Richard Gephardt: “I urge a ``no'' vote on vouchers and a ``yes'' vote for public schools. I want to say that I think everybody here…”

“I urge a ``no'' vote on vouchers and a ``yes'' vote for public schools. I want to say that I think everybody here tonight is well-meaning and everybody here I would submit cares about what happens to our children, but I believe that we have to enter into a new discussion. Part of that will happen with the gentleman from Indiana on charter schools. There are other ideas that we are wanting to talk about: Early childhood development, Basics by Six, well-trained teachers and equipped classrooms, relief for crumbling and overcrowded schools, support for local plans to review neighborhood public schools, efficient and coordinated use of resources, parental choice for public schools. This is an agenda that begins to start a national conversation about how we improve our public schools. I had a meeting this morning in my district with the superintendents of all of the school districts in my district, and I asked them about this agenda, and I asked them about what we ought to be talking about. Incidentally, most of those school districts, in fact all of them, get very good outcomes.”