Mike Honda: “I really appreciate this discussion on education, because I believe that the President has made education one of the…”

“I really appreciate this discussion on education, because I believe that the President has made education one of the cornerstones of his administration for this next 4 years. One of the things that I found as a principal is that one of our jobs is to identify youngsters who need special education and need to be assessed. But that is not an obligation of the principal nor the teacher, because we are just good guys. It is also a mandate by the Federal Government. Public Law 94-142 requires everybody in schools to be able to go out and seek youngsters who may need special education services, and the PL 94-142 also said that they would fund the cost of special ed at the level of 40 percent. Currently, in the past few years, it has not gone beyond 12, 13, 14 percent. What that does for local school districts... is a bind that we have this requirement, this duty to seek out youngsters who need special education and also assess them and cover the costs and then cover the costs for the services that they would need.”