Richard K. Armey: “I continue to oppose this legislation. Goals 2000, which I call bureaucracy 2000, was a bad bill when it went into…”

“I continue to oppose this legislation. Goals 2000, which I call bureaucracy 2000, was a bad bill when it went into conference, and it is still a bad bill. Faced with a clear choice between bureaucratic control and parental freedom, the American people choose parental freedom, hands down. But this bill insists on giving a big thumbs up to bureaucratic control. Instead of giving parents more accountability over what goes on in their children's classrooms, it gives more power to a new National Education Standards and Improvement Council, a new National Skills Standards Board, a new National Education Goals Panel, and, of course, the old Federal Education Department in Washington. All of which means more power for the National Education Association and less discretion for America's parents. And true to the NEA agenda, the bill still mandates gender-sensitive and multicultural textbooks; still contains language carefully crafted to lead to the race-norming of educational and employment tests; and still pours money into school-based health clinics. But most troubling of all is the bill's mandates on the States-- mandated content standards, mandated performance standards, mandated opportunity-to-learn standards. The folks that are calling this bottom-up reform must be standing on their heads.”