Judd Gregg: “I support the Senator from Delaware in his amendment. The Senator, of course, served as Governor of Delaware prior to…”

“I support the Senator from Delaware in his amendment. The Senator, of course, served as Governor of Delaware prior to coming to the Senate. He understands intimately the issues that are involved in education, as all Governors do, because it is the No. 1 issue with which most Governors deal. Therefore, I think his amendment, which I am supporting, is a reflection of a comprehensive understanding of the question of how we try to address the improvement of our school systems. I believe that those who have been exposed to the charter school movement see in it the embryo of a way to move our school systems into a phase of significant improvement. Charter schools are being tried in a lot of States. In fact, they have expanded dramatically across the country. I think we are now up to some multiple thousand charter schools. They have caught on because they make sense. Essentially, what a charter school does is give a community which is unhappy with the way the public school system is working an opportunity, within the public school structure, to set up an independent school, which is a public school but which is not subject to the restrictions that the public school system may put on the traditional school in the community, thus creativity can and does occur within that charter school.”