Political Quotes

“when the President came to Washington, he announced a bold plan, a bold plan to reform education, by giving more flexibility to the States, by holding the schools accountable for results and by empowering parents. Over the last 3 months, that plan has slowly been whittled away. Much of the flexibility that the President had envisioned for States to target their spending towards the needs of their kids is gone. This amendment is an attempt to give the States and local school districts just a little bit more flexibility for that 1 percent of their money that comes to their local school districts. Parental empowerment is basically gone. Accountability, it is interesting the President's plan said we are going to get rid of process accountability. We are going to move away from these categorical programs that tell school districts exactly what to do with every Federal dollar and then audits them to make sure that the dollars are spent for each of these programs creating a huge bureaucratic and programmatic nightmare. He said we are going to come back and we are going to focus not on process accountability, but we are going to focus on results accountability; move away from process accountability, go to results accountability. Let us test whether our kids are actually going to be able to read and to do math. The process accountability has stayed alive. The bureaucracy has won on all of those counts. School districts will be given money.…”