Political Quotes

“we hear a lot about programs that fail, and I have seen a lot of them, financed by Federal taxpayers. I would like to talk a little bit tonight about a program that appears to be successful. During my career in teaching and counseling, I saw a lot of National Defense Education Act money poured down the drain, millions of dollars, billions of dollars, primarily because there was no plan. The money was there; we were told to spend it. I watched then as a principal a lot of well-meaning programs that were instituted during the sixties that failed also, because, again, no planning. I can remember both as a principal and as a superintendent receiving title I money, chapter 1 money. Normally we were told that this money was available in about October. School had already started in September. No planning. Money wasted. I finally said, as a superintendent, to my early child education expert, 'There must be something we can do with this Federal money to break the cycle of dependency, the cycle of illiteracy, the cycle of dropouts,' because we pretty well knew which children were going to have trouble when they came to school because we had seen older brothers and sisters, we had seen parents all having trouble in school.”