Political Quotes

“If I might further engage my colleague from Iowa in this dialog and go back to the point I made earlier, I say to the Senator, he has been chair and ranking Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that is responsible for education and health, and he has done a substantial and marvelous job, including record funding for the National Institutes of Health and amazing efforts to help the funding of education. I ask my friend and colleague from Iowa to just reflect on what I have found, and I ask if he has found the same. I have gone to good schools in Illinois, and they have told me the results of the testing. The results of the testing, in the most recent rounds of testing in No Child Left Behind, required that the students reach a 60-percent plus of performance in terms of their learning ability and learning attainment, education attainment--60 percent. In some of the schools I have visited in the suburban areas of Chicago--not in the cities, in the suburban areas of Chicago--here is what we found. When they took the test, we found that the white students in the schools were testing slightly over 60 percent. So they were meeting their target. The African-American students were testing in the 40-percent range; the Hispanic students in the 25- and 30- percent range; and the special education students, the students with disabilities, below 20 percent. All of these subgroups, if there are certain numbers of them in each school, are all expected to hit 60 percent.”