David Weldon: “In talking to a lot of parents in my congressional district who have serious concerns about the quality of education in…”

“In talking to a lot of parents in my congressional district who have serious concerns about the quality of education in the United States, one of the big issues that I find comes up more and more is an area where I think a lot of our schools are failing, and that is it is not just in the academics. It is not just in the ABCs, but in the basic fundamentals of character development. As many people know, we threw that issue out the school house door 30 years ago and we are reaping a lot of the benefits of that, or the negative benefits of that. There is more to educating a kid than just teaching them how to read and write and to do arithmetic. There is more to being a good citizen. And that is really what it is about. We want to raise up people to be good citizens. We want them to be involved in their communities. We want them to be good parents. We want them to grow up to be hard-working people, people who will succeed in the marketplace. Our schools, particularly many of our public schools, are failing in that element of education in the area of teaching character and virtue. And at least what I hear from a lot of parents, particularly some of our inner-city communities, is that they want school choice for that reason.”