Joe Pitts: “again the Democrats are cooking the books. This amendment takes away the States' flexibility that we are trying to…”

“again the Democrats are cooking the books. This amendment takes away the States' flexibility that we are trying to provide under our bill. It is based on the philosophy that the Federal Government knows best. The States and local districts should be making the decisions about how best to achieve the goal of improved student performance. Under this amendment, States are allowed to use only one-half of 1 percent of their funds to carry out activities relating to improving teacher quality. At the local level such use of funds are only allowable after they have met certain specific targets in class size reduction. In effect, this amendment puts a very low priority on the importance of teacher quality and too much faith in the benefits of class size reduction. In fact, teacher quality is more important than class size. After all, what good is a classroom of 20 or 10 or even 5 students if the teacher has no idea about the subject in which he or she is teaching? We have seen massive class size reduction efforts in several States that have led to negative impacts in certain poor and rural areas where already they are experiencing shortage of qualified teachers. A mandate that further reduces class size will, in effect, force them to hire more inexperienced and unqualified teachers with emergency license. This amendment will only force thousands more children to be sent into trailers parked in the backs of schools.”