Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I have to tell my colleagues that I feel an immense sense of urgency tonight on the topic that we are talking about; that is, education and the whole question of getting money into the classroom, because right now there is a grave threat posed to education in America. It is a feel-good, sound-good idea called national testing. It is this idea that we ought to adopt in America a single reading test for every fourth grader in America, and a single reading test for every eighth grader in America. It is a proposal that the President made on the floor of this House in his State of the Union speech last January which, as the gentleman I know already knows, the President has already implemented. That is, he created a test panel and has written that test. Now, a lot of my colleagues in Arizona say, and my friends at home say, 'Well, Congressman, what is wrong with national testing? Why are you so impassioned in your opposition to national testing and why am I concerned about it here tonight?' Let me explain that. There is a simple concept: What is tested is what will be taught.”