Wayne Gilchrest: “I will vote for the rule, but I will not vote for the conference report. There are many good things in this legislation.…”

“I will vote for the rule, but I will not vote for the conference report. There are many good things in this legislation. The President has helped the House and the Senate develop a lot of positive things that the Federal Government can do to become involved in the process of stimulating curiosity, intellectual curiosity and knowledge. But the critical area that fails in this legislation in my opinion is based on the conversation that the gentleman from Florida just mentioned, and, that is, that the Federal Government is requiring, through a pretty heavy hand, that the State governments create a testing tool, whether it is diagnostic or not, that will have a fairly riveting effect, in my judgment, of sterilizing and taking away the uniqueness of each individual teacher's expertise. When you do that, you do not create an academic environment that the teachers thrive on or the parents or the students. Unfortunately, I rise to support the rule but oppose the conference report.”