Political Quotes

“I have got good news, bad news, and some more good news. The good news is there are a lot of people around the country that recognize we have this difficulty, and on the chart up there we are focusing too much on the dollars spent. We are focusing too much on the Washington Bureaucracy and not spending enough time talking about students and teachers. Christy Todd Whitman, the Governor of New Jersey, in her State of the State Address, identified the problem that my colleague from California was talking about: We must stop chasing dollars and start creating scholars. We found that in the hearings that we have done in Chicago and Milwaukee and around the country, one goes into a successful school and says, 'What is making your school work? How come your kids are scoring better than the national average?' They don't come back and say, 'It is this program, it is title I out of Washington that has really made the difference.' They said, 'We have got even parents involved in the schools, and these are some of the toughest neighborhoods in Chicago. We have parents involved in the school. We have liberated teachers and principals to create special programs for special needs.'”