Political Quotes

“the most painful part about sitting for 20 years in the minority on the committee was the fact that I could not get members of the committee to think in terms of quality and unfunded mandates. The emphasis was always on quantity and, therefore, an awful lot of youngsters did not get what we had intended them to get in relationship to a head start as far as education is concerned. For instance, in Head Start, the first two studies on Head Start, made it very evident that we should be taking corrective action in order to make sure that every Head Start program is a quality one. We waited more than 15 years to ever mention quality in Head Start. Finally, in the reauthorization in 1994, we did that. In the reauthorization again last year we put special emphasis on quality so every child has a quality program. We have done the same in Title I. We have paid no attention to quality. Then it became a jobs program. As I also mentioned yesterday, one cannot help an alcoholic unless they first admit they have a problem. One cannot improve education unless one first admits there are problems, and even though the studies have indicated there are problems in all of these programs, we have failed to do anything about it.”