Connie Mack: “I say to the Senator he is exactly right, there is no mandate. As strongly as I feel about it, I would like to, but I do…”

“I say to the Senator he is exactly right, there is no mandate. As strongly as I feel about it, I would like to, but I do not think that is our role. I think we can make some serious mistakes by mandating certain things, to say to a particular school district or a particular State they have to do what I say. They might say, what if we put this kind of testing program into effect but our concern is we need more computers. We need more books. We need--whatever. This is not a mandate. It never has been a mandate. It never will be a mandate, at least as far as the Senator from Michigan and I are concerned. It is merely a statement of importance and it says to the schools if they want to, these dollars can be used for the purpose of developing the concepts for creating tests, developing some merit pay program, or in reforming tenure, all three of which we think can in fact go to the heart of the matter about what is necessary to improve the ability of the teacher. The inference was made earlier that somehow or another those of us who are talking about this are out to degrade the teachers in this country. That is absolutely a false challenge. Most of us can remember those teachers who made a difference in our lives, who challenged us, who demanded from us that we do better. Each of us responded in a little bit different way. But we understand the importance of having good, quality teachers, and there are a lot of them. That is why we put the merit pay in, to recognize that.…”