Political Quotes

“When we had the literacy bill on the floor, I made the statement that we have pretty close to 100 million people who are performing either on the first or second level of literacy. The first level gets them nowhere in the 21st century. The second level, it will be very, very difficult, and that is why it is so important. It was so sad that we lost as many years as we lost, Head Start, well meaning all of those programs, well meaning but no one was out there to make sure there was quality, so we ended up many times with people who were heading the programs who really needed the programs themselves, and that is a tragedy. In one largest school district in this country, 55 percent of all their Title I money was used to hire teachers aides. One says, that may not be bad if they are well educated. Fifty percent of them did not even have a GED, did not have a high school diploma, did not even have a GED; but worse than that they were teaching and they were teaching unsupervised. So we can see how those children who needed the very best teacher, a disadvantaged child, did not have a chance because, of course, as I indicated, there were close to 100 million, 40 to 44 million demonstrate the lowest basic literacy skills, and 50 million adults have skills on the next higher level. As the gentleman mentioned, we are going to bring in probably another 200,000 a year for the next 3 years from some other country to fill our $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 jobs.…”