Political Quotes

“Improve the existing educational system. This is pretty hard for you to realize. We've got all kinds of change in this country, and one thing that really hasn't changed fundamentally in years is elementary and secondary education. We have a program that you may or may not have heard of called America 2000. There are 1,700 communities already participating in this program. It bypasses the powerful teachers union and says to the local teachers and the parents and the community leaders, literally, help us reinvent the schools. So that's one thing that's going to happen. In some areas, some urban areas, they say, we only want 8 hours. And others might say, we want year-round schools. Others are going to try more emphasis on math and science. As President, I put into effect, with the help of the Governors, including Governor Clinton, six national education goals. It's never happened before. They're voluntary, but they set the future for education, kids like you. More emphasis on math and science is one of them. Another one is every kid must start ready to learn. That means Head Start, and we've literally doubled the funding for Head Start in this administration. It means nobody's too old to learn. That's one of them, more job retraining and more adult education and give people credits while they're working to get educated. And so we've got the plan. We've got the ideas to revolutionize education. And there's one last point: I think parents ought to have the right to choose the schools. When I got out of the service they gave you a GI bill, and they didn't say you can only use this in public institutions. They said you can go wherever you want to college or use this money to help you get to college. I want to see the same thing tried in public education. Forty-six percent of the public school teachers in Chicago send their kids to private school. I want to try this now under our ``GI bill'' for kids that says to parents: You choose, public, private, or religious. And the schools not chosen will do what's happened in Milwaukee where they've tried it. They'll get better. It won't undermine the public school system; it will make it better. Moderator. Mr. President, just a followup to Betsy's question. When you ran in 1988 against Mr. Dukakis, you said you wanted to be the education President. Four years later, if you had to grade George Bush's paper, what grade would you give yourself?”