education. That’s wrong. Most of them can. Public two-year colleges, for...

Next week the United States Senate will begin debate on a bipartisan agreement to fix No Child Left Behind. I negotiated this bill, the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015, with the Senate education committee’s Ranking Member Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. We found a consensus about the urgent need to fix this law as well as a remarkable consensus...