Rosa DeLauro

One of this Nation's most urgent charges is to address the achievement gap between English learners and their Native English-speaking peers.

We are not going to stand by and watch States discriminate against our children in terms of proceeding to get an education.

Let us help people that have had misfortune and made mistakes get back on the right track in life...

I am fierce about TRIO and GEAR UP and some of these other programs.

I think it is a very wise investment, and I particularly appreciate you taking the lead...

I was troubled by reading that piece as well and have directed that an investigation ensue to see what is going on there.

And you are saying putting all these programs in a pot, decreasing the funds, everything is going to be fine.

But if you are cutting the budget, you are cutting the budget.

I want to take time to acknowledge the continued struggles of children in Puerto Rico.

I am going to wrestle with this student loan problem because I see it as real issue...

You and the President are to be commended for that.

I think in a bipartisan way, there is agreement on your comment, and we will, so ordered, put the information into the record.

I just might add if you have not seen the video of the 6-year-old child being put in handcuffs, pleading, pleading for not to have handcuffs.

However, you are decreasing the amount of money in the pot so that you are making schools really compete against each other for these dollars.

I think the important thing is the policy here, and the proposal--the policy proposal is to put all of those programs together in one block grant that would then allow the most local level, those closest to the students, to target the…

We are an appropriations committee. This is a serious amount of money that we are looking at.

Let me just say--I beg the indulgence of the subcommittee because I would like to address, Congressman Moolenaar, your comments.

The cuts that you have proposed is doublespeak.

Let us not denigrate a public school system that serves 90 percent of our kids and that is making gains.

If you deny the resources to the most--to the schools that need the help most, yes, you will fail.

That achievement gap has not closed one little bit.

The data is overwhelming.

I don't understand, Madam Secretary, why do you continue to claim that additional resources to public schools do not improve student outcomes when the empirical evidence tells us the exact opposite?

Your budget proposal has eliminated this crucial support for students in high-poverty schools.

More than half of Americans live in a childcare desert, and that includes the one in five college students who are parents.