Bob Schaffer: “I am grateful to the majority leader for yielding, but even more so for bringing this amendment to us. As everyone here…”

“I am grateful to the majority leader for yielding, but even more so for bringing this amendment to us. As everyone here knows, this portion of the President's plan was taken out of the bill by the Committee on Education and the Workforce. What the majority leader is proposing to do here is restore what really is the heart and core of the President's Leave No Child Behind proposal. In fact, if one looks closely at the way the President had proposed even the testing provisions, those testing provisions are predicated on this particular provision that is here before us now. Because real accountability is a matter, not of government taking tests and telling us what the answers are, but it is a matter of empowering the parents who love their children more than anybody here in this city, and by empowering those parents to place their child, when armed with the data derived from testing, into a school that earns their confidence and offers more promise and more hope for their child. That is what we should be about.”