Political Quotes

“I am here to discuss the Every Child Achieves Act. I think it is significant that for the first time in more than a decade, the Senate is considering legislation to make significant changes to our Nation's elementary and secondary education system, and this conversation is long overdue. As a former teacher, I appreciate the challenges our schools have, and I am very much looking forward to the debate ahead. I want to applaud Senators Alexander and Murray, the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, for reaching a compromise bill that passed out of their committee with strong unanimous bipartisan support. Today, I want to focus on some of the provisions included in this bill that have to do with STEM education--science, technology, engineering, and math. This is an issue I have been working on for a number of years--really since I was Governor in the late 1990s in New Hampshire. We know the most critical jobs needed to compete in the global economy are in the STEM fields, but data consistently shows our American students are falling further and further behind in these subjects. One of the other challenges is that we have an enormous gender gap in employment in these fields. Forty-eight percent of the workforce in this country are women. Yet only 24 percent of the jobs in STEM fields are held by women.…”