Bob Schaffer: “Talking about education spending within the context of freedom and liberty is very important for us, because we have not…”

“Talking about education spending within the context of freedom and liberty is very important for us, because we have not been able to do that too much in recent years. There are really strings and red tape and all kinds of parameters that are placed on Federal funds. This gives us a chance to get away from that. Americans are really expecting and hoping that the Congress begins to talk about new and innovative ways and creative ways to improve schools across America. What most Americans are dealing with right now, if they have children in school, are these mandatory tests. Almost every State is dealing with them right now. Mandatory tests that have been required by State legislatures, through State laws, and also the new mandatory requirements for testing that have come from the Federal level. That serves to achieve the accountability objectives that the President had outlined and that the Congress had focused on in the legislation we passed last year, and the outcome of that still remains to be seen. But what a tax credit really allows us to do is start speaking to the flexibility side, the decision-making side of locally elected school board members, superintendents, of principals and teachers, in identifying priorities in their own schools that they would go to the community for assistance on and would be made easier through a tax credit that we are proposing.”