Frank Riggs: “fundamentally this debate is about the refusal of my colleagues on the other side to give up their Band-Aid-- their fig…”

“fundamentally this debate is about the refusal of my colleagues on the other side to give up their Band-Aid-- their fig leaf--their placebo for the failure of their great society social programs and the failure of the public education system in America. The poor in this country, white and black and Hispanic and Asian, were trapped for forty years in a dismal and dysfunctional welfare system that we have only now begun to dismantle. They are still trapped in a public school system that is betraying our nation's children--a public education system that we on this side of the aisle have tried again and again to reform. We've tried with education savings accounts, with parental choice in education, with shifting power and responsibility and accountability from Washington bureaucracy and powerful teachers unions to states and localities and families. And every one of our efforts--every one--has been resisted tooth and nail by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and by the Clinton administration. They will do nothing to reform primary and secondary education: They did worse than nothing for twenty years to reform welfare. What they will do, is defend to the death the right of government to discriminate based on race and sex. Because that is their Band-Aid, their fig leaf, their placebo for a public education system that traps hundreds of thousands of young children in unsafe and underperforming schools. Our children deserve better.…”