Political Quotes

“Mr. President, joining as part of this effort, I think we need to reform No Child Left Behind and that we should focus on making sure we preserve disclosure and the right of parents to know how their schools are doing, without destroying the school, without having an AYP measurement that somehow says most, if not all, schools are failing. As part of this effort, I am introducing the Empowering Parents Through Quality Charter Schools Act to emphasize charter schools and to make sure their opportunities are more widely available to parents and children, especially in inner cities. This is a chart I have in the Chamber that shows the top 10 nonselective--meaning they take everyone--public high schools in Chicago. They are ranked in order of ACT scores. You can see from the chart, Lincoln Park High School is No. 1, not a charter school. But in the top 10, 8 of them are charter schools, and these are in some of the toughest neighborhoods in Chicago. That is why this is one of the No. 1 issues being discussed right now in Chicago. Mayor Emanuel is doing an outstanding job of leading a reform effort to make charter schools more available, to expand the day of instruction, and to expand the number of days in the school year because right now Chicagoland suffers from some of the lowest numbers of days of instruction in the country. Right now, for example, in Chicagoland, only about 10 percent of kids have the opportunity to go to a charter school.…”