Bob Schaffer: “We had something like the Florida plan in the draft of the President's bill as it was introduced last year, and it got…”

“We had something like the Florida plan in the draft of the President's bill as it was introduced last year, and it got stripped out right at the first committee hearing. It did not last very long. That is, frankly, why we are here now, because since the choice elements were stripped out of the President's bill, something the President wanted, we have been working with the White House and have spoken directly with the President; and he has committed to making sure that a choice element, a tax credit provision, becomes law and becomes a high priority in this Congress. But I would like to ask the gentleman from Michigan to comment, if he would, on just this notion of choice. The gentleman from Florida indicated very clearly the experience we have seen in several other States through the research of the Committee on Education and the Workforce is that public schools, government-owned schools are really not threatened by choice. That is where we find the greatest resistance up front, because there are people who think if we allow this system to have some kind of alternative funding structure, that all the people who are employed at any of these levels are somehow going to lose their jobs, if we can, instead, adopt the model on that chart, of direct contributions to education and more of a market approach. But what we found is very different. These people do not lose their jobs; they just get better at it.”