Bob Schaffer: “I think these nutty ideas that come out of the Clinton-Gore administration provide a more clear emphasis on the need for…”

“I think these nutty ideas that come out of the Clinton-Gore administration provide a more clear emphasis on the need for choice, for parental choice, for parental involvement in academic settings. That is frankly where the liberals in the Democrat Party and the more moderate and conservative Members who are on the Republican side of the aisle differ with respect to our approach on education. We on the Republican side genuinely believe that we can trust parents. We genuinely believe that when you elect a local school board member to make decisions about what the curriculum should be, about how much a teacher should be paid, about whether a scarce tax dollar should be spent buying a new bus or repairing the roof or maybe giving the teacher a pay raise, that those are the folks that can be trusted. We do not need to be second-guessing them every day here in Washington, D.C. That is the real battle that takes place. It is unfortunate that so often it is misrepresented in the press or by our opponents or the media, in other words. Our goals are probably fundamentally the same. We want to build an education system in America that helps children. We favor a decentralized model that is decentralized right down to the last school, even beyond that, even for those who want to educate their children in their own homes, in their church school, or wherever they want to educate them.”