Political Quotes

“I think the debate and the discussion that I just heard really does crystallize the exact debate as to where we need to hold and what accountability really is. The President's plan originally talked about flexibility, it talked about accountability, and the accountability was to the Federal Government. What this amendment says is that there is another accountability. It is the accountability of schools, teachers, to parents. To claim that there is not accountability there, this amendment is absolutely false. This is empowering parents and will force schools to be accountable not to a bureaucrat in Washington, not to a bureaucrat in the Department of Education, and not to a bureaucratic test that is mandated out of Washington. We know a lot about this Department of Education. If we talk about accountability, we are talking about holding schools in Holland, Michigan, in my district, accountable, when at the same time Congress continues to back away from holding the Department of Education accountable for their $40 billion that they cannot get a clean audit on, and were not willing to allow parents to make the decisions about their kids. Let us recognize through this process that by empowering parents we are moving accountability to exactly where it should be.”