Political Quotes

“What we talked about earlier, Mr. Speaker, what happens in this process is, No. 1, our kids go through all kinds of tests already. This is one more layer on top. It is not only the time that is spent on taking the test, but if a school district is going to be evaluated on a national basis, and every child in a classroom is going to be evaluated against every other child in the country, we can bet parents are going to expect and teachers are going to want to prepare their students for that test. They are going to spend a week or 2 weeks teaching to the test. That is not what we want. We do not want teachers teaching to tests. We want teachers teaching to basic academics, the basic skills we want our children to learn. Then there are other ways to measure how they are learning. There is not a need for the Federal Government to come in and put one more overlay on things that are already being done at the State and local level.”