Political Quotes

“one of the things that we ask for in this bill is that the States voluntarily move towards seeing that we really do guarantee opportunity to all young people. And this amendment does not change that. What we have done is to move away from the original compromise reached in the language of the committee. We restore that original language and we say, for example, ``adopting or establishing comprehensive''--that is put back in--``opportunities-to-learn standards that address the needs of all students achieving.'' Then we have in here, we restore ``establishing a timetable for demonstrating progress toward reading, comprehensive State opportunity-to-learn standards in every school in the State.'' We are not saying what the timetable is. If they want to come back and say, by the year 2050, we are going to establish standards, under the amendment that Senator Wellstone and I are offering, that complies with our amendment. Frankly, our amendment is probably weaker than it should be. But it is stronger than the, frankly, anemic language that we have in the bill.…”