Political Quotes

“my amendment, which I intend to withdraw, is very simple. It would prohibit the Department of Education from counting test scores for English language learners against school districts until after the student completes 3 years of English language instruction. In our subcommittee's hearing, with Secretary Spellings, I raised some concerns regarding English Language Arts Test that student learning to speak English as a second language were given this year. In my home State, there are over 192,000 immigrant students learning English, the majority of whom are in kindergarten through third grade. In the city of Syracuse, my hometown, we have an elementary school in which 43 percent of the kids are English language learners learning English as a second language. I recognize that there are benefits to monitoring ELL student achievement on an annual basis. But school systems should not be penalized for student scores after only 1 year of instruction. I'd like to state emphatically that we need to make sure that all of our kids speak and read English proficiently. It is essential to their ability to compete in a very competitive society and a very competitive world. And it is essential to the long-term viability of the American culture that we can all speak to each other in the same tongue. But I've learned other languages myself, some better than others, and it took me more than 1 year to be considered proficient.”