Dan Coats: “Gen. Julius Becton has been charged with reforming education in the District. He deserves our support. But by his own…”

“Gen. Julius Becton has been charged with reforming education in the District. He deserves our support. But by his own estimates, it will take 5 or 10 years to test his approaches. Similar changes have been promised by five new superintendents in the last 15 years. I suspect that many District parents are skeptical. I believe they have every right to be. Put yourself for a moment into their shoes. What good does it do a parent who fears for the current safety and future prospects of their 13-year-old child to wait 10 more years for the results of public school reform? By admitting that public school reform in the District will be accomplished in decades, we are saying that the sacrifice of a generation of students is unavoidable. But what if that child were our child? What if that child was the child or the grandchild of a Member of this body who was assigned to a school where physical attacks and robberies and drug sales are rampant, where education is failing, where the one opportunity they have to escape the poverty that they are living in, a decent education, is unavailable to them? Would we be content to sit back and let the bureaucrats tell us it will take a decade to reform these schools? Would those of us who have a 10- or 12- or 13-year-old be content for one moment to allow that situation to exist if there was anything we could do about it?”