Political Quotes

“Senator Murray suggested we work on this in a bipartisan way. I took her advice. It was good advice. This is the result. We have had 100 amendments in committee and on the floor. We have had excellent process. I thank the majority leader. I thank Senator Reid, the Democratic leader, for creating an environment to do that. Now, let me say this about the vote we are about to have. This is a law that everybody wants fixed. We have a consensus on that. We have a consensus on how to fix it: keep the important measurements of academic achievement and turn the rest of it over to the States, to classroom teachers, and others who are closest to the children. That is what the Governors, that is what the superintendents, that is what the teachers organizations have said to us. They want us to fix it. They support the way we are proposing to fix it. Now, in the last few years, we have created in this country, in effect, a national school board. It has made it harder to have better teaching, harder to set higher standards, harder to have real accountability in the States. So we changed that. We reversed the trend toward the national school board. We end the common core mandate. We end the waivers that the U.S. Department of Education is using to run public schools. We end DC evaluating teachers. We end adequate yearly progress. Some are saying vote no because you should go further. Well, we had a chance to go further.…”