Political Quotes

“let me begin by especially thanking two of our colleagues as we begin this debate about a part of this country's educational system that, unfortunately, has gotten short shrift. For the next few minutes we are going to talk about summer school, which I think is a critical time between the spring achievement tests that our youngsters take and that time in the fall when it is so critical to evaluate their performance for the upcoming school year. Suffice it to say, what the Senator from Alabama and the Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, and I would like to do is have an opportunity to supercharge those few months in an effort to beef up the test scores, particularly the test scores of math and science, for youngsters across this country. What Senator Sessions and Senator Durbin and I envision is establishing a new demonstration program that would empower States and local educational agencies to develop models for exceptionally high-quality summer academic enrichment programs that would be designed to help public school students meet those achievement requirements being required by the States in the performance standards that are being established. For me, it all came down to what Nehemiah Vaughn told me in Portland not long ago when he was going into the sixth grade. Nehemiah Vaughn told me: Summer school, Mr. Senator, is helping me to raise my grades.…”