Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank the Senator from a State once owned by North Carolina, and a distinguished Member of this August body. What are we doing here today? We are responding to what every CEO has said and every local leader has said and every parent has said: If you want a future in this country, you have to fix K-12 education. We have to make sure every child in this country has the foundational knowledge to meet whatever challenge they are faced with in a lifetime. Washington is good at coming up with new programs and, to be honest, when we look back over the history of the last couple decades, every year we come up with a new program to fix K-12. What is obvious? We never fix it. But what we hear loudly and clearly from people who are on the front lines--those elected and those nonelected and those who are charged with educating our children--is give them flexibility. We can't design one program in Washington that works in Raleigh, NC, and works in Knoxville, TN, much less in rural North Carolina or rural Tennessee. What I propose is very simple: that 59 pots of money, 59 different programs, be merged into two pots, and that those local school systems have the flexibility and the capability to choose what they are going to use that money for to educate our kids. What a novel thought, that we would take the people on the front line-- for the first time, I am suggesting that Washington give up the power we have to say: You do it our way or you will not get the money.…”