Political Quotes

“In closing, I want to address a few of the points that were made by my friend from Colorado. He said, ``It's hard to get evaluations right.'' I actually agree with him on that statement. If that's the case, then the question we are posed with is: Who is best suited to evaluate teachers? Is it some unelected bureaucrat in Washington or is it a State or a locally elected official who is directly accountable to the parents of those children? So we're not presented with some false choice of whether or not to evaluate teachers. As I pointed out, in the legislature in my State of Louisiana, they fought it out, and they actually passed a teacher evaluation program a few years ago that's doing well. It's actually getting good results. That's the kind of innovation we should be encouraging. We shouldn't have this idea that there is this ``one size fits all'' in Washington and that Washington knows best and that, if a State can do it better, too bad, that's its fault because the Federal Government wants to tell it how to evaluate its teachers. I think we ought to trust the people who know best and who are most directly accountable to the parents of the students, and that's our State and local school boards. That's why this amendment says, if they've got a better way to evaluate teachers, they're the ones who are better suited to do it, not some unelected bureaucrat in Washington. With that, I urge a ``yes'' vote on this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.…”