Matthew Russell: “For 200 years, we educated our children without Federal intrusion. During that time, we not only founded our Nation and…”

“For 200 years, we educated our children without Federal intrusion. During that time, we not only founded our Nation and strengthened it and held it together during a Civil War, we won two World Wars and put a man on the Moon. We did it with the innovative spirit that local, educated States, families, and people had without Federal intrusion mandating how they should be educated. Now, we see an opportunity to preserve individual freedom, to preserve States' rights, to protect privacy, to allow our teachers, to allow our local school boards, to allow our local communities, to continue to educate. Some States think that some other States don't do a good job. That may be, but it is not their choice, and it is certainly not the Federal Government's choice, to coerce and to put things out there. My State of Oklahoma is often referred to as ``flyover country.'' But our unemployment is 4.2 percent. That is nearly half that of many of these States that think that we ought to have some progressive Federal control of our education. We have no problem putting our population and our workforce to work. We also have the largest per capita population of astronauts and those in the space program. So much for lack of education in flyover country. This is a good measure because we all agree in a bipartisan fashion that No Child Left Behind is bad--and it is leaving children behind-- but we get there not by some collective coercive control.…”