Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, over the last 4 years that I have had the pleasure of chairing the Committee on Education and the Workforce, I think we have come an awful long way in terms of transforming the Federal role in education and trying to help all of our kids in our country get a chance at a good education. And I think we have been fortunate to be able to do almost all of this in a broad bipartisan way. The bill before us today is the result of a lot of commitment and hard work on the part of Members on both sides of the aisle. And while we have heard an awful lot of talk about IDEA and how we are transforming it, I think there is one important point that continues to be lost on many people. When we passed No Child Left Behind, we created a new paradigm for how we are going to judge the education of our special-needs students. By disaggregating data in four subgroups in each school, including those with special needs, what we have done is we have asked schools to focus on results for our special education students as opposed to being burdened with a lot of paperwork, dotting I's, crossing T's and worrying about lawsuits. Now schools are judged on the results that they produce for these children.”